Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (23 page)

“But that’s just your interpretation. Rabbi,” Kaplan said doggedly. “As I see it, we have a right to follow the secular law, especially where the money from the sale of the property is going to be used for a truly religious purpose, for the revival of religion –”

“Religion!” The rabbi was scornful. “Religion with us is ethical conduct. You are an observant Jew, Mr. Kaplan. You pray daily with the phylacteries. You kiss the mezzuzah that is affixed to the lintel of your door when you pass it. But what are these if not reminders to walk in the way of the Lord? If they are not that, then your piety, your meticulous observance of the ceremonials is just so much mumbo jumbo. ‘What to me are your sacrifices?’ the prophet said. ‘Your Sabbaths and New Moons, my soul hateth…. Rather, cease to do evil.., seek justice, relieve the oppressed.’” Warmed by his own rhetoric, he went on, his voice rising, “You may be reviving religion up there in your retreat in the woods, but it’s not the Jewish religion, and if this is the direction in which our temple is turning, I want no part of it.”

As if to punctuate the rabbi’s exhortation, a bell rang throughout the building, startling the men in the room. It was the bell signaling the end of the Sunday-school session.

The secretary looked at his watch in disbelief. “Jeez, it’s twelve o’clock. Look, I’ve got to take my kid home, the wife raises hell if we’re late.” He slapped his notebook closed and rose from his chair.

“Yeah, me too.”

Kaplan raised his hands to stop what threatened to become a general exodus. “Look, men, we can’t leave it like this, we’ve got to –”

“Lay it on the table until next week.”

“Just a minute, just one minute. You’re acting like a bunch of kids. Let’s do this in an orderly fashion. Somebody make a motion.”

“All right. I make a motion that we lay the rabbi’s motion for reconsideration on the table.”

“Second.”

“Rabbi? All right with you?”

“Well, I feel there should be more discussion –”

“Look. Chet, on an important matter we always hold it over for a week at least.”

“You didn’t on the original motion that I’m asking you to reconsider,” the rabbi observed.

“Can I say something?” Dr. Muntz called out. “The way I see it, the rabbi thinks Aptaker ought to get his lease renewed, all right, how do we know Bill Safferstein won’t renew it? If he renewed it, then everything is okay, halacha-wise, isn’t it, Rabbi?”

“He won’t,” said Kaplan. “I know he won’t.”

“It won’t do any harm to ask him, will it?”

“All right, so I’ll ask him, but I know he will not agree.”

“Then I make a motion that we lay this matter on the table until our chairman has a chance to speak to Safferstein about Aptaker’s lease.”

“Second the motion.”

“All in favor, say aye. Oppose, nay, the ayes have it. Now I’ll have a motion to adjourn. Paul?”

“I’m not making a motion to adjourn. Chet.” Goodman said. “I will if you want me to, of course. I asked for the floor because I think the rabbi ought not to be present next week when we discuss this matter. I don’t think it should be a motion –”

“Why shouldn’t the rabbi be here?” Muntz asked. “Seems to me since he brought it up –”

“Because he’s practically accused all of us of having broken the Jewish law on this matter and said he was going to call all of us – ‘individually and collectively,’ he said – to a Din whatyamacallit. Okay, so he’s on one side, and we’re on the other, he’s the accuser, and we’re like the defense, well, common sense would dictate that you don’t have the accuser present at a meeting of the defense.”

“Now, Paul –”

“I think there’s some merit in what Mr. Goodman says,” said the rabbi. “I think I should absent myself from the meeting. I have made my position clear, and it is up to you to decide what you’re going to do about it. I don’t mind waiting a week.”

“Just a minute, there’s no meeting next week,” said Goodman.

“Why not?”

“The Sisterhood Fair.”

“Oh yeah. So it will be the week after, all right with you, Rabbi?”

“If I can wait a week, I guess I can wait two,” said the rabbi.

Edie Kaplan could never understand what her friends found to marvel at in her housekeeping, she kept a kosher kitchen with two sets of dishes, one for meat and the other for dairy products, because for her it was the normal way, her father had been a sexton in a large synagogue in Boston, and a sexton is expected to be a pious man, strictly observant of the regulations, he not only had to supervise the maintenance of the building, but he also had to make the necessary arrangements for each of the services, lead the daily prayers, read the Scroll and even spell the cantor on occasion.

Edie was raised in a household where the idea of eating meat and dairy products from the same set of dishes was as unthinkable as eating from the floor, as for eating both at the same meal, she found the thought positively repulsive. Just reading a recipe which called for the use of butter or milk in preparing a meat dish gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She knew, of course, that other people ate things like pork and lobster, but for her they were as alien and outlandish as snails or snakemeat or fried termites, which some people also ate. Nor did she think her eating habits constituted a sacrifice that she was making for religious reasons, as Catholics eat fish on Friday. Intellectually, she knew that the foods she ate were permitted and the foods she did not eat were considered taboo according to her religion, but in point of fact, hers was a pure gut reaction, she could not have swallowed one of the forbidden foods, and if forced to, she would have retched. When the Kaplans dined out with friends, she always ordered fish, and if one of the company ordered meat and then more particularly buttered a roll to eat it with, she would tend to wince and look away.

“But isn’t it awfully complicated, Edie, having two sets of everything? Don’t you get them mixed up?”

She would shrug and say, “When we were in Israel we saw the Bedouins sitting on the ground, all of them eating from a common dish, and just with their hands. Eating at a table, each person using a separate dish and a knife and fork must have seemed complicated to them.”

Edie had married Chester while he was still a student at law school, and for several years they had lived with her folks. It was not uncongenial, but her husband chafed at the necessity, after passing the bar, some of his friends had taken jobs with the city as assistant district attorneys, with insurance companies, with large law firms. Instead, Chester had elected to go into private practice, but clients were not forthcoming.

Edie had faith in him, however, and so did his father-in-law, who would say, “Don’t worry, Chester. Have faith in God, and everything will be all right.”

“You mean He’ll send me clients?” Kaplan gibed.

“I’m sure ambulances He won’t chase for you, Chester,” his father-in-law said, “and crimes He won’t arrange so you can defend the criminals. But if you pray, you’ll be satisfied. When I was a young man, I wanted to be a rabbi and I studied for it, but one thing or another prevented. But I didn’t lose faith so I got what I really wanted.”

“But you became a sexton, not a rabbi.”

“True. But what did I really want? At first, I wanted to be a rabbi because of the honor. Later, when I was older and more mature, I wanted to be a rabbi because I thought I would like the life; to study, to advise and influence people in the right way, to teach. So this is just exactly what I do now. I have time to study, I teach a group of men Talmud and most of the time I’m the voice of the congregation when I lead the prayers in the daily services, and I’ve outlasted three rabbis at the synagogue. Every one of them was so busy with meetings and committees and preparing little speeches that he never had time for study or even to always come to the daily minyan. In the old country, of course, it was different – different for the rabbi and different for the sexton. But we are not in the old country, we are here, and here I am doing what I really wanted to do.”

“So why doesn’t it happen to me? I go with you to the minyan every morning and every evening and –”

“But one must pray,” his father-in-law said.

“So what do I do? Read the newspapers?” Chester asked.

“Like most people, you say the words. It must be in your mind.”

In the course of time, things began to improve for Edie’s husband. Clients came, in part from contacts he had made in the synagogue, and Edie and Chester were finally able to move into their own apartment. Secretly, he was convinced that it was his faith that was responsible for his success, he did not publicize it, however, because faith was out of fashion, and his contemporaries would have regarded him as odd, as it was, they tended to explain his regular attendance at the synagogue as a mild eccentricity, or as something he did to please his father-in-law or even because it was a good way of getting clients.

When Leah was born, they decided that a city apartment was no place to bring up children and moved to Barnard’s Crossing. Chester became a member of an Orthodox synagogue in nearby Lynn and attended the daily minyan regularly, the Sabbath, however, presented something of a problem, the synagogue was a good five miles from his house, too far to walk, and riding was taboo, he discussed the problem with Edie. “I could go to a hotel Friday afternoon and –”

She shook her head. “Then you’d miss the Sabbath meal at home, according to my father, that’s more important than going to shul. You have to use common sense. Like once, the electricity went off in the synagogue just before the Friday evening services. For some reason the janitor wasn’t around. My father knew what to do. It was a fuse that had blown. But to change it meant working on the Sabbath, he thought of going into the street in the hope of seeing a passing Gentile and asking him to fix it, but then he worried that something might happen, he’s always been a little afraid of electricity. On the other hand, what would happen when the people arrived and found the synagogue in darkness? So even though it was work and forbidden on the Sabbath, he changed the fuse himself.”

“But I can’t just ride up to the synagogue on Saturday.”

“So park a block away and walk from there,” Edie advised.

When Jacob Wasserman started an organization for building a temple in Barnard’s Crossing, Chester Kaplan joined as a matter of course, but manifested little interest since it was going to be a Conservative synagogue. However, when their daughter Leah was old enough to attend the religious school, he decided to send her to the one attached to the Barnard’s Crossing temple rather than make elaborate arrangements to drive her to the school connected with the Lynn synagogue, as a result, he became more involved with the local temple and correspondingly less with the synagogue in Lynn. While there were things that he missed, there were also compensations, as a highly observant and religiously knowledgeable Jew. Chester belonged to a small elite group in the local temple while in the Lynn synagogue he was only one of many, as a result, he was accorded a special respect.

Shortly after Leah was divorced, her father began the Wednesday At Homes and the retreats in New Hampshire. Edie was not enthusiastic about either, but she did not push her views, vaguely sensing that Chester’s new interest had something to do with the divorce, that it was a reaction to the bad luck that had been visited on their daughter, a special religious exercise for having fallen from grace.

Edie was pleased when her husband was elected president of the temple, but only mildly, having grown up in a household where the president of the synagogue was frequently viewed as the enemy or, at the very least, the opposition. When he began to develop plans for a permanent retreat, she showed little interest.

“But how about the effect on the members of the congregation?” Chester said. “It will give them a chance to work at their religion, to make it more meaningful.”

“Funny, I never thought of it as work,” Edie replied. “There are rules, and everything is spelled out. You always know what to do. So where’s the work?”

When she learned that the rabbi was opposed to the retreat. Edie was disturbed, but her husband was so enthusiastic about the project that she did not argue with him. However, when after the meeting she heard him on the phone explaining to Safferstein that there was nothing to worry about, that the rabbi was the only opposition and that he had no doubt that the move to reconsider would be defeated, she could not remain silent.

“It’s not good, Chet,” she said. “My father had dealings with lots of rabbis over the years. Some he liked and some he didn’t like so much, with some he discussed and with some he argued, because he was a learned man and he knew the Talmud as well as any of them did. But when he asked a rabbi a point of law, he accepted his decision. You don’t fight with a rabbi, Chet. When you call him in on a decision, you accept his judgment.”

“But I didn’t call him in on this, he’s forcing himself into the issue.”

“Same thing, Chet. If you ask him, you accept what he says, and if he feels that it’s a matter that pertains to him, you also have to accept his decision. No good will come from this, Chet, believe me.”

Except for his brief visits to the hospital to see his father, Akiva spent every free minute with Leah. Not only would he drop by at night after closing, but on those mornings when it was McLane’s turn to open, he would run over after breakfast to have coffee with her. Occasionally, when his hours at the store permitted, he would pick her up and drive into Boston for lunch at a kosher restaurant, he never phoned in advance but merely arrived at her house, he always assumed she would be there and would want to see him.

“Why don’t you phone first?” she asked plaintively. “Suppose somebody is visiting me?”

“Like yesterday morning?”

“You were here yesterday? My mother –”

He grinned. “Sure, I was here. But I saw a car in the driveway and drove on.”

“But why couldn’t you –”

Akiva put his hands on hers. “Do you mind. Leah? Does it bother you? Because it does something nice for me. It makes me feel that I’m home.”