Monday the Rabbi Took Off (17 page)

“And how did it go?” asked Miriam.

The rabbi did not answer immediately. He frowned as though trying to find the words with which to frame his reply. “You know, it’s curious.” he said at last, “you live here for a while – and it doesn’t have to be a long time – and you start feeling like a native, at least toward tourists. You find yourself embarrassed by them, and you resent their failure to understand what they see, You resent their patronizing airs; you resent the comparisons they make with America, the ones they voice and the ones you sense they feel even when they don’t say anything; you resent their attitude that they own the country because of the contributions they’ve made –”

“You’re really talking like a native.”

“I suppose I am. Maybe I’m beginning to think and feel like one.”

She rose and walked over to the table to busy herself rearranging the books, the vase of flowers, the ashtrays that were on it. With her back to him. she said. “I get the impression. David, that you’re hinting that you’d like to remain here.”

“I think I might.” he said quietly. “At least for a while. Would you mind?”

“I don’t know. It would depend. What would you do – I mean about making a living? You couldn’t be a rabbi here.”

“I know.”

She turned around and faced him. “David, are you tired of being a rabbi? Are you planning to give it up?”

He began to laugh. “It’s funny: rabbi comes to the Holy Land and loses his religion. Of course I knew, even before I went to the seminary, that I couldn’t be the kind of rabbi my grandfather was in the little shtetl in Russia where he lived or for that matter in the Orthodox community that he came to in America. He was a judge, applying his knowledge of the Talmud to settle the problems of his congregation and his community. That was impossible in America. But I thought I could be a rabbi like my father, a leader in the community who steered his congregation along the lines of basic Judaism and kept them from straying into the romantic Christianity that surrounded them. It involved certain traditional practices, set prayers to be said at certain times of the day, that were not in keeping with the modern world, but they had the merit of keeping us different from our neighbors, and so they were a cohesive force. Well, since coming here to Israel. I have to begun to think that they were the religious practices of the Exile, the galut. I felt the spirit of the Sabbath most on our first day here when I did not go to the synagogue and again at that nonreligious kibbutz. They had worked hard all week, and on the Sabbath they put on clean clothes and feasted and rested, and it renewed their strength for the coming week. Somehow. I felt that was the way it was intended to be. It seemed to me that here, in our own land, our traditional practices had become a kind of mumbo jumbo, useful in the Exile, but meaningless here. I could see it in the wondering eyes of Itzical’s little boy at the kibbutz as he watched me praying in my shawl and phylacteries. To bind a black leather strap around my arm in a certain way and around my forehead, to wrap a special fringed cloth around me in order to recite words that had been written for me hundreds of years ago – that was useful in America to remind me that I am a Jew. But here in Israel. I don’t need anything to remind me. What is my work in Barnard’s Crossing but purveying religious hocus-pocus – marrying people, burying them, saying an appropriate prayer at all kinds of occasions? That’s what Markevitch and Katz expected of me today.” Hands in his trouser pockets, he began to pace the floor.

“But they’re not typical of the congregation.”

“They’re a little extreme. I admit, but their attitude is not too different from that of most of the congregation.”

“David, have you made up your mind? Have you definitely decided you want to leave the rabbinate?”

“No – I don’t know,” he said unhappily, looking moodily at the floor. “But –”

“But you’d like to know how I feel in case you should? Well, I married you before you were a rabbi, and if you had flunked out at the seminary, I wouldn’t have asked for a divorce. But you still have to make a living. What would you do?”

“Oh, I could always get a job.” He looked up, and his voice was buoyant again. “Or maybe we could join a kibbutz. Or I could teach. Or write for one of the newspapers. My Hebrew is good enough. Of course, we’d have to make some adjustments. We’d have to get used to a lower standard of living. Instead of the volunteer work you’re doing at the hospital, you’d have to get work that you’d be paid for –”

“That wouldn’t bother me. I could even do the same work I’m doing now. The others in the department do get paid. But it might be some little while before I could start.”

“Oh?”

“Today at the hospital. I begged off for a while and went to see a doctor on my own.” She hesitated. “I’m going to have a baby. David.”

They met as usual in the hotel lobby, before going up to dinner at the Artist’s Club, and the first thing Roy said was. “I got an exam tomorrow, so I’ll have to leave early.” On the other occasions, he had made similar announcements – that he was tired and planned to get to bed early; that he had an early class the next morning or a date later that evening – any excuse to leave immediately after dinner. Each time Dan had been disappointed and even a little hurt, but had been careful to give no indication of his feelings. He felt it was important that Roy feel he had complete freedom. He was determined not to play the role of the heavy-handed father. “If we’re to be friends.” he told himself, “he’s got to want to see me the same way I want to see him.”

He had tried to get Roy to talk about his studies with little or no success. “Courses, like courses in the States. You get one prof that’s interesting, you’re lucky. The time passes a little quicker. Most of them just cover the ground.”

He had tried telling him about his own work, interviews he had taped, his methods of procedure. It drew little response.

He had tried to ask about Roy’s friends and even offered to have one or two join them for dinner.

“Well, most of the kids are pretty busy.”

“I don’t need to make any special preparation. Give me a call.”

“Yeah5 I’ll keep that in mind.”

Deciding that perhaps Roy interpreted his interest as interference in his affairs, prying, tonight he was determined to keep the conversation in neutral channels and take his lead from his son. They walked to the restaurant in silence, and only when they arrived did Roy finally say, “This is not a bad place, you know.”

Dan agreed, saying that considering location, service, quality of the food, he found it as good as any place in Jerusalem.

After some discussion of the menu, they ate in silence for the most part. When they were served their dessert and coffee, however, Roy ventured, “I called you last night, and they said you’d gone to Tel Aviv.”

Dan wondered if he resented the trip. “Yes, I went down for a couple of days. Bob Chisholm was having a little party. He’s head of the AP office down there.” Roy did not appear to be interested, but Dan continued if only to fill the vacuum of silence. “I took the sherut down and when we arrived. I called the Sheraton to see if they could let me have a room for the night. They were full, of course – they always are – but I got hold of Phil Bailen, the manager, and he said he’d fix up something. So that way I was able to stay down there for a couple of days.”

“M-hm.”

“It’s quite a town.” Dan continued. “There’s no telling who you’ll run into. When I got to the hotel late that night, after the party, who do I see but Alfred Northcote? He’s with the BBC, and when I was stationed in London a couple of years ago. I used his digs because he was off to Spain at the time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It didn’t surprise me either. You know, between the time I registered at the desk and the time I got into the elevator I met three different people I knew. I had just finished registering when Colonel Girande, whom I met in Paris, oh, six or seven years ago. spotted me and came over and we chatted for a few minutes. And while we were talking, Bob Chisholm – the one that gave the party – he joined us. Then while I’m waiting for the elevator. I hear somebody calling. ‘Meestaire Stedman’ and I turned around and it was Olga Ripescu. The minute I saw her, I remembered her, and remembered her name, too. Some years ago I did a story on the Rumanian Ballet. Most of the story was devoted to the premiere danseuse and the choreographer and the manager, of course. But I also talked to some of the young people who had just joined the troupe, and one of them was this girl. Olga Ripescu. Well, she had come with the ballet and now she was the premiere danseuse. And she had remembered me after all that time.”

“Fantastic!”

Dan didn’t know how to read the remark, so pretended not to notice. “There’s a party at the American Embassy next week,” he went on. “I was invited. I could wangle an invitation for you if you’d care to go. There’s usually a number of pretty girls on hand from various diplomatic and government offices.”

“Jewish girls?”

“Most of them.”

“I see.” said Roy. “You’d like me to meet some Jewish girls.”

“From what you’ve told me, it might not be a bad idea.” his father observed. “Yes, I’d like you to meet some Jewish girls and Jewish boys.”

“That’s what I thought. So you’re still trying to run my life,” he said bitterly.

“Well, isn’t that what fathers are for?” Dan said, trying to keep the conversation light.

“No one has a right to interfere with somebody else’s life. I’m an individual, and I’ve got a right to live my own life the way I want to. I aim to pick my own friends and do my own thing.” The young man spoke with passion.

“Look. Roy; do we have to quarrel every time we meet?”

“Just don’t try to steer me, and everything will be just fine. That’s all. just don’t try to steer me.” He got up from the table. “Uh, look, it’s getting late and I’ve got that exam.”

Back in his hotel room. Dan Stedman went over the evening in his mind. What’s the matter with these young people? Anything you say, they give their own special interpretation. How do you talk to them so they’ll listen and respond in a reasonable, adult way?

He was reminded of a line in a letter he had received only that morning from his sister in Barnard’s Crossing. “… although he was here more than six years, he was never very popular and has no real backing in the congregation except for the young people, most of them still in their teens, who seem to like him – and they don’t vote in temple elections.”

He searched in his desk drawer for an earlier letter in which she had given him Rabbi Small’s address.

It’s a book of opinion. Israeli opinion, not of government officials or big shots but of the man in the street – Jew, Arab. men. women, the young and the old.” Stedman warmed to his subject. “You see, Rabbi, when you talk to an official, all you ever get is the official view that has already been announced through the government press releases. But if you get the ordinary people to talk, you get insights into the political situation that underlie the official news.”

“And how do you go about it?” asked Miriam. “Do you stop people on the street?”

“Sometimes I do. Mrs. Small, but I don’t tell them I want to interview them because then they would either freeze up or say what they think you want them to say. I try to be a little more subtle. Here’s a man walking along the street. So I ask him how to get to someplace that is in the general direction he’s heading. Usually they say they’re going that way, and we walk along together. We start to talk, and if it sounds as though it’s going to be interesting. I switch on my tape recorder – I control it from a device in my pocket – so they don’t know they’re being taped. Then when I get back to my room. I label everything so that I can collate it. edit it, and write it up at my leisure.”

“Are your interviews in English or Hebrew or what?” asked the rabbi.

“I have them in Hebrew. Yiddish, English and even French. My Yiddish is excellent; my French not too bad. My conversational Hebrew is all right, too. I’ve been here about a dozen times. The last time was for more than a year. I’d say it was adequate. Occasionally I strike a tough one. as I did the other day. He was an intellectual, and he used words I’d never heard before. But that’s another advantage of the taping method. I can play it over and over again and look up the words I don’t know in the dictionary.”

“But how were you able to frame your replies or the next question if you didn’t understand what he said?” asked the rabbi.

“Oh, I got the gist of it all right. It’s the subtle nuances that I felt I was missing. Would you like to hear some of my tapes sometime?”

“Yes, very much.” said the rabbi, “although I don’t think my college French would be up to following a conversation.”

“I don’t have too many in French, just some that I got in a restaurant where there were a lot of Sephardic Jews from North Africa. I tell you what, maybe you’d like to come along. If you’re not doing anything tomorrow morning –”

“Nothing urgent.”

“You, too, Mrs. Small.”

“Oh, I’d like to, but I have to be at Hadassah in the morning.”

When they met the next morning. Stedman said. “Perhaps it’s just as well that Mrs. Small couldn’t make it. It might be harder to develop a conversation if there were three of us.”

“I suppose so. By the way5 Miriam asked me to ask you if you’d care to take dinner with us tomorrow night. And we’d like to have your son come. too. When you mentioned on the phone you had a son in the university, we rather expected he might be with you last night.”

“Well, Roy is kept pretty busy. I see him about once a week; we have dinner together. I try not to interfere in his life too much. I’m not sure he’ll be able to make it tomorrow night, but I’ll ask him.”

“I thought tomorrow being the Sabbath he’d be likely to be free. He might enjoy a Sabbath meal, and I’d like to meet him.”

“I’d like you to meet him. Rabbi.” He hesitated and came to a decision. “To tell the truth, I’m at something of a loss as to how to deal with him. After I was divorced from his mother – he was ten at the time – I had visiting rights, of course, but my work was apt to keep me away from the States for long periods of time. My wife wouldn’t let me make up the time lost when I was home, and I don’t blame her, because it would have disrupted his life. But the net result was that I didn’t see much of Roy. except a day now and then. I tried to keep in touch with him – letters, phone calls – but it wasn’t the same thing. I thought that with both of us here alone, we’d get to know each other. But he’s cold, distant. I can’t seem to reach him. Sometimes I think he resents me. If I try to interest myself in his work, in his problems, if I try to advise him. he acts as though I’m intruding on his private affairs.”