Monday the Rabbi Took Off (24 page)

When the Stedmans left. Dan purposely steered the conversation away from the subject of police and passports. “How did you enjoy the evening?” he asked his son.

“I had a nice time. I liked the rabbi.”

“You were fighting with him all night.”

“That doesn’t make any difference.” Roy said. “He wasn’t yes-yessing me like some of the profs do at home who are always trying to get on with the kids. You know the drill: ‘Now that’s a good question1 or ‘That’s a very interesting point Stedman has brought up.1 And he didn’t talk down to me either. We argued like equals.”

They came to where they had to separate. “Er, Roy, about that passport, don’t worry about it. Maybe I’ll run down to Tel Aviv tomorrow.”

“But it’s the Sabbath. You’d have to cab down. It will cost about fifty lira.”

“Yeah, but I can take either the sherut or the bus back, and that’s only three and a half.”

As Roy trudged home, stopping whenever he heard a car to jerk out a thumb for a ride, he went over the whole business in his mind. If the police inspector thought he was really involved in the murder, why had he been so pleasant to him? Why hadn’t he questioned him more intensively? On the other hand, if the interrogation had been all it appeared, why did they have to check his passport so thoroughly? Maybe his father was right and they had actually pulled his passport; then why couldn’t they simply go to the American consulate in Jerusalem and have them get it back for him? Why did his father think it necessary to go to the embassy in Tel Aviv? And on the Sabbath? It couldn’t be just to expedite matters so they could make the boat trip, because the embassy wouldn’t be able to do much before Sunday and by then it would be too late. But then why did his father tell him not to worry? If there was really nothing to worry about, why was he going down to Tel Aviv on the Sabbath? And if there was. why didn’t he just tell him? Did he think he was a kid who couldn’t be told the truth?

Then Roy really started to worry.

There’s nothing official about this. Rabbi.” said Marty Drexler. “We want to make that plain at the beginning. Don’t we5 Bert?”

Bert Raymond nodded. “That’s right. Marty had this idea, and he spoke to me about it, and I said we ought to come over to see you first before we started doing anything – you know, talking it up among the fellows, laying the groundwork.”

Rabbi Deutch looked from one of his two visitors to the other. His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “It’s something I’d have to think about.” he said at last in his deep baritone voice. It was the voice he used in the pulpit, several notches below the tones he used to tell his wife how he wanted his eggs cooked for breakfast. “I served my congregation in Darlington faithfully for thirty years. There were many who wanted me to continue, but I felt that I needed a much deserved rest. There was work of a scholarly nature that I wanted to do. Traditionally, a rabbi is primarily a scholar, gentlemen. Frankly, one of my reasons for coming to Barnard’s Crossing was its close proximity to the great libraries of Boston and Cambridge.

And even in the short time I’ve been here. I’ve made use of them. However. I have also enjoyed my work with the congregation, and I must admit it has not seriously interfered with the works of research and scholarship in which I am engaged. How it would work out over the long haul is another matter. I’d have to give it careful thought.”

“Well, sure, we know that. It’s not that we want your answer right away,” said Marty eagerly.

“It’s not only a question of my own personal inclinations.” Rabbi Deutch went on as though he had not been interrupted. “There is also an ethical and moral question. I came here originally as a substitute for Rabbi Small –”

“But he’s not the one who picked you.” said Marty. Although he felt a good deal of constraint in Rabbi Deutch’s presence, unlike his reaction to Rabbi Small, he could not keep restrained for long. “I mean it isn’t as though he asked you to come and take his place. It was the board that did. I mean you’re not his choice, so it isn’t as though you owe him anything.”

“Well –”

“Marty is right, you know,” said Raymond judicially. “I can see where you would feel bound to him if he had asked you to come and take his place. Even if he had recommended you to the board without consulting you first – that is, if he had submitted your name to the board as a possible candidate – but he had nothing to do with it. When he told us that he wanted a long vacation – and mind you. he didn’t ask us, he just told us – we discussed what we ought to do. There was even some talk on the board of not engaging anyone, you know, just arranging for someone from the seminary to come down now and then.”

“I see.” Rabbi Deutch tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling as he pondered the matter. Finally, he lowered his head and said, “Still, the rabbinate is not a business. I can’t take advantage of a colleague’s absence to take over his pulpit as a businessman would take a customer away from a rival.” He rose and began striding the room, their eyes following him like spectators at a tennis match. “I have been very happy here. I admit that. And I am happy to hear that my efforts have not been in vain. I am happy to hear from you that I am well thought of in the congregation. That makes me very happy indeed. Now suppose that as a result of my greater experience, some of you, even a majority of you. even the entire congregation” – he stopped in front of them and spread his arms as if physically to include the massed congregation – “felt that I was more attuned to your needs, and I put it that way advisedly, gentlemen, because I don’t for a minute want to suggest the possibility that Rabbi Small might not be as effective in his own way as you gentlemen seem to think I am in mine, well, even then, it becomes a question of whether it is right, or at least proper, for me to take over this pulpit on a permanent basis when Rabbi Small left it expecting to come back after his vacation or leave of absence.”

“But that’s just the point.” said Marty. “This wasn’t just an ordinary vacation. I ought to know because I’m the guy that arranged it. And I came down ready to talk contract. And because he’d been here almost seven veers and hadn’t taken off in all that time, we were ready to give him a sabbatical. But for a sabbatical, you know, you’ve got to have a contract. I mean, you can’t give a guy a year’s salary or half a year’s salary so he can go to Israel and then afterward have him say, ‘So sorry, boys, I’m taking a job with this other congregation.1 And he wouldn’t even discuss it.” Marty could not keep the indignation out of his voice. “Absolutely refused to talk about it. So, okay, he doesn’t want to talk contract, but what are your intentions, Rabbi? How long do you want? You want to go to Israel? You want to get it out of your system? Fine, I can understand that. I guess a rabbi has to go to Israel at least once to say he’s been. You want to take off three weeks or a month even. I guess we could manage all right. But no5 he wants an extended leave, three months, maybe more. Now you understand. I’m the treasurer of the temple. I’m the moneyman, and I’m responsible to the whole congregation how I spend the temple’s money. It’s not my money. It’s theirs, the congregation’s, so while I’m handling somebody else’s money I got to be careful. I mean, suppose somebody in the congregation says to me what right have I got to give away the temple’s money when I don’t even know is the rabbi coming back or not. So I have to figure what the congregation can be legitimately asked to stand for. And I come up with a formula. I say, ‘Okay, Rabbi, let’s figure on a vacation basis. You been here six years and little more. All right, practically anybody got a right to two weeks’ vacation a year. So that’s six times two weeks is twelve weeks or three months. I figure anybody that asks, I could justify a three-month paid vacation.’ And what do you suppose the rabbi says to that? He says he’d given the matter some thought, and he’s decided that he shouldn’t be paid while he’s on leave. And to me that means he was practically resigning,” said Drexler triumphantly.

“That’s the way I see it,” Bert Raymond chimed in.

A faraway look came over Rabbi Deutch’s face, and when he spoke, his eyes were focused beyond them as if he were addressing an unseen audience. “The responsibility of the spiritual guidance of a congregation can constitute a great drain on one’s nervous energies, gentlemen. I can remember when I was a young man in my first pulpit, on more than one occasion the thought came to me that for my own peace of mind I should throw the whole business up and go into some other line of endeavor. You may have approached him when he was tired, exhausted, drained. If he meant to resign, would he not have said so?”

“Well, we thought of that,” said Bert Raymond, “and that’s why we didn’t approach you before. But just recently one of the members, V. S. Markevitch, I think you know him –”

“Yes, I know him.”

“Well, V. S. may not be the biggest brain in the world, but he’s no fool either. He’s a successful businessman, which means he’s had experience dealing with people. He saw Rabbi Small in Israel, and he reported that he got the feeling that Rabbi Small wasn’t planning to come back. Maybe he was even thinking of leaving the rabbinate.”

“Still, you can’t tell about these things at second hand –”

“So we’re not. Rabbi.” said Marty Drexler. “If we were sure Rabbi Small was not coming back, we’d have voted on it in the board and then come to you with a definite offer. All we’re asking is would you care to stay on here if the opportunity arose? I mean, if you thought you were going to be through here in a couple of weeks and were flirting with another congregation –”

“No. I haven’t considered –”

“So. why not stay on here?”

“As I said. I’d have to think about it. I’d have to talk it over with Mrs. Deutch and see how she feels about it.”

“Of course.” said Raymond quickly. “By all means, talk it over with Mrs. Deutch. Then a little later we can talk again. Right now. all we’re doing is what you might call hedging our bets.”

In his talks with Roy, whenever the subject turned to politics. Abdul always couched his criticism of the government or of Israeli Jewish society in a teasing, half-humorous way so that it was hard to tell if he was serious or not.

“Today I went to the bank to cash a check. I stood in a long line, and when I got to the counter, the clerk told me I was in the wrong line. So I stood in another line. When I finally reached the counter, the clerk examined the check and the signature. He looked at the front of the check and then at the back, and then I had to identify myself. Then he looked through a long list to make sure that the one who had given me the check was a depositor and then to match signatures and then to see if there was enough money in his account to cover the check. Then he gave me something to sign and sent me to another clerk. Again I waited in line, and there, too, I had to sign, and only then did I get my money. This is Israeli system. And the check was for twenty lira.”

“Less than six dollars American.”

“That’s right.” said Abdul. “I could have earned more in the time it took me to cash the check.”

“And is it more efficient in Arab banks,” Roy asked.

“No, but with us efficiency is no virtue. You have work split between many people because it is efficient. With us. a job that can be done by one is split between two or three because we feel that they also have to make a living. And the cost is no greater because we do not pay them much, but everyone gets a little. And delay does not bother us because we expect it and are not in a hurry. Usually, it means that some official expects a bribe. We don’t resent it because the poor man gets only a small salary and has a large family to feed and maybe a daughter for whom he has to have a dowry.”

“And what if the man can’t afford the bribe?”

“So perhaps he has a patron who helps him, or he waits and suffers a little. Is it different in America if a man can’t afford a lawyer?”

Roy laughed. And then because he was uneasy and troubled and wanted to allay his fears, he decided to tell Abdul what had happened. Abdul would put the whole matter in proper perspective; he would cite similar cases he had known of police stupidity. “Well, maybe you’re right. But let me tell you what happened to me.” And he told the story from the beginning.

“Memavet?” Abdul interrupted. “You went to see Memavet at his apartment? But that was the place that –”

“Yeah. yeah. I know, but listen.” When he told what his father had said about returning later that evening. Abdul smiled approvingly.

“He is a smart man. your father. The big trick in bargaining is not to appear interested. Always remember the seller has interest enough for both.”

“Yeah, well –” He went on to tell of his own return to Mazel Tov Street later in the evening. But now Abdul was not smiling.

“This was not very smart of you, Roy,” he said reprovingly. “If your father found out. he would be angry. And what did you hope to gain in any case? You could not buy the car on your own.”

“But my idea was just to look at it. I wasn’t planning to go in to see Memavet. I just figured that after we left, he must’ve called somebody he knew that had a car and told him to bring it around at seven. So it would be parked in front of his house, and I could take a look at it and maybe tip off my old man.”

“But there was no car there.”

“That’s right. So then I got to thinking, here we made an appointment and he was going to have a car to show us. So he hasn’t got a car. So I’d just go in to show him we kept our part of the bargain and he didn’t keep his. Then he’d be obligated, see?”

Abdul shook his head pityingly. “Why would he be obligated? And what good would it do? You think he’d ask less when he did get a car? Believe me. more likely he’d ask more because he’d know you were anxious to buy.”

“Yeah. well. I figured it the other way. Anyway, I didn’t get to see him because he was in bed sick, so I left a note in the letterbox saying I had been there.”

Abdul showed concern. “This note, it is probably still there. It must be recovered. There are workmen there now. Arab workmen, perhaps I can arrange –”