The Day the Rabbi Resigned (2 page)

“How long?”

“Ever since my birthday.”

“But—but why then?”

“Because I'm fifty-three, and it occurred to me that in a few years I'd be too old to be considered for a teaching job. Maybe I'm too old now, but I'd like to give it a shot.”

“And have you done anything about it?” she asked quietly.

“Well, I've written to my cousin Simcha.”

“Simcha the Apicorus? You wrote to him because you thought as an atheist he would approve of your leaving the rabbinate?”

“I wrote to him because he's been a professor at Chicago for over forty years, and I thought he might be able to help me. And an Apicorus is not necessarily an atheist. We use the term very loosely and are apt to apply it to anyone who doesn't observe some regulation we do.” He looked at her curiously. “You don't appear to be particularly upset at my wanting to leave the rabbinate.”

“I'm not,” she said flatly. “Do you think it's easy being a rabbi's wife?”

“Why? What do you have to do? Oh, you mean you feel you have to go to all the Sisterhood meetings and the Hadassah meetings.”

“Oh, I don't mind going to those. I'd probably go even if I weren't the rabbi's wife. I mean, I have to be nice to everyone. The Bergsons are good friends of ours, but would I ever say to Rachel that I thought Janice Slobodkin used too much makeup? Or that Nancy Bersin spoils her kids rotten? Or that I didn't think the other Nancy, Nancy Goldstein, was much of a housekeeper?”

“You mean Rachel Bergson would tell them?”

“Of course not, but in talking to her good friend Debbie Cohen she might mention it. And Debbie Cohen is friendly with both Nancys, and
she
might mention it to them.”

“I don't hesitate to tell Al Bergson what I think of various members of the congregation.”

“Of course not. You've been fighting with one segment of the congregation or another ever since we came here. Sometimes you've opposed the entire Board of Directors. Besides, men don't talk.”

“How do you mean we don't talk?”

“I mean that a man doesn't call another man on the telephone unless he has something specific he wants to tell him, but women talk on the phone for hours even when they've got nothing to say to each other. It's a form of visiting, of keeping in touch. So things get said that you hadn't planned on saying. I've got to smile and be friendly all the time, and it's a strain. Janice Slobodkin calls me ‘Mimi.' I hate the nickname. But if I ask her to call me Miriam, she's apt to think I'm stuck-up, or that I want her to keep her distance. Let's get out, David. Find another job in teaching or editing—”

“But it's not easy for a man of fifty-three to get a job, especially in an entirely new field. I can't very well give up this job until I get another.”

“But you can, David. There'll be just the two of us. Jonathon goes into that big law firm at the end of the year, and Hepsibah is getting married in September.”

“That's going to cost a pretty penny.”

“But we've saved for it.”

“We have?”

“I have.”

“Still, we've got to live. What if a job doesn't come along? Do you expect me to ask our children to support us?”

“Heaven forbid! But we'll manage. In a couple or three weeks, in June, you will have been here twenty-five years. And you are eligible for your pension, which pays seventy-five percent of your present salary. And there's a cost of living increase included. Seventy-five percent of your salary for just the two of us. We'll be rich, David. Even if you don't get a job right away, we won't suffer. We can travel. We can go to Israel without having to worry about getting back in time for the High Holy Days, or because you have to officiate at someone's wedding.”

A slow grin spread across his face. But then he shook his head. “No, I've got to have a job, even if it's just one to come back to.”

“Why?”

“Because I've got to have something to do. I have to know that something has to be done, to give structure to my life. It's different for a woman. She always has a job—preparing meals, running a household. But if a man has nothing to do, he disintegrates. You know what happens to men who retire, men who have nothing to do? They're with their wives all the time. They go shopping with them and carry their bundles. The big decision of the day is where they'll go for lunch or what to prepare for dinner. No, thank you. I won't give up this job until I get another.”

Later, as they were preparing for bed, she asked curiously, “Why didn't you see Morris Fisher, David? Didn't you make your regular visit to the hospital? And don't you see every one of the congregants when you go?”

“And any other Jew who happens to be there at the time,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I did go Tuesday. That's my regular day at the Salem Hospital. I asked about him, and the nurse said he was down in X-ray, so I didn't bother to stop in at his room. I'll catch him next Tuesday, if he's still there.” He sighed. “And if he's not, I'll stop in and see him at his house.”

“You don't sound very enthusiastic. Don't you like him?”

“Well … he's not a very cheerful fellow; seems to be in a perpetual state of mourning.”

“But that's because he's lost his wife.”

“That was five or six years ago, before he came to Barnard's Crossing. And I've heard from those who know him that he's always been that way.”

“Well, maybe your visit will cheer him up.”

“What do you suggest, that I tickle him with a feather?”

“Oh, you. Go to bed.”

2

Whenever Mark Levine, short, stocky, and balding, came up to Boston from his home base in Dallas, he always made a point of seeing his old friend Donald Macomber. They had been classmates in college, and in their senior year they had roomed together. After college, Mark Levine had gone to work in an insurance office in Dallas, had branched out for himself after a year or two, had made some shrewd investments, or as he would say, had been extremely lucky, and was now a very, very rich man.

Donald Macomber, tall and slim, with piercing blue eyes and silvery gray hair, had gone on to take a doctorate in history, to a professorship in a good university, to a deanship where he had shown considerable administrative skill, and finally to the presidency of Windermere Christian College in Boston. When informed of the appointment, Mark Levine had written facetiously, “It was only a question of time; people who look like you are bound to become college presidents.”

They had maintained contact over the years by an occasional letter or phone call, and on the occasion when business brought Mark to Boston, he always made a point of leaving one night free so that he could have dinner with his friend.

It was after such a dinner that Macomber had asked, “How about joining our Board of Trustees, Mark?”

“You want me on the Board of Trustees of Windermere Christian College? You must be joking. Just what denomination is it?”

“I'm not joking, Mark. And it's no denomination.”

“I mean originally.”

“It was never denominational. It started out as a ladies' seminary back in the middle of the last century. You know what those places were: a place for girls to mark time for a couple of years after high school until they managed to get married. They couldn't go out to work because in those days the only acceptable job for women of good family was teaching school. So the wealthy girls were sent to finishing schools with large campuses out in the country, with tennis courts and horses, where girls learned the things that aristocratic gentlewomen were supposed to know. But Windermere was for girls of the middle class. It was in the city, so the girls could live at home. It was called the Windermere Ladies' Christian Seminary, not because it was religious in any sense of the word, but to convey the idea that it was a moral place, strictly supervised, and that no high jinks were permitted.

“Then at the turn of the century, it became Windermere Christian College for Women because ladies' seminaries and finishing schools were going out of fashion. It became a four-year college of liberal arts because—because, I suppose, things were beginning to open up for women and there were other things they could do besides teach school.”

“Or perhaps because two years was not enough time in which to catch a husband,” Levine suggested.

Macomber chuckled. “You may have something there,” he conceded. “In any case, they kept the Christian in the name, maybe with even a little more justification since the four-year girls' colleges were a lot less supervised than the two-year seminaries had been. I don't think anyone thought of it as a school with any religious orientation. In going over the names of some of the graduating classes, I noted a number of names that were almost certainly Jewish.”

“It doesn't prove anything,” said Levine. “In Catholic countries like Ireland and Poland, I understand Jewish youngsters are enrolled in the religious schools with a dispensation from attending the religious services.”

“I suppose so, but I would think that after the school had been in existence for so many years, its general orientation would be pretty well-known, at least in the area.”

“All right.”

“Then after World War Two, with the G.I. bill enabling large numbers of veterans to go to college, it became coeducational, the way many schools did. Women's Lib had something to do with it, I imagine.”

“But you still kept Christian in the name,” Levine insisted.

“Yes, it became Windermere Christian College of Liberal Arts. As I understand it, they kept the Christian in the name because it had always been referred to as Windermere Christian. It's not easy to give up a name. The company is still called American Express even though it hasn't engaged in the business of delivering parcels for years. And then, too, it was argued that there were a number of scholarships and gifts of one sort or another that had been made out to Windermere Christian, and that these might have to be given back if they changed the name. At least, that was one of the arguments that was offered me when I took over as president. I didn't push it because I sensed that the board wouldn't go along with me. But I did do something to indicate that the school was nondenominational. I hired a Rabbi Lamden to give a three-hour course in Judaica. He is the rabbi of a Reform congregation in Cambridge. He's not much of a scholar, but he's popular because it's a snap course and anyone taking it is sure of an A. You see, the school had become a fall-back school—”

“Fall-back?”

“Yes, you know, as it got harder and harder for kids to get into the prestigious colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, they'd apply to those and then to some less prestigious school, like Windermere, to fall back on if they were refused admission to their first choices. Well, because Windermere had become a fall-back school, it had begun to get students from outside the Boston area, especially from New York and New Jersey. The student body had been pretty much local until then. Quite a few from the New York and New Jersey area were Jewish, and I thought the Judaica course might allay whatever suspicions their parents might have of the name.”

“I see, and you think my name on the Board of Trustees would add to the effect?”

“No, believe me, Mark, that's not what I had in mind.”

“What then? An endowment, perhaps?”

Macomber smiled. “A college can always use some extra money. But that's not what I was thinking of either. Look, the board meets only four times a year, and the agenda is set beforehand. If you can't make it to one of the meetings, there's no harm done. Many of the out-of-state trustees come only once or twice a year, although the college picks up the tab for the trip. There are twenty on the board. When a vacancy occurs, I nominate the replacement, and although they vote on it, my nomination is tantamount to election. There's a vacancy right now, and I'd like to put your name up. And by the way, it's for life.”

“Really? So someone has to die before—”

“Well, there are resignations, and once one of the trustees was involved in a rather smelly bankruptcy. The board called for his resignation, and it was understood he would be voted out if he did not offer it. But that was before my time.”

“Well, I'm clean, but why do you want me?”

“Because I want people on the board I can be sure of.”

“But if you're the president, don't you automatically get the backing of the board?”

“It's not like taking over a corporation where your people hold the majority of the stock. In a nonprofit institution like a college, the members of the board aren't there because they own a certain number of shares. They're there because they are presumed to be important people or to come from important families. Some of them even inherit their places on the board.”

“Come, come, you mean their fathers will the seats to them?”

“Of course not, but what frequently happens is that when John Whatsis the Second, the president of the Geewhiz Corporation dies, and John Whatsis the Third takes over, he's apt to be offered his father's place on the boards of the various charitable institutions that his father had held, at least the smaller ones. Right now, I have a majority, but it's a bare majority.”

“And with me, you'd have a comfortable majority?”

“It will be better, but not yet enough to give me full control. Because for certain things—and changing the name of the college is one of them—I need a two-thirds majority.”

“You realize, Don, you can't count on me to make a financial contribution, not while you're Windermere Christian. Every Jewish organization would be on my back for donations or to increase the sums I've already given.”

“Believe me, I understand.”

“All right, as long as you understand, I'll come aboard. Will that give you your two-thirds majority?”