Monday the Rabbi Took Off (3 page)

“It’s fair enough. Mr. Drexler.” said the rabbi. He hesitated and tapped the arm of his chair with his fingertips as he marshaled his sentences to explain. “You may find this hard to believe. Mr. Drexler, but when I sent that letter, all I was interested in was a leave of absence. That’s still all I’m interested in. I haven’t given any thought to the matter of a contract, and I don’t think that I’m prepared to think about it right now. A leave of absence I asked for, and it’s a leave of absence that I want.”

Drexler was still not convinced. He could not help feeling a certain admiration for the rabbi’s gifts at dickering. He tried another tack. “All right, you want to play it that way. I’ll go along. Let’s think about it and see where it leads. You say you want a leave of absence. In your letter you said three months. That’s still what you want?”

The rabbi nodded.

“So you go away for three months. And you’ll be expecting full pay, I suppose?”

“As a matter of fact, I hadn’t thought about it.” He considered. “No51 don’t think I’d be entitled to any pay under the circumstances.”

Drexler was annoyed. How do you dicker with someone

who doesn’t want anything from you? He had planned to

point out that if the temple paid him three months’ salary,

a sizable sum, they would have to have some agreement

that he would make it up to them. But if he didn’t expect

to be paid…

“Suppose we refuse the leave of absence. Rabbi?” The rabbi smiled faintly. “I’m afraid I’d take it anyway.”

“You mean you’d resign?”

“You wouldn’t be giving me any other choice.”

“Then does that mean if we vote the leave of absence, you’re definitely coming back?”

The rabbi was honestly troubled. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I’ll feel or what I’ll want three months from now.” He smiled. “Who of us does?”

“But look here, that puts us in kind of a spot. I mean, we’ve

got to hire somebody to take your place while you’re

gone, and if you’re not sure you’re coming back… “

“I see your problem. Mr. Drexler. All right, why don’t we just assume that I’m coming back? And when I do. we can then negotiate a contract that will be mutually acceptable.” He smiled. “Of course, if I should not, then we wouldn’t have to.”

The telephone rang, and Miriam hastened to answer it. She listened for a moment and then said. “It’s New York. David. Your mother, I suppose. Why don’t you take it on the extension?”

The rabbi excused himself and hurried out of the room. On the phone. Miriam said. “Hello. Mother. Everything all right?… Yes, we’re fine… Yes, Jonathan is fine… Yes, David’s here, he’s taking it on the other phone.” She listened for the click that signaled that her husband had picked up the receiver and said, “I’ll say good-bye now, Mother. We’ve got company.11 She hung up and came back to where she had been sitting.

She apologized to Marty Drexler for the interruption and then went on. “My husband has been in Barnard’s Crossing over six years. Mr. Drexler. In all that time, he hasn’t had a real vacation – just an occasional weekend. He’s tried. He feels stale. He needs to get away from all his regular work so that he can get a chance to think. You think it’s easy for me to pick up and leave for three months and live on our savings? You’re right, I’m the homemaker. I’m the one who worries about expenses and this trip will be expensive – just the fares –”

“You’re planning on a tour or something?”

“We’re going to Israel, to Jerusalem.”

“Oh, but look here. Mrs. Small, if it’s Israel, well. I can understand that. I mean, him being a rabbi, naturally he’s got to visit the place. He’s probably the only rabbi around here who hasn’t been yet. But look here. Don Jacobson. who’s on the board, is in the travel business. I’ll bet he can work out something, maybe a three-week tour where your husband will be the guide and it won’t cost him a red cent. I’ll talk to him.”

The rabbi returned to the room while he was speaking. To Miriam he said. “Nothing important.” To Drexler, he said. “It’s kind of you to want to arrange something, but we’re planning to go there to live for a while, in Jerusalem, not just to visit.”

“You mean just in Jerusalem? You’re not going touring to see the sights? And for three months? Why?”

The rabbi laughed shortly. “It might not strike you as compelling, Mr. Drexler, but I’ll try to explain. The Passover is our basic holiday. We celebrate it not merely with a service but with an elaborate ritual so that its lesson, the philosophy on which our religion is based, will be engraved on our minds.”

“Oh, you still bothered about our decision to drop the congregational Seder? Well, there were sound financial –”

“No, Mr. Drexler, I’m not bothered by the board’s decision,” the rabbi assured him. “There are good arguments on either side, although I might point out that it is a question on which the rabbi of the congregation would normally be consulted. No, I was going to say that the ritual ends with a devout wish ‘Next year in Jerusalem.1 Well, I’ve made that wish at the end of every Passover Seder, but last year it was for me not a wish but a promise, a religious commitment, if you like.”

Drexler was impressed, and for the remaining few minutes of his visit he was subdued and respectful. But by the time he got home his natural cynicism had reasserted itself, and when his wife asked how he’d made out. he replied. “He says he wants to go and live in Jerusalem for a while; it’s like a religious commitment with him. Who’s he trying to kid? He’s just lazy and wants to goof off for a while. He saves up a little money, and now he’s going to blow it.”

“Well, he’ll be getting his salary –”

“He will not.”

“You’re not going to pay him his salary?” She was surprised.

“Look.” said Marty, “he’s taking a leave of absence. You don’t pay a salary to somebody taking a leave of absence.”

“That’s kind of mean, isn’t it? Is that what the board decided, or was it your idea, Marty?”

“Look. Ethel, it’s not my money; it’s the congregation’s. As treasurer. I’m supposed to use it for their advantage. I can’t just throw it away because it’s the rabbi. Besides,” he said, “he suggested it himself.”

She did not answer then or during the remainder of the evening when he made sporadic remarks during the TV commercial to the effect that “Some guys sure have it soft if they can take off for three months and their wives go along with the crazy idea.” and. “Of course, by paying his own way, he’s got no obligation to us. He’s probably writing to a bunch of congregations right now asking about jobs.”

But later when they were lying in bed and he was on the point of dropping off to sleep, she said. “You know, Marty, it’s crazy and all that, but it’s kind of nice, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean throwing up your job and just taking off –”

He asked for three months’ leave of absence and they gave him three months’ leave.” Harvey Kanter threw one leg over the arm of his chair, ran a hand through his brush of iron-gray hair and focused protruding blue eyes on his brother-in-law. Ben Gorfinkle. “So how do you figure they done him dirty?” Harvey was a good ten years older than Gorfinkle. in his fifties, and was married to the elder of the two sisters. He tended to patronize him just as his wife did her younger sister. As editor of the Lynn Times-Herald, a local newspaper which might dismiss news of the gravest national or international importance with a paragraph while devoting two columns to the installation of officers of the local Dorcas Society, his editorials expressed the hidebound conservative Republicanism of the owners, but in private life, he was radical, agnostic and generally irreverent – especially when it came to his brother-in-law’s connection with the temple in Barnard’s Crossing which he found highly amusing.

“But it’s without pay, and the guy can’t have much money saved up.”

“But you said that was what the rabbi said he wanted.”

“I said that was what Marty Drexler reported he wanted.” Ben remarked.

“And you think this Drexler lied? That’s the money-lender, isn’t it?”

“Great Atlantic Finance. No51 don’t think he lied. He couldn’t; it would be bound to come out. But a guy like Marty Drexler could maneuver the rabbi into a position where he’d pretty much have to say it. You know. ‘Are you suggesting, rabbi, that you take off for three months and we hire a substitute and pay you. too. for not doing anything?’ That kind of thing.”

“Well.” Kanter said, “the rabbi is a big boy and ought to be able to take care of himself.”

“He’s actually pretty naive about money and business.” Ben shook his head. “He could have had a life contract and a year’s sabbatical. The board would have granted that if he had insisted.”

“That’s what you favored?” Harvey looked at his brother-in-law.

“That’s what the board last year agreed to offer him.” Ben said. “But it was at the end of the term, and on a lifetime contract we felt that the new board should pass on it. Naturally, we thought the new board wouldn’t be much different from the old. You know, each year you drop some deadwood and pick up some new people, but from year to year it’s pretty much the same. But the Raymond-Drexler crowd put up a full slate and they won.”

“How’d they manage that?”

“Well.” said Ben, “for one thing, the congregation was pretty much split down the middle last year. There was my bunch, and there was Meyer Paff s group. We had a majority, of course. That’s how we got in. But it was a very slim majority, and after the trouble our kids got into, we were pretty disorganized, and frankly not too interested in campaigning for control of the temple. I guess a lot of us were feeling sort of disenchanted with the whole business. We didn’t fight too hard.”

Seeing his brother-in-law’s skeptical look. Ben tried to explain more fully. “We figured we didn’t have to fight too hard. We thought that since the Raymond-Drexler group were so young – under thirty-five – and since they were all relatively new to the temple – most of them had only been members two or three years – we figured they wouldn’t get far. But over the years, that age group had been growing in numbers in the congregation, and right now. I guess there are more of them than there are of us older people. The kids grow up. people retire a lot earlier these days, there are a lot of reasons –”

Harvey still looked unconvinced. Ben elaborated:

“The temple was started by Jake Wasserman and Al Becker, people like that, well along in years. They had ties to the tradition which made a temple important to them. It certainly was to Wasserman. who is a deeply religious man. Besides, in those days, when the temple was just getting started, you needed men with money, and I mean a lot of money, like Wasserman and Becker, because they were expected to dig down every now and then to pay a fuel bill or a teacher’s salary out of their own pocket when the treasury was empty. They took back notes from the temple organization, but I don’t think they really expected that the temple would ever be able to make good on them. And I think some of them are still outstanding. Well, you had to be well along in years to accumulate that kind of money.”

“That’s true.” acknowledged Harvey.

“And then when the temple began to stabilize. I mean when we were meeting current expenses, people like Mort Schwarz came into power. Somewhat younger men, but still pretty well-to-do, because in those days we were always having drives for funds and you couldn’t urge someone to make a big donation or pledge if you hadn’t made one vourself.11

Harvey raised an eyebrow in exaggerated surprise. “Well, you don’t have that kind of money. Or do you. Ben, and are keeping it secret?”

But Gorfinkle didn’t react. “Oh, by the time my group came into power.” he said seriously, “the temple was completely in the black. What they wanted was somebody who could run things efficiently, the administrative-executive type.”

“What about Raymond and Drexler? Aren’t they administrators, too?”

Ben shook his head. “No, they’re different. They’re younger, for one thing. And they’re all either in the professions or in business for themselves, and they’re all doing pretty well. I guess, but of course they’re still on the make. And if you’re a lawyer like Bert Raymond or Paul Goodman, being a big shot in an organization like the temple is helpful. People get to know you who otherwise wouldn’t. And it helps an accountant like Stanley Agranat and the doctors and dentists who are part of the group.”

“You mean they’re in it just for the publicity?” Harvey needled him gently. “Not like the rest of you.”

“Well, no.” said Ben. ignoring the jibe at himself, “that wouldn’t be entirely fair. Let’s just say that they’re mindful of it. For the rest. I imagine that they feel their oats and want to run things. They’re in town politics, too, and for the same reason or reasons.”

“All right.” said Harvey, getting serious at last, “so what have they got against the rabbi that makes you think they want to do him dirty?”

Gorfinkle thought for a moment. “It’s a little hard to explain. For one thing, he’s the same age. thirty-five, and yet he doesn’t think the way they do at all. He’s not particularly interested in money or in getting a bigger pulpit with more prestige. He’s done some pretty spectacular things in the time he’s been here, but he’s never courted any publicity for them, not because he’s modest, because he isn’t, but because he doesn’t think such things are important. Maybe they’d tolerate that in an older man, but not in a man their own age. You understand?”

Harvey nodded. “I think so.”

“There’s another thing: He knows exactly what he thinks and he doesn’t hesitate to say it.”

“You mean he’s dogmatic? Opinionated? Stubborn?”

“No. although it might seem that way sometimes and maybe some people might think so.” Ben laughed dryly.”/ thought so at one time.”

“I remember.”

“But it’s something different,” Ben went on. “Old Jake Wasserman once said of him that he had a kind of radar beam of the Jewish tradition in his mind. When the congregation went off to one side or the other, he heard a beep that told him we were straying and he’d chivy us back on course. The kids, the young high school and college kids like my Stuie, go for him in a big way. I asked Stuie about it, and he said it was because they know exactly where they stand with him. As I got it, he doesn’t play up to them and he doesn’t talk down to them.”