Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out (9 page)

The rabbi smiled. “So?”

“So it bothers him, he feels he’s not really a bona fide Jew, he’s that kind of guy – awfully sincere, all the different cities they lived in – see, they moved around a lot because he’d take over a corporation, in Detroit, say, and they’d move there, and then they’d trade it for a corporation in Dallas, say, and they’d move there, living in hotels all the time – so in all these cities, he never joined a synagogue, mostly I guess because he never got around to it, and wasn’t planning to stay long, in any case, but also because he felt he wasn’t really a Jew, not having been Bar Mitzvah.”

“But surely; you explained –”

“But here, he’s planning to stay.” Maltzman hurried on. “He didn’t get control of Rohrbough to trade it, he’s planning to run it, and he’s planning on building a house in the area and living here, he wants to become part of the community, that’s when I braced him about joining our temple, and he springs that Bar Mitzvah thing on me. I was just going to tell him it made no difference, when his wife tells how she heard about some old geezer of seventy out in California who just got himself Bar Mitzvahed, and why couldn’t he do the same thing, and right then it came to me – the gimmick!”

“The gimmick?”

“That’s right. Ever since I became president, and even before, I’ve been searching for a gimmick, the gimmick that would sell the temple. You got something to sell, you need a gimmick. In my line, when I first started selling houses, it was tiled bathrooms with glass shower doors. You had a house that was built solid with nice large sunny rooms in a nice location, it didn’t mean a thing without a tiled bathroom. It caught the eye. It didn’t have a tiled bathroom, forget it, well, after a while all houses had tiled baths, so you had to come up with another gimmick. So they came up with tiled kitchens, then it was kitchens with wood cabinets, then rumpus rooms, then finished cellars with a bar. Get the idea? So when I became president of the temple, and decided that what we needed was more members. I tried to think of some gimmick that would bring them in. I’ve been racking my brains for a gimmick, and then Mrs. Segal tells about the old guy who was Bar Mitzvah, and her husband is interested, and right away I’ve got my gimmick, he wants a Bar Mitzvah? Swell! We’ll give him a real one, we’ll send out invitations to every Jew in the community, members and nonmembers. ‘You are cordially invited to join with us in worship and attend the Bar Mitzvah of Benjamin Segal.’ We’d do it up brown, he’d make the usual speech –”

“Today; I am a man?”

Maltzman grinned. “Sure, why not? I’ll bet he’ll go along, then I’d make my little president’s speech and give him a prayerbook like we give all the Bar Mitzvahs, and then you’d give him your blessing and make your little speech the way you usually do, then we’d have a party in the vestry so he could get to meet everybody. I even had the idea we’d give him a bunch of fountain pens as a gag –”

“Fountain pens?”

“Oh; I guess that was before your time. But when I was a kid, a fountain pen was the most popular gift for the Bar Mitzvah boy. Not ballpoints, but the kind with a gold nib that you fill yourself from a bottle. See, the kid would be going on to high school where he’d need it, they cost anywhere from a couple of dollars to fifteen or twenty, so it was a pretty good gift, too, Gosh, when I was Bar Mitzvah, I must’ve got half a dozen. I wore them all in my breast pocket the next day, so I looked like the doorman at the Russian Samovar. Segal is my age, so he’ll know about it and get a kick out of it.”

“I see.”

“So is it all set?”

“No, it’s not all set. Mr. Maltzman. I certainly have no intention of going along with the gag. Mr. Segal was Bar Mitzvah when he was thirteen whether he knows it or not, there’s no special rite or ritual required. It’s automatic. It’s not like baptism. It isn’t initiation into the religion or the tribe, that’s what circumcision is. If Mr. Segal feels that he wants to be rededicated to the religion of his fathers, it would make more sense if he had himself circumcised again.”

“That’s crazy!”

The rabbi nodded. “But at least it has some justification in logic. Bar Mitzvah, though, merely means that one is of age, old enough and presumably mature enough to take responsibility for one’s own actions and sins. It’s just like becoming twenty-one, or eighteen, or whatever the age is now where you can make your own contracts. No special ceremony is required, no party and no speeches. When you’re twenty-one you can vote or make a contract, well, that’s all that Bar Mitzvah means, that you are of age.”

“But you’re called up before the Ark for the Reading in the Scroll.”

“That’s because, as an adult, you’re now a member of the community. It’s a courtesy we extend to any new person in the community, or to a stranger who happens to be present. In the morning services when we read from the Scroll, if there’s someone present whom I haven’t seen before, I always offer him the opportunity. You’d know that if you came to the minyan occasionally.”

“But that old guy on the West Coast –”

“I can’t be responsible for what happens on the West Coast.”

“And in other places, too. In the Hadassah Journal there was a picture of a whole group, all senior citizens, that went to Israel and had a mass Bar Mitzvah at the Wall.” Beads of perspiration began to appear on Maltzman’s forehead.

The rabbi shook his head. “I can’t answer for the judgment of any other rabbi. I interpret the Law as I see it. I don’t approve of changing the meaning or the interpretation of an old and treasured tradition, the whole business of ceremonies of confirmation and rededication, it’s foreign to us, we confirm our faith every time we perform one of the commandments, every time we recite our prayers or make one of the blessings or gain some new insight into our religion, the rabbis of old warned against making unnecessary vows. It suggests that we might be taking the name of the Lord in vain. In fact, on Yom Kippur, in the Kol Nidre prayer, we ask to be released from vows, rather than the other way around. Of course, if you want to throw a party in the vestry for this Ben Segal, I can’t stop you, although I might question the propriety and the good taste of having a party to celebrate the signing up of a new member just because he’s rich. But what happens before the Ark and the Scrolls of the Law is within my jurisdiction, and I cannot permit it.”

Maltzman’s eyes protruded dangerously and his face was flushed, he rose so abruptly that the chair fell over, he glared at the rabbi for a moment and then bent over and picked up the chair. Erect once again, he appeared to have recovered his composure, he even smiled. “We’ll see about that. Rabbi.” Then he turned and left the room.

The guests had all arrived by the time Henry Maltzman got home. His wife. Laura, could tell by the violent way he shrugged out of his topcoat that something was wrong.

“Did you see the rabbi?” she asked.

“Yeah, I saw him.” He strode into the living room. “Hello you folks. Sorry I’m late. I had to see our spiritual leader.”

His sarcasm revealed to his wife that he was angry and it worried her. “I think we can eat now,” she announced brightly and led the way into the dining room.

She served the soup from a tureen on a side table and called out. “Don’t wait. I always say soup should be piping hot.”

“Needs salt.” grumbled her husband.

“Delicious, absolutely delicious.” said Mrs. Streitfuss. “It has a special taste. Lentils?”

“Lima beans.” said Laura. “The big ones. I let them dissolve, and it gives a special flavor.”

“You must give me the recipe.”

“Now, that’s what I call soup.” said Allen Glick. “Why can’t you make soup like that?” he asked his wife.

As Laura cleared the dishes for the next course, her husband, who had been silent up till now, leaned back in his chair and said. “You people hear about the Segal Group taking over the Rohrbough Corporation?”

“Oh, that was reported in the papers last week,” said Roger Streitfuss, “at least, that it was in the works.”

“Well, it’s all set.” said Maltzman. “and what’s more, Ben Segal, who heads up the Group, is going to run the place personally, he and his missus are in town right now, and – now get this – they’re joining our temple.”

“Hey; how about that!” exclaimed Herb Mandell.

“Imagine, a big shot financier like that comes to town, and first thing he does is want to join a temple.” Allen Glick shook his head in wonder.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way exactly/’ said Maltzman. “I mean, he’s not one of those pious Jews who can’t live without a synagogue, as a matter of fact, he didn’t think of himself as a Jew at all. Oh, born one and all that, and not denying it, but he never had a Bar Mitzvah on account his folks were so poor at the time, so he didn’t think of himself as a real Jew. See what I mean?”

“Well, I don’t think –”

“In the Hadassah Journal –”

“Seems to me –”

Maltzman held up his hand to still the babble. “I read that article in the Hadassah Journal, too. It’s the one about that group of old geezers from California who went to the Wall in Jerusalem to be Bar Mitzvah. Right? Well, I told him about it, and he was willing.” He looked around the table to gather their attention. “Then I got an idea. You know, all along I’ve been saying we ought to do something to bring in new members. I figure there are at least a hundred Jewish families in town, maybe more, that don’t belong to the temple, maybe they’re not sure they’re going to stay on in town, maybe they haven’t been approached right.”

“Maybe they don’t want to join a temple where women are second-class citizens.” said Molly Mandell.

Maltzman nodded. “Maybe, anyway; I’ve always thought if we could get the right gimmick, we could sell the temple to these people, and I was sure this time I had it, here’s this big shot, and he’s going to be running Rohrbough, and some of our people work there. Now, he feels funny about never having been Bar Mitzvah, feels he isn’t really a Jew, and yet with a name like Segal, he feels he can’t be anything else, unless he changes his name, and he wouldn’t do that. So it came to me – the gimmick. I could kill two birds with one stone. Why don’t we give him a Bar Mitzvah, the temple, I mean, and we send out invitations to all the Jews in town, whether they’re members of the temple or not – ‘You are cordially invited to join us in worship and the celebration of the Bar Mitzvah of Mr. Ben Segal of Chicago – ‘ Get it?”

He could tell from their faces that they did, that they all thought it as wonderful an idea as he did.

“So I went to see the rabbi about it, that’s why I was late getting home.”

“And?”

“And nothing, he wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was against our religion, that you’re Bar Mitzvah when you become thirteen whether you want to or not, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Well –”

“Seems to me my father said that.”

“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they know in Jerusalem?”

“And the Hadassah people would know, wouldn’t they?”

“I guess our rabbi knows better.” said Maltzman bitterly. “He says he’s not responsible for what other rabbis do. This isn’t the first time –”

“Maybe he feels you’re against him.” suggested his wife, as she entered to serve the main course. “All the other presidents invited him to sit in on the board of directors’ meetings and you never did. If he were at the meeting and something came up –”

Maltzman was exasperated. “I’ve explained to you that it’s a different kind of meeting now. Until we reformed the bylaws, practically anybody could come to the meetings.

There were forty-five directors plus all the past presidents, we held the meetings Sunday mornings when people came to bring their kids to the Sunday School, or when they came to the morning minyan. So those who were on the board, some of them would stay for the meeting. It was a crazy system, there’d be only about fifteen or twenty present at most meetings, but if something was proposed and somebody was against it, they’d spend the week calling all the members of the board, and the next meeting, when it was to be voted on, there’d be forty or more, and it would be voted down. You could never transact any business, well, now we have a board of fifteen, and it’s like an executive committee, and we meet in the afternoon, and it’s every other week, instead of every week. It’s a business meeting, not just a place where you come to chew the fat. Everybody who is supposed to comes. If someone stays away two or three meetings, he’s dropped, and I’m empowered to appoint someone to take his place the way I appointed Herb Mandell here when Joe Cohen found he couldn’t make it regular. So, even if I invited the rabbi to attend the meetings, he would be unable to come every meeting, he has a wedding or a funeral or some other kind of meeting he has to go to on a Sunday afternoon, and if he didn’t come every week, we’d have to spend time when he did come explaining what the points at issue were.”

“It seems to me.” said Molly Mandell placidly: “the big mistake we made was in giving the rabbi a lifetime contract.”

“We didn’t give him a lifetime contract.” said Roger Streitfuss. “We offered him one and he refused it, a couple of years back, I think it was, he’s on a yearly basis. It was his own idea.”

“That’s right.” said Maltzman. “It was the year he went to Israel, maybe thought he might want to go back there and didn’t want to be bound by a long-term contract.”

“So how do you work it?” asked Molly: interested. “Do you meet with him on the terms every year and then draw up a contract?”

“Oh no. His salary is just one item in the budget. When the board votes the budget, the secretary sends him a letter telling him his contract has been renewed for the year, and that’s it.”

“And what would happen if you wrote him and said it hadn’t been renewed?” asked Allen Glick. “I’m just asking, you understand.”

“Gosh. I don’t know. I suppose he’d – I don’t know what he’d do.” said Maltzman.

“I bet he’d resign.” said Roger Streitfuss. “I know he’s had trouble with other administrations, and he’s fought for his job. But he’s never actually had an official vote passed against him.”

“You got a point there.” said Allen Glick. “What else could he do but resign? Either that, or appeal to the board to reconsider, and he’s too proud for that.”