Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

place will be too hot to hold him.”

“It wouldn’t have hurt to show some enthusiasm, David. He was trying so hard to be nice and friendly, the least you could have done was to compliment him on the design.”

“Honestly, Miriam, I tried, but the words stuck in my throat. I kept thinking how ridiculous the temple would look with that what did he call it? rich, simple, elegant, classic monstrosity along with his schmoosing gallery, and the words wouldn’t come out. Sorenson’s design may not be much, but it is simple and it has an austere grace that Schwarz wants to spoil just so he can show he can build something besides a supermarket. We need a chapel about as much as we need a bowling alley. We don’t need the extra space. And when the sanctuary is used for secular purposes, there’s no reason we can’t put a simple screen in front of the Ark as they do in other synagogues. Don’t you see, he wasn’t interested in improving the temple-only in advertising himself.”

“All I see is that he was trying to be friendly, and you turned him down.”

“I couldn’t buy his friendship on that basis. I don’t think for a moment that Goralsky would ask my opinion, but if he did I couldn’t give him a false impresson just to curry favor with Schwarz.” He could see she was still unconvinced. “Look, Miriam, as the rabbi of the congregation, a sort of public figure, I have to be nice to all kinds of people. I have to pretend an interest in things that truthfully don’t interest me at all. I have to busy myself with matters that aren’t worth the time I spend on them. And I do it. No matter how much I resent it, I do it. I do it because in some small way, they help the congregation or the community. But if I gushed all over Schwarz about how wonderful his design was, and how wonderful it would be for the congregation to have a little jewel of a chapel which could never be profaned by anything mundane or secular, and if I assured him that I would back him to the hilt in dealing with Goralsky, then I’d be doing it just to get in good with him, to make my job more secure, and that I couldn’t do.”

“I don’t think the design is really so bad,” she said tentatively.

“By itself, no. It’s a little fancy for my taste, but well within the range of acceptability if it stood alone. But when you slap it up against the wall of our present structure, don’t you see what the effect would be? The two buildings don’t blend. They clash. And because our present structure is simple with clean lines, and the proposed building is ornate and fancy, he’s hoping that people will make the comparison. What he’s saying in effect is, ‘See what you would have got if you had engaged me originally.’ ”

Still she did not answer. Her silence made him uncomfortable. “What is it, Miriam? What’s troubling you? Are you worried about what Schwarz can do?”

“Oh, David, you know I’ve gone along with you in every important decision. After you got your degree, when you turned down that job in Chicago that paid so much money because you didn’t like the kind of congregation it seemed to be, I didn’t say a word although we were living on my salary as a typist-that and whatever occasional fees you got as a fill-in rabbi for the High Holy Days in small towns. And then there was the job at a good salary down in Louisiana that was the right kind of congregation but which you refused because you felt you couldn’t serve effectively in the South. Then there was the job as assistant rabbi in that Cleveland temple that paid more than most full rabbi jobs, but you said you didn’t want to serve under someone else and have to sub-ordinate your own thinking to his. It was near the end of the hiring season, and you yourself felt that Hanslick was getting tired of offering you jobs you kept turning down. And it was I who urged you to turn it down; I told you I didn’t mind continuing my job and that I loved our little one-room basement apartment that was so cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and doing all the shopping and the cooking-”

“I did some of the shopping and the cooking,” he protested.

“But when you did it, the clerks always gave you the worst-the vegetables that were just starting to rot-and the butcher, that kosher butcher on the corner-I’ll bet his eyes lit up when he saw you come in-all the fat and bones and gristle, and you couldn’t even remember to take off the roast until it started to burn-” She began to laugh. “Do you remember that time when you started to cut away the burnt part and I said I liked meat well done, and you said you could eat any kind of meat but you couldn’t stand a liar, and you went out and bought some delicatessen?”

“Yes”-and he, too, started laughing-“and remember the time-” He broke off. “But what are you getting at?”

“Just that in those days it didn’t make any difference.”

“And now is it different? Since living in Barnard’s Crossing, have I been buying two-hundred-dollar suits and alligator shoes?”

“You need a new suit, and the collars on half your shirts are frayed-”

“Stick to the point, woman,” he cried in exasperation.

“The point is, that was all right when there were just two of us. But I’m carrying a child and I feel responsible for it.”

“For him, and I’m responsible. Are you worried that I might lose my job and not be able to make a living for my wife and child? Don’t worry. As long as we haven’t developed a taste for luxury, then if not this job, another. And if not another pulpit, then a teaching job. And if I can’t get that, then a job as a bookkeeper in an office, or a clerk in a store. These days there’s always some job for a man who is willing to work. Remember, a rabbi doesn’t have to have a pulpit to be a rabbi. Traditionally, we don’t even approve of being paid for one’s learning. ‘One should use the Torah as a spade to dig with.’ But don’t think that I haven’t thought about it.

“I’m aware of my responsibilities. And I’m aware of the added burden that will fall on our child as a rabbi’s son. I am a rabbi’s son and I know what it means. Because your father is a public figure, everyone expects more of you, and you feel guilty when you don’t come up to expectations. As a youngster, you can’t imagine how often I wished my father owned a shoe store or went to work in an office like the fathers of the other boys. Believe me, I envied the boys whose fathers earned a living in the ordinary way. But there were compensations, and much of it was fun. When I went to the synagogue on a Friday night with my mother, and I saw my father in the pulpit conducting the service, delivering his sermons, I always felt that the synagogue was ours, that I was being taken there as other boys were occasionally taken to their father’s offices on Saturday.

“But when I got a little older and would overhear, and partly understand, the talk of men such as Schwarz-and don’t think my father didn’t have his Schwarzes-every rabbi does-then it wasn’t so pleasant. A rabbi is a public servant, and anyone who has many masters can’t expect to please them all. Once I asked my father about something I overheard-some controversy he was having with the members of his synagogue at the time-and he smiled at me and said, ‘In this life you sometimes have to choose between pleasing God and pleasing man. And in the long run, it’s better to please God-He’s more apt to remember.’ After that, I wasn’t bothered so much. Whenever I heard an uncomplimentary remark about my father, I figured he had chosen to please God again.”

“Oh, David, I don’t want you to do anything you think is wrong. Only-” she looked up at him-“please could we please God after the baby is born?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Precisely at noon the next day a cab pulled up to the door and out stepped a slim, boyish-looking man in his early forties. Dr. Ronald Sykes had a long narrow face with thinning dark hair; it was an intelligent face with shrewd knowing eyes and a ready smile. He was wearing stout English boots, gray flannels, and a tweed jacket. If the hair had been a little thicker, the face a little fuller, and the eyes somewhat less knowing, he could have passed for an undergraduate.

“I came to see you in behalf of my late friend and colleague, Isaac Hirsh,” he said when they were seated in the rabbi’s study. “You heard of his death, of course.”

“I don’t believe I knew an Isaac Hirsh,” the rabbi said with a tinge of embarrassment. “He wasn’t a member of my congregation, was he?”

“No, Rabbi, but he did live here and was part of the Jewish community, so I thought you might know him.”

The rabbi shook his head slowly.