hair was carefully combed and her makeup was fresh. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise, Rabbi Small,” she said and held out her hand. “You’ll join us in a drink? I was just fixing Manhattans.”
“That will do very nicely,” said the rabbi with a grin.
“I can’t help thinking,” said the rabbi, as she left to prepare them, “that on the few occasions I have called on you it always starts with a drink-”
“Spirits for the spiritual, Rabbi.”
“Yes, but when you dropped in on me, I always offered you tea.”
“At the rate I was coming around it was just as well,” said Lanigan. “Besides, I was usually on business, and I don’t drink during business hours.”
“Tell me, were you ever drunk?”
The chief stared at him. “Why, of course. Haven’t you ever been?”
The rabbi shook his head. “And didn’t Mrs. Lanigan mind?”
Chief Lanigan laughed. “Gladys has been kind of high herself on occasion. No, why would she mind? It isn’t as though I’ve ever been really blind drunk. Always it’s been on some special occasion where it’s kind of expected. Why? What are you getting at?”
“I have just been to see Mrs. Hirsh-”
“Ah-hah.”
“And I’m just trying to understand. Her husband was an alcoholic, and that’s something I haven’t had much experience with. We Jews don’t run to alcoholism.”
“That’s true, you don’t. I wonder why.”
The rabbi shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. The Chinese and the Italians also have low incidences of alcoholism, yet none of us are teetotalers. As far as Jews are concerned, all our holidays and celebrations involve drinking. At the Passover feast, everyone is expected to drink at least four glasses of wine. Even the young children partake. It’s sweet, but the alcoholic content is there nonetheless. You can get drunk on it, but I can’t remember any Passover when anyone did. Maybe the very fact that we do not forbid it enables us to enjoy it in moderation. For us, it doesn’t carry the joys of forbidden fruits.”
“In France, I understand, they drink wine as freely as water, but they have a lot of alcoholism there.”
“That’s true. I don’t suppose there’s any single explanation. There are certain similarities among the three groups that do encourage speculation. All have a strong family tradition that might provide a sense of security other people may look for in alcohol. The Chinese, especially, feel about their elders somewhat as we do. You know, we have a saying that other people boast of the beauty of their women; we boast of our old men.”
“Well, that might apply to the Italians, too-respect for elders, I mean, although they seem to lean more toward the mother than the father. But how does that help?”
“Simply that the embarrassment of being seen drunk might act as a deterrent in societies where elders are greatly revered.”
“Possible,” Lanigan said judiciously.
“But there’s another explanation-and here we share a similarity with the Chinese. Their religion, like ours, emphasizes ethics, morals, and good behavior; and like us they attach less importance to faith than you Christians. This helps to keep us from being guilt-ridden.”
“What’s faith got to do with it?”
“In Christianity, it’s the key to salvation. And faith is not easy to maintain at all times. To believe is to question. The very act of affirming implies a doubt.”
“I don’t get it.”
“We don’t have that much control of our minds. Thoughts come unbidden-unpleasant thoughts, awful thoughts-and if you believed that doubt could lead to damnation, you’d be apt to feel guilty a good part of the time. And one place you might find solace would be in alcohol.”
Lanigan smiled easily. “Yes, but any mature, intelligent person knows how the mind works and discounts it.”
“Any intelligent, mature person, yes. But how about the immature?”
“I see, so you think one reason Jews don’t become alcoholics is because they don’t have guilt feelings?”
“It’s a theory. I’m just speculating idly while waiting for a drink.”
“Gladys,” Lanigan bawled. “What are you doing in there? The rabbi is dying of thirst.”
“Coming.”
She appeared with a tray of glasses and a pitcher. “You can replenish your glass whenever you’ve a mind to, Rabbi.”
“And how about Isaac Hirsh?” asked Lanigan as he raised his glass in silent toast to his guest. “As I understand it, he didn’t have any interest in the Jewish religion, let alone the Christian.”
“But he may have felt guilt. At least so thinks his superior, a Dr. Sykes. He suggested he may have become an alcoholic because of the work he did on the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
“That so? And how are you involved? Was Hirsh a member of your congregation?”
“No, but his widow thought he should be buried in our cemetery.”
“I think I’m beginning to see. You’re wondering if it really was an accident, or if it was suicide. You people have the same attitude toward suicide that we have-I mean as far as burial is concerned?”
“Not quite. In a sense, our practice is similar to yours. The suicide is not publicly mourned, no eulogy is said, and he is supposed to be buried off to one side rather than in the main part of the cemetery. But your church is a large authoritarian organization-”
“And what difference would that make?”
“Just that there’s a sort of hierarchy, a chain of command that tends to keep the rules of the church uniform.”
“And you are your own boss. Is that it?”
“Something like that. At least no religious body passes on my decision.”
“So if the rabbi is easygoing and soft-hearted-”
“He still has his own integrity to live up to,” said the rabbi firmly. “But apart from that, the philosophical basis for our disapproval of suicide is somewhat different from yours, and that in itself permits greater flexibility.”
“How so?”
“Well, the attitude of your church is that each and every one of us was put on this earth to fulfill some divine purpose, and life is essentially a test to determine an individual’s eventual destination-Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. So the man who takes his own life is in a sense dodging the test and flouting God’s will. For us, on the other hand, life on this earth is the sum total of man’s destiny. But we hold that man was created in God’s image, and hence to destroy himself is to commit a sort of sacrilege by destroying God’s image.
“At the same time, we do not condemn the man who is driven to suicide by reason of insanity or by great pain, grief, or mental anguish. In the Old Testament, there are several suicides whose memories we still honor. Samson for one. He pulled down the pillars of the Philistine temple, you remember. That could be defended on the grounds that it not only killed him but large numbers of Philistines who were the enemy. In a sense, then, his could be regarded as death on the battlefield. King Saul is another example, a more clear-cut case perhaps. After the death of his sons in battle and realizing he was likely to be captured by the enemy, he asked his armor-bearer to run him through with his sword. When he refused, Saul thrust the sword into his bosom with his own hand. Here it has been argued that the suicide was justified on the ground that if he had been captured, the enemy would have made a mockery of him which would have brought great shame and dishonor to the Jewish nation. Then too, there was the certainty his men would have tried to recapture him and that many would have died as a result. So his death could be regarded as a sacrifice to save the lives of his people.
“Martyrdom is really a form of suicide even though the actual blow is not dealt by one’s own hand. And starting with Hannah and her seven sons, all of whom died rather than bow down to Greek idols as recorded in Maccabees of the Apocrypha, we have had a long record of martyrdom. It is referred to, in fact, as
