Meanwhile the women bustled about me, setting up music stands, rearranging chairs, turning our rec room into a sort of studio, and I was struck by the power implicit in their team-work. Women were not like this in my day. Then they were weak sisters, wimps, the beautiful nerds of time. Then they were without gyms, home fitness apparatus. Sometimes I think Shelley and Constance are throwbacks, designed to set a Sabbath table, bensch a little licht and, in the dark of their blindman’s-buff-shielded eyes, make solemn, mysterious passes over the candles like thieves palming light.
Coffee was perking, chipper as rhythm, and Miriam Perloff, Sylvia Simon, Elaine Iglauer, Shelley Goldkorn, Rose Pickler, Naomi Shore, Fanny Tupperman and Joan Cohen were everywhere at once, pulling cups and saucers out of cabinets, spoons out of drawers, shuffling napkins, placemats, preoccupied as stagehands in darkness. Out my high kitchen window like an embrasure in a fort I could see two of their station wagons drawn up casual and unattended in my driveway as police cars on a lawn.
“Does the rabbi want milk and sugar with his coffee?” Elaine Iglauer asked me, coming into my study.
“He drinks it black, Ellie,” Rosie Pickler told her. “Don’t you, Rabbi?”
“That’s so he doesn’t have to worry about mixing dairy with meat when he’s out at a function,” Syl Simon glossed.
“Oh,” said Miriam Perloff, “but that’s so interesting!”
“They teach us that in yeshiva,” I said. “It’s a trick of the trade.”
“Yes,” chorused Fanny Tupperman and Naomi Shore, crowding into my study with the others.
“But what about the sugar?” Joan Cohen wanted to know.
“It’s only forbidden during Passover,” I told her.
“I didn’t know that,” Naomi Shore said.
“Sure,” I said, “black coffee is a bitter herb.”
“The rabbi has a sense of humor,” Rose Pickler said carefully.
“I speak for my people,” I shrugged.
“Sometimes,” Shelley said, glaring in my direction, “my Jerry likes to tease-e-le.”
These women had been coming to the house seven years yet I was still a curiosity to them. People put us on a pedestal. Shelley, giggling, once told me they’d wanted to know about our sex life. “What did you tell them?” I said.
“I asked how they thought we got Connie.”
“What did they say to that?”
“You could have knocked them over with a feather-le.”
Yet I’d never doubted that they waged a kind of mass flirtation with me, even the dedicated fuss and bother of their preparations a pattern of honeybees, their hitherings and hoverings about our rooms some domestic cross-pollination. They treated me with an almost congregational deference which, if it wasn’t patronizing, may have been a kind of actual tilting with God—guarded, circumspect Godtease. Women, and men too, are sometimes burdened by their pious curiosities. Mystery makers, what, they wonder, do priests do with their hungers? Were they so different from Shelley, turned on by her own awful wonder? Into my holy leathers, my phylacteries and parchments, as well as the garments, the shtreimel and kittel and gartel I did not even own (let alone wear), and embracing who knew Whom in her head?
As I’ve said, these women were all attractive and I could, I knew, probably have made time with them if I’d shown more interest. Miriam Perloff and Fanny Tupperman had been divorced and were now remarried. And, according to Shelley, Rose Pickler and Naomi Shore had had affairs. (As “The Sabras” they’d entertained at both Miriam’s and Fanny’s second marriages and, during the period when Rose Pickler and Naomi Shore were fooling around, it wasn’t at all unusual for the group to work either Naomi’s or Rose’s favorite love songs into the program. Not wanting to abet immoral acts, Shelley, God bless her, was a little reluctant to go along with these practices even in the face of Sylvia Simon’s argument that supporting these lovesick ladies by singing their songs showed sisterhood. Shelley was a sucker for argument, she loved pleadings—I was privy to these proceedings, the rehearsals were held in my house, Shelley’s demurrers and Sylvia Simon’s justifications came through the thin walls of my study—and countered with an argument of her own: “My dear girls,” Shelley said, “of course we would want to show support, to come when we can to the emotional service of a sister in trouble. Why, in Old Testament, in Old Testament, didn’t Judith’s very own maidservant help her mistress chop off Holofernes’ head? Wasn’t that sisterhood? To make oneself an accomplice? If that isn’t sisterhood I’d like to know what is. But some principles outweigh other principles. That’s plain as the nose. So I ask you, if, as Sylvia Simon suggests, we went ahead and sang ‘My Man’ at Phyllis Levine’s bat mitzvah Saturday, what would that do to our artistic-e-le integrity?” Good old Shelley!) Good old Shelley! No wonder I’m uxorious. Who ever had a better, sweeter uxor?
Though if those assorted Sabras, balebostes and chaverot, the Fannies, Joans, Sylvias, Miriams, Elaines, Roses and Nao-mis, showed an interest in me—I mean in the fascinated, spellbound sense of the word—why, I was no less interested in them, all my powerful, exiled scholar’s instincts alerted to their own peculiar gynarchic routines. Joan Cohen shopped, one of those lanky, elegant women who wore her boots and leathers, suedes and woolens, their textures graduate as the gauge of knitting or the finish on sandpaper, and all her colors flat and dull as the shades on maps, as camouflage, as if fashion were only a step from actual blood sport. It was as if, her tints bleached by distance, you perceived her through binoculars, some quick tweed movement in a field. She looked like someone who could hold liquor. Because she seemed so efficient, she was probably the least credible of the women in the group when she opened her mouth to sing.
Joan Cohen shopped and Elaine Iglauer moved. She was one of those Jersey rovers—it’s a phenomenon I’ve only observed here—who regularly changed houses, trading up or down or even. Changing towns, following the school systems, following the country clubs, on the spoor of the fashionable synagogues. Once, it’s claimed, she actually bought a house because the town it was in was reputed to have a good newspaper. In the years we’d lived in Lud, Elaine Iglauer had lived in seven houses in six different towns and, word had it, was now on the trail of another.
But all these women—good old Shelley!—were on one trail or other, hot pursuit a way of life. Joan Cohen’s shopping sprees, Elaine Iglauer’s house hunting, Naomi Shore’s and Rose Pickler’s romantic involvements, even, I suppose, Fanny’s and Miriam’s divorces and subsequent marriages, and their flattering, collective forays into my (as the rabbi of opportunity) customs—oh, oh, how they stormed my fort!—and secrets—the question of sugar, the mystery of milk. The dietary proprieties and pieties. For openers, for conversational spur-of-the-moment ploys—a fishing expedition.
What, fishing myself, I might have told them!
That Lord-of-Kit-and-Kaboodle set Eve up, that He was never any equal opportunity Creator, that He disdains women—He doesn’t like the way they smell, as a matter of fact, and that’s why He makes such a big deal out of the mikvah, the ritual bath they’re supposed to cleanse themselves in after their menses—and why He never took a Goddess; that He isn’t even very interested if you want to know the truth, and never came on to one as a shower of gold or swan or any white bull either, and that the only books in the Bible named for women, Ruth’s and Esther’s, are—what?—ten lousy pages. That He’s this man’s-man God; that that’s why He gave them periods in the first place and relented only after He invented hot flashes and then gave them those instead; that as far as He was concerned they could stay in the tent barefoot and pregnant forever at the back of the bus, and that that’s why he made them beautiful, snappy (looking at Joan Cohen) dressers, good (glancing at Miriam Perloff) at real estate, interested (tucking my thumbs into my suspenders and taking all of them in at once) in the big questions. That this was why I had seen my Connie cry but never heard her whistle.
But this is what I thought, not what I would ever te
ll them. I’m only the Rabbi of Lud. You go along to get along.
Telling them nothing and settling instead for the cheap—my God, how difficult it is to have power, to be, I mean, however adjunct, however peripherally, in the glamorous way—some idol of the amateur, a rabbi, any insider—thrill-a-minutes of any on-site, backstage reality. Giving them instead, Shelley’s susceptible ladies, eyewitness, hands-on experience.
“Oh, Connie,” raising the window in the rec room where they’d been rehearsing, I called out sweetly, “Connie darling.” She was out front, risking the funeral corteges, which were the street’s only traffic, rather than play in our backyard that looked out on Lud’s biggest cemetery, gravestones floating on the level, becalmed surface of its unleavened earth like buoys. She was biting her nails, mauling her fingers with her mouth, drifting from station wagon to station wagon, aimless as a kid with a collection can at a red light.
“Connie,” I called, “shouldn’t we be doing Stan Bloom now? Come inside, sweetheart, and we’ll get to him while we’re both still fresh.” As I’d promised Al Harry, I’d been praying for Stan Bloom’s blood count, getting up Stan’s prayers with my daughter like a kind of 4-H project. “Come on, darling, you’ll play afterwards.” I lowered the window again. “I’ve this very dear friend in Chicago,” I told the ladies. “Connie and I have been praying for him.”
“A rare blood disease. He was on his last legs,” Shelley chipped in. “But Jerry thinks he may have caught it in time.”
They trembled, I tell you, shuddered. A small seizure. The chill of awe. Because people believe in intervention, in salvation and influence like a fixed ticket.
Connie lumbered in, the little girl all bulked up in her resentment as if it were a kind of steroid.
“Go wash,” I murmured.
“Ahh,” quivered Elaine Iglauer, Sylvia Simon and Joan Cohen together.
“Excuse me,” I told them, “I really ought to brush my teeth first.”
“Hmn,” vibrated Miriam Perloff, Rose Pickler and Fanny Tupperman.
When I came back I was wearing my yarmulke, I was wearing my tallith.
“Should we leave?” Naomi Shore asked.
“Not me,” Shelley said.
“That’s all right,” I said. “We’ll be in my study. Connie?”
“Here I am, Dad.”
I began with a couple of broches, laid on a Sh’ma, then, before they knew what had hit them—I could hear their attention through the thin walls—I was into my theme.
“Teller God of Collections and Disbursements, of Bottom Lines and Last Dipensations,” I prayed, “Lord, I mean, of Now-You-See-’em-Now-You-Don’t—Your servant, Jerry Goldkorn here with his lovely daughter, Constance.”
“Da-ad,” Connie bleated.
“—his lovely daughter, Constance.”
“Dad!” she scolded.
“Jerry Goldkorn here. Beseeching You from his hideaway in Jersey, Jersey Jerry Goldkorn. With my daughter at my side—the lovely Connie. As if,” I continued, “You didn’t know. Who knows everything. Eh, Old Sparrow Counter? Where we’re coming from. Why we’re here. You know what we’re up to. I don’t have to tell You!
“It’s Stan Bloom’s blood count again. Back in Chicago. In the Kaplan Pavilion. A young man. In his early fifties. With a lymphocyte count of a hundred and fifty thousand bleaching his blood. To only seven or eight grams hemoglobin. Is this a way to do a young fellow? Fix my old pal’s ratios, Lord. Bring that white smear down where it’s manageable. Down to ten, fifteen thousand. Beef up his red count to acceptable levels—twelve, fourteen grams.
“We have not yet forgotten Hebe Heldshaft, the Yiddish Mockeybird, whose falsetto prayers raised up a melanoma on his vocal cords like a welt to Your glory. Or those other good lads from the minyan—Norm Sachs, Ray Haas, Marv Baskin.
“Do what You can, would You? Grant our prayer. Oh, by the way, this happens to be a challenge grant. The kid’s faith is riding on it.
“Have you something to add, darlin’? Is there anything you’d like to say?”
“No,” she said.
“Connie joins me in the Amen.”
I could feel the frissons through the walls.
They so admire a rascal, other people’s cynicism. I was their rascal of God. Only Constance did not admire me. Though I was doing this for her. Getting His attention for her. Only for her. I wasn’t showing off for the women anymore. Not for Joan Cohen with all her wardrobe or Elaine Iglauer and her trade-up heart. Not for Naomi or Rose with their easy Valentine acquiescence. Or any other of those predisposed ladies, choir girls, songstresses for God. Not even for Shelley. (Though ultimately, I think, nearly everything I do is for Shelley.)
For Connie. Needing to impress Connie. Because I meant it when I said the blood count prayers were a challenge, that my kid’s faith was riding on them. Even if what I really meant was her faith in me. (Though inevitably, down the road, this conversation—RABBI OF LUD: “Hey, kid, I gave it my best shot. You were right there beside me, you heard me. Weren’t you? Didn’t you hear me? The lengths I went to. All wheedle one minute, all smart-ass, up-front I/Thou confrontationals the next. Jesus, kid, I’m a licensed, documented rabbi. I was taking my life in my hands there.” CONNIE: “He died? Stan Bloom died?” RABBI OF LUD: “I think prayer must be like any other treatment. I think the earlier you start, the more effective it is. Al Harry didn’t even tell us about Stan until he was already down for the count.” CONNIE: “He died, Daddy? You said you could pray him back to health and—Oh, Daddy, ‘down for the count’! I get it. Oh, that’s so grisly!”)
Am I a buffoon? Some wise-guy, ungood Jew? Understand my passions then. All my if-this-will-go-here-maybe-that-will-go-there arrangements were in their service. What did I want? What did I need? To keep my job with God. To hold my marriage and family together. Who was ever more Juggler of Our Lady than this old rebbie? As much the God jerk as any chanteuse out there in my rec room tuning her instrument or vocalizing scales.
Because let’s face it, I’m no world-beater. Lud, New Jersey, is not one of Judaism’s plummier posts. It’s hardly the Wailing Wall. Hell, it’s hardly Passaic. I haven’t mentioned it but it had already begun to see its better days. There is, for example, a small airfield in Lud, hardly more than an airstrip really. Its tattered windsock no longer waves more than a few inches away from its standard even in the strongest gale, and tough clumps of rag grass have not only begun to spring up through cracks in the cement but have started to puncture actual holes in the tarmac. The landing strip had been put in long before for the convenience of people who flew their own airplanes, wealthy, high-flying bereaved from all along the eastern seaboard, New York State and the near Middle West who didn’t want to deal with the traffic controllers at busy Teterborough a dozen miles off, and who came in not only for the actual funerals and unveilings but with guests and picnic hampers for casual weekend visits to the graves of their loved ones, and who were willing, even anxious, to stay in the tiny hotel that the funeral directors had had built, also for their convenience. Now, however, the landing field was hardly ever used and the hangar was just a place where the gravediggers and maintenance men stored their tools and parked their Cushmans and forklifts in an emergency.
It’s hard times.
Shull and Tober keep telling me so.
“Rabbi Goldkorn,” big Tober called out.
“Good morning, Reb Tober,” I said, raising an imaginary cap. “Good morning, Reb Shull.”
Sometimes, when we pass each other in the street, we pretend that Lud is this shtetl from the last century, this Ana Tevka of a town.
“Yeah, yeah,” Shull muttered, “good Shabbes, l’Chaim. Next Year in Jerusalem.”
“Is something wrong? What’s wrong?”
Tober unlocked the coffee shop. It had closed its doors to the public long ago but its big stainless-steel coffee urn was still operational, its grill and freezer.
Shull stepped behind the counter. He looked oddly chi
c back there in his dark, expensively tailored suit. “You want something with your coffee, Rabbi? There’s marble cake in the bell. We might have some fruit in the back. I could heat soup in the microwave. I could make toast.”
“Coffee’s fine.”
“This was before your time,” Tober said. “When the hotel was still open for business. This coffee shop had one of the finest kosher chefs in all America behind the counter.”
“I’d heard that,” I said.
“Talk about your funeral baked meats,” Shull said.
“There just wasn’t the business,” Tober said. “We couldn’t justify it.”
“We had to send him packing.”
“The Association hired him for the prestige and convenience.”
Tober meant the Greater Lud Merchants’ Association. Even the anti-Semite, Seels, was a member. Even I was.
“Then, when business dropped off …”
“That’s the thing,” I broke in. “I don’t understand how business can drop off.”
“That’s because you’re a scholar, Rabbi.”
“Not so much a man of the world.”
“You busy your head with the important things.”
“Blessing the bread.”
The Rabbi of Lud Page 8