Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red

by Harry Kemelman

  “He gives a sermon?” asked Selma. “You’re sure? Every Friday night?”

  “Well, every time I’ve been. I’m sure he gives a sermon every Friday. Why?”

  “Oh, we wouldn’t want to go if the rabbi weren’t going to give a sermon,” said Selma.

  Flossie Bloom giggled. “No point in going.”

  “How long does it last, the sermon, I mean?” asked Natalie Wolf.

  “Why, I never actually timed him,” said Annabelle, pleased to be the center of attention, “but I’d say anywhere from twenty minutes to maybe as much as a half-hour.”

  “Then say we figure on ten minutes,” said Flossie Bloom, her eyes glittering at the others, “or even fifteen minutes. What happens next, Annabelle?”

  “Next, I guess the cantor sings again and there’s another prayer or two and then everybody goes down to the vestry for tea and cake.”

  “I think it would be better at the very beginning,” said Selma.

  “You’re right,” said Natalie Wolf, “then it wouldn’t look as though it had anything to do with what he was saying at the time.”

  Annabelle looked from one to the other uncertainly, her friendly little smile frozen on her face. “Were you all planning to go together? It’s really quite interesting, and it doesn’t last too long. I mean, I don’t think you’ll be bored.” She saw their smiles and wondered if she had said something silly. Of course she knew all these girls, but some of them she didn’t know awfully well. Natalie she knew was divorced and there were rumors that she was kind of fast. Of course, if she was a friend of Selma’s she must be all right. And Genevieve Fox and Clara Nieman, well, she’d met them, any number of times, but they were really in a different circle altogether. Genevieve drove a white Jaguar, and Clara was single and had a studio apartment downtown right on the water.

  “Yes, that was the general idea,” said Selma. “We all thought we’d go together in a body. Would you like to come?”

  “Oh wonderful! I’d like to. Of course, I’ll have to ask Joe. He may have been planning to go tonight, and then of course, I’d really have to go with him.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-TWO

  The Friday evening service began at half-past eight, and it started right on time. The congregants began arriving at eight o’clock, but they remained in the foyer, greeting friends, talking, until a quarter past when they made their way gradually into the sanctuary. Once inside, they took seats and automatically lowered their voices to whispers in keeping with the sanctity of the place.

  They usually found the rabbi’s wife already in her seat in the twelfth row, which was far enough back for her to judge if the rabbi’s voice was carrying and on the aisle so she could signal him if it were not. They always nodded to her if they caught her eye and she would smile back and form her lips in “Gut Shabbes.” On the bema, next to the ark, the rabbi and the cantor sat together, the latter stately in his black robe, long silken prayer shawl, and high-crowned and betasseled velvet yarmelke. He sat straight and tall, inclining his head on occasion when the rabbi whispered a comment to him, nodding gravely afterward.

  The rabbi, shorter, and seeming even shorter because he tended to slouch in the thronelike chair, cut a sorry figure beside him. In spite of numerous hints from the ritual committee, he refused to wear a black robe, and his prayer shawl, while clean, was of wool and looked yellowish beside the gleaming white of the cantor’s. His yalmelke, too, was the ordinary close-fitting skull cap worn by members of the congregation. And since he walked to the temple, his black shoes, plainly visible to the congregation, were invariably dusty. There was a shoe brush in the enrobing room, but in spite of Miriam’s adjurations he always forgot to use it.

  The attendance varied from week to week, depending largely on the weather. On pleasant nights, about a hundred. They tended to congregate in the middle seats, that is, in the center section, third or fourth row back. After a few minutes of whispered conversation, they would begin leafing through their prayer books as if to get into the proper mood for the service. Those who came in late, or even just before the service began, would take seats in the rear as unobtrusively as possible.

  But tonight, just as the rabbi was about to come forward to announce that the cantor would begin the service by chanting the Ma Tovu, How goodly are your tents, 0 Jacob, half a dozen youngish women appeared at the back of the sanctuary. They glanced about them for a moment and then marched resolutely down the aisle to take up seats in the second row. The rabbi waited for them to get settled, then came forward to make his announcement.

  Mrs. Nathanson, like most of the congregation, was annoyed at the interruption and whispered to her husband, “Selma Rosencranz and her crowd. I suppose they’re slumming.” But before Mr. Nathanson could answer, the cantor, his head thrown back, his prayer book held at arms length, had launched into the chant.

  He followed with L’choh Dodi, greeting the Sabbath bride, and the congregation joined in the choruses. Then came the responsive reading of a psalm in English, conducted by the rabbi, and then the chanting of the Hashkivenoo, a favorite of the cantor’s, since his rendition of the chant displayed his vocal range to good advantage. Then the congregation pronounced the Shema aloud and then arose to recite the Amidah in silence. During all this, the women in the second row behaved with great propriety, standing when they were supposed to stand, reciting the responses when the occasion required.

  The rabbi waited until all had finished the silent prayer and were seated, and then, adjusting his prayer shawl and fingering his skull-cap to make sure it was securely in place, he came forward to the lectern in front of the bema to deliver his sermon. The congregation closed their prayer books and settled back. “In the portion which we shall read tomorrow,” he began, and then stopped.

  The women in the second row had risen in a group, shuffled out of their seats, and as boldly as they had entered marched up the aisle and out of the sanctuary.

  For a moment there was a shocked silence and then muffled voices as people turned to their neighbors.

  The rabbi waited until the sanctuary door had closed behind the women and then murmured, so that only those in the first few rows could catch the words, “They must have heard it before.” Then he began again, “In the portion which we shall read tomorrow …”

  * * *

  They walked in silence until they turned the corner and the temple was out of sight; then Miriam said, “You handled that rather well, David. You didn’t appear to be the least bit angry or disturbed.”

  “I wasn’t. That’s rather disturbing, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” said Miriam. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not sure I do, either,” said the rabbi. “I should have been angry. The occasion certainly warranted it, but I wasn’t. I just didn’t care. I don’t know why.” He paused in his stride and looked at her as though expecting to be challenged. When she remained silent, he went on, “It may be that I’ve always resented this late service, its artificiality, the chanting of the L’choh Dodi, greeting the Sabbath hours after it’s arrived, giving a sermon that’s nothing more than a change of pace from prayers, carefully crafted so that it’s not too tedious. I resent the fact that we get over a hundred people every week and have difficulty rounding up a minyan for the regular maariv service.”

  “But that’s the way it’s always been,” she said at last.

  “Perhaps so, but I’ve never had a basis of comparison.”

  She looked at him. “You mean because now you’ve been teaching?”

  “That may have something to do with it,” he admitted. “I’m far from satisfied with my class at the college, but at least I feel I’m doing something worthwhile there. Here, I’m not so sure. These women,” he turned to her, “do you know them all? I thought I knew some of them, but there were some I’m quite sure I’ve never seen before.”

  “It was Selma Rosencranz and her bridge-playing friends,” said Miriam tightly.

 
“Oh. I didn’t realize they were so interested in religion. They chose a rather dramatic way of expressing their opinion of the Friday evening service, or perhaps of me, since they left the moment I began my sermon.”

  “Oh David,” Miriam cried, “they don’t care a fig about the service, or about your sermons.”

  “But they—” he stopped. “Is there something you know that I don’t, Miriam?”

  “Well,” she said, “Selma is very friendly with Edie Fine, and there’s been some talk—I can’t imagine anyone taking it seriously—that you got the Selzer boy off by convincing the police that Roger Fine was a more likely suspect.”

  “Oh no!”

  She nodded dumbly.

  And now he was angry. She could tell by the way he strode along so that she almost had to run to keep up with him.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  What the hell kind of dumb play was that?” demanded Sumner Rosencranz. “What are you, some kind of hippie? Why don’t you carry a sign and picket the place? How do you suppose it makes me look when my wife gets up in the middle of a service and walks out on the rabbi?”

  “I thought you didn’t care for him,” said Selma coldly.

  “What’s that got to do with it? There are lots of people I don’t care for, so do I go around insulting them to their faces in front of a whole bunch of people? I’m not so keen on your old lady—”

  “And you show it. You show it every single solitary time she comes.”

  “I’ve never said a single goddam word to her that any reasonable person could call an insult.”

  “Oh, is that so? How about the time she gave you that shirt for your birthday? How about the time she asked you to stop off at the drugstore and get that beauty lotion?”

  “Now wait a minute. Just wait one goddam minute, will you? I’ve explained that dozens of times. All I said was that it wouldn’t do her any good. Those expensive lotions are just a big fake and they wouldn’t do anybody any good and she could put her money to better use. That’s all I meant. And as for that shirt I just said—well, all I did was criticize the shirt. That’s no insult to your mother. And how about the way you treat my mother when she comes?”

  “Look,” said Selma, “I treat your mother the same way she treats me. If she wants to come here as a guest she’s perfectly welcome, but a guest doesn’t go snooping in the refrigerator and she doesn’t make personal comments on my friends. My friends are strictly my business and I’m going to stand up for them. And Edie Fine has been my best friend for years. We went to school together and if someone says she’s married to a murderer and what’s more actually goes to the police and tells them he’s a murderer, when she’s pregnant and is supposed to stay calm and not get upset, well, I don’t care if he’s the rabbi of the temple or if he’s the Chief Rabbi of Israel, I’m going to show him what I think no matter who’s around.”

  “How do you know, Clare? How can you know that the rabbi fingered this guy Fine?”

  “Oh Mike, it’s known. Everybody knows.”

  “But how do they know?” he persisted. “Who told you, for instance?”

  “No one actually told me. I mean no one person I can think of. We were just sitting around talking. How do you know that Columbus discovered America? Somebody told somebody who told somebody. How did everybody know that it was the rabbi who got that Selzer kid off? Everybody knew it and nobody denied it. All right, the same way people know that he was the one that accused Fine.”

  “Well, if Fine is guilty and the rabbi happened to know about it, isn’t he supposed to tell? Isn’t that what a good citizen is supposed to do?”

  “Mike, how can you talk like that? A rabbi isn’t supposed to do things like an ordinary citizen. Rabbis and priests, people like that, don’t even have to go to court. I mean you can’t even make them go on the witness stand. That’s religious freedom. Besides, if the rabbi didn’t do it, why doesn’t he come right out and say so?”

  “You got a point there.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean. Now Selma Rosencranz is one of my best friends. She put it before the girls and we all agreed. And I’m not sorry.”

  He shook his head in reluctant admiration. “I got to admit that broad Selma’s got guts. Still, it was kind of raw, getting up and walking out like that.”

  “Look, as far as I’m concerned, this Fine is a snooty sonofabitch. I like Edie all right. She’s a nice girl, but as for that husband of hers …”

  “You hardly know him.”

  “I know him well enough. The big professor! Remember that political argument we had over at Al Kaufman’s house and how he jumped down my throat? He struck me as a downright radical, maybe even a Commie. And when you made some objection to something he said, he acted like you were some kind of idiot. Oh, very polite, and with high class, ten-dollar words, but anyone who disagreed with him got jumped on. Well, after hearing his Commie talk, I can believe he could do it. You know, to them it’s not murder; they liquidate somebody.”

  “Believe me, you got him all wrong.”

  “Yeah, Well, if you want my opinion, if the rabbi fingered him he knew what he was doing, and this sonofabitch Fine is guilty as hell.”

  “This is a way for Jewish women to act? For a minute I didn’t know what was happening. I thought maybe one of them got sick or something. I guess like me the rabbi didn’t know what was happening either, at first. Then he couldn’t help knowing. So if he got angry, who could blame him? Let me tell you, in the same position I would’ve been mighty sore. Anybody would. And I would’ve said some mighty nasty things, believe me. But not the rabbi. He stayed cool. He even smiled and made a little joke. He says everybody walks out after a sermon, but what kind of people walk out before?”

  “So what was the joke he made?”

  “That was it; I just told you.”

  “Some joke!”

  “Well, it sounded funny at the time, and everybody laughed. Look, it’s not whether the joke was funny or not. It’s that he could make any kind of a joke at a time like that.”

  Gladys Lanigan handed her husband his gin and tonic and then poured one for herself. “I dropped in to the Shipshape for coffee this morning,” she said. “A couple of women in the next booth were talking and I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “Didn’t lean back and strain a little, did you?” asked Chief Lanigan affectionately.

  “I did not!” She laughed. “They were talking loud enough so I didn’t have to. Seems that there was some trouble at the service at the temple last night. A group of women got up and walked out just as Rabbi Small was about to give his sermon.”

  “They did? What for?”

  “Well now, that’s something I couldn’t quite lean back far enough to make out. I gathered that these women were friends of the Fines, the one who was arrested for that Windemere business. They had some idea that it was the rabbi’s fault. Do you know anything about it, Hugh?”

  He shook his head, mystified.

  “Why do people do things like that?” she exclaimed. “And the rabbi is such a nice young man.”

  “Just general cussedness, I suppose.” He shook his head again, but this time philosophically. “They want to get rid of him. And do you know why? Because he’s there. With them it’s not like with us. There are plenty of people who don’t like Father Aherne, but no one would think of trying to get rid of him. They wouldn’t even know how to go about it. That’s because he’s sent here by the archbishop and we don’t have any say in it. With them, they hire the rabbi and so they can fire him. But I’ll tell you one thing, Gladys, for all he’s so mild-mannered, David Small’s as tough as nails. And he’s going to stay here just as long as he wants to. There ain’t no one going to push him out.” He put down his glass. “I might stop by and see him tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I gathered one reason they thought the rabbi had been able to bring it of
f was because he was friendly with you.”

  He stared at her in angry disbelief.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  Although it was the Sabbath, a time of rest and relaxation, of quiet rejoicing, when mundane thoughts and worries are supposed to be banished from the mind of the observant Jew, the rabbi had been abstracted all day, speaking scarcely a word to Miriam. And now, in the early evening, the Sabbath over, he went into the living room and was soon lost in a book.

  “Do you think he did it?” Miriam asked in annoyance. “Roger Fine. Do you think he did it?”

  He shrugged. “How do I know?” And he returned to his book.

  “Well, aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

  With a sigh of impatience, he closed his book. “What can I do?”

  “At least you can go see him,” she retorted.

  “I’m not sure it’s advisable,” he said. “Fine hasn’t asked to see me, and neither have his family here. What’s more, considering the unpleasantness before the wedding they’re not likely to, especially after this business at the temple last night. If they can spread rumors that I accused him or denounced him to the police, Lord knows what they’d make of my going to visit him at the jail.”

  “You never used to care what people thought,” she remarked quietly. “You did what you felt you had to do, regardless of what people thought.”

  “So maybe I’m a little wiser now,” he said cynically.

  She looked up quickly. It was so unlike him. He caught her look and felt he had to explain. “I’ve never been exactly a howling success here in Barnard’s Crossing,” he said quietly. “At first I thought it was the fault of the congregation and that once they came around, everything would be all right. Each time there was a crisis of some sort—and there’s been one practically every year I’ve been here—when it was finally resolved, I’ve thought, now everything is settled and I can begin to be really effective. But then another crisis would arise. It was like that first car we had, remember? We had trouble with the ignition, and when we had it rewired we thought everything would be all right. And then the radiator went. So we got a new radiator and in less than a week the muffler let go. And then the transmission, and they wanted—what was it—two hundred dollars? Three hundred?”