The Rabbi

by Noah Gordon

  “Does it hurt them?” Michael asked, in spite of himself.

  Elkins snorted. “How did you feel, first time you got your wings clipped?” He grinned at their silence. “They got over it, too.”

  He placed a kernel of corn between bloodless lips and bent over. A large duck with rainbow lights like jewels in her feathers paddled in and reached up regally and bit the corn from the old man’s mouth.

  “They’re my darlings,” he said. “I love ’em. I love ’em in orange sauce.” He threw the last of the corn and then he crumpled the bag and dropped it. He rubbed his palms on his sweater. “You didn’t come out here to admire my ducks.”

  They explained their mission.

  “Why do you want me to become your chairman?” he asked, peering at them from under white eyebrows that stuck out wildly in every direction.

  “We want your money,” Kahners said clearly. “And your influence.”

  Elkins grinned. “Come into the house,” he said.

  Mrs. Elkins was lying on the couch reading a paperback with a naked corpse on the cover. She looked up and smiled at them and her eyes met Michael’s and held them. He was aware of her husband and Kahners standing on either side of him but perversely he didn’t look away. After what seemed like a long time but was actually a moment she smiled again and broke the contact as she resumed her reading. She had a good figure under the pink housecoat, but there were fine wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and her pale hair looked like straw in the yellow light of the living-room lamp.

  Elkins sat down at a Louis XIV desk and opened a large checkbook. “How much do you want?” he asked.

  “Hundred thousand,” Kahners told him.

  He smiled. He reached under the checkbook and pulled out a Temple Emeth membership list. “I looked this over before you came. Three hundred and sixty-three members. Among them some men I know. Men like Ralph Plotkin and Joe Schwartz and Phil Cohen and Hyman Pollock. Men who can afford to give a little money to support a good cause.” He wrote out a check and tore it out of the book. “It’s for fifty thousand dollars,” he said, handing it to Michael. “If you were trying to raise a million, I’d have made it a hundred thousand. But for four hundred thousand, let everybody do his share.”

  They thanked him. Michael put the check in his wallet.

  “I want a plaque in the main lobby,” Elkins said. “‘In beloved memory of Martha Elkins, born August 6, 1888, died July 2, 1943.’ My first wife,” he said. On the couch Mrs. Elkins turned a page of her book.

  They shook hands and said good night.

  Outside, as they got into the car, they heard a door slam. “Rabbi Kind! Rabbi Kind!” Mrs. Elkins called. They waited while she hurried to them, holding the hem of the pink housecoat high to keep from tripping as she half-ran.

  “He said,” she reported breathlessly, “that he wants to see the exact layout of the plaque before it’s cast.”

  Michael promised that it would be done and she turned and went back into the house.

  He started the car, and beside him Kahners gave a little low laugh, like a man who had just rolled a point in a crap game. “That’s the way it’s done, Rabbi.”

  “You got only half the amount you wanted,” Michael said. “Won’t this cut major contributions in half all the way down the line?”

  “I told you we would ask for a hundred grand,” Kahners said. “I was hoping we could get forty.”

  Michael sat silent and unaccountably depressed, feeling the presence of the fifty thousand dollars in his wallet.

  “I’ve been rabbi here for two and one-half years,” he said finally. “Tonight was the third time I set eyes on Harold Elkins. He has been inside the temple twice during that length of time. At bar mitzvahs, it seems to me. Or perhaps at weddings.” He drove in silence for a little while. “The people who use the temple,” he said. “The ones who come to services and send their children to Hebrew school. I’ll feel a lot better about receiving money from them.”

  Kahners smiled at him but said nothing.

  Next morning the telephone rang in his study at the temple and a woman’s voice, hesitant and faint and slightly husky, asked for the rabbi.

  “This is Jean. Jean Elkins,” she added, revealing that she had recognized his voice.

  “Oh, Mrs. Elkins,” Michael said, aware that Kahners had looked up at the sound of her name and was smiling. “What can I do for you?”

  “The question is what I can do for you,” she said. “I’d like to help with the fund-raising drive.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I can type and I can file and I can use an adding machine. Harold thinks it’s a good idea,” she said after a tiny pause. “He’s got to do some traveling and he thinks this will keep me out of mischief.”

  “Why don’t you come down here whenever you feel like it,” Michael said. As he replaced the receiver he observed that Kahners’ face still wore the same smile, which disturbed him for reasons he had trouble defining.

  41

  A Buick dealer named David Bloomberg donated four acres for consideration as the temple site, in memory of his parents, and when Michael visited the place with the committee they saw at once that it was ideal, a completely wooded tract on the crest of a high hill on the outskirts of town and less than half a mile from the campus. The view to the east was of broad meadow cut by a wandering stream, falling to young timber.

  “Di Napoli can build his temple on a height and facing the sun, like Solomon,” Sommers said, while Michael simply nodded, his silence showing his pleasure more than words.

  Acquisition of the site gave Kahners another talking point, and he scheduled a series of fund-raising parties. The first was a Sunday breakfast for men, which Michael was unable to attend because of a funeral.

  The second was a champagne party at Felix Sommers’ home. When the Kinds arrived, the living room was crowded with people standing and drinking champagne. Michael liberated two glasses from a passing tray as they plunged into the vocal hubbub. He and Leslie found themselves in conversation with a young Ph.D. biologist and an overweight doctor who specialized in allergy.

  “They’ve got a fellow in Cambridge,” the biologist was saying, “who is working in cryogenics, trying to find a way to quick-freeze human beings. You know, give them a blast of cold and keep them in a state of suspended animation.”

  “What on earth for?” Michael asked, testing the champagne. It was warm and rather flat.

  “Think of the incurable diseases,” the biologist said. “You can’t cure something? Zappo, you freeze the poor shnook and keep him that way until there’s been a breakthrough. Then you wake him up and cure him.”

  “That’s all we need, that and the population explosion,” the allergist said. “Where would they keep all the sleeping stiffs?”

  The biologist shrugged. “Cold-storage. Warehouses. Refrigerated boarding houses, the natural answer to the nursing homes shortage.”

  Leslie made a face and swallowed warm champagne. “Think of a power failure. With all the boarders waking up right and left and hammering on the radiators for less heat.”

  Like a sound effect, someone started to hit a spoon against a glass pitcher for silence, startling her, and the three men laughed.

  “Here comes the pitch,” said the biologist.

  “The commercial,” the doctor said. “I already heard it, Rabbi. I made my pledge at the Sunday breakfast. I’m just here tonight as a shill.”

  Michael didn’t understand, but the crowd was moving into the next room, where long tables had been set up. There were place cards to prevent random seating, and they found their places next to a couple they liked—Sandy Berman, an assistant professor of English at the university, and his wife June. Felix offered a short welcome and then introduced Kahners (“a financial expert who graciously is helping us with the campaign”), who spoke about the importance of their contributions and called for verbal pledges. The first man on his feet was the allergist. He pledged three thousa
nd dollars. He was followed by three other men, none of whom pledged less than twelve hundred dollars.

  Each of the four pledges was made quickly and cheerfully. Too fast and too pat, the work of amateur dramatists. An embarrassed silence hung in the room like a fat lady’s bosom. Michael saw that Leslie was looking at him and he knew that now she too understood what the doctor had meant when he had said he was a shill. Each of these bids had been made before. They were being made again in a mechanical effort to create a giving mood.

  “Well?” Kahners said. “Don’t be bashful, my good friends. Now is the opportunity. The need for sacrifice is now.”

  A man in the corner named Abramowitz rose and pledged one thousand dollars. Kahners’ face lighted until he consulted a list in his hand and checked off his name. Obviously, he had expected more from Mr. Abramowitz. When Abramowitz sat down another man at his table leaned forward and engaged him in strenuous conversation. At each table now, a planted salesman began to sell. Nobody at Michael’s table was urging anyone else to pledge. They sat and looked at one another in an uncomfortable muteness. Could it be, Michael wondered, that the committee had expected him to deliver a sales pitch? But Kahners was approaching them, smiling broadly.

  “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay,” he said.

  “Goldsmith,” Sandy Berman said gloomily.

  “Ah, a student.” Kahners placed a blank pledge card in front of him.

  “Worse, a teacher.” Berman made no move to pick up the card.

  Kahners smiled. He placed a card in front of each of the men at the table. “What are you gentlemen afraid of?” he said. “They’re only pledges. Take your pens and sign. Sign!”

  “Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay,” Berman said.

  “Ecclesiastes,” Kahners said, this time without a smile. He looked around the table. “Look,” he said. “We’ve been working like dogs on this campaign. Like dogs. For you. For you and your kids. For your community.

  “We’ve got advance gifts from principal donors that could knock your eyes out. From one man alone, from Harold Elkins alone, we got fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand. So come on now, be fair. Be fair to yourselves. This is a democratic temple we’re trying to build. It’s got to be supported by the little guy as well as the big guy.”

  “The trouble is, it isn’t democratic at all,” an owlish young man sitting at the front of the table told him. “The littler a guy you are financially, the more of a personal burden your contribution will be.”

  “It’s all proportionate,” Kahners said.

  “No, it isn’t. Look, I’m an accountant. On salary. Say my salary is ten thousand dollars a year. That places me in a twenty per cent tax bracket. If I give the temple five hundred dollars I can deduct one hundred dollars in taxes, so my donation actually cost me four hundred.

  “But take another guy, a businessman who earns forty thousand dollars a year,” he said, nervously adjusting his glasses. “In his bracket, he deducts forty-four and one-half per cent. If he gives two thousand dollars, which makes him four times the good guy I am, he saves almost half his donation.”

  The people seated near him began discussing this phenomenon.

  “That’s a lot of doubletalk. Mathematics can tell you whatever you want it to. Gentlemen,” Kahners said. “Is anyone prepared to sign his pledge card now?”

  Nobody moved.

  “Then you will excuse me. It was a pleasure to meet you.” He moved to another table. In a few minutes the party began to break up.

  “Join us for coffee?” Leslie said to June Berman. “Howard Johnson’s?”

  June looked at her husband and then nodded.

  As they passed Kahners, Michael saw that he was talking to Abramowitz, the man who had pledged one thousand dollars. “You’ll come tomorrow night at eight-thirty in David Binder’s house?” he was saying. “It’s very important or we wouldn’t ask. We appreciate it.”

  In the restaurant they ordered without enthusiasm.

  “Rabbi,” Sandy said, “I don’t want to embarrass you, but that was pretty bad.”

  Michael nodded. “Bricks and cement cost money. It’s a miserable, thankless job, dunning for it. But they have to get it.”

  “Don’t let them aggravate you,” Leslie said. “Only you can tell how much you can give. Give whatever you can afford, and forget it.”

  “What we can afford?” June said. She waited until the waitress had served their coffee and sandwiches and left. “It’s no secret how much assistant professors are paid at Wyndham. Sandy gets fifty-one hundred from the university—”

  “Junie,” Sandy said.

  “Fifty-one hundred, plus another twelve hundred for teaching summer school. Because we need a car, this fall he’ll teach two evening sections of business English; another eighteen hundred. That gives us an annual income of eighty-one hundred dollars, and those . . . fools . . . suggest we pledge seventeen hundred and fifty dollars to the temple.”

  “Those were preliminary suggestions,” Michael said. “I know for a fact the committee will be happy to receive less. A lot less.”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Sandy said.

  “If that’s it, then give them the check and when they say thank you, say you’re welcome,” Leslie said.

  Michael shook his head. “They’re going to set a minimum pledge at seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

  There was a small silence.

  “I won’t join, Rabbi,” Sandy said.

  “What will you do about Hebrew school for your kids?”

  “I’ll pay the tuition the way I always have. A hundred and forty bucks a year for the three of them, plus thirty dollars a month for transportation.”

  “You can’t. The executive board has voted that only paid-up members can send their children to the Hebrew school.”

  “Wow,” June Berman said.

  “What happened to the grand old idea that the shul was a place where any man, no matter how poor, could seek God?” Sandy said.

  “We’re talking about membership, Sandy. You’ll never be chased away from the temple.”

  “But there may not be a seat for me?”

  “There may not.”

  “Suppose somebody just can’t afford seven hundred and fifty dollars?” June asked.

  “They’ve set up a hardship committee,” Michael said wearily. “It won’t be an ordeal. I’m on it. Your friend Murray Engel. Felix Sommers, your husband’s boss. Joe Schwartz. All reasonable guys.”

  Leslie had been watching Berman’s face. “That’s horrible,” she said quietly.

  Sandy started to laugh. “Hardship committee. You know what the executive board can do? I’m not a hardship case. I’m a teacher. A university professor.”

  They finished their food. When the check came Michael struggled for it. Finally, knowing that tonight Sandy would insist interminably, he let him pay.

  An hour later he and Leslie argued as they got ready for bed.

  “Don’t criticize the drive in front of congregation members,” he said.

  “Must it be this kind of a drive? Christians raise money for buildings without this . . . loss of dignity. Couldn’t they tithe or something?”

  “They aren’t Christians. I’m a rabbi, not a minister.”

  “But it’s wrong,” she said. “I think the methods they’re using are disgusting. They’re an insult to the intelligence of the membership.”

  “Don’t make things worse than they are.”

  “Why don’t you tell them, Michael?”

  “They know how I feel. Raising the money is their responsibility. They’re convinced this is the one way to raise it. If I stay in the background, eventually the temple will be built and then perhaps I can make it something very fine.”

  She didn’t answer. She put down the brush and he saw that she was actually taking out the thermometer, and something inside of him pulled back.
“Don’t wait up for me,” he said. “I have some work.”

  “All right.”

  He read until 2 A.M. When he crawled into bed he was sure that she was asleep, and he drifted off almost immediately. But the luminescent hands of the bedside clock said 3:20 when he woke and realized that she was no longer lying at his side. She was sitting by the open window, smoking and staring out into the dark. The chirping of the crickets was piercing and he realized that it had been the shrill sound that had awakened him. “They’re loud, aren’t they?” he said. He got out of bed and sat on the window sill facing her. “What are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  He took one of her cigarettes and she flicked her lighter for him, her eyes enormous and her face sad and wakeful, smooth light planes and dark hollows in the sudden yellow flare. “What’s the matter, Leslie?” he asked gently.

  “I don’t know. Insomnia, I guess. I just can’t seem to sleep lately.” They were silent for a moment. “Ah, Michael,” she said, “we’ve gone sour, haven’t we? Too sour to make anything as sweet as a baby.”

  “What are you talking about,” he said roughly, and immediately felt exposed as a liar and a hypocrite, knowing she knew him too well for pretending. “That’s a great theory. Very scientific.”

  “Poor Michael.”

  “It will work out,” he said. “There’s always adoption.”

  “I don’t think it would be fair to the baby.” She looked up at him in the dark. “You know what our real trouble is?”

  “Come to bed.”

  “You’re no longer the young Jewish Lochinvar of the mountains. I’m no longer the girl you caught that big fish for.”

  “For God’s sake,” he said, enraged. He returned to bed alone but while she continued to sit in the dark and smoke he lay unable to sleep, and watched the red glow of her cigarette ember, recalling that vanished girl with a remembered love so intense it refused to be blotted out by the pillow he pulled over his face like a do-it-yourself slumber mask.

  Kahners had reached the stage in the campaign where he was ready to sell the temple in sections. A mimeographed list entitled Living Memorials and Tributes was readied for the congregation members; it reminded them that a good name was rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold. Certainly the highest virtue, it said, is a name that attaches itself to the betterment of a community, the education of youth, and the molding of good character. It offered the unique opportunity of inscribing the member’s name or the name of a dear departed one in a building that would serve through the years as an inspiration to future generations.