Rabbi Gabrielle Commits a Felony

by Roger Herst

  The bright red marquee of the Sheraton Hotel, LaGuardia, attracted Chuck, who made a last minute turn toward it. "There you go again, Rabbi Gabby, making excuses for scoundrels. No matter that Olam v'Ed and his henchmen forced you to endure a miserable night tied up and stole your Torah. You have to find reasons that they weren't the skunks everybody knows they are."

  "Not Carey Sylerman."

  "There isn't a chance in hell she'll last at Sh'erit ha-Pletah. You delude yourself by thinking she will."

  Mention of Carey caused Gabby to wonder what arrangements Carey would make for teaching the Sunday afternoon class. Perhaps she assumed she would be flying to Washington with Chuck and herself and staying with her folks. Or would she take an early morning Shuttle, giving her plenty of time to make the class? In any case, Gabby expected to fly home to Washington just as soon as she had delivered the Torah.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Gabby returned to Washington on a morning plane from Buffalo with a stop in Pittsburgh. A call to the Religious School office at Ohav Shalom revealed that nobody had heard from Carey Sylerman, so Gabby played it safe and headed directly to the synagogue in the event she didn't show up. There was no doubt that, for Carey, the previous evening at Beth Sh'erit ha-Pletah had been a nightmare. For members of Sh'erit ha-Pletah, the experience was no less daunting. It was very possible the majority had no idea that the Torahs paraded about after maariv were ill-gotten and, at that moment, the community was most probably in deep crisis. Autocratic societies vest such trust and adulation in the authority of their leaders that when they are challenged the discharge of emotion is usually traumatic. Gabby guessed that there had to be many who questioned if not the judgment then certainly the ethics of their leader. His criminal past had returned to haunt him.

  Gabby called Carey's parents to learn they had not heard from her. To spare Norma from unnecessary anxiety, she avoided mention of what had transpired in Brooklyn.

  "I feel things are a little better these days, Rabbi," Norma sounded emotional. "At least Carey and I are seeing each other, thanks to you and your class. She loves teaching. You know she'd walk over fiery coals if you asked her."

  "Carey is special, Norma. The two of us have a meeting of the minds, though I must tell you we don't agree on all matters, particularly about Judaism. You must have trained her well because, unlike her cohorts in Sh'erit ha-Pletah, she respects those who don't view the world through the same prisms."

  "We've always tried to keep our minds open," Norma was flattered.

  "Respect goes two ways. If you hear from her about this afternoon's class, please call me on my cell phone. I'm going to the synagogue to cover for her in any case. And if she calls, tell her the job is hers for next week. I need her badly."

  Norma's voice was choked with emotion. "Thanks Rabbi Lewyn… for everything. Roland and I…" The next words failed her.

  It was nearly impossible to celebrate the return of Ohav Shalom's Holocaust Torah without providing details about its return. Miles Boronsky was not pleased with Gabby's plea to restrict information. In good faith, a president of a congregation could not withhold what he knew from the synagogue's board of directors and telling the Board was like disseminating viruses on the Internet. It took less than 24 hours for the story to spread. Adat Israel in Greensboro and Beth Torah in Buffalo had less to tell, yet neither felt obliged to hide Gabby's identity.

  Gabby was furious, but what could she do other than to write Rabbi Olam v'Ed an email apology and complain to Chuck about her naiveté? Once again, she found herself in the media. Her public defense of Sh'erit ha-Pletah did not go over well with many in the Jewish community who felt passionately that by interfering with law enforcement, Gabby had conspired to commit a felony. These were the same people, she pointed out to Kye, who didn't believe in the statute of limitations for criminals and had little patience for shades of guilt. Her Reform rabbinical colleagues proved to be less sympathetic and more public in their criticisms. They interpreted the assault on Gabby's person and the theft of Torahs by the Orthodox as an attack on democracy that demanded swift retaliation, within the bounds of the criminal code, of course. Gabby was viewed as too soft on fundamentalists who would never reciprocate her generosity.

  The president of the Reform rabbinical seminary in Cincinnati, himself a child of survivors from the Holocaust epoch, invited Gabby to speak at the monthly lecture for the faculty and student body. While she harbored doubts about adding fuel to the controversy, she was nevertheless flattered by the invitation and agreed to fly to Cincinnati early Thursday morning for an eleven o'clock lecture and lunch with the faculty. That worked well because Kye was scheduled to fly to California on an early morning plane and she could drive him to Dulles Airport, leaving her car there.

  It was in her Lexus, driving 20 miles above the speed limit on the Dulles Access Road, that Kye told her, "Tomorrow I'm meeting with a real estate agent in Carmel. I've instructed her to look at both apartment and home rentals but not tempt me with a magnificent home for sale. We've already gone through that exercise."

  "I'm sorry about losing our dream house in Carmel," Gabby kept her attention on the road because she knew she was speeding to make Kye's flight to San Francisco.

  "I'm not pushing you anymore, Gabrielle," he said. "It was a great opportunity, but there's got to be more in life than a home. I'm going to become a star commuter and who knows how things will eventually turn out."

  "That's inconvenient for you, but a big gamble for me. You could get in trouble alone in California. Let the floozies in the Golden State make a pass as you and they'll have to account to Gabrielle Lewyn."

  "It cuts both ways, Gabrielle," Kye said, "I'm the fellow who will be fighting off the competitors."

  Before security for the gates, she kissed him warmly. "I appreciate your patience, Kye. You know how wonderful it would be to bring up our kid in a dream house by the Pacific. But something keeps me attached to the home we have. Who would want to trade my job?"

  "Only someone who doesn't do it as well as you," he kissed her back and shuffled forward in the line toward his plane.

  While waiting for the Delta flight to Cincinnati, Gabby managed to notice an op-ed piece in the Washington Post by none other than Cici Landau, in which she attempted to distinguish the various historical and ethical issues of the Holocaust Torah controversy. It annoyed Gabby that she had not discussed the piece with her before sending it to the newspaper, but she was not surprised. While a first class malingerer, Cici was also a very competitive person. By passing judgment on the events in Brooklyn, she established herself as a player in the ongoing debate.

  After a short tour to observe changes to the seminary campus she had left fifteen years before, Gabby was escorted to the president's office. He was a stocky, balding man with a penchant for fund raising, an essential talent of a successful college president. Years before, he had been one of Gabby's professors of Jewish history. He later claimed that she needled him terribly with tough questions. She remembered their interchanges differently. His answers to the best questions she could pose were always in short bursts, as if planned in advance. While chatting amiably over coffee he personally prepared in an espresso maker on his credenza, he excused himself to answer the phone.

  Gabby watched his eyes light up in preliminary conversation with someone he knew. But after a few more sentences, he signaled with the phone receiver that the call was not for him, but for her. His grimace conveyed a sense of respect for the company she was keeping. "It's Senator Arthur Zuckerman in Washington!"

  "How did you know to call me here, Senator." she sounded her surprise.

  In a bad mood, his voice could be gruff and biting. "You're in my state, Rabbi, and there isn't much I don't know about what happens in Ohio, even when I'm not there. I've got spies in every Ohio town and city. I know you're giving an address about your adventure in Brooklyn. By the way, I had a call from Senator Spencer who was very pleased you decided not to press charges. She c
ounts the Orthodox in Brooklyn as firm supporters. Had matters turned out differently the FBI could have given her a severe migraine."

  "We all thank you for interceding with the Bureau," Gabby interjected.

  He huffed. "Nothing more than a phone call to a colleague in the same party. She now thinks I'm the cat's meow and, what's more important, she owes me a tradelast, which brings me to the purpose of this call."

  The seminary president glanced to his watch and signaled to Gabby that they had only a few minutes before her lecture.

  "I'm afraid that I need your help once again with Gideon Ganeden, Rabbi," Zuckerman said. "For reasons that you can probably figure out, it's improper for me to speak with him directly. But I have another important message. I'd like you to call him immediately and say that tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. the Nuclear Regulatory Agency is going to make an audit of radioactive materials stored at New Frontiers. The NRC keeps an up-to-date inventory of radioactive materials in private industrial plants and I have reason to believe that his inventory may be short. If it is, he's got to get what's missing back to Gaithersburg by seven o'clock tomorrow morning. Otherwise, as the saying goes, 'he's going to be in big do-do,' if you catch my meaning."

  Gabby was puzzled. All she knew for certain was that the Senator had previously warned Gideon about a project in Cincinnati. "Can you tell me more?" she asked.

  "I can't get involved in this mess. Just get a hold of Dr. Ganeden immediately and tell him about the audit. That will shake him up."

  "What if I don't make contact?"

  "You will. My spies tell me he's at the Gaithersburg plant as we speak. This is top priority, Rabbi."

  The moment the Senator hung up, Gabby asked permission to ring Gideon Ganeden. The president insisted they go immediately to the assembly hall for the lecture. A call could be made as soon as the lecture was over, before the luncheon planned with the faculty. If she wished, the president's secretary would make the call and for that purpose, introduced Lillian Goldmeyer, a lean, matronly women with over-sized glasses who accompanied Gabby and the president from the administrative offices to the lecture hall.

  As they walked, Gabby instructed Lilian Goldmeyer. "Please call Dr. Gideon Ganeden at New Frontiers in Gaithersburg, Maryland and tell him to call me on my cell phone at exactly 12:20 this afternoon. And tell him it's very important we speak."

  Having received her instructions, Lilian Goldmeyer retreated to her office.

  Gabby spoke without notes for forty-five minutes about the Holocaust scrolls, the exhibition at the Holocaust Museum and rescuing the stolen Torahs from Sh'erit ha-Pletah, then took questions. Hostility she felt in Washington toward her role in the affair was absent. Students and faculty seemed to view her as a victorious warrior in the ongoing, internecine war with the Orthodox. They were interested in the shading of ethics and were surprisingly sympathetic to Gabby's view that Rabbi Olam v'Ed had historical justification for his illegal acts.

  Gideon Ganeden's return call arrived precisely at 12:20, only a minute after she left the lectern.

  "Mah ha-ba-ayah, what's the problem?" he asked in Hebrew.

  "Gideon," she cradled the cell phone close to her lips and stepped away from admirers who clustered around. "I'm in Cincinnati talking about the Sh'erit ha-Pletah business. Arthur Zuckerman tracked me down here to have me contact you directly. He wanted me to tell you there's going to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission audit of New Frontiers at seven tomorrow morning. They'll be looking at your inventory of radioactive materials."

  "What?" Gideon sounded his alarm.

  When she repeated the message, he went silent on the other end before returning. "Gabby. This presents a major problem and I may need you for a big favor. Let me try to work things out from this end first."

  She became firm. "What it's about, Gideon? This is the second time I've played messenger between Zuckerman and you. Tell me, what's going on."

  "I'll call you back in about ten minutes," he answered, unable to conceal his anxiety. A moment later, the phone went dead.

  Gabby rejoined professors and senior staff as they proceeded down a series of corridors to a faculty conference room, prepared for a luncheon in her honor. More introductions were made at the head table. When she had graduated fifteen years before, it had never occurred to her that someday there would be such a luncheon. The president said many complimentary things about her as a student and alumnae, praising her fund raising efforts in the Washington area on behalf of the college. He then expressed empathy for her dilemma regarding the stolen Holocaust scroll. While Ohav Shalom had made exceptionally good use of the scroll, the actual survivors from Europe also had a claim. Professor of rabbinics Yechiel Stern spoke about additional information he had turned up on Ivano Frankivsk and the Yeshiva shel Maalah directed by Moishe Lieb Knishbacher, the only yeshiva in the world to his knowledge that functioned without complete dependence upon Talmudic texts.

  As waitresses were serving salads for the first course, Gabby's cell phone rang. She knew exactly who it was and politely excused herself from the table, walking briskly to a service corridor where she could hear Gideon.

  "So what's this all about, chaver, friend?" she demanded. "Why is Zuckerman so interested in your activities in Cincinnati."

  As if hesitant before jumping into an abyss, Gideon paused, then blurted. "New Frontiers is operating a food irradiating plant there with P&G, Inc, one of the senator's largest financial supporters. You know he's Chairman of the Senate Committee on Domestic Security. He fears a scandal if word gets out that we're irradiating foods in his state."

  "Why? Is it illegal?"

  "No, if you have an NRC license," Gideon said. "But New Frontiers has had trouble obtaining the proper permits. P&G was desperate to begin using our technology and we fudged a little. The original plan was to build two electron beam accelerators at the main cereal plant on the west side of Cincinnati. Without permits, we modified our plans to use Gamma radiation produced from the Cobalt 60 that we're using in Gaithersburg. Our output is much smaller, but we didn't have to raise a lot of eyebrows by constructing accelerator vaults and ordering the equipment. Instead we built a shielded chamber for the Cobalt."

  "I don't get it. Why is Arthur Zuckerman so upset?"

  "He knows I sent Cobalt from Gaithersburg to Cincinnati and this is his way of quietly servicing P&G in his bailiwick. When the NRC comes for the audit in Gaithersburg tomorrow morning, we won't be able to account for the Cobalt 60 on NRC books. They'll take me out of here in chains."

  "If you've got the Cobalt in Cincinnati," Gabby felt the urgency mounting," why not fly it back before tomorrow morning's audit?"

  "You can't take radioactive materials on airplanes and I can't charter a plane without disclosing the cargo. That's why I need to ask you the biggest favor of my life. You could rent a utility vehicle in Cincinnati, collect the Cobalt from P&G and drive here tonight. I make the same trip all the time; it takes between seven and eight hours of steady driving."

  Gabby swallowed a lump of saliva in her throat. "Are you asking me to handle radioactive Cobalt, Gideon? I barely know what radioactivity means. What if there's an accident?"

  "You're a good driver. There's no reason to think an accident will occur if you drive slowly and safely. And it's not dangerous to handle. My people at P&G will seal it in a double container of either lead or depleted uranium the size of a small steamer trunk."

  "I can't handle anything that heavy."

  "My people there will put it in the utility vehicle in Cincinnati and when you get here, we'll remove it."

  "You're sure there's no danger?"

  "We handle Cobalt 60 all the time. Its penetrating properties are low. As long as you don't open the containers, you shouldn't get any exposure."

  Gabby dropped the phone receiver from her ear and pressed it against her chest to symbolically contain her conflicting thoughts. In time, they could all be worked out, but she knew there was no spare time to be had. "You're asking
a helluva lot, Gideon, a helluva lot. I'm pregnant," she eventually returned to the phone. "Could there be damage to my fetus?"

  "I know you're pregnant and there's absolutely no risk of contamination to your fetus. You'll just have to take my pledge to you, Gabby," he spoke in a vulnerable voice that she had never experienced before. "I'll give you whatever you want, Gabby. Name your price. This is the life and death of me, my company and, I suppose, my family. Anything, just name it."

  She supposed that in the course of Gideon's charmed life with women, many threw themselves at him, soliciting favors, some sexual. And there was a time in her own life when she might have been susceptible to such an opportunity. Thank God, she had cycled through the period when her hormones were nearly out of control. "This won't be cheap, Gideon," she normally felt a surge of energy in negotiating situations and, in this particular case, she felt the advantage.

  "Anee m'veen, I understand," he said, sharply, the businessman in his tone.

  "Claire Davenport…" Gabby remembered the name of Gideon's mistress from Sycamore Island. "You've got to give her up, Gideon, and get back into bed with your wife. I want the Ganeden family back in one piece, Gideon, and I believe that's also what you want, deep down. No more cheating on Melanie, who already knows you're playing around."

  "How does she know that?" he barked in surprise.

  "Women know things like that, teepash, idiot. You must promise to dump Claire Davenport. Take it or leave it, friend. That's my price. Think it over and call me back. I'm at a luncheon and I can't leave. I'll need at least an hour and half before finding a SUV to rent."

  She heard a hefty sigh from Gideon. "No, it's not necessary to call back. I'll ring Claire as soon as the NCR audit is complete. Get the stuff here in time and I'll break with her. Go back to your lunch, but call me as soon as it's over. I'll make arrangements at P&G. I'll give you the gate to enter and the name of our people who will handle the stuff for you. I'm going to remain at New Frontiers all night, so we can talk by mobile phone when you're on the road. Call me every hour to let me know your progress."