Monday the Rabbi Took Off

by Harry Kemelman

  They were turning to go when the rabbi heard his name called. “Small! Dave Small!”

  They stopped, and the tall blond man came striding toward them, his hand outstretched.

  “Billy Abbot! It’s really you.”

  “In the flesh. You’re touring, of course. You have the look.”

  “That’s right.” He introduced Miriam. “And you? Are you here on business?”

  “I live here, up near Caesarea. I’m an Israeli citizen. I’m what’s called a chartered accountant here. I get up to Jerusalem about once a month on business, and when I do, I make a point of coming to have a look at the Old City and the Wall. Most of my clients are in Tel Aviv and Haifa, so I live halfway between the two and get a chance to play some golf.”

  “And is there a Mrs. Abbot?” David asked.

  “Oh, yes. And three little Abbots, two boys and a girl. And you? Do you have children?”

  “One boy, Jonathan,” said Miriam. “He’s here in Israel with us.”

  “I seem to remember that you were planning to go on to the rabbinical seminary, Dave—”

  “I went. I have a pulpit in Massachusetts, Barnard’s Crossing—”

  “Right,” said Billy Abbot. “I know the place. A friend of mine used to go down for the boat races. I went along once to crew for him. Nice town, as I recall.”

  “We like it,” said Miriam.

  “It’s curious, your coming here to settle,” the rabbi offered.

  “Well, I lived in London for a while and in Rome,” said Abbot. “My folks were in the music world—my father was a concert pianist—and we traveled around a bit. After the Six-Day War I decided to come and settle here.”

  “But why here?” the rabbi persisted.

  “I had no religious instruction and no sense of national or religious affiliation, if that’s what you mean. My parents thought of themselves as citizens of the world. And that’s how I was brought up. They never denied the fact that they were Jewish, but they never advertised it either. But the world isn’t ready to have citizens of its own. Jews are everywhere, and the Jew as a subject of conversation—and discrimination—keeps coming up. An insulting remark about Jews, on the assumption that you’re not one—your pride, your manhood, doesn’t permit you to let it go unchallenged. There was a girl I was interested in—well, never mind; it’s not important.” He grinned. “Anyway, I finally decided that if I was going to escape the bloody Jews, I had to come here.”

  The rabbi grinned back. “You certainly chose a funny place to escape Jews.”

  “Ah, but here I don’t feel like a Jew.”

  The rabbi nodded. “I think I know what you mean.”

  It was after two when they got home, and Mrs. Rosen greeted them with, “Jonathan is playing with Shaouli. You could have stayed away all afternoon.”

  “The morning is enough for the first day,” said the rabbi.

  “By the way, were you expecting anyone the other night, Friday night?” asked Mrs. Rosen.

  “Friday night? We had only just arrived. And we know no one here. Why?”

  “The police were here making inquiries,” Mrs. Rosen said. “They spoke to each of the neighbors. They wanted to know if anyone here in the building was expecting someone late Friday night.”

  The rabbi looked at Miriam inquiringly and then shook his head.

  CHAPTER

  EIGTHTEEN

  Ish-kosher studied the list in front of him. “You questioned each of them personally?” he asked.

  “Everyone except the … Smalls,” said Aaron, consulting his notes. “They weren’t home. I could go back and speak to them if you think it’s worthwhile. But they just arrived from America. It’s not likely they’d be expecting anyone the first day.”

  “And what does the family consist of?”

  “There’s a husband and wife. He’s a sort of rabbi. And they have a little boy. Oh, yes, and according to the neighbor, they arrived with an aunt of Mrs. Small’s, a citizen who lives in Tel Aviv who drove up to the city with them to see them settled in.”

  “Aha!”

  “You think the aunt—”

  “No, but she’s already not someone who just arrived.”

  “She’s no longer there. She left the next morning.”

  “On the Sabbath?”

  Aaron nodded.

  Ish-Kosher shook his head—in annoyance, in disapproval. Then he sat back squarely in his chair and said, “Listen Aaron. There’s probably nothing there, but it might be worth your while to check. In the next couple of days if you’re in the vicinity, you might look in on them.”

  Aaron nodded. Then he shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “You don’t think that maybe Adoumi is on the right track—”

  “Of course he’s on the right track. There’s no doubt it’s terrorists. The type of bomb shows that. But which terrorists? Was it Al Fatah, or the Palestine Liberationers, or the Committee for Arab Nationalism, or the Arab Commando Battalion? They’ve all claimed responsibility. They always do, as you know. So Adoumi pulls in all whose names he has in his files and questions them. Most of them are young and inexperienced—and nervous and let something drop. That’s the Army and the Shin Bet method. And it works because it’s based on the assumption that the terrorists attack blindly, anyone—women, children. The purpose is to strike terror, not to achieve some definite military objective. On that assumption, their method is probably the only logical procedure.”

  The inspector leaned back in his chair. “But suppose one of the terrorists has a grudge against a particular Israeli citizen. Then their attack can be directed just as easily against him. Do you see? Now this time the victim was a professor at the university. Suppose they were after him in particular. That suggests the possibility that it was an Arab student group. And the Shin Bet system doesn’t work so well with Arabs at the university. They tend to treat them with gloves—government policy. So, if we can pinpoint the group or the individual, we might be able to do what perhaps the Shin Bet can’t.”

  “But we questioned his colleagues and his students, and they all were agreed he was a mild, inoffensive old man who never harmed anyone, who never failed a student.”

  “Just a minute, Aaron. You’re quoting. Wasn’t that in one of the reports—‘mild, inoffensive old man’?” He shuffled papers on his desk. “Ah, here it is: Professor Robinson’s statement. ‘Yacov Carmi was a mild, inoffensive old man who never harmed anyone, Arab no more than Jew. Why, just the other day, he told me of some project he was engaged in for the Arab farmers in the Jericho area, something that could increase their yield fourfold.’ What do you think of that?”

  “Well, sure I read the statement, but—”

  “But what does it mean, Aaron?”

  “Well, it means that he was a mild, inoffensive old man—”

  “Tcha,” said the inspector. “It means that Yacov Carmi had an idea that would perhaps mean extra income to the Arab farmers. And there has been no formal announcement of it, but it was known around the university. And that means, Aaron”—he held up a forefinger to emphasize the significance of what he was about to say—“that if what he was planning to do was contrary to the policy of the terrorists, only somebody at the university was apt to know about it.”

  “But if it was to help the Arab farmers—”

  “This is precisely what the terrorists don’t want. Who has suffered most at their hands? Not the Jews. We’ve been able to protect ourselves. It’s been the Arabs, ten to one, twenty to one. Those poor devils in Gaza—they’re the ones that have got most of it. And why? Because the terrorists don’t want their people to cooperate with us. They don’t want them to be prosperous because then they might decide that they are better off with us than with Arab masters.”

  He sat back and teetered in his chair as he studied the swarthy face of his assistant. He came to a decision. “Look, Aaron, that American couple at Five Victory Street, you can forget about them for a while. Or let one of your men check them
out. For the next few days, I want you to hang around the university. No uniform. Talk to some of the Sephardi students; they’re closer to the Arabs. At least, they speak Arabic and may have overheard something. Do you know any of them?”

  “My sister’s boy.”

  “Excellent. See him and get him to introduce you around. And you might see Professor Robinson and find out all you can about this project Carmi was working on.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  The formula of short and snappy Friday evening services proved to be successful in Barnard’s Crossing, and within two months Rabbi Deutch succeeded in doubling the attendance. The direct mail campaign helped some, but as Malcolm Slotnick pointed out, “If the product hadn’t come up to its billing, there wouldn’t have been any repeat business.” With the large majority of those who attended it had become a habit.

  “Friday night? Oh, I’m afraid Friday night is out. Friday night we go to temple…. Well, we’re not religious either, but it makes for a pleasant evening for one thing. You get out of the house … and of course, the rabbi is a dear, and Betty Deutch—well, we’ve become such good friends, I’d feel I was letting her down if I missed a Friday evening service. She’s such a lovely person. She’s a Stedman, you know—the TV Dan Stedman….”

  There were critics, of course. Meyer Paff, for example. “I’m not saying the new rabbi ain’t good. I’m just saying maybe he’s too good. Me, when a guy starts speaking, I look at my watch. Makes no difference if it’s a political speech or some highbrow lecture the missus dragged me to or a rabbi giving a sermon—I look at my watch when he starts, and I look at my watch when he stops. Now Rabbi Deutch averages about fifteen minutes. Sometimes he goes seventeen minutes, or eighteen minutes, but usually from start to finish it’s fifteen minutes. Now the delivery is good, I’ll give him that, but it’s still fifteen minutes. Now me, I figure. I can’t help it; I figure all the time maybe because I been doing it all my life. So you take fifteen minutes and you multiply by the number of Fridays—say, thirty-five because in the summer, of course, there’s no Friday evening services—and that comes out to a little less than nine hours. Then you divide that into what we’re paying the guy, and let me tell you that works out to a helluva lot per hour. So that’s what I mean about him being good. I mean, anybody that can make that kind of dough per hour is not only good, he’s damn good. But then I start wondering about another thing: Can the guy make a long speech? Has he got enough stuff for a long speech?”

  At the Purim service, Rabbi Deutch proved at least that he could make a long speech. His sermon ran fifty minutes by Meyer Paff’s watch. It was the first holiday since he had taken over, and the greater portion of the sanctuary was filled. The title of his sermon was “The Purim Story; Fact or Fable?” It went well. Dozens of the congregation came over to tell him that they had never really understood the significance of the holiday until just now. And Bert Raymond called him the next evening to say, “I just had to call, Rabbi. I’ve got so many wonderful comments on your sermon, I just had to let you know that we’re grateful.”

  Rabbi Deutch was immensely pleased, and when he hung up, he could not help philosophizing to his wife on the success of his sermon. “You see, all I really do is tell the story of Purim, but it happens to be a corking story. Of course, the congregation has a recollection of the general outline of the story, but that only adds to their enjoyment. Still, if I were to do nothing but tell the story, they’d feel they were being treated like children and would be indignant. Justifiably so. So I embellish it with all sorts of speculations to give it plausibility in a modern context, such as suggesting that the Persian king feared a palace revolution by Haman and plotted with Esther to bring about his ruin.” He chuckled. “I could tell it was going over well as I gave it.”

  She smiled sympathetically. “Yes, dear. You like it here, don’t you?” “Very much,” he said without hesitation. “It’s a nice town and convenient to Boston and Cambridge. I’ve enjoyed being able to go to a symphony concert now and then—which is gratifying the way I feel about music.”

  Betty Deutch shook her head to indicate he was missing the point. “I mean you like this temple, the congregation, the work you’re doing.”

  “That’s the best part of all. No problems with the board, everyone going out of their way to be agreeable, and I only do whatever work I care to do. That sermon now, you know when I wrote that?”

  “Of course. You used it in your first pulpit in Coventry, Michigan, and again when you first came to Darlington, Connecticut. And I didn’t really have to ask if you were happy here,” she said with a smile. “I can see that you like it. Have you thought that it might be a good idea to stay on?”

  “Oh, that’s out of the question, Betty. This is just a temporary job. Rabbi Small will be back in another month. Besides,” he said, “I’ve retired. Remember?”

  “Yes, I remember, dear. And I also remember that you weren’t very happy in your retirement. A man like you, a man in good health and vigorous, you’ve got to have something to do. You can’t just spend your time moping around.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was moping around,” he said stiffly. “I was planning to do some writing, some scholarly work that I’ve had in mind for some time now—”

  “Oh, Hugo, face reality. If you had writing to do, you would have started right in doing it. You would have done it while you were still the rabbi of the congregation in Darlington. You certainly wouldn’t have spent those months just hanging around.”

  “I was mulling over in my mind a number of projects,” he said.

  “No, Hugo. If you really want to write, you write.” She shook her head. “Don’t you see? The work you’re doing here, running a temple and a congregation, that’s your work. And you’re awfully good at it. So why not continue?”

  He turned away, hurt. “Well, I’m sorry you think that my writing plans were just so much make-believe—”

  “But they were, Hugo, dear. Don’t you remember when you thought the congregation in Darlington was sure to ask you to stay on, and you wondered what you’d do if they didn’t. Then you said at least it would give you time to put your papers in order and that you might edit your sermons for publication. But that just meant that you weren’t ready to face the thought of retirement. But they didn’t ask you to stay on, and you had a few months of retirement—”

  “I was sure they were going to ask me to stay on,” he said quietly. “They hadn’t picked a replacement yet. At least, they hadn’t been able to agree on one. But,” he said resignedly, “I guess after thirty years, they get tired of you.”

  “The congregation changed, Hugo,” she said in a tone that suggested they had had this discussion many times before. “A different class of people came into power and began running things.” She smiled. “Besides, you were getting tired of them, too.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “But here,” she went on, “everyone respects you. If you were to stay on—”

  “It would be the same,” he said. “Everyone is kind and courteous and pleasant because they know I’m here for only a short while. If I had a regular long-term contract, it would be the same here as it was in Darlington.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Hugo,” she said quickly. “You were a young man when you came to Darlington. You had nothing—no money, no reputation. They were in a position to push you around, and they did, until over the years you gained strength and won their respect. But here, they know you don’t need them. Your pension is almost what they’re paying you. Nobody here can push you around, and they know it, so they won’t try. Oh, Hugo,” she pleaded with him, “you could stay on for another five years or seven years, and then we’d move to Florida or perhaps go to Israel.”

  “Well, it’s not a bad idea, I mean taking another pulpit,” he conceded, “but of course, this one is out of the question. You seem to forget that Rabbi Small will be back in another month.”

  “How do you know?”
she said sharply.

  “Well, that was the—the general agreement. I was hired for three months because Rabbi Small was due back in three months.”

  “It’s not quite like that, Hugo.” Even though they were alone, Betty Deutch lowered her voice. “There are a couple of girls in the Sisterhood that I’m really friendly with, and they let down their hair. Did you know, for example, that Rabbi Small is not being paid while he’s on leave?”

  “Not being paid?” He was horrified. “You mean they stopped his salary?”

  “As I understand it, he refused it. He refused to talk about a contract and even refused to promise that he was coming back here.”

  Rabbi Deutch found that hard to believe. “He seemed like a very level-headed young man. It seems quixotic for a young man with a family to refuse to take his salary. Of course, it could be the way it was offered.”

  “But it also could suggest—”

  “Let’s say, it makes one think about possibilities.” He nodded. “Yes, it makes one think.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  The Small family settled into a regular routine, and within a few weeks they felt as though they had lived in Jerusalem for years. In spite of her meager Hebrew, Miriam was perhaps the most acclimated, by reason of her busy schedule. After she had got Jonathan off to school, she went to the Hadassah Hospital, where she did volunteer work five mornings a week. She would get home by one o’clock, giving her an hour before the stores closed for the afternoon, to do her shopping. Previously, she had decided what she wanted to buy and had asked her husband for the Hebrew words for the articles or looked up the unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Sometimes she would practice the sentences she might have to use and recite them to the rabbi so that he could correct her if necessary. “How much are these a kilo?” “Do you have larger ones?” “Will you please deliver these to Victory Street, number Five? You may leave them outside the door if I am not at home. The milk and butter I will take with me.”