“But you don’t follow it,” Megrim insisted. “You say you’re an atheist, so I can’t see how you’re affected.”
“Sure, I’m affected,” said Jordon. “I grew up in it, didn’t I? Once you’re exposed to something like that, you can’t ever get rid of it. It’s what enables them to do so well at—oh, all sorts of things. Their minds are clear. They’re not guilt-ridden. They’re not weighted down with superstitions. Their mathematicians or doctors or physicists, nothing they believe conflicts with their science. They don’t have to keep a portion of their minds in a water-tight compartment, the way we do. So they have a tremendous advantage over us. They function more efficiently, so it seems as if they are operating at a higher temperature.
“The Christianity they gave us consists of concepts that no one but a saint could possibly follow—and I’ve often wondered what their dreams were like. All this business of ‘Turn the other cheek,’ and ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out,’ and ‘Love thine enemy,’ it’s beyond the capacity of a normal human being.
“On the other hand, the Jews set up a religion, or a code of ethics or what have you, that a normal person can follow, like helping each other out, and respecting each other, and enjoying life by eating and drinking and having families. And what’s the result? We don’t follow our rules because they’re beyond our capacity, and we keep only the irrational and the superstitious elements—the fear of going to hell, the guilt feelings we have when our minds perform their normal function of questioning the impossible. Whereas the Jews stick to their principles because they’re well within human limitations. And sometimes they even manage to follow the Christian rules—when it’s convenient, or good business, or reasonable, like in this Good Fence. But that’s loving your enemy and turning the other cheek.”
A thought occurred to him. “Hey, you guys want to know something? Theirs is the only Christian nation in the world today. How about that, Padre? Here your church has been trying for centuries to convert them, and in the meantime they’ve converted themselves, and you didn’t even know it.”
“Well, now that you’ve proved that Jews are Christians, do you feel different about Segal’s membership?” asked Megrim, grinning.
“Hell no,” said Jordon. “I’m still going to blackball the sonofabitch.”
“I—I don’t understand,” said Burkhardt.
“What don’t you understand?” asked Jordon.
“On the one hand you claim that Segal is a better man than you are, and on the other hand, you say you’re going to blackball him.”
“So what? Suppose you’re gaga over some woman, and you know she’s mean and petty and downright nasty. Does that mean that you’ll stop desiring her? Desire, or dislike for that matter, or any of the emotions, they have a logic of their own.” He leered at the younger man. “When you’re young, you tend to be careful what you think. Ideas come into your head, but if they’re not the right kind of ideas, you push them away. Either you try not to think of them, or you twist them around to where they’re respectable. You’re afraid they’ll annoy your family or your boss or an important customer or client. But when you get to my age, especially where you don’t have a family or a boss or important customers, more particularly when you’ve been brushed by the wings of the Angel of Death as I have, then you don’t have to worry about strange ideas that come into your head. You can face them and even think them through, and then go on and do as you damn please.”
“And it doesn’t bother you if you’re inconsistent?” urged Burkhardt.
Jordon smiled broadly. “Not one damn little bit. So I can say that the Jew is a better man than I am, and I still don’t want him around.”
“You know, Ellsworth,” Megrim mused, looking up at the ceiling, “this young fellow you’ve got living with you, the wife saw him yesterday at the bank and was saying she thought he looked Jewish.”
Jordon stared blankly. “Oh, my God, I forgot all about Billy. Look, I’ve got to run along.” And rising hastily he left the room.
Although he believed in discipline, Jordon was no martinet. And in handling Billy, Jordon had been careful never to be too severe. After all, the boy was not really under his jurisdiction. He was free to go and might well leave if things got unpleasant. Besides, he wanted Billy to like him.
If he had thought that the boy was going to be so stubborn, he would not have locked him in his room in the first place. He had expected that Billy would certainly submit before it was time for him to go to the Agathon. When he did not, of course he had to carry out his threat, but he had intended to stay at the club only long enough for a drink and get back in half an hour at the latest. He had not intended to get involved in a long discussion, certainly not one that had lasted as long as this one had.
He shut the front door with a bang and waited for the boy to call out and ask to be released. There was no response. A little worried now, he went to the door of the boy’s room and knocked. Then, his ear to the door, he listened intently. Still hearing nothing, he turned the key and flung open the door. The room was empty!
It was clear what had happened, the boy had climbed out of the window, no great feat since the room was just above ground level. The window was ajar an inch, obviously so that he could raise it easily and climb back in on his return. Nevertheless, he looked in the closet and was relieved to find that Billy’s clothes were still there. Jordon began to chuckle. Then he slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. He left the room and locked the door once again. The boy had shown spirit and he liked that. What’s more, he had got his own way, and without whining or arguing. And his way of doing it had meant that neither of them had lost face. He admitted that he was pleased at how it had worked out.
A thought occurred to him, and he reached for the phone and called Lawrence Gore.
“Is Billy there with you, Larry?” he asked.
“No, Ellsworth. He just left. Anything important? I could yell to him from the window.”
“No, and I’d rather you didn’t tell him I called.” He chuckled. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the bank and I’ll tell you about it. By the way, what time did he get there? … About eight? What do you know?”
The boy must have left within minutes after he had been locked in. He rubbed his hands together gleefully. Wonderful!
12
With hat and coat on, Henry Maltzman took a quick look around the office, snicked off the lights and prepared to leave. Then the phone rang. It was Laura, of course. She always managed to catch him before he left.
“Henry? Would you stop by the market on your way home? I need a few things.”
“Sorry, Laura. I’m not coming straight home. I’ve got to see the rabbi first. It’s important.”
“Well, couldn’t you pick up these few things first and—”
“Nothing doing. I’ll get stuck at the market, and then by the time I get to the rabbi’s, he’ll be getting ready to leave for the evening service.”
“Then after you see the rabbi—”
“The market will be closed. No, Laura, you’ll have to get them yourself or just manage without.”
“But we’re having people over tonight. Have you forgotten?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. But I can’t help you. Call the market. They sometimes deliver in an emergency.”
In the rabbi’s living room, half an hour later, Maltzman talked of his great coup. “Do you realize what it will mean for the temple, having a man like Ben Segal as a member?”
“What will it mean?”
“More members,” Maltzman answered promptly. “Everybody likes to belong to an association—a club, a lodge, a temple, what have you—with a big shot. It’s human nature. If it’s a big, successful business tycoon like Ben Segal, maybe they figure his luck will rub off on them. Or maybe they hope to transact some business, or even get some advice on some stock they own. Mostly, it’s just so they can do a little name dropping. ‘I was saying to Ben Segal—you know, of the Rohrbough Corporation�
��he’s a member in our temple—’ That kind of thing.”
“Well, I can think of better reasons for joining a temple, but I don’t insist on them,” said the rabbi good-humoredly.
Maltzman grinned. “Or we wouldn’t have enough members for a minyan.”
The rabbi grinned back. “All right, so did you sign him up?”
“Well, there’s a little hitch, from his point of view.”
“What’s the hitch?”
“Well, see, when he was a youngster, his folks were awfully poor. They had this little store where he used to help out right after school. So at the time, when he was thirteen, they couldn’t afford to have a Bar Mitzvah for him.”
The rabbi smiled. “So?”
“So it bothers him. He feels he’s not really a bona fide Jew. He’s that kind of guy—awfully sincere. All the different cities they lived in—see, they moved around a lot because he’d take over a corporation, in Detroit, say, and they’d move there, and then they’d trade it for a corporation in Dallas, say, and they’d move there, living in hotels all the time—so in all these cities, he never joined a synagogue, mostly I guess because he never got around to it, and wasn’t planning to stay long, in any case, but also because he felt he wasn’t really a Jew, not having been Bar Mitzvah.”
“But surely, you explained—”
“But here, he’s planning to stay,” Maltzman hurried on. “He didn’t get control of Rohrbough to trade it. He’s planning to run it, and he’s planning on building a house in the area and living here. He wants to become part of the community. That’s when I braced him about joining our temple, and he springs that Bar Mitzvah thing on me. I was just going to tell him it made no difference, when his wife tells how she heard about some old geezer of seventy out in California who just got himself Bar Mitzvahed, and why couldn’t he do the same thing. And right then it came to me—the gimmick!”
“The gimmick?”
“That’s right. Ever since I became president, and even before, I’ve been searching for a gimmick, the gimmick that would sell the temple. You got something to sell, you need a gimmick. In my line, when I first started selling houses, it was tiled bathrooms with glass shower doors. You had a house that was built solid with nice large sunny rooms in a nice location, it didn’t mean a thing without a tiled bathroom. It caught the eye. It didn’t have a tiled bathroom, forget it. Well, after a while all houses had tiled baths, so you had to come up with another gimmick. So they came up with tiled kitchens. Then it was kitchens with wood cabinets. Then rumpus rooms. Then finished cellars with a bar. Get the idea? So when I became president of the temple, and decided that what we needed was more members, I tried to think of some gimmick that would bring them in. I’ve been racking my brains for a gimmick. And then Mrs. Segal tells about the old guy who was Bar Mitzvah, and her husband is interested, and right away I’ve got my gimmick. He wants a Bar Mitzvah? Swell! We’ll give him a real one. We’ll send out invitations to every Jew in the community, members and non-members. ‘You are cordially invited to join with us in worship and attend the Bar Mitzvah of Benjamin Segal.’ We’d do it up brown. He’d make the usual speech—”
“Today, I am a man?”
Maltzman grinned. “Sure, why not? I’ll bet he’ll go along. Then I’d make my little president’s speech and give him a prayerbook like we give all the Bar Mitzvahs. And then you’d give him your blessing and make your little speech the way you usually do. Then we’d have a party in the vestry so he could get to meet everybody. I even had the idea we’d give him a bunch of fountain pens as a gag—”
“Fountain pens?”
“Oh, I guess that was before your time. But when I was a kid, a fountain pen was the most popular gift for the Bar Mitzvah boy. Not ballpoints, but the kind with a gold nib that you fill yourself from a bottle. See, the kid would be going on to high school where he’d need it. They cost anywhere from a couple of dollars to fifteen or twenty, so it was a pretty good gift, too. Gosh, when I was Bar Mitzvah, I must’ve got half a dozen. I wore them all in my breast pocket the next day, so I looked like the doorman at the Russian Samovar. Segal is my age, so he’ll know about it and get a kick out of it.”
“I see.”
“So is it all set?”
“No, it’s not all set, Mr. Maltzman. I certainly have no intention of going along with the gag. Mr. Segal was Bar Mitzvah when he was thirteen whether he knows it or not. There’s no special rite or ritual required. It’s automatic. It’s not like baptism. It isn’t initiation into the religion or the tribe. That’s what circumcision is. If Mr. Segal feels that he wants to be rededicated to the religion of his fathers, it would make more sense if he had himself circumcised again.”
“That’s crazy!”
The rabbi nodded. “But at least it has some justification in logic. Bar Mitzvah, though, merely means that one is of age, old enough and presumably mature enough to take responsibility for one’s own actions and sins. It’s just like becoming twenty-one, or eighteen, or whatever the age is now where you can make your own contracts. No special ceremony is required, no party and no speeches. When you’re twenty-one you can vote or make a contract. Well, that’s all that Bar Mitzvah means, that you are of age.”
“But you’re called up before the Ark for the Reading in the Scroll.”
“That’s because, as an adult, you’re now a member of the community. It’s a courtesy we extend to any new person in the community, or to a stranger who happens to be present. In the morning services when we read from the Scroll, if there’s someone present whom I haven’t seen before, I always offer him the opportunity. You’d know that if you came to the minyan occasionally.”
“But that old guy on the West Coast—”
“I can’t be responsible for what happens on the West Coast.”
“And in other places, too. In the Hadassah Magazine there was a picture of a whole group, all senior citizens, that went to Israel and had a mass Bar Mitzvah at the Wall.” Beads of perspiration began to appear on Maltzman’s forehead.
The rabbi shook his head. “I can’t answer for the judgment of any other rabbi. I interpret the Law as I see it. I don’t approve of changing the meaning or the interpretation of an old and treasured tradition. The whole business of ceremonies of confirmation and rededication, it’s foreign to us. We confirm our faith every time we perform one of the commandments, every time we recite our prayers or make one of the blessings or gain some new insight into our religion. The rabbis of old warned against making unnecessary vows. It suggests that we might be taking the name of the Lord in vain. In fact, on Yom Kippur, in the Kol Nidre prayer, we ask to be released from vows, rather than the other way around. Of course, if you want to throw a party in the vestry for this Ben Segal, I can’t stop you, although I might question the propriety and the good taste of having a party to celebrate the signing up of a new member just because he’s rich. But what happens before the Ark and the Scrolls of the Law is within my jurisdiction, and I cannot permit it.”
Maltzman’s eyes protruded dangerously and his face was flushed. He rose so abruptly that the chair fell over. He glared at the rabbi for a moment and then bent over and picked up the chair. Erect once again, he appeared to have recovered his composure. He even smiled. “We’ll see about that, Rabbi.” Then he turned and left the room.
13
The guests had all arrived by the time Henry Maltzman got home. His wife, Laura, could tell by the violent way he shrugged out of his topcoat that something was wrong.
“Did you see the rabbi?” she asked.
“Yeah, I saw him.” He strode into the living room. “Hello you folks. Sorry I’m late. I had to see our spiritual leader.”
His sarcasm revealed to his wife that he was angry and it worried her. “I think we can eat now,” she announced brightly and led the way into the dining room.
She served the soup from a tureen on a side table and called out, “Don’t wait. I always say soup should be piping hot.”
&nb
sp; “Needs salt,” grumbled her husband.
“Delicious, absolutely delicious,” said Mrs. Streitfuss. “It has a special taste. Lentils?”
“Lima beans,” said Laura. “The big ones. I let them dissolve, and it gives a special flavor.”
“You must give me the recipe.”
“Now, that’s what I call soup,” said Allen Glick. “Why can’t you make soup like that?” he asked his wife.
As Laura cleared the dishes for the next course, her husband, who had been silent till now, leaned back in his chair and said, “You people hear about the Segal Group taking over the Rohrbough Corporation?”
“Oh, that was reported in the papers last week,” said Roger Streitfuss, “at least, that it was in the works.”
“Well, it’s all set,” said Maltzman, “and what’s more, Ben Segal, who heads up the Group, is going to run the place personally. He and his missus are in town right now. And—now get this—they’re joining the temple.”
“Hey, how about that!” exclaimed Herb Mandell.
“Imagine, a big shot financier like that comes to town, and first thing he does is want to join a temple.” Allen Glick shook his head in wonder.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way exactly,” said Maltzman. “I mean, he’s not one of those pious Jews who can’t live without a synagogue. As a matter of fact, he didn’t think of himself as a Jew at all. Oh, born one and all that, and not denying it, but he never had a Bar Mitzvah on account his folks were so poor at the time, so he didn’t think of himself as a real Jew. See what I mean?”
“Well, I don’t think—”
“In the Hadassah Magazine—”
“Seems to me—”
Maltzman held up his hand to still the babble. “I read that article in the Hadassah Magazine, too. It’s the one about that group of old geezers from California who went to the Wall in Jerusalem to be Bar Mitzvah. Right? Well, I told him about it, and he was willing.” He looked around the table to gather their attention. “Then I got an idea. You know, all along I’ve been saying we ought to do something to bring in new members. I figure there are at least a hundred Jewish families in town, maybe more, that don’t belong to the temple. Maybe they’re not sure they’re going to stay on in town. Maybe they haven’t been approached right.”
Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out Page 7