Someday the Rabbi Will Leave

by Harry Kemelman

  The rabbi did not attend the meetings and saw little or nothing of the new president. For a month or more they did not exchange a word. The president did not come to the Friday evening services, and certainly not to the daily minyan. And he did not have an office in the synagogue where Rabbi Small might have dropped in on him, if only as a matter of courtesy. Several times the rabbi had thought of calling Magnuson in the evening, suggesting that he would like to come over to talk with him but, as he explained to Miriam, “It’s up to him to call me. If I call him, he’s apt to think I’m being pushy.”

  “But he’s been in office over a month now—”

  “So what? He’s probably pretty busy, and nothing has come up that immediately concerns me.”

  He heard about Magnuson from various board members, and it was evident that he was popular, largely because he was friendly and affable whereas they expected that he might be distant and cool. They were never unaware however of the economic and social gulfs between them, but this awareness manifested itself not in reticence on their part, but rather in a kind of filial respect they accorded Magnuson, which had the effect of eliciting from him an almost paternal concern for them.

  Harry Berg, who owned a small chain of three grocery stores, reported: “I was telling Bud Green about the trouble I was having getting money from the bank here in town. Howard overheard me and said, ‘Why don’t you try the main bank in Boston? It could be it’s a little too much for the branch to handle. I know the head of the Loan Committee. If you like I can give him a ring.’ So I said, ‘Sure.’ And do you know, when I came in to see the guy, he treated me like I was his rich uncle from Australia.”

  Dr. Laurence Cohn, a dermatologist who liked to take a flyer in the stock market now and then, told of mentioning a stock that someone had put him onto as sure to double in value in a couple of months. “I was saying how there was a takeover situation, see? Howard makes a kind of face and says he doubted it. So I ask him if he knows anything and he says, flat out, that there won’t be any takeover. So I didn’t buy and the stock is down twenty points.”

  Al Rollins was sure Howard Magnuson had helped his daughter get into the college of her choice “with a partial scholarship, yet” by dropping a word in the right quarter.

  The only negative view came from Chester Kaplan, whom the rabbi saw regularly at the daily minyan. “This man is a regular goy. He doesn’t come to services on the Sabbath. Not once has he come to the minyan. Not once since I’ve been here. Believe me, I would have remembered. Even on Yom Kippur, I—”

  “He came to the synagogue on Yom Kippur,” said the rabbi quickly. “I saw him.”

  “Maybe in the morning for an hour. Then he went home, I’m sure for lunch. This is what you should expect from the president of a synagogue?”

  “Most of our presidents have been nonobservant,” said the rabbi. “Except for Jacob Wasserman and yourself—”

  “Yeah, they were nonobservant, but at least they grew up in observant homes. Their parents were observant. They didn’t come to the minyan regularly, but at least you saw them when they had Yahrzeit and had to say kaddish. This one, never. Has he conferred with you, Rabbi, since he became president? Have you talked to him at all?”

  “No, but—”

  “There,” said Kaplan triumphantly. “A man becomes president of a synagogue, and doesn’t even meet with the rabbi!”

  The rabbi smiled. “It doesn’t bother me, so why should it bother you?”

  But the following Sunday, Howard Magnuson did seek him out. Shortly after the board meeting adjourned, there was a tap on the door of the rabbi’s study, and in response to the rabbi’s “Come in,” Magnuson entered.

  “I’ve been expecting to see you at the board meetings, but you seem to have stopped coming to them,” he said as he took the visitor’s chair.

  “I didn’t come because I wasn’t invited,” replied the rabbi.

  With a touch of irony, Magnuson asked, “Do you need a special invitation?”

  “Not a special invitation,” said the rabbi with a smile. “Just an invitation.”

  Magnuson looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I’m not a member of the board and, strictly speaking, not even a member of the temple organization. So I come to the board meetings only at the invitation of the president. Usually, the new president asks me at the beginning of his term to come to the meetings. Not always, though. There have been presidents who have not extended the invitation, or have invited me to attend only particular meetings where they felt that I could be helpful with the business that was to be discussed”

  “Well now, I didn’t know that. I’m new to this game. I’m glad you told me. So I am now inviting you to attend the meetings of the board.”

  “All right. Thank you. I’ll try to be present in the future.”

  “You know, I didn’t get your job description yet.” He smiled. “If I had, perhaps I would have seen that you attend board meetings only by invitation. Are you still working on it?”

  “No, I wasn’t planning to make it out. I didn’t feel that your letter applied to me, since I am not part of the temple organization personnel.”

  “No? Don’t we pay you?”

  “Yes, but it’s really in the nature of a subsidy, since I am the rabbi of the Jewish community of Barnard’s Crossing and serve the needs of the entire Jewish community of the area, those who are not members of the temple organization no less than those who are.”

  “You mean you’re a kind of consultant like our CPA or our lawyer, but that you’re on a kind of retainer.”

  “Something like that, but they act only when called upon, whereas I can take action on my own. If the temple organization should propose something that I considered to be contrary to our law or tradition, and by the way, I’d be the one who would decide if it was, then I would forbid it.”

  “And what if we, that is the temple organization, chose to ignore your edict? You couldn’t go to law about it, could you?”

  “Not to a secular court, but I might appeal to a rabbinical court. In all probability, I would merely disassociate myself from you by resigning. If it were something major, a matter of important principle, I might denounce you to the Rabbinical Assembly, or to the Jewish community at large.”

  “I see. Well now, I didn’t know that. It doesn’t happen very often, does it?”

  The rabbi smiled broadly. “No, not often. It’s very rare.”

  Magnuson looked at the rabbi quizzically. “Is that all there is to it, or is there more?”

  “Oh, there’s lots more,” said the rabbi. “I maintain oversight of the school and of the religious services; I teach our tradition in lectures and sermons; I am frequently the voice of the Jewish community in its dealings with the community at large; I have on at least one occasion acted as a rabbinical court and passed judgment on the evidence in a purely secular matter; and, oh, yes, I am a sort of scholar in residence. And then, of course, there are those functions that one usually associates with the rabbi—marriage, divorce, conversion, burial.”

  “Hm, you’re a pretty busy man, Rabbi.” And although Magnuson had intended the remark to be sarcastic, it also contained a hint of respect. “I’m glad you told me. You realize that what you’ve been doing is giving me your job description orally.”

  The rabbi smiled. “You’re welcome. But since we have to work together, perhaps you ought to give me your—well, not your job description, but some idea of your plans, your attitude towards the temple and the congregation.”

  Magnuson nodded. “Fair enough. All right, I’m a businessman by philosophy and conviction.”

  The rabbi smiled faintly. “Does that mean you’re going to try to have the temple turn a profit?”

  Magnuson returned the smile to show that he did not take offense. “No, Rabbi. I mean that I’m a businessman in the sense that I like to do things in a businesslike way, just as a scientist might want to do things in a scientific way. That’s
why I called for all employees to submit job descriptions. And I intend to draw up organizational charts—”

  “You think that will help?”

  “Believe me, it never hurts. Look here, we have a School Committee and a principal and there’s you, all involved with the religious school. What happens if a pupil or his folks have a beef? Does he complain to you, or to Brooks, or to the School Committee, or maybe even to me? It helps to have all these things spelled out in advance. I once took over a company that had only three employees.” He held up three fingers to emphasize the point. “Three. And it was losing money. I applied my methods, made it plain who was responsible for what, and in six months it was showing a profit and had expanded to a staff of twenty. Now, while many businessmen, maybe most businessmen, would be interested only in the profit, I was interested in other things as well, making it a better place to work, making the work more satisfying for those employees, showing them the chances for growth and advancement.”

  “I see.”

  “Actually, for me, the profit is merely a confirmation that I’m on the right track. It’s a proof of the method.” He settled back in his seat. “When my father and his partner sold the department store in Boston, back in twenty-nine, they were left with a load of cash. If we had been in England, my father might have bought an estate and set us up as county people, gentry. But that’s not the fashion in the States. Instead, Magnuson and Beck began to buy a number of companies, and we became what is known nowadays as a conglomerate. We were lucky, not only in selling out before the Crash, but in having ready cash afterwards. We made a lot of money. By the time my brothers and I were of age, we were in a position to choose any career, do anything we wanted to. My oldest brother, Myron, chose to do nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Oh, he lives in Paris and he goes to the theater and museums. He travels. He has lots of friends whom he visits and entertains. He never married.”

  “It seems a hard life,” the rabbi commented.

  Magnuson nodded. “My thought, too. But he seems to enjoy it. He lives in France, I imagine, because that kind of life is more readily understood there than it would be here. My other brother, Lawrence, is in medicine, in New York. I chose to go into business, but I invest only in things that interest me. I own a minor-league baseball team, for example, because I like baseball. That hasn’t turned a profit yet,” he added ruefully, “maybe because my methods don’t seem to apply to baseball.”

  “What happened to Beck?” asked the rabbi.

  Magnuson laughed. “I married her. Marcus Beck had only one child, Sophia. We grew up together and were more or less intended for each other. That kind of thing it’s assumed doesn’t usually work out, but it did in our case.”

  “And do you have children, Mr. Magnuson?”

  “One, a daughter.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable as he went on, “She graduated from Bryn Mawr magna cum laude and then went to the London School of Economics to do graduate work in political science. She’s interested in politics.”

  The rabbi smiled. “Somehow, I get the impression that you approve of her.”

  Magnuson beamed. “Soph and I—our lives are wrapped up in her.”

  “Does she have any interest in the temple?”

  Magnuson shook his head. “Young people don’t these days. Of course, she went to Sunday school as a child, but I don’t think she was very much influenced by it, although she was very fond of her grandmother Beck, and the Becks were a little more traditional than we were. My mother-in-law didn’t have separate meat and dairy dishes. She was not fanatic, you understand. I don’t suppose her cook would have stood for it. But when we dined there, she never had butter on the table when she was serving meat. Although, when Laura was with us, she always insisted she have a glass of milk. A little inconsistent that, and Sophia used to tease her about it.” He smiled self-consciously as he realized that a rabbi might not find his cavalier attitude toward the dietary laws amusing. To change the subject, he asked, “And you, Rabbi, do you have any children?”

  “Two. Jonathon is going into college next year and Hepsibah is entering high school.”

  “Do they give you any trouble?”

  “Of course. That’s what they’re for.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I was joking, of course.” The rabbi chuckled. “Still, I can’t help thinking that every bachelor or spinster of my acquaintance, and childless couples, too, seem to be as upset over a missing shirt button or a dirty ashtray or something equally trivial as I am when one of my children is running a fever. I suspect that there’s a certain amount of annoyance and trouble that we all have to endure, and if it isn’t for something reasonable like a sick child, then it’s apt to be for something silly and trivial. I suspect children give us a sense of proportion.”

  “What kind of trouble do they give you?”

  “Oh, nothing serious. Hepsibah is of an age where the opinion of her peers is terribly important, on what to wear and where to go. It’s her mother who bears the brunt of that. As for Jonathon, he’s concerned about his future career. Last year he wanted to be a professional baseball player—”

  “Is he any good? I might be able to help him there. I own a baseball club, you know.”

  The rabbi smiled. “Too late. This year, or the last I heard, he wants to be a brain surgeon.”

  Magnuson smiled. “I see what you mean. But don’t you direct him? Steer him in the direction he ought to go?”

  The rabbi shook his head. “The sages maintained that a father had four duties to his son, to get him circumcised, to teach him Torah, to teach him a trade, and to marry him off. I did the first, of course, and I interpret the other three liberally. I include a liberal arts education in the provision for Torah, and a profession as a possible substitute for trade. As for choosing a wife for him, I doubt if he’d stand for it.”

  “But in the choice of profession, wouldn’t you try to influence him? Would you like him to be a rabbi?”

  “Only if he wanted to. These days you can’t direct children too easily.”

  “Maybe you’re right, Rabbi, but I keep trying. I guess I’m the authoritarian type. And now that the temple is my baby, I intend to direct that.”

  “And how do you plan to direct the temple?” asked the rabbi.

  “I aim to make it a better place to work in and a better place to worship in. More, I’d like to attract more of our people to it. I’d like to see everyone in the Jewish community a member.”

  “No one could quarrel with that,” said the rabbi easily.

  “And I don’t tolerate quarrels in any organization I’m running.” Magnuson smiled. It was a friendly smile, but the rabbi sensed in both the statement and the smile a hint of challenge? Of warning?

  13

  The printer exchanged his glasses for another pair which he took from one of the slots in the rolltop desk, and examined the sheet of paper Tony D’Angelo offered him. Across the top it said in caps, THE COMMITTEE OF CONCERNED CITIZENS. Just below was stapled the snapshot taken at the banquet and under each figure was the name and a brief caption noting the charge—Grand Larceny, Assault with Intent to Kill, or Conspiracy to Defraud. One, however, showed neither name or caption.

  The printer nodded to himself and looked up. “You still working for Moriarty?” he asked.

  “His Nibs? I sure as hell ain’t working against him,” said Tony genially.

  “So what do you want?”

  “I’d like this set up on a piece of notepaper. You know, something you can fold over once and put in an envelope.” He looked around at the dusty shelves, and spotting a pile of printed forms, he took one. “Something like this. Just about this size, but good quality. You know, we don’t want it to look cheap. This ‘Concerned Citizens’ line, that can go up in the right-hand corner. Understand?”

  The printer nodded.

  “Now all this stuff, the picture and these little captions under each guy, I’d like that on th
e upper part of the page just above where it would be folded. Get it? Then below, that would be below the fold, you understand, I want just one line: ‘Do you care who your senator associates with?’”

  “Whom,” said the printer.

  “What’s that?”

  “It should be whom. Whom your senator associates with.”

  “Oh yeah?” He sampled it. “‘Do you care whom your senator associates with?’ Yeah, sounds more refined. Tell you what, how about, ‘Do you care with whom your senator associates?’”

  “That would be even better.”

  “Okay, do it that way.” He watched as the printer penciled it in block letters. “Now these little captions under each guy, how about having like a little box with maybe an arrow pointing to the guy it applies to?”

  “I can do it, but if I put it just below each figure, I don’t think you’d need an arrow. It would be plain enough with just the box. Or without the box if there was a separation between them.” He studied the paper and the photograph, then pointed with an inky finger. “How about this one?”

  “Nothing under that one. You know him?”

  The printer shook his head.

  “Never heard of Tommy Baggio?”

  Again the printer shook his head.

  “He’s running for state senator.”

  “And I guess you people would rather he wouldn’t?”

  “That’s right. There’s just one thing. He needs a moustache, a little Hitler moustache.” From his wallet he drew the newspaper clipping with Baggio’s picture. “This is what he looks like now. Ouestion is, can you put back the moustache?”

  The printer studied the clipping and the photograph for a moment, and then said, “No problem.”

  “Okay. What will the whole business cost me?”