One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross (23 page)

“You think it will work? You think the judge will go along?”

“Of course, in this business you can never tell, but I think there's a good chance.”

“But look here, why couldn't you present it to the prosecutor? Maybe he would agree to drop the case.”

The other smiled. “A lawyer always tries to keep a little something back, Rabbi. And what might work if I spring it in court might not work if I tried it on the prosecution in his office over a cup of coffee.”

33

On Wednesday, Al Bergson called from tel Aviv. “This is your president speaking,” he announced.

“Al? Al Bergson? Where are you?”

“In Tel Aviv, at the Sheraton. We'll be here through tomorrow, and come up to Jerusalem Friday morning.”

“How many of you are there?”

“There are twenty-six of us. I had thirty lined up originally, but the Moscovitz family—Ed, Emily, and the two boys—dropped out at the last minute. We'll be staying at the King David. Present plans call for going to the service at the big synagogue, but some said they preferred going to the Conservative synagogue on Agron. In any case, we'll have our Sabbath meal at the hotel. Could you and Miriam make it? As our guests, of course.”

“I'm afraid we can't. We're expecting company here.”

“And Barney's Bar Mitzvah at the Wall the next morning?”

“I don't think so,” said the rabbi. “It's a pretty longish walk to the Wall from where we live.”

“I'd try, if I were you. There'll be a party afterward at the hotel, but if you haven't gone to the Bar Mitzvah—”

“Then I hardly think it would be proper for me to go to the party.”

“But you've got to meet the group sometime, David. I mean, here are a couple of dozen members of your congregation, some of them on the Board of Directors, and their rabbi is right here in the city—”

“How about Saturday night? I could come to the hotel in the evening,” suggested the rabbi.

“I'm afraid that won't do. They'll all be scattered. They all have relatives or friends. Look, plan on Sunday morning. I've arranged for a guided walking tour of the Old City, the Jewish Quarter, the Cardo, the Wall. It's probably old stuff to you, but it will give you a chance to meet the gang.”

“Sunday morning is fine. I think Miriam has something scheduled, but I can make it. How about you? Do you have relatives to go to Saturday night? If not, how about coming to us?”

“You're a hard man to help, David,” said Bergson as they sat in the salon of Gittel's apartment. Gittel and Miriam had gone off to a movie, and the two men were alone.

The rabbi smiled faintly. “You've been trying to help me, have you?”

“Uh-huh. The Levinsons got back from Israel and reported that the Goodman boy had been arrested for murder and that you fingered him to the police and that you almost got them involved as well.”

“I merely gave the authorities Goodman's name, and the Levinson's, as being from Barnard's Crossing. It was a matter of identifying—”

“I know, I know. But the Levinsons don't like you, so in the telling, there was a suggestion that there may have been something more to it than that. And by the time it had been repeated and made the rounds, there was a general conviction that you were acting as an agent of the police. And some pointed out that here, too, you were awfully friendly with Chief Lanigan with the implication that you were somehow connected with the police.”

“But that's ridiculous. I—”

“Of course it is, and it would be obvious to anyone if you were generally liked. But you're not, you know. So anything that can be thought to discredit you is seized on and accepted without further question. And now you've alienated Barney Berkowitz, and that means his friends. He could understand—not easily, to be sure—why you might give up a free trip to Israel in order to get here earlier and have more time to spend here, but not to come to his Bar Mitzvah when you were already here, and a couple of dozen of your congregants were along as well—”

“How did it go?”

“Oh, fine. Without a hitch. He'd had the cantor record his haftarah on a tape, and he played it over and over. I have the room next to him at the hotel, and I could hear it and him repeating it sentence by sentence, the night before. At the Wall, he choked up at one point, but someone nearby whispered the word and he went on. Then afterward back at the hotel, there were lots of high jinks. ‘How does it feel to be a man, Barney?' That sort of thing. And several of the fellows managed to get hold of some of those old-fashioned fountain pens. He must have got half a dozen of them. I gather that used to be the usual present to a Bar Mitzvah boy. Before my time, but I'd heard of it. And Sophie Katz presented him with a prayer book in white leatherette on behalf of the Sisterhood, and I presented him with a matching Bible, as we do to all the Bar Mitzvah boys. And then afterward we toasted him with champagne—Israeli champagne, but nevertheless champagne. I wish you had been there.”

“So that I could have made my usual speech to Bar Mitzvahs about his now being responsible for his actions?”

“No-o, but to show them that you were part of them, that they were your people. I can't understand why you were determined not to. It's not such a terribly long walk.”

“Because it was foolish. I don't mind foolishness as such. It's even encouraged sometimes—on Purim, for example. But—”

“But you're his rabbi.”

“Sure, and I was performing my rabbinical function.”

“By not going?”

“That's right. In America, the rabbi is rarely if ever permitted to perform his traditional functions of sitting in judgment on civil cases brought before him, or of rendering a decision on a halachic matter. The one function that he can and that his congregation expects him to perform is to act as teacher and guide in maintaining the tenets of the Jewish tradition, and to keep them from straying from the traditional path. Now in our tradition, a boy becomes a man—that is, an adult—at thirteen rather than at eighteen, as in secular society. As a man, he is presumed responsible for his actions; he can give testimony in a law court; he can sign a contract; and he can serve as one of the ten required for a minyan. That's all there is to it, although we ceremonialize it by having him take part in a religious service. If there is no ceremony, he is still Bar Mitzvah simply by having reached thirteen, the age of maturity.

“As teacher and guide in the tradition, isn't it my function to try to prevent a member of the congregation from perverting this halachic rule to something else, to a kind of confirmation, as in the Reform Synagogue? If he had come to me I would have tried to explain it to him, but since he didn't, I could only disassociate myself from the action. And that's what I did.”

“Yes, but in doing so, you antagonized some powerful people in our congregation. They've got it all mixed up, your failure to come to the Wall this morning, not showing up at B.B.'s party later, and now the business with the Goodman boy. You've generated hostility, and that doesn't do the congregation any good, and it doesn't do you any good. Your contract comes up for renewal—it was you who insisted on an annual review of your stewardship—and they might use the occasion to express their feelings by voting against you. This business with Barney might blow over, but I hate to think what would happen if the Goodman boy goes to jail.”

“Why, what's his situation got to do with mine?”

“David, David, for a smart guy you've got some of the damndest blind spots. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. And his folks aren't even members of our congregation. But our people shop with them, and talk with them as they stand around waiting their turn at the deli counter. People are always happy to hear of anything reprehensible of someone in authority. It makes them feel good about themselves. It doesn't have to be anything specific, you understand. Just a suggestion of something. Now you did what anyone was apt to do. The police came to you and asked you to identify a man from a photo because he came from your hometown. You couldn't, so you suggested someone else they might see who was familiar with the town. That's all. But if that someone else gets into trouble as a result, you're going to be blamed for it, maybe not directly in so many words. No one is going to accuse you directly. But they'll think it, or feel it. Look, I really think it's important that you go on that walk with us tomorrow.”

When Miriam and Gittel came home, the rabbi told them about Bergson's visit, and after Gittel had gone to bed and he was alone with Miriam, he amplified his account by telling her of Bergson's gloomy outlook.

“Are you worried, David?” she asked.

“No-o, not really. I think Al Bergson is exaggerating the situation.” Then quite suddenly, he was exasperated. “If the Board refuses to renew my contract because I didn't attend Barney's phony Bar Mitzvah, or because I did what any one of them would have done on the Goodman boy, then maybe I ought to look around for another congregation.”

“You've had trouble with the Board before, David,” Miriam observed, “and you've fought it. Why would you give up now?”

“This is different. It was always a matter of principle, of something I was strongly opposed to, or some action I had taken that they objected to, and it was the principle I was fighting. This is just a matter of popularity. I know I'm not particularly well liked. I suppose I don't have the warm personality that makes for easy friendship. Well, I don't care What I want is not love from the congregation, but respect. And if I do all the silly things that people would like me to do, I wouldn't even have my own respect.”

“Yes, I understand,” she said. “You're really bothered about young Goodman.”

Startled, he stared at her. Then with a sheepish smile, he said, “Well, I can't believe he actually murdered the man over some old quarrel. I've seen him twice, and I wasn't particularly taken with him. I certainly don't feel in any sense responsible, and still—”

“You're probably thinking of his parents,” she said matter-of-factly. “If anything happened to him, they'd never forgive themselves for having asked you to look him up.”

34

Many, perhaps most, of his congregation did not normally see their rabbi except on the New Year, Rosh Hashonah, and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when he sat in his traditional place beside the Ark, and even the more devout were apt to see him only when he presided at the Friday Evening Services, which normally were suspended during the summer months. So Rabbi Small did not interpret the coolness with which he was greeted when he met them at the King David as being critical of his behavior.

“Hello, Rabbi. Feeling better? Glad you could make it,” was the usual form of greeting. From which he concluded that Al Bergson had let it be known that he had been ill, presumably as explanation for his failure to appear at Barney Berkowitz's Bar Mitzvah. Barney himself was most solicitous. “These summer colds, they can develop into something serious, Rabbi.” And because to deny that he had been sick would give the lie to Al Bergson, he merely smiled and nodded.

But he did express his annoyance to Bergson when they were seated together on the bus that took them from the King David to Jaffa Gate in the Old City, where the walk was to begin.

Bergson was not at all abashed. “Sometimes, David, a man has to be protected against himself,” he said. “As president of the congregation, I'm not going to let a split develop over something as silly as B.B.'s Bar Mitzvah. No matter what you think, a lot of the guys have the idea that it is a religious ceremony that every Jew has to undergo, even women. Mollie Berkowitz was going to do it, too, until she heard if they did it at the Wall, there was no service on the woman's side. It has become a tradition, and there's no accounting for traditions. Look at all those youngsters, and older men, too, who walk around with those little crocheted yarmulkes held in place with a bobby pin. Try telling them that there is no commandment that dictates it. As far as they're concerned, it indicates that they are observant. It has become a tradition, and you're not likely to laugh or argue them out of it. And now what's the story on the Goodman boy?”

The question was repeated again and again by various members of the party as they trudged behind the guide, usually prefaced apologetically with, “See, Rabbi, his mother heard I was going to Jerusalem, and she asked me …”

To each of them he explained that the system was different here from in the States, that arrest did not have the same significance in Israel, where it was apt to be the beginning of an investigation rather than the end. He explained, “The police have the authority to hold anyone for forty-eight hours without a warrant. After that, if they want to hold him longer, they must appear before a magistrate and ask for a remand. In the case of a young man like Goodman, unattached, without a family or job, who is free to come and go as he pleases, he is apt to be remanded, and the magistrate will go along if they have any sort of evidence against him. It is while he is safely in custody that they work on their case. Only a small percentage of those remanded ever come to trial. The vast majority of them are released.”

One of them began his inquiries by saying, “I know you've got some connection with the police, Rabbi, because back home you're pretty chummy with Chief Lanigan, and some of the guys think that's not entirely proper, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm glad my rabbi stands in good with the authorities, and I tell them if the rabbi's got a drag with the police here, it's all the better for young Goodman, on account of the rabbi will use his influence for him.”

While the congregants did not confront him as a group, for which he was profoundly grateful, their attitude, as he sensed it from individual remarks, was most disturbing. They seemed to feel that he was in some way responsible for young Goodman's arrest, or at least was in a position to do something about it. The facts of the case had been kept out of the newspapers, so they knew little about it, not even what he had been charged with, but the belief was strong that it was something very serious, perhaps even murder.