The Outsider (8 page)

“I don't know what could be more fitting. We worship the same God, and you could say that church came to us as an act of love, a hand held out from Christian to Jew —”

“For a nice price,” Hurtz put in.

“That's a low shot.”

“No, it isn't,” Osner put in. “Marty Carter and his crowd had embarked on their own piece of church building, and they had overspent and used up every dollar they raised and still had not finished their new church when we came in as the buyers. We helped them out of a hole. The old church may be a museum piece, David, but nobody else wanted it.”

“It's not a museum piece. It's a signature for a great deal of what is best in America. The people who built this church are the same people who created Harvard and Yale, who laid the basis of a country where Jews could come and be free — for the first time, anywhere.”

“David, David,” Osner said gently, “we are not going to destroy the old church. Do you think that any of us living here on the Ridge are without a sense of what Congregationalism means? We're not that narrow or that foolish.”

“I didn't mean to indicate that you were. If I did, I must apologize.”

“Don't apologize to us, Rabbi,” Klein said, mollifyingly.

“We're not going to destroy the church, David,” Osner said again. “There's a group of Unitarians who've been meeting at the Elks Club in Danbury, and since most of them come from Brookfield and New Fairfield, they're delighted at the thought of a church of their own here in Leighton Ridge. They're crazy about our building, and they've offered a very good price, thirty thousand dollars for parsonage and church, which is more than double what we paid.”

“So you've sold my home,” David said.

“No. We've done nothing, and we won't without your approval.”

“I'm afraid you'll never have my approval. On the other hand, I will not stand against any decision of the board. Like the people whose church we are selling, we are congregationalists and we rule ourselves.”

“Now wait a minute,” Osner exclaimed. “If this goes through, David, we'll build you a good, modern house. Furthermore, I am putting a restrictive covenant into the deed that will prohibit the Unitarians from making any changes in either building without the approval of the Leighton Historical Society.”

“Is that legal?” Hurtz asked.

“Entirely legal. Now what do you say, David?”

“I plead with you to change your minds.”

“We need some things that we don't have now,” Klein said. “We want to start a nursery school, a sort of crèche. We want a gym. We want a reasonable area to expand into. We want some classrooms and an office for you. These are the functions of a synagogue today, and I see nothing so awful about it.”

“In one of those ugly modern buildings.”

“It need not be ugly.”

“We'll have the best and most innovative architect we can find,” Osner said. “And you've got to admit, David, that Jewish kids growing up in a Congregational church in Connecticut are bound to be a little confused.”

“Such confusion might not be the worst thing in the world. Do we have to go on forever pretending that God changes character every time some sect decides that they own the whole truth?”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Joe Hurtz demanded.

“Come on, come on,” Mel Klein said softly. “I know what David means, but that's not the kind of a world we live in. The stink of Hitler's gas ovens is still with us. I spend a day in the showrooms on Seventh Avenue and then come up here to the Ridge, and it's like the rest of the world disappeared. Only it hasn't. My father came here from Kiev, in the Ukraine, and he used to tell me what the nature of anti-Semitism was in czarist Russia, and I grew up on One hundred and fifty-ninth Street and Amsterdam Avenue, so I know a little something about anti-Semitism myself, but my kids grew up here in Leighton Ridge and they don't know one damned thing. They feel comfortable in the old church, and I don't want them to feel comfortable there.”

David remained silent.

“David,” Osner said, “I never asked you. But you come from German-Jewish people, don't you?”

David nodded.

“Could I ask when they came here?”

“My mother's family in eighteen forty-eight, my father's family a bit before that.”

“And Reform since then?”

David nodded. “More or less.”

“So your family has a hundred years of the Reform movement behind it. For me, it's my first step, and I think three quarters of the congregation are the first generation of Reform Jews. Those who are Reform. Just remember that we have a few Orthodox and Conservative as well.”

“In other words,” David said, “you intend to build the new synagogue, and nothing I say will stop you.”

“Oh, no. Positively not,” Mel Klein said. “You're putting us in a hell of a position, David. We think this is a proper step — but if you're going to set yourself in opposition to it, well, we'll just drop the matter, or postpone it.” He turned to the others. “Am I putting it right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Why don't you think about it, David?” Osner said kindly. “No great hurry. Meanwhile we're having some drawings made, and you may find it's not as inappropriate as you fear. If we decide to go ahead, we'll put it at the other end of the property, about three hundred yards from the present synagogue. And suppose we meet again in a few days and talk about it? Will the drawings be done by, say, Monday?” he asked Hurtz.

“That's what he promised, Colonel.”

At home, Lucy looked at David and shook her head. “No fun with the boys?”

“That's nicely put. If I weren't a rabbi, I might say that those three guiding lights of our religious institution give me a pain in the ass, especially one, our beloved colonel.”

“I can go with that. Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“What is it this time?”

“They want to sell the church and build a new synagogue.”

“Well, you know, Dave, Martin sold it to us, and what's so terrible if we want to sell it?”

He shook his head and remained silent, but as they were preparing for bed, he told Lucy that he had decided to go into New York the following day and talk to Rabbi Belsen.

“Sure. That might be a good thing, you worry so much, David.” Her voice was like honey, and David knew that meant she wanted to make love. It irritated him, and he stiffened under her touches; and then his guilt rose up, because she was loving and kind and a good mother, ran the house properly, painted and papered rooms by herself, found pieces of antique furniture for ten and fifteen dollars each and put up with the problem of being the wife of an underpaid country rabbi; and out of this rush of guilt, he entered into the lovemaking. But it was not very good. He had to arouse himself with the erotic images of his boyhood encounters, and if that fulfilled something, it spoiled something else.

Driving into New York the following day, David brooded over his relationship with his wife. As a rabbi, he should have been kind, tolerant, understanding. As a rabbi? And why not as a human being? But he had long ago come to the conclusion that men of the cloth, rabbis or otherwise, were less than saintly, and human beings were not very human. His thoughts wandered and he made a wrong turn through a light, and a police car pulled up alongside and waved him over. When the cop saw his license, his face relaxed and he said, “You got to watch yourself, Rabbi. You make an illegal turn like that, you could end up in the hospital or even dead.”

“Then you should give me a ticket,” David said firmly.

The cop's big, red, Irish face broke into a grin. “That'll be the day,” he said. “Go on, Rabbi, only be careful.”

Perks. They brought Lucy food, and cops refrained from giving him tickets he deserved. “Shit!” he exclaimed angrily, using the word as a release he desperately needed. “Shit! Shit! Shit! What in hell am I doing here? What in hell am I doing anywhere? Piousness turns my stomach. So I witnessed the Holocaust! Do I bring any Jew back to life by pretending I'm a rabbi? I'm a joke, a clown!”

“I'm pretending to be a rabbi,” he told Belsen, fiercely, challengingly.

“We all are, to some extent,” the old man said. He was warming an electric teapot. “A gift from my daughter,” he explained. “She's very modern. She couldn't bear that I made my tea in a little tin pot. You want lemon, David? Milk? I don't have any here. But I have sugar.”

“Any way.”

“All right, David. Plain. You know, I pretend to be a rabbi too. What is pretending? It's passing yourself off as something you are not. But not
anything
you are not. It's passing yourself off as something that is special in your heart and mind, something you want to be very desperately and you feel it's beyond you. When my son-in-law says he pretends to be a doctor, what does he mean? That he didn't go to medical school, that he cheated on his exams? No, absolutely not. He means that with all his learning and degrees, he has not even scratched the surface of the mysteries of the human body. And we who are rabbis, we pretend. We pretend that we know something of the mystery of life and death. We pretend that we heard a whisper of the voice of God. We pretend that we know the nature of worship, the nature of observance, the nature of meditation. Maybe a little. Maybe some of us. Does that make the rest of us liars, cheats, worthless? No. Drink your tea. And about Israel — that is the most glorious miracle of the twentieth century, and to want to be there at this moment is completely understandable. What will you do there, David?”

David hesitated.

“Take up a gun and fight?”

He shook his head.

“Then you're still a rabbi. They have enough rabbis there, believe me. You still haven't mentioned what is underneath all this.”

True. He hadn't. He hadn't even spelled it out to himself, and now he wondered whether he could. And what should he say to the old man? The emotion, the passion, the call that I felt in the service is gone, and now I'm a half-baked psychiatrist for a group of middle-class Jews in Fairfield County, and I'm disgusted with it, and I look at my wife and wonder who she is, and even my son brings me no joy. And if he said that, would it be the truth any more than anything else would be the truth?

Instead, lamely, he muttered, “They're going to sell the old church and build a new synagogue.”

“Oh?”

“I'm against it. I suppose I could stop it. No, I wouldn't. They want it too much.”

“Maybe they need it, David.”

David shrugged. “I don't think so. Maybe in five years. The point is, as far as I am concerned, that we're giving up a beautiful old building, something that's intrinsic to the place, for some modern monstrosity.”

“Tearing it down?”

“No, we're selling it to the Unitarians.”

“So there you are, David. They'll take good care of it, and you'll have a new synagogue with all modern improvements. Not too bad. Tell me, David, could it be that there's comfort in a church, that it makes you feel a little less a Jew?”

David stared at the old man, feeling anger begin to boil in him, yet knowing he could not exercise anger against Belsen, who wore all the images of teacher and father.

“I know.” Belsen nodded. “Over in Israel are heroic figures, a tiny handful of young Jews arrayed against the entire Arab world, and what do you have up there in Leighton Ridge — businessmen, professionals, storekeepers, possibly not even three or four that are noble, heroic, brilliant. What is a Jew, David? Something that wins Nobel Prizes, something chosen for mass murder, something without good manners, something
with
good manners, something supercultured?” His voice became suddenly harsh, angry. “Come, David. We've given you years of study and instruction. Now answer a simple question. What is a Jew?”

David shook his head, mute.

“Then let me explain. When God told Moses to go forth and speak to Pharaoh for our people, Moses demanded God's name. It was a time when there were many gods, with many names, but the Almighty answered simply, ‘I am what I am.' Do you understand?”

“I think so,” David said.

“So. Finish your tea. You want to give up the rabbinate, give it up. You want to leave your wife, leave her. You want to go to Israel, go. Only get rid of the illusions.”

That evening, glum and silent, he helped Lucy bathe the baby. “You know something,” she said to David. “This ancient bathtub is impossible and our hot-water system is impossible, and I'm always afraid that the electric heater will blow the current, and I wouldn't be one bit unhappy to live in a clean modern house where there's insulation, and the basement ceiling is more than four feet high, and the windows and the roof don't leak.” She saw his expression. “God help me, I've said something wrong again.”

“It's nothing you said. It's just the way I feel.”

“I think you
should
go off to Israel for a while. Oh, come on, David. I'm only kidding.”

He wrapped little Aaron in the towel, handed him over to his mother, and stalked out.

David left the house and walked along the path that led to the old church. Today was Tuesday, the eighteenth of May, just four days since the declaration of independence was announced in the old museum at Tel Aviv, and he was here, trapped in this Connecticut backwater, with a wife who could not for the life of her understand what moved him, and a comfortable middle-class congregation that appeared already to have forgotten that there ever was a Holocaust in which millions of Jews died.

There was moonlight and starlight, and whatever one might say about Leighton Ridge, the air was pure here, and tonight there was enough moonlight to fill the interior of the church with a pallid glow. David opened and closed the door gently, as if there were someone inside to be disturbed or awakened, and then he stood in the aisle, looking toward the sanctuary. The interior, as well as the exterior, was still more or less as it had been a hundred and seventy-five years ago. David's people had painted the chair rail white, the walls above it blue, scraped the floor and every bit of woodwork, oiled the wood, polished it, and repaired the pews; and they had put a new roof on the old church. The Unitarians would get a good, sound building.