Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red Read online

  The story got out of course. On Sunday, as the members of the board of directors waited around in the temple corridor for their meeting to begin, they discussed it. Typical was Norman Phillips’ comment “Just like our rabbi.” He tapped his head with a forefinger. “No smarts. He’s supposed to be an educated man, and I guess he is since he’s a rabbi, but smarts he sure hasn’t got.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, Norm, what could he do? You know our house rules call for strictly kosher catering in the temple. And as I understand it, if you use non-kosher type food, then all the dishes and pots and pans are automatically non-kosher. Then the next wedding or bar mitzvah that comes along, you want us to go out and buy a whole new set of dishes? So it isn’t as though you could make an exception that one time. You use non-kosher type food in the kitchen, and zip, that’s it. The kitchen is non-kosher from then on. And even if you could make an exception, why should we do it for Chernow?”

  “Who’s saying we should make exceptions? I’m only talking about the way the rabbi handled it. We got a house committee, haven’t we? Nate Marcus is chairman, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So if our rabbi had any smarts he would have said”—and he changed his voice to simulate the rabbi’s—“‘you understand, Miss Chernow, that all matters governing the use of the facilities require the approval of the house committee, which the chairman is Nathanial Marcus, I believe. This applies to any caterer which he has not used our facilities heretofore. Our house rules require that he receive the prior approval of our house committee. If you like, I’ll phone Mr. Marcus and arrange for an appointment for you.’”

  “So Nate would have had to turn her down, wouldn’t he?”

  “But that’s just the point. Nate is not a salaried employee who may need a member’s vote someday. This way the rabbi made enemies of the Chernows, and the last thing the rabbi needs in this congregation is another enemy.”

  Because the weather was mild, frail old Jacob Wasserman, the first president of the temple, had ventured forth to attend the board meeting. He had been brought by his good friend Al Becker, and though they were standing apart from the others, they could not help overhearing.

  “I don’t set much store by a loudmouth like Norm Phillips,” Becker commented in a low rumble, “but I think he’s got a point. Why does the rabbi always have to stick his neck out?”

  Wasserman smiled. “What’s a rabbi, Becker? A rabbi is a teacher. In the old country when I went to school, the teacher was the boss—not like here. Sometimes, if you were maybe fresh, or if you said something stupid, you’d get a slap from the teacher. Believe me, many times I got slapped when I was a boy.” His smile broadened with reminiscence. “But the mistakes you got slapped for, Becker, you didn’t make them again.”

  “Maybe. But you know what I think? I think the rabbi doesn’t give a damn anymore.”

  Wasserman nodded sadly. “Maybe that too.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  The call came in mid-September, right after the High Holydays, and was totally unexpected. When the voice on the phone introduced itself as Bertram Lamden, Rabbi Small did not immediately connect him with Rabbi Lamden, the swarthy, bewhiskered young man who was the Hillel director at the University of Massachusetts and whom he had first met at the Greater Boston Rabbinical Council meeting a few weeks earlier.

  “I’ve been giving a course in Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Windemere College in the city for the last few years,” Lamden said, “but I won’t be able to do it again this term. I took the liberty of recommending you in my place.”

  “How did you happen to think of me?” asked Rabbi Small.

  A short laugh. “Well, to tell the truth, Rabbi, because the dean of the college happens to live in your town. Do you know her by any chance? Millicent Hanbury?”

  “It’s a local name, I believe. There’s a Hanbury Street downtown.”

  “Right Now the course is three hours a week; it’s in Boston, in the Fenway, less than an hour’s drive for you, and it pays thirty-five hundred dollars. Why don’t you give her a call?”

  Rabbi Small asked how they happened to be offering a course in Jewish philosophy.

  Lamden laughed. “Oh, they get a lot of Jewish kids from around here and from the New York-New Jersey area. Windemere’s a fallback school, but they maintain decent academic standards.”

  “She’s the dean, the dean of faculty?”

  “That’s right. It used to be a woman’s college. You know, one of those ladies’ seminaries that flourished in New England around the turn of the century. It’s been coed for the last ten years or so, but it’s still two-thirds women. Look, why don’t you talk to her? You’re not committed in any way.”

  “Ladies’ seminary,” “New England,” “Dean,” “turn of the century” had evoked in his mind an image of Millicent Hanbury as a tall, gaunt spinster with carefully coiffed gray hair and pince-nez on a gold chain. After hearing her low contralto over the phone when he called to make an appointment, he revised his estimate of her age downward and pictured her as trim, businesslike, a modern woman who favored conservative, basic suits.

  It was a pleasant day, so although the address she had given him was some distance away, he decided to walk. As he approached the old rambling house with its turrets and gables and useless porches, all decorated with the fretsaw work of a century earlier, and saw the overgrown bushes, the cracked concrete path leading to the heavy oak front door badly in need of a coat of varnish, he revised his estimate of her age upward again. So he was totally unprepared for the extremely attractive woman, no more than in her early thirties, who answered the door and extended her hand in a firm handshake.

  She was tall, slim, and her short dark hair was carefully touseled, as styled by a hairdresser. Her fine gray eyes were candid as she explained, “Frankly, we’re in something of a pickle, Rabbi. The course has been taught by Rabbi Lamden for the last three years on an annual contract. We just assumed he’d be back again this year. And then he told us he was leading a group to Israel. Oh, I’m not blaming him,” she hastened to add. “We should have contacted him earlier. I suppose it’s really my fault.”

  She motioned him to a chair. On another was the knitting she had dropped when she answered the door. She began to put it away, but he said, “You don’t have to stop on my account.”

  “Oh, you’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “I like to see women knitting. My mother is a great one for it.”

  “It’s not as common as it used to be, I’m afraid.” She sat down with the knitting in her lap, and to the pleasant accompaniment of clicking needles she explained, “Christmas presents for nephews and nieces. I start early enough, but I always seem to be rushed toward the end. I keep three or four projects going all the time. I have a separate bag for each wherever I’m apt to be sitting, and I work at the one that’s available whenever I have a free moment. A gift is so much more appreciated if it’s the work of your own hands. Don’t you agree?”

  As she knitted, she told him about the school. The enrollment was just under two thousand with a pupil-teacher ratio of twelve to one. “That doesn’t mean, of course, that our classes average twelve pupils, because several of our teachers are on leave each year and quite a few teach only one course. The course in Jewish Philosophy usually runs between twenty-five and thirty students. Do you think that’s a lot? Some of the younger men feel put upon if their classes run over twenty. On the other hand, since we have unlimited cuts, you never get the full enrollment at any one class.”

  “It’s three hours a week?”

  “That’s right, Rabbi Small. Mondays and Wednesdays at nine, Fridays at one. I’m sorry about the Friday hour. We only have a couple of classes scheduled for Friday afternoon, but we’re awfully tight for space and I’m afraid your class has to be one of them.”

  “What’s so bad about Friday afternoon?”

  “Oh you know.” She looked up from the knitting. “People like t
o leave for an early weekend. Certainly students tend to cut class more on Fridays.”

  “I don’t mind Friday afternoon as long as I’m through by two o’clock,” he said. “Any later would be a problem, because the Sabbath comes early in the winter.”

  “Of course.” She nodded to show she understood. “Then we can expect to have you with us this year, Rabbi?”

  “Well, I’ll have to notify the board of directors of the temple.” He saw that she seemed a bit disappointed, and he smiled. “It’s just a formality, but I do have to tell them. Of course, if they raised serious objections …”

  “How soon can you give me a definite answer?”

  “They meet Sunday morning. I could let you know that evening.”

  “Good. Then if everything is all right, you could come in Monday for the faculty meeting and meet President Macomber and I’ll get you squared away on all the forms you have to fill out.”

  Not until he left, about an hour later, did he realize that she had not asked to see his academic resumé, although Rabbi Lamden probably had given her some idea of the academic background required for the rabbinate. Nor had she discussed the scope of the course or how he planned to teach it, but then she probably did not feel qualified. On the other hand, he had not asked her a number of questions. He grinned. Perhaps he was as anxious to come as they were to have him.

  A passing police car hooted and then drew up beside him. The square red face of Hugh Lanigan, Barnard’s Crossing’s chief of police, leaned out of the window and hailed him. “You want a ride home, Rabbi?” When the rabbi climbed in, he said, “I saw you coming out of the Hanbury house. You trying to convert Millie?”

  “Oh, you know her?”

  “How many times must I tell you that I know or know of everyone in town?” said the chief. “It’s part of my job. But the Hanburys are an old Barnard’s Crossing family and Millie I can remember from the day she was born.”

  “She seems a very attractive young woman. I was wondering why she’d want to live in an old ark of a house all by herself.”

  “And you came to ask her?”

  The rabbi smiled. “Oh no. That was just a little private thought I had.”

  “Well, maybe I can clear it up for you. She lives there because she was born there. It’s the Hanbury house and she’s a Hanbury. It’s a—well—it’s a matter of pride.”

  “What’s pride got to do with it?”

  “It’s a matter of how you’re brought up,” the chief said, slowing down for a delivery boy on a bicycle. “The Hanburys have been important people in these parts since Colonial times. Josiah Hanbury was captain of the town company of militiamen, as a matter of fact. You’ll find his name on a bronze plaque in the Town Hall. He had his own boat and was a privateer during the Revolutionary War.” Lanigan laughed. “For privateer read pirate and you won’t be far wrong, I guess. At least there was money in it. And afterward the Hanburys were in whaling, and after that in the molasses-rum-slave traffic. And Hanbury Shipping Lines did right well during World War I. These days they still operate as Hanbury Shipping but they no longer have any ships. It’s an insurance and factoring business now, and their stock is quoted on the New York Stock Exchange. The office is in Boston, of course. It’s too big an operation to remain here in Barnard’s Crossing. All the Hanburys had, and still have, money. All except Arnold Hanbury, Millie’s father. His branch of the family never did too well and never had much luck either. But still he was a Hanbury, and no one was allowed to forget it.

  “That house there, Rabbi. It practically bankrupted him when he built it, but of course he had to have a big house because he was a Hanbury. And Millie, she couldn’t play with her rich cousins and their friends—they had ponies and sailboats when they were kids growing up and later on, their own cars and trips to Europe, and she couldn’t afford any of that. Even so, she wasn’t permitted to play with the ordinary kids in town. Because she was a Hanbury.”

  “But surely at school she’d meet—”

  Lanigan shook his head vigorously. “You still don’t understand about the Hanburys. Her cousins all went to private schools and she had to go to the public school because Arnold Hanbury coudn’t afford anything else. But they wouldn’t let her associate with the common folk. They had this old woman that worked for them for little more than board and lodging—Nancy—Nancy something—it’ll come to me. Anyway, one of her duties was to wait for Millie at the school gate and hustle her home as soon as school let out.”

  “What about college?”

  “Not even there. She went to a school in Boston and commuted from here. It was an all-girls’ school, too, where they teach physical education—you know, to be a gym teacher. Now, if a girl wants to latch onto a man she’s got to go where men are available, right? Lots of men. And I don’t suppose being a graduate of a physical education school helps either. It might even scare a man off. You know, a fellow makes a pass at a girl, he figures the worst that can happen, he’ll get his face slapped. But if she’s a physical education type, he could wind up with his jaw broken.” He laughed coarsely. “I’d worry about it myself. The two lady gym teachers at the high school aren’t married either.”

  “It’s surprising that she got to be dean if all she had was a Phys. Ed. degree,” the rabbi remarked.

  “Why, what’s a dean supposed to do?”

  “Well, the dean is head of the faculty,” said the rabbi, “and usually a scholar of some distinction.”

  “Could be you’re a little out of date, Rabbi. I know the dean at the community college in Lynn. He used to be the manual training teacher and coach of the football team right here in the high school half a dozen years ago. I gather that these days what they want is some forceful executive type who can keep the kids in line.”

  As they drove along, the rabbi told him of Dean Hanbury’s offer.

  “Are you going to take it?”

  “I think so. It will be an interesting change.”

  “How does Miriam feel about it?”

  “I haven’t talked to her about it yet.”

  The rabbi encountered little difficulty when he made his announcement. Of course, it would not have been a Temple Board meeting without some questions.

  “What if there’s a funeral, God forbid, on one of the days you’re teaching, Rabbi?”

  “I’ll merely notify my class I will be unable to meet them.”

  “How about the minyan, Rabbi? Does this mean you won’t be able to make it on the days you teach?”

  “I might not. But of course, my role as rabbi does not include being the permanent tenth man at the daily minyan. It seems to get along very nicely without me when I can’t make it now.”

  After he had left and they were making their way to their cars in the parking lot, they voiced their real feelings.

  “I notice the rabbi kept talking about Windemere College, but the full name is Windemere Christian College. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but to me it’s kind of funny a rabbi should teach in a Christian college.”

  “That don’t mean a thing these days. They got boys going to girls’ schools, girls going to boys’ schools. And Jewish kids going even to Catholic schools.”

  “Yeah, but that it should be Christian right in the name! I wouldn’t mind if it were something like Notre Dame, for instance.”

  “Notre Dame! You know what that means? It means ‘Our Lady.’ And you know who’s the Lady they’re referring to?”

  “So? What I mean is you can’t tell from just the name. Besides, Mary was a Jewish girl, wasn’t she?”

  They laughed. Then someone raised another objection: “What bothers me is the way he told us. He just announces he’s taking a teaching job. He doesn’t ask us. He just tells us.”

  “You think he’s getting paid for it?”

  “You kidding? Did you ever hear of a rabbi taking a job for nothing?”

  “Well, all I can say is he’s supposed to be working here full-time. So if he’s getting paid, then bigod he
ought to turn that money over to our treasury, same as if some engineer over at the GE works out some invention, he owes it to GE.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be the day.”

  “Well, I think somebody ought to ask him.”

  “All right, I’ll appoint you a committee of one.”

  “I don’t mean me. But the president ought to, or the treasurer.”

  “Hell, they do it all the time. When they go off someplace to give a lecture, do they turn the money in? And some of these hotshot rabbis they do more talking outside the temple than in it.”

  “Some of the rabbi’s sermons, I wouldn’t mind if they were outside, to tell the truth.”

  They guffawed.

  “It’s not like it’s someplace like Harvard or M.I.T.,” said Norman Phillips, who was in the advertising business. “That would give the temple some prestige. But Windemere?” He emphasized his disparagement by swinging an imaginary golf club in a long approach shot to the green. Although in his mid-forties, Norm was with it in the matter of clothes: two-tone fancy shoes, wide flared trousers worn low on the hips and supported by a heavy leather belt with a massive brass buckle. His long hair was not cut by a barber but shaped by a hair stylist. His opinions carried a certain weight with the other members of the board who assumed he knew what the young people of the community were thinking.