“I get it. You’re going to show them the model.”
“Right.”
The group returned from the study to the living-room where Ethel Schwarz had prepared coffee and ice cream and delicious little French cookies. “You know, Mort,” Hal Berkowitz said, “what I can’t get through my noggin is why the rabbi, of all people, should want to do anything to keep that building of yours from going up. I mean, your chapel has class, and what’s more, it’s his-”
“That’s right,” chimed in Abner Sussman. “It’s his place of business, you might say. I was visiting my brother in Richmond Friday night and the rabbi was over. Most of the time we were talking business, and I had been telling them how I remodeled my store. After dinner we all started out for services, and when we got to the temple the rabbi says, “How do you like my store?”
“What gets me,” Berkowitz said, “our rabbi is supposed to be so traditional and the building we got now looks like anything but a synagogue. Now Mort’s scheme here makes it look like a real synagogue-”
“Seems to me you’re both missing the point,” said Nelson Bloomberg. “Here we’ve got a chance to make a giant step forward. We can make our temple a real showplace on the North Shore. I don’t claim to have any great aesthetic appreciation-although in the dress business, let me tell you, you better develop a sense of style or you’re in trouble-but to me, Mort’s is the kind of building that would get talked about. The kind of building you might expect to see pictured in some magazine. To me, it represents progress. And what’s standing in the way? A ghost. No, not even a ghost, a corpse-the dead body of this guy Hirsh who wasn’t even a member of the congregation. Here we have something that means progress for an entire community-something wholesome and alive-and the rabbi throws in a monkey wrench with a lot of ghoulish technicalities about graves and burials and death. It’s just plain gruesome, when you come right down to it.”
“Nel’s put the whole thing in a nutshell,” said Nate Shatz. “We had a pretty awkward situation here. This idea of having the driveway so everybody is satisfied, Goralsky, the widow, the temple-that’s the kind of thing the rabbi is supposed to dope out. And what happens? Marve and Mort figure it out, and the rabbi instead of being grateful says he forbids it. Either we like it or lump it. Well, I say the fat’s in the fire and we go ahead with the road. He can resign, for all I care.”
“What’s he ever done to you?” asked Jerry Feldman. “You sound angry.”
“I am. He acts as though he’s too good for the likes of us. I see him at the Board meetings and sometimes he says hello and sometimes he doesn’t. My wife gave a bridge and invited his wife, but when she got there all she would take was tea. If he’s too good to eat with us, he’s too good to rabbi for us.”
“Well, I wouldn’t condemn a man because he sticks to his principles,” said Feldman. “If a man wants to eat kosher, especially if he’s a rabbi, I see no harm in it. My mother always kept a kosher house with two sets of dishes and everything. When she’d come to my house, she wouldn’t eat with us either. At the same time-I say maybe we can do better. Personally I’d like to see a man who was a leader and looked like a leader. A man who would take hold and build this place up.”
“A lot of people come into your store, Abner, and you must have heard them talking,” said Schwarz. “How do you think people feel about him?”
Sussman rotated his hand. “Comme ci, comme ça. Some people say he keeps to himself a lot and they don’t like a rabbi to be so standoffish. Some say when they go to the temple on a Friday night they like to hear a sermon-not just a casual talk like he thought it up on his way over. But don’t think he hasn’t friends; he has. A lot of people like the way he talks-common sense and no bull. Like Jerry here, some object to the way he dresses-more like a bookkeeper making seventy-five a week. But that works for him too-brings out the motherly instincts, if you know what I mean.
“Of course, I see mostly women in my place, and they’re always complaining about something. He’s not interested in their work. Half the time when he’s supposed to go to a Sisterhood meeting, they’re not even sure he’ll show up. But you know women; if he were a big handsome guy he could do anything he liked and they’d love it. On the other hand, there’s no doubt they’ve got a lot of influence with their menfolk.”
“How about those who are strong for him?”
“Well, like I say, he’s got his friends but they’re scattered, so I wouldn’t say he has what you might call a following. I mean he’s not the kind of guy that goes out of his way to get a group behind him. And he hasn’t exactly got what you’d call a magnetic personality like some of these glad-handers. You know, my father was president of one temple and a big shot in another, so I know a little about rabbis. You take a smart rabbi, the first thing he does when he comes to a new place he sort of gets the lay of the land-who’s important and who isn’t. Then he develops a party, a clique. Everybody knows they’re the rabbi’s friends, see? Then any time the rabbi wants something, he doesn’t ask the Board of Directors himself personally. He whispers to one of his buddies who is damn important, some guy with plenty of dough who has kicked in to the building fund or who can be tapped for a big contribution when you need it. Then this guy, he talks to the other friends of the rabbi and when one of them gets up in the Board meeting and says, I think we should do thus and so, why somebody else seconds it quick as a wink and before you can say Gut Shabbes it’s passed. A rabbi like that, he runs the organization.”
“I see.”
“Now our rabbi-he don’t have any organization behind him.”
“How about Wasserman and Becker and Doc Carter?”
Sussman shook his head. “They’re not an organization. Wasserman backs him because he picked him, and Becker because he helped out his partner when he got into that trouble a couple of years ago so he feels obligated. You know how a rabbi goes about setting up an organization? He visits with them, he invites them to his house. He’s nice to their wives and he’s helpful to their kids. One I knew who used to help his friends’ kids with their school lessons when he’d come to visit-not their Hebrew school lessons but their public school lessons. Another one would play baseball with some of the kids, and this one even had a beard. Can you imagine our rabbi playing ball?”
Everyone laughed.
“All right,” said Schwarz, “so the consensus of the meeting is…”
Marvin Brown held back after the others left. “You know, Mort, if this doesn’t go through we’ll be left with egg all over our faces.”
“Marve, old boy, it’s in the bag. Nel Bloomberg gave it to us when he said the rabbi was fighting progress. That’s our new theme song-the rabbi is against progress.”
“I didn’t mean the rabbi, I was thinking of Goralsky. How much of a commitment do you have from the old man?”
“It’s pretty firm. Ben was the stumbling block, but now with this, he’s sure to be on our side.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, when he called to tell me about the cemetery, he mentioned his father’s interest in the chapel and said we wouldn’t get it if the situation wasn’t taken care of. Well, if we do clean it up, and we point out that to do it we had a regular hassle with the rabbi, will he have the nerve to say he changed his mind?”
“Maybe, but you know how these things work. Goralsky can stall. The old man can say he put it in his will-why not?” as Schwarz shook his head.
“Because, Marve old boy, I just decided this is going to be called the Hannah Goralsky Memorial Chapel. Get it? We’ll make this a memorial to his wife, Ben’s mother. So isn’t the old man going to want to see it? Isn’t he going to want to be there to lay the cornerstone, and be at the ceremony when it’s completed, and to be the first one called up for the Reading on the first service that’s held there?”