“Do you, when you recite the prayers in Hebrew?”
“To tell the truth, most of the time I use the English side.”
“So that’s an advantage that you have over him. But the question is what are we going to do now?”
Becker shook his head dolefully. “Too bad you had to get sick, Rabbi. If you had been at the meeting yesterday when the discussion came up, you could have explained what the real issue was-”
“I’m not sure I could have, from the way you report it,” said Rabbi Small. “As I gather, the motion was a general one-to give the Cemetery Committee a budget to improve the grounds. In general I think that’s a good idea, so under the circumstances I’d be unlikely to rise and accuse Marvin Brown and your president of ulterior motives.”
“Of course not,” said Wasserman. “It would have been unseemly for the rabbi. It would be like calling Schwarz a liar. And even if he had, and the whole business had come out into the open, what good would it have done? After Schwarz got through explaining, do you doubt that the majority of the Board would have voted with him? Building a road which might affect the grave of an outsider against a building worth a hundred thousand dollars or more?”
“I cannot permit the desecration of the grave of a Jew by fellow Jews,” said the rabbi quietly.
“But what can you do about it, Rabbi?” said Becker. “You’ve got to be reasonable. The road has already been voted, so it’s no longer a simple question of being fair to this guy Hirsh. Now it’s a question of who is to set policy for the congregation, you or the Board.”
“Not quite, Mr. Becker,” said the rabbi. “In this matter, my authority is supreme.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you there, Rabbi.”
“It’s simple enough. Although it is customary to speak of the rabbi as an employee of the congregation, it is a mistake to equate him with other employees. My position here is more like that of the CPA who is engaged to audit the books than that of Stanley Doble who is hired to maintain the building and grounds. I am not a tool of the congregation to be used any way they see fit. I cannot be asked to do something that runs counter to the principles of my profession any more than you can ask a CPA to cover up some discrepancy in the books. The CPA has loyalties to the entire business community that transcend his loyalties to the person who engages him. In the same manner my loyalties cannot be commanded completely. Transcending my loyalties to this congregation are my loyalties to the Jewish tradition, to the Jews of the past, and to Jews as yet unborn. In certain areas, and this is one, my authority is supreme and not subject to question by the congregation.”
“But-”
“A widow comes to me,” the rabbi went on impatiently, “and asks to have her late husband buried in a Jewish cemetery according to Jewish custom. It is for me to determine if he is a Jew, and I decided he was. Again, it is for me, and only for me, to determine if his manner of death warrants burial according to Jewish rites. If there is the suspicion of suicide it is for me, and only for me, to decide how much weight to give the evidence, how much to allow for mitigating circumstances, and then to decide how rigidly to apply the regulations that govern burial of a suicide. These are not congregational matters; these are purely rabbinic.”
“Well, if you put it that way-”
“Now, having made my decision, I referred the widow, or her representative, to the chairman of the Cemetery Committee. Mr. Brown, as the voice of the congregation in this matter, sold the widow a lot in good faith and accepted her money. If the congregation had a regulation limiting the cemetery only to members, and on those grounds had refused to bury Hirsh, I might have considered the regulation harsh or ill-advised but there I would have no authority-only what influence I could bring to bear. But the regulations made special provisions for a case like this. It called for the payment of a fee which conferred nominal membership. And this fee was paid and accepted.”
“No question.”
“Once having made Hirsh a nominal member of the congregation in accordance with the regulations they themselves made up, they then have to treat his burial exactly as they would any other member’s.”
“That’s not only in the bylaws, but it’s in accordance with our tradition,” said Wasserman.
“Now, suppose sometime later evidence is adduced, incontrovertible evidence, that Hirsh had actually committed suicide-and such is not the case-then once again it becomes a decision entirely for me, and me alone, whether his presence compromises the cemetery. And if I were to decide that it did, it would be up to me, and me alone, to decide what measures of purification were necessary. But the Board chooses to follow Mr. Goralsky in this matter. Why? Is his smicha greater than mine? Did he perhaps receive his from the Vilna Gaon?”
The rabbi’s voice had risen, and his normally pale face showed the heat of his indignation. He sat back in his chair and smiled, a small, deprecatory smile. “I told Mr. Schwarz and Mr. Brown that I would forbid this desecration of Hirsh’s grave. Of course, in the present congregation-rabbi relationship, my ban has no force behind it. So when Mr. Brown called to say that the committee was going ahead anyway, I did the only thing I could do: I sent in my resignation.”
“You resigned!” Wasserman was aghast.
“You mean already, you’ve already sent it in?” said Becker.
The rabbi nodded. “When Brown hung up, I wrote out my resignation and dropped it in the mailbox.”
“But why, Rabbi, why?” Becker pleaded.
“I’ve just explained that.”
Wasserman was upset. “You could have called me. You could have discussed it with me, explained your position. I could have talked to Schwarz. I could have brought the matter up before the Board. I could-”
“How could I do that? This was between Brown and Schwarz and me. Could I come running to you to help me exercise my authority? Besides, what good would it have done? You would have split the congregation, and in the end the Board would have voted with Schwarz. As you yourself said, given the choice between an unknown’s corpse and a hundred-thousand-dollar building, is there any question which way the Board would vote?”
“And how does Mrs. Small feel about this?” asked Wasserman.
“Just a minute, Jacob,” interrupted Becker. “You say you sent this letter out Friday morning? So it must have been received no later than Saturday. If it was addressed to the president of the temple it would have been put in with the rest of the temple mail, and the corresponding secretary would have got it and showed it to Mort Schwarz. So why didn’t Schwarz have it read at the meeting?”
“That’s a good question, Becker.”
“It must mean that Schwarz just isn’t accepting it.”
“That could be,” said Wasserman slowly, “but I don’t think so.”
“You think he wanted to discuss it with the rabbi first?”
“That could also be, but I doubt it.”
“So how do you figure it?”
“I think he wants to talk it over with his group on the Board first, and get them all to agree. Then when he brings up the matter in the meeting, they’ll railroad it through just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“But why, Jacob? You think he wants the rabbi out?”
“I don’t think he’ll let anything interfere with his new building.”
“Why is the building so important to him? We don’t really need it.”
“Because it’s a building, that’s why. It’s that progress they were talking about. It’s something he can point to, something solid and substantial. It’s a hundred- to a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar property. It’s a value that he can say he brought into the temple organization. Now the present building came in during my administration.”
“I didn’t put up any buildings,” said Becker.