“And then did he show you the model?”
“He showed me.”
“And?”
“And the model-” he grimaced, “already I wasn’t so crazy over. The building by itself-nice, but attached to the temple, it was already not here not there. The temple-it’s plain, it’s straight; and the new building, it’s fancy. But I’m an architect? What do I know about buildings? So I wasn’t sure, but that day when I was praying for my Ben, I made it a promise that if they let Ben go I would give the building.”
“And your question is whether you’re bound by your promise?”
“That’s the question.”
“And your objection is that the two, the new and the old, don’t go together?”
“Not only that, Rabbi. This I could stand already. But all my life, I’m a businessman. Do you know what is a businessman, Rabbi? A businessman, when he spends a dollar he got to get for a dollar merchandise. Makes no difference for what he spends. If he spends for charity, he got to get for a dollar charity. You understand?”
“I think so.”
“So to me it seems like this building is mostly wasted. Do we need an extra building for the temple? To put up a building just to put up a building, just to spend the money, it’s not in my nature.”
“Suppose the building were separate from the main building. Would you feel better about it?”
“So what would you use it for?”
“It could be a school,” the rabbi suggested slowly. “Or even a community center.”
“You need a separate building for a school? If you took the school out of the temple and put it in a separate building, for when would you use the temple? For a couple of days a year? It would be a waste. And a center? Here in Barnard’s Crossing you need a center for the boys to play basketball? In the city, where nobody had a yard and was lots of kids and was dangerous to play in the street-all right. But here, you need a place for kids to play?”
“Perhaps you’re right-”
“Remember, Rabbi, just to put up a building, should be a building-this is foolish. Better in this place should be God’s grass and flowers.”
Then it came to the rabbi. “You’re right, Mr. Goralsky. But there is one building that we do need.” He looked at the old man and spoke carefully. “We could use a chapel for our cemetery. Oh, it wouldn’t be as big as the plan calls for, but it could be the same general design. And it would be especially fitting since your wife was one of the first to be buried there-”
Goralsky’s lined face broke into an old man’s smile. “Rabbi, Rabbi, this time you got it. The same design, maybe a little smaller, this would be a nice building for the cemetery. And even a fence, I would be willing to put it in, and flowers and maybe trees. The Hannah Goralsky Memorial Cemetery. It could be like a garden.” Then his face fell. “But my vow, Rabbi. I made a promise for an addition to the temple here in Barnard’s Crossing. In my own mind, I even saw Morton Schwarz’s building-”
“But did your vow concern this particular arrangement of buildings? You made a vow to donate a building to the temple, a memorial to your wife-” He stopped as the old man shook his head.
“Look, Rabbi, you think I made a vow like I was swearing before a notary? I, Moses Goralsky, do hereby promise… No. Was going through my mind all kinds of pictures, feelings, ideas-not so much words, you understand. But I know what I promised,” he added stubbornly.
The rabbi nodded thoughtfully. Of course the old man did not verbalize his vow. And he was old enough and rich enough to hold himself to its strict observance, even though he was also shrewd enough to realize that the alternate plan, the cemetery chapel, would be much more useful and appropriate. The rabbi rose from his chair and began to stride up and down the room, while Goralsky waited with the patience of the very old.
The more the rabbi thought of it, the better the plan seemed. No less than Marvin Brown, he realized the importance of the cemetery to the congregation. And it would give Morton Schwarz his building-not exactly as he had planned it, but near enough. And it would permit the old man to set up a lasting memorial to his wife’s memory. The problem was, how to permit Mr. Goralsky to do what he actually wanted to do.
He paused in front of the bookcase and his eyes wandered over the large leather-bound tomes that comprised his copy of the Talmud. He selected a volume and took it over to his desk. He leafed through the pages until he found the passage he wanted and swiveled around to face Goralsky.
“I told you at the beginning that if your vow involved doing something wrong, that you were absolved. Do you remember?”
“Of course. Nu, so is putting up Schwarz’s building a sin?”
The rabbi smiled. “For this one particular case, Mr. Goralsky, I shall rule that the law of shatnes applies.”
“Shatnes? But isn’t that about clothing-that you shouldn’t mix linen and wool?”
“That’s the way it’s usually construed. But the regulation is mentioned in two places in the Bible, in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy. Why in two places? When the Bible says the same thing twice, it can mean either that the regulation is very important or that it can have another significance. In Leviticus the regulation is joined with an injunction against letting cattle of different kinds breed together and also an injunction against sowing with mingled seeds. In Deuteronomy the regulation is joined with an injunction against sowing a vineyard with different seeds and an injunction against plowing with an ox and an ass together.”
His voice took on the Talmudic chanting intonation. “Now if the two passages were exactly the same, you could argue that what is intended is that the regulation is important and should be strictly applied. But where the rule is given, and in each case accompanied by two other rules, and the two from Leviticus are not the same as the two from Deuteronomy, we can interpret this to mean that the precept is intended to forbid various mixtures of two things of different kinds.”
He leaned back in his chair. “So you will say, where does it stop? We use many mixtures of diverse things: shoes made of leather and rubber, houses of wood and stone. If we go beyond the specific regulations, then we must have some kind of a test. What then would be a logical test? Why, obviously, if it seems wrong to you. For what other purpose did God give us our intelligence if not to use it? Your initial objection to Schwarz’s design was that the two buildings were of two different orders, and it seemed wrong to join them together. It bothered you from the very first. So my ruling is that this is an example of shatnes, and hence forbidden.”
The old man scratched his head. Then his wrinkled old face cracked into a smile and he beamed in fond admiration at the young rabbi. “And in the cemetery would be all right-it’s separate. It’s a pilpul, but you know something, Rabbi? Suddenly, I’m feeling all right.”
Harry Kemelman
Harry Kemelman got an A.B. in English literature at Boston University and also earned his M.A. in English philology. He went on to teach and wrote freelance, his first series was the Nicky Welt stories, but then went on to the Rabbi tales which have won Edgar Allen Poe Awards and have also been made into a film (Lanigan's Rabbi). Kemelman died at 88 in 1996 in his hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts.
