“Who’s fighting?” Several tailenders of the congregation filing out stopped to listen. “Would I fight in the sanctuary? Believe me. I wasn’t brought up that way. I’d as soon get up in the pulpit and insult one of the members.”
“Insult? Who was insulted?” asked Gorfinkle.
“I don’t know. Maybe Doc Edelstein. He doesn’t favor the temple getting into politics. I doubt he cared much for being called an idol worshiper. Or maybe he doesn’t know any better. He always thought he was a good Jew. He helped start this place and gave a lot of money to get it going. My friend Irving Kallen, he wasn’t here tonight, but he gave a lot of money, too, for this temple. And maybe you don’t know it but the Kallen Family Fund has made a contribution to the NAACP for years. But Irv Kallen never suggested that because he wanted to. I had to.
“You are talking about some of the seats that have little nameplates on them. I don’t suppose you happened to notice, but on that stand you were talking from and on the reader’s desk behind you and on the very chair you were sitting on, there was a little brass plate telling that it was contributed by the Kallen Family Fund, all the pulpit furniture, including the ark and the public address system you were talking through. Maybe he wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to give it if he had known some young wise guy was going to use it to call him a worshiper of the golden calf.”
“Money isn’t everything.” said Gorfinkle, “and it doesn’t give you the right—”
“Sure. I know money isn’t everything. Some people can talk and make speeches instead. I didn’t go to college like you boys. I grew up in the streets, but I learned a couple of things there. One was talk is cheap. And when some wise guy would sound off about something he claimed to know for sure, we would say. ‘Put your money where your mouth is.’”
“Well, let me tell you—”
“I just want to ask you one question. Ted. It’s about your sermon. I’m not going to ask you what the purpose of it was. That was pretty clear: The temple is growing; it’s getting too big for the both of us. Maybe you think it would be better for all concerned if you cut it down some in size.”
“I didn’t—”
“No. what I want to ask you is, in your sermon, in laying down the law the way you did, did you think of yourself as Moses? Or God?”
Chapter Ten
There were less than twenty-five present Friday evening in the tiny Hillel House chapel, and Rabbi Small suspected that some of them were Gentiles. One who sat well in back certainly was not Jewish, since he was dressed in black and wore a Roman collar. The rabbi assumed he was the director of the Newman Club at the college, and so it turned out when he approached him at the end of the service and introduced himself. Father Bennett was a youngish-looking man of thirty, slim and boyish, and he laughed easily.
“Scouting the opposition. Father?” the rabbi teased.
The priest laughed. “For a while. I thought you might need me to round out your minyan. Is that the word?”
“That’s the word. The attendance was rather disappointing.”
“Actually, I’m surprised you got as many as you did. The great majority of students left this afternoon or earlier—right after their last class. Not that Rabbi Dorfman draws crowds, you understand. For that matter, I figure I am getting only about a quarter of the students I should,” he added hastily, as if to avoid any disparagement of Rabbi Dorfman. “In our case, it’s understandable: The church is in a state of flux; we’re trying to modernize. But so many of our young people are holding back, as though waiting to see which road the church will take. They don’t accept blindly; they question and discuss and argue.”
“And you find this disturbing?”
“Not at all.” said the priest quickly. “But much that they question we are not in a position to answer. Take the matter of birth control. So many of our Catholic students come from large families. In most cases, they are the first of their families to go to college. Well, you know from hearing them talk that they aren’t planning to have six or seven children; two or three at the most, and that means birth control.”
“Well?”
“Of course, upper-income Catholics have been doing it for years. In the higher social levels the large family is the exception, rather than the rule. But these young people are frightfully sincere. If the church establishes a regulation that runs counter to their common sense, they won’t just disregard it, as other generations have done.
They’re more apt to disassociate themselves from the church completely.”
“Young people grow wiser or at least more tolerant as they grow older.” said the rabbi.
“Perhaps,” said Father Bennett, “although frankly, I’m hoping the church will grow more tolerant, too. On this matter of birth control, for instance, the committee the Pope set up to study the question, opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of permitting the use of the pill.”
“But the Pope has come out against the pill.”
“For the present, yes. But there’s a good chance one of these days he may change the doctrine.”
The rabbi shook his head. “He can’t. He really can’t.”
The priest smiled. “It’s not a dogma, you know, and the church is a very human institution.”
“It’s also a very logical institution, and the question of birth control impinges on the sanctity of marriage, which is a dogma.”
“And what is your position?”
“Well, we regard monogamous marriage as a highly artificial institution which is nevertheless the best system we have for organizing society. It is like a legal contract, which can be broken by divorce in the event that it becomes impossible for the two principals to continue. But with you, marriage is a sacrament and marriages are made in heaven. You can’t permit divorce, because that would suggest that heaven had erred, and that is unthinkable. The best you can afford is annulment—a kind of legal fiction that it never happened.”
They had left Hillel House and were strolling along the neat campus walk. Now they had arrived in front of the Dorfman home. “And how do you see birth control affecting our teaching on marriage?” asked Father Bennett.
“It becomes a question of what the function of marriage is.” said the rabbi. “If it is procreation, then I suppose it makes sense to consider it the business of heaven. But it is hard to imagine heaven being greatly concerned with an institution that is largely intended for recreation. And that would be the effect if the use of the pill were condoned.”
When Father Bennett had left them and the baby-sitter had departed and they were alone together. Miriam asked. “What got into you tonight. David? Were you deliberately baiting that nice Father Bennett?”
He looked at her in surprise and then grinned. “I suppose it’s hardly the sort of discussion I would be likely to hold with Father Burke in Barnard’s Crossing. Somehow I feel freer here. Perhaps it’s the academic atmosphere. Do you think he was annoyed?”
“I don’t know.” she answered. “If he was, he took it well.”
Professor Richardson lived in an old Victorian house. A large, square vestibule was separated by sliding doors from the living room, at the other end of which was another pair of sliding doors, which led to the dining room. Both pairs of doors had been pushed back to form one huge L-shaped room. By nine Saturday night the party was in full swing. People were standing around in small groups sipping their drinks. At one end of the room several chairs were clustered around a small table where the rabbi and Mrs. Small were sitting with their host. Professor Richardson, a youngish-looking, athletic man who kept interrupting his conversation with the rabbi to jump up to greet some new arrival, whom he would bring over to present. Mrs. Richardson circulated among her guests with occasional hasty forays into the kitchen to replenish the supply of food and drinks.