The rabbi smiled to himself. Mrs. Gorfinkle must have pointed out that their son might not like the idea of being saddled with the rabbi and his family for the afternoon. “That’s all right. We’ll probably be pretty tired after our trip and will want to rest up.”
“Well, it’s a thought, anyway. When are you coming back. Rabbi?”
“Saturday night, right after Havdalah.”
“Really?” Gorfinkle sounded surprised. “I thought Stuart said—” He sounded his hearty self again. “Well, anyway, it just occurred to me—”
“Yes?” The rabbi felt sure that he was now to hear the real reason for the call.
“If you’ve got room in your car, if it’s not crowding you or inconveniencing you in any way-you see, Stuart will be coming home for Passover, and they’ve got a week’s vacation—”
“That I could give him a lift back?”
“Only if it wouldn’t be any trouble to you.”
“I’d be very happy to, Mr. Gorfinkle.”
He had no sooner hung up when there was a rap on the door, and without waiting to be invited, in came Morton Brooks, the principal of the religious school. He was a bouncy, youngish man of forty, with a kind of theatrical flamboyance about him.
“Thank God I caught you before you left. When I got the call, I came right over.”
“What happened?”
“Arlene Feldberg broke out with measles! The doctor was over last night, but Mrs. Feldberg didn’t think to notify me until this morning.” He sounded betrayed.
“Arlene Feldberg?”
Brooks nervously fingered the long strands of hair that he had carefully combed to cover an incipient bald spot. “You know Arlene Feldberg, the little girl from the first grade who’s supposed to say the Four Questions in English at the seder.”
“Oh, Harry Feldberg’s child. Well, that’s all right.” The rabbi was considerably relieved. For a moment he had thought the principal was concerned about a possible epidemic. “The Haggadahs we’re using have the English translation on the opposite page. Or I suppose the little boy—what’s his name?”
“Geoffrey Blumenthal.”
“I’m sure Geoffrey can give the translation after he reads it in the Hebrew.”
“Impossible, Rabbi.”
“You mean he doesn’t know what the Hebrew means?”
“Of course he knows,” said Brooks indignantly, “but there’s a big difference between reading and being able to recite it without adequate rehearsal. But even if there were time to coach him properly, it’s still impossible. In fact, it would be adding insult to injury to let him have both parts. The Feldbergs would never forgive me, and they’d talk about it to their friends, and they include the Paffs and the Edelsteins. I assure you. Rabbi, we’d never hear the end of it.”
“I see. And Geoffrey is a—”
“Blumenthal, of course—friends of the Gorfinkles. The Epsteins, and the Brennermans. They’re cousins of the Brennermans, in fact.”
“Oh, come, Morton. Isn’t that rather silly?”
“Not at all.” said the principal gravely. “Believe me, Rabbi, this is my third school, and I know how these things work. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you would be wise to pay a little more attention to the politics in the congregation. Oh, you attend the board meetings regularly, but the important developments take place in the school. That’s where it really shows up.”
“In the religious school?” The rabbi made no attempt to hide his amusement.
“Of course. The High Holidays are once a year. And the lesser holidays, if they fall during the middle of the week, we don’t get more than seventy-five attending services, like on Friday nights. But the school—the kids go three times a week, and they report anything that happens the minute they get home. You know how we Jews feel about our kids. Any little slight or fancied unfairness, you’d think from the way the parents carry on it was a pogrom.”
The rabbi smiled. “So what do you want to do about the present—er, crisis?”
“Well, it’s a problem. Most of the members, as you know, hold their own seders at home, so we don’t have too many children from the first grade who are coming to the temple seder. And the Paff group, who tend to be a little older, have fewer children in the first grade, anyway. But they have better representation in the upper grades. So I thought about that bit about the four kinds of sons. You know, the wise, the foolish, the simple, the wicked son.”
“I know,” said the rabbi dryly.
“Yes, of course, Rabbi. Well, I was thinking how would it be if we could act it out, see. You’d say the introductory paragraph, and then the lights would go dark, and we’d have a spotlight focused right in front on the head table.” With tiny steps, he approached the rabbi’s desk, his hands moving to outline the cone of light from the spot. “Then we could have the sons come on one at a time, see. The wise son, say, might come in wearing glasses and reading a book or maybe fiddling with a slide rule. Then he’d suddenly look up and ask his question. Only, the way I see it, we’d modernize it and have him say something like. ‘Golly, this is groovy, Dad. How come the Lord our God asked us to do all these things? And the way I visualized the wicked son. he’d be dressed in a black leather jacket and one of those peaked caps and sun goggles, or maybe we could have him dressed as a hippie—you know, barefoot with beads and long hair and faded blue jeans.” He slouched, his head lolling to one side, and he spoke out of one side of his mouth, as though there were a cigarette dangling there. “‘Hey, how come you cats snazzied up your pad like this? Crazy, man. crazy.’ Do you get the idea?”
“And how would this help your particular situation?”
“Well, we have a wider choice among the older children. I had the Edelstein boy tabbed for the part of the wicked son. And being all dressed up, the only one in costume, you might say, it would go a long way—”
“Have you thought of a rock and roll band for the chants?” Brooks looked at him. “Now there’s an idea. Rabbi.”
“No, Morton. No,” he said firmly. “We’ll stick to a traditional seder if you don’t mind. And let the Blumenthals and Feldbergs just make the best of it.” He rose and edged to the door. “I really have to run now.”
“Well, think about it over the weekend, won’t you. Rabbi?” Brooks pleaded.
“I’ll give it all my free time.” said the rabbi with unwonted sarcasm.
But Brooks was not to be put off. “No, seriously. Rabbi, what’s wrong with livening up the ceremony so’s to capture the interest of the kids? Everybody’s doing it now—the Catholics, everybody. They’ve even held jazz masses. After all, the seder’s a celebration. Why shouldn’t they have a good time?”
The rabbi stopped at the door. “Because. Morton, the Passover seder is something more than a celebration. It’s a ritual in which every step is spelled out—and for a purpose. The whole point of a ritual is that it should be repeated exactly every time it is performed for it to have the proper effect. And now if you don’t mind. I really am in something of a hurry.”
Outside, he stopped for a moment to make sure the windows of his study were closed in case it should rain over the weekend. The exterior of the building was also showing signs of wear, he saw. The stainless steel columns, which Christian Sorenson, the architect, had said were intended to suggest “the purity of the religion and its resistance to the decay and erosion of time.” had taken on a dull yellowish tinge—the effect of the salt air, no doubt. And the long walls of glazed white brick that jutted out from either side of the tall boxlike building and sloped away in gentle curves—“like a pair of open and embracing arms calling on people to come and worship”—were chipped here and there and showed black spaces like missing teeth.