“Who’re you, mister?”
“I’m Meyer Paff. I own the place.”
“Do you mind standing back; you’re in my light.” He straightened up and went to the next lane to inspect the ashtrays there. “Police business.” he said. “We got a tip, so we’re checking it. You around here much?”
“Well, I—I come in a couple of times a week maybe. Sometimes only once.”
“You don’t mind how you mess up a place,” said Henry.
“You going to leave that stuff there?”
“Sure, we’ll leave it for the sweeper.”
“You guys got a search warrant?” demanded Henry.
“No, no,” said Paff. “Never mind, Henry—”
The policeman looked at the manager in surprise. “What do we need a search warrant for? It’s a public place, and my partner had to go to the John.”
“Not to the ladies’ john.”
“Please. Henry.” Paff turned to the policeman. “Look, do you mind telling me what you’re looking for?”
“We’re looking for pot, mister.”
“But why here?”
The other policeman joined them, shaking his head in response to his partner’s look of inquiry.
“Well, we got a tip, so we checked it through. You ever see any kids acting high?” he demanded of Henry.
“The little bastards all act high.” said Henry indignantly. “That still don’t give you no call to come down here—”
“Without a search warrant? Look. Buster, we come down here with a warrant, we take the place apart.”
“No need to get excited. Officer.” said Paff. “We’re always happy to cooperate with the police.”
“Yeah? Well tell your man.”
When he got home. Mrs. Paff greeted him at the door with, “Where were you? It’s so late I was beginning to worry. Hurry and wash up. Dinner has been ready for half an hour.”
“I don’t feel like eating now, Laura. I’m tired. I’ll eat later.”
“But we’ve got to go to the temple, Meyer. It’s Friday night.”
“I think I’ll pass it up tonight. I’m tired.”
“Come on, Meyer, sit down and eat something, and you’ll feel better. And then we’ll go to the temple, and you can relax. It’s the Brotherhood service. You always enjoy that.”
Chapter Seven
As Ted Brennerman strode to the pulpit the congregation settled back expectantly. He had a reputation as a “hot-shot” and a “character.” (“That Brennerman, he doesn’t care what he says; he gets away with murder.”) Leaning against the lectern in a manner obviously reminiscent of Rabbi Small, he announced. “Good evening, this is your friendly Rabbi Brennerman.” There was a titter of appreciation, and he went on, “Seriously, folks, I’ve done a lot of public talking in my time, but this is the first time I’ve had to give a sermon. Let me tell you, it sobers a fellow up.” There was another appreciative chuckle, for among the Brotherhood members Brennerman was reputed to know what to do with a bottle.
“So when I found that the program called for me to give the sermon, I asked our rabbi if I could borrow his sermon book. (Laughter.) Well, he claimed he didn’t have one, that he made them up himself. So I thought to myself, I know what to get you for your birthday. (Laughter.) Actually, no one here has a greater appreciation of our rabbi than I have. I consider him one of the wisest and most intelligent men I’ve met. And I guess he proved it when he arranged to play hookey tonight. (Laughter.)
“So since I didn’t get any help from our rabbi. I went over his head and consulted his boss. Moses himself. Always deal with the top man is my motto. I took down the family Bible and began to read in Exodus. I read it in English, because I didn’t happen to have my Hebrew glasses around. (Laughter.) Well, it was a revelation. And there’s no pun intended. We all know the story of the exodus from Egypt, the ten plagues, and all the rest of it from way back in Sunday school. But when you read it in the Bible, you really get an idea of what clowns Pharaoh and the Egyptians were. And I guess recent events in the Middle East tend to prove that they haven’t wised up very much in three thousand years. (Appreciative laughter.) Except that then they wanted us to stay, and now they want us to get out. Can’t they make up their minds what they want? (Laughter.)
“But then as I continued reading I discovered that our own folks weren’t an awful lot brighter. Get the picture: They had just been treated to as classy a demonstration of God’s power as had ever been displayed to mankind. Again and again, God had demonstrated that He regarded the children of Israel with special favor. He had plagued the land with flies and with locusts, with darkness and with death, and in each case the Israelites got off scot-free. Did they need any more proof positive? He gave it to them: He parted the waters of the Red Sea to let them pass. How did the Israelites react? You’d think that after all that they’d be four-square behind Moses. But no. as soon as they realized the Egyptians were after them, some of them—I’m sure it wasn’t all of them—began to crack wise at his expense. ‘Did you take us out here to die in the wilderness because they didn’t have any graves in Egypt?’ And to the other Israelites they said. ‘Don’t you remember? I told you we ought to stay in Egypt and serve the Egyptians. It’s better than dying in the wilderness.’ Now you all know God’s answer to that. When the Egyptians came along. He rolled the waters of the sea back again and drowned the lot of them.
“Did that end the griping? Did that end the doubt? Not by a long shot. It happened again and again. Anytime the situation wasn’t a hundred percent kosher, this bunch—and I’m sure it was the same bunch all the time—would begin acting up. It happened when they got to Marah and the available water was bitter. And again later on when rations were low and they yearned for the fleshpots of Egypt. That was when God sent down manna from the heavens. And later on when they ran out of water and they thought God was going to let them die of thirst. That was the time that Moses struck the rock with his rod and produced water. And then it happened again when Moses went up on the mount to receive the tables of the Law. When he didn’t come down right away, they were sure they had been abandoned, and they forced Aaron to make them an image of a golden calf so they could worship it.”
Brennerman’s tone had changed, and the congregation was giving him its full attention. “Now Moses had given them a set of laws. These weren’t laws of ritual and prayer; they were laws to live by, the laws necessary to maintain a workable society. It was a primitive society they had in those days, and they needed some pretty elementary ethical rules to make it work, laws like ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.’ We all know that you can’t have a society where murder and stealing and bearing false witness are permitted or condoned. It would disintegrate overnight. Those laws were necessary for the society of that time to maintain itself and to grow and prosper. And isn’t that what our religion is essentially—a set of rules that men can live by?
“But now we live in a more complex society, and that calls for different rules, or perhaps for a new interpretation of the old rules. We know now that when large segments of our population have inadequate food and clothing and shelter—that is a form of murder. When we prevent the Negro from stating his case and protesting his true predicament, that is a form of bearing false witness. That when our young men are not permitted to listen to the voices of their own conscience and we force them to do the will of the majority, then you are setting up another god, the god of the Establishment. What I’m saying is that the true function of a temple—or a church, for that matter—is to see that the society of its time is workable, and in these days that means taking the lead in matters like civil rights and social justice and international peace.”