Lemmy sat back and gazed at the ceiling. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand until tears surfaced.
Benjamin rapped the bench with his hand. “Wake up!”
“It’s the damn smoke.” Lemmy waved at the full synagogue. “Bunch of hypocrites!”
“Are you crazy?”
He tugged on his earlobe. “Why is it forbidden to pierce your ear?”
“The sanctity of our body.” Benjamin scratched his head through the large black yarmulke. “We’re created in God’s image, as written in the-”
“Aren’t lungs part of the sacred body too?” Lemmy pointed in a circle. “Look at them, hundreds of supposedly God-fearing Talmudists, destroying the lungs God gave them.”
“ Shush!” Benjamin pulled him down.
“They should hear!” Looking around, he saw they were all too involved in Talmudic discussions to notice his outburst. He punched Benjamin’s shoulder. “Even you don’t hear me!”
“I do. The answer is simple. Smoking is allowed because it keeps the mind sharp and alert, so that you can study Talmud all day, which is the most important mitzvah of all.”
“Another Talmudic hoop.”
“Right.” Benjamin’s white teeth flashed. “Now, do you agree with my explanation, that because each of them honestly believes he was the first to reach it, they share it?”
“What would you do with half of a prayer shawl? Drape it around one shoulder?”
Benjamin threaded his finger through his cylindrical side lock, pulling and releasing it like a spring. “Maybe sell it and split the money?”
“That makes sense. But Talmud still avoids the real issue. What if each of them claims to be the original owner, who had lost it and came back to pick it up? What do we do when it’s clear that one of them is a liar?”
“In such case,” Benjamin chanted in the argumentative tune of Talmudic scholars, “Rabbi Sumchus says that the tallis should be kept in a safe place until the Messiah comes and the liar is exposed. But Rabbi Yossi says it should be sold and the proceeds split so that the true owner at least gets half of his property now.”
“I think the owner should grab it,” Lemmy argued, “go to the police station downtown, and get the bastard arrested. Who cares about Rabbi Sumchus and Rabbi Yossi? They’ve been dead and buried for a long time.”
“ Oy vey!” Benjamin looked around to see if anyone heard Lemmy. “What’s wrong with you? One minute you’re falling asleep, the next you’re saying crazy things.”
Lemmy leaned forward, his elbows on the book of Talmud. “I’ve been reading stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Benjamin leaned closer, as if someone could hear him over the surrounding noise. “You’re not reading Kabbalah, are you?”
His friend’s conclusion was logical. Kabbalah, the secret world of Jewish mysticism, was forbidden to anyone but the most pious rabbis, whose strength of faith qualified them to study it. There was a rumor in Meah Shearim that Rabbi Gerster was one of the few scholars allowed to explore the secrets of Kabbalah.
Benjamin grabbed Lemmy’s arm and shook it. “Tell me!”
He could not tell Benjamin the truth. If the burden was so heavy on him, how terrible would it be for Benjamin? “I read at night.”
“What do you read?”
The Talmud page began to blur, the print no longer discernible. “The smoke is killing me,” Lemmy said, though he wasn’t sure it was the smoke that brought up his tears.
A t noon, everybody went out to the foyer and formed a line before a table loaded with sliced bread, jars of jam, and a tall samovar of hot tea. Lemmy and Benjamin took their lunch outside to the sunny forecourt, where the air was crisp and fresh.
After lunch, the men returned to the synagogue for Rabbi Gerster’s lecture. He mounted the front dais and stood before the wooden ark of the Torah, his back to the men. A blue velvet curtain, embroidered with Torah verses in gold threads, covered the ark. Rabbi Gerster kissed the curtain and turned to the podium. He was wearing his prayer shawl over the black coat, his wide-brimmed black hat contrasting with the blond-gray payos and beard.
Lemmy glanced at Benjamin, whose face was filled with anticipation. Everyone else was similarly entranced, holding their breath for the surprise opening Rabbi Gerster was certain to deliver.
The rabbi caressed his beard and rocked slowly over the lectern. “We’re all smart,” he roared, his voice filling the sanctuary. “We’re all wise. We all know Talmud. So why would two scholars yank on a tallis in opposite directions like silly boys fighting over a toy?”
The synagogue filled with laughter.
“Master of the Universe! Who would fight over such an object of small value and great spiritual significance? Imagine that I walk home with Cantor Toiterlich, and we find a prayer shawl-”
“You can have it,” Cantor Toiterlich boomed.
“No way,” Rabbi Gerster said. “You take it! In good health!”
Another burst of laughter came from the men, and Rabbi Gerster, whose own tallis was draped around his shoulders, held up one corner, looking at it with feigned astonishment. “Fighting over this? For what? To wear it later, when they repent for fighting a fellow Jew?”
Nachum Ha’Levi, an elderly man in the first row, raised his hand. “The commentators explain that property lost by its lawful owner becomes the property of the first person to notice and pick it up in a manner which manifests ownership.”
The rabbi held his arms wide open. “Therefore?”
“Therefore,” Ha’Levi continued, “if they just stood there and chatted politely, they would acquire nothing. That’s why the example must include them grabbing it at the same time. Without the physical aspect, there’s no claim for ownership.”
“True,” Rabbi Gerster said, “but the physical confrontation serves another purpose. It shows that an angry dispute must resolve in peace.” He pointed up. “God’s emissary was the learned rabbi, who brought about reconciliation. He’s not explicitly mentioned, but a real scholar reads between the lines!”
Many in the crowd nodded and made notations with pencils on the margins of the Talmud page. Lemmy wrote on his: Which rabbi? Why wasn’t he mentioned?
Benjamin read it over his shoulder and whispered, “What do you mean?”
Rabbi Gerster clapped his big hands. “Any questions?” His blue eyes surveyed the hall, searching for a raised hand or a doubtful expression. There was none. He closed the Talmud volume. “Let us take a break from studying to bring a Jewish baby boy into God’s covenant.”
In the rear, the doors opened. The foyer was full of women in headdresses. One of them handed a bundle to Redhead Dan, who carried it to the dais.
S hortly after 4:00 pm, Elie Weiss arrived at the central police compound at the Russian Yard. He found Major Buskilah at his office in the rear of the building.
“I’ve been expecting you.” Buskilah was an Iraqi Jew, gray-haired with a weathered face and muscular arms. “My superiors ordered me to obey you, but I won’t risk disaster with those black hats. Like all other hoodlums, they will interpret leniency as a weakness.”
Elie sat down and lit a cigarette. He drew on it several times until the small room filled with smoke. “I sympathize with your frustration.”
“We should have arrested them all. It was a stupid order!”
“My orders are always part of an established strategy.”
“Next time my radio might be inoperative.”
“You want to face a court-martial?”
“Better I face a court-martial than the wife and kids of a policeman lost under my command.”