A Town of Empty Rooms (35 page)

Finally, at 7:00 P M , Tom Silverman ascended the stairs of the bima. He clasped the sides of the wooden podium where the rabbi usually stood. “Welcome,” he said, thinly, into the microphone, and then, perhaps optimistically, “shalom.”

“Shalom,” a few ragged voices called back.

“This is an unusual meeting for Temple Shalom. But in my judgment, as president, it seemed wise to do this. It is time to dispel rumors that are going around about a great man. It's time to vote to renew our rabbi's contract permanently — to keep this man on as leader of our — ”

Tiffany stood up. “Objection!” She stood up front of the bima. She
held up her purse. “This Temple belongs to you! No one can lock you out! I have keys if anyone wants one! I have them here!”

The congregation, used to standing up and sitting down in order to utter the prayers of the various services, looked on, stunned.

“Let 's have some order,” Tom said, his voice crackling in the microphone. “Rabbi Golden is not going to be present for the meeting. He is going to watch this proceeding on closed circuit television in the social hall,” said Tom. “Then he will give his rebuttal.”

They all realized then that Rabbi Golden was standing, quietly, at the back of the room. Swiftly, almost majestically, he walked down the aisle to the social hall. He held up a hand as though to silence them, or as though he were riding a float in a parade. There was a palpable longing in the people jammed in the pews. They wanted to go with him. How they wanted him to lead them! Serena saw two people stand and walk with him to the other room — Norman, his throat in a thick white bandage, moving forward with a cane, and Tom's wife, Dora. They gazed out at the rest of the congregants with grim, proud expressions. Serena envied them, their certainty, their pure, simple belief in him, even if she now believed the rabbi was wrong.

The rabbi disappeared through a door.

Then everyone was quiet. They sat in the small room, surrounded by the decor of worship, sitting in the pews, but without an appointed leader, and Serena thought an understanding rippled through them — that they could do whatever they wanted.

Tom looked out at them. “Now,” he said, “I'll turn the proceedings over to a member of our congregation who has years of legal experience. Seymour Carmel, former prosecutor for the State of New York, will offer an unbiased legal perspective.”

Seymour Carmel happily took his place at the podium. He was a short man of about sixty-five, mostly chest, and he looked out at the congregation with a dazed, almost delighted expression, as though he had finally ascended to the court to which he aspired.

“Here are the rules,” he said in a stern voice. “Only members with dues paid up can speak. This is by rule of the bylaws of the congregation.” There was murmuring. “Order in the room!” He banged his gavel on the podium, a little too hard. It made a clunking sound, strangely
civilian, so that everyone fell into troubled silence. “If not, I have a sergeant at arms, one of our finest members who has come here from Camp Lejeune, who will remove anyone who becomes unruly.”

Was this really going on? Serena stared at a tall, shorthaired man on the bima who resembled a bouncer. In a moment of nostalgia or blindness, he was the only one, except the rabbi, who wore a velvet yarmulke on his head. He stood and held his hand in either a salute or a greeting.

The only possible response to this was laughter.

“Stop laughing!” said Seymour Carmel. He lifted the gavel again.

“Why only paid-up members?” shouted someone. “We have a right, too — ”

Tom stepped to the podium. “Then pay on time.”

A kind of panic fluttered through the congregation; the ease of coup in a sanctuary, of all places, was settling on all of them. There was the incongruous sound of cell phones in the sanctuary, the phones erupting, chirping into errant forms of song. No one knew how to get Seymour or Tom off the bima, especially now that there was a military presence there.

“Everyone who wants to will speak,” said Seymour. “Five minutes each. I'm timing. Then the rabbi will give a rebuttal. Then we will vote. First up. Serena Hirsch.”

She stood up. Her groin was light with fear. The borrowed formality of Seymour's announcement, accompanied by his brandishing of the gavel, made her now see the tremulousness of religion, this whole endeavor — how the rules were set down in order for people to follow them, as the impulse to chaos was so immense. The gavel was particularly unnerving given her recent experience with the law — she wondered if Seymour could, with his legal expertise, see her criminal activities, her terrible and crooked longing. But he appeared to see nothing. He nodded at her and sat down. Now her crime would be to rob the congregation of their perceptions of a great man.

He tapped his watch. She positioned herself in front of the microphone. Her hands were shaking.

“My name is Serena Hirsch,” she said. Her voice cracked; she closed her eyes. “I've belonged to this Temple for three months.”

She thought of the rabbi's voice on the phone, saying hello softly in
the middle of the night, and she thought of him standing with Forrest, praying for the shed, and she thought of him sitting with his troops in Kuwait, and sitting alone in his apartment, crouching over a pizza box, alone, and she thought of him leaning toward the old ladies and making them weep. She thought of the silence of the phone line at midnight, and she wondered what all the other callers were thinking, what kind of love they harbored in their skins, for him, for their mothers and fathers, for their brothers and sisters and husbands and wives, how they wanted their beloved to be different; she wondered what they craved when they waited to hear his voice in the dark.

“We all know that Rabbi Golden can be a good rabbi,” she said. “No. A great one. But the rabbi has another side. This is a list of complaints put together by Betty Blumenthal over the last year. Listen to how he has treated some of the congregants. Maybe it is you. Maybe it isn't you.” Her mouth was dry. “We have to figure out what to do.”

She read the complaints. Everyone was listening: Tiffany and Mike and Tom and the others, even Seymour and the sergeant at arms, who was methodically squeezing a rubber ball as he sat on the bima. How they all had not been listened to, Loretta and Carmella and Lillian and Rose and Pearl and the others, how they all held these diminishments inside them, curdling, waiting to come out. “And then he slammed the door on her,” she read. “And then he screamed at her”; “And then he threw a glass”; “And then he called her a witch”; “And then she began to cry, and he turned away.”

There were four pages of this.

Her voice was thin as she started, but then she felt it rise. She had never been aware of how her voice felt in her throat, the way it rose up through her chest; she heard herself get louder as she spoke. She saw the faces of the women she had spoken to; they sat very still, perhaps embarrassed, but there was a relief on their faces that something that had diminished them was being acknowledged.

Then she was finished.

“All right, Mrs. Hirsch,” said Seymour. “Next person to speak. Howard Rosenfeld.”

She descended the stairs and sat beside Tiffany.

There was no particular order to the following speakers. People had
signed up in passion and haste, having heard only a variety of rumors: A naked woman had been found in his office; the Temple was going to shut down; an Orthodox contingent wanted to take over; the rabbi was being railroaded out by an emotionally unstable gang. There was the animal odor of sweat. A tiny, frail man, wearing a yellow bowtie and a brown suit, made his way up with a cane and stood at the microphone.

“My name is Howard Rosenfeld,” he said. “I was born in the great state of Kentucky too many years ago to remember. I am a Jew.” He looked at the group, his papery face glowing, as though accepting an Academy Award. “I moved here from Louisville forty-five years ago. I was privileged to serve in the Armed Forces in World War Two. I got someone to change my birth certificate. I wanted to crush those Nazis. They didn't want me to be a liberator of Dachau, but I insisted. They were afraid I would get caught and tortured. But I didn't. I won a Purple Heart. Half of my platoon didn't come back.” There was respectful applause. “When I got back, I lived on Beaufort Street with the other Jews. This is all to say that I am a proud member of this institution, and I would like my opinions to matter.”

Howard looked out at the audience. “I would like to say that the board is being a lynch mob,” he said, his voice rising. “This rabbi is a great man. If you could only hear the inspiring conversations we have had on the Book of Genesis. You members of the board should be driven from the congregation.” He paused. “I would like to read a quote from Elie Wiesel. ‘There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.' Thank you.”

There was a surge of applause. Howard made his way back to his seat.

It seemed they were all auditioning to be a leader, a prophet, a Messiah, a Maccabee, whatever side they took, as though the current vacancy in spiritual leadership left an opportunity. There was Sasha Wakowski, who described herself as a local yoga instructor and a healer, and who sang, “Hineh ma tov uma na'im shevet achim gam yachad,” with great feeling, and then translated, “Psalm 133. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity!” It seemed, at this point, a great wish.

Marty Schulman walked up and grabbed the mike. “Stop, everyone!”
he called. “Why are we not getting along? Do you think,” he pointed across the street, “
they
might not want us to get along? The folks across the street at First Baptist? What about St. John's? How do they benefit if we don't get along? Think about it.”

There was a change in the air — almost a wistfulness — and a hope that this whole fracas could be blamed on someone else.

“Are you suggesting there is an agitator in our midst?” called out Norman, hoarsely.

“No,” said Marty, “just think. Since the dawn of our religion, they have wanted us to vanish.” Everyone looked moved by the word
dawn.
“Do you think they would be happy if we closed our doors? Don't we all know that they all pray for us?” A murmuring, a ripple of shared anger. A connection. “We must get along. For the survival of our people.” He sat down.

It was Norman's turn. He walked slowly to the podium. His throat was thick, heavy from his surgery, a fist in his throat when he tried to swallow. He looked out on the crowd; he did not know as many of them as he had before. It used to be that he knew everyone in the congregation; now many of the members did not even know his name. As he lay in bed after the surgery, he counted how many members of the Temple knew his name. He counted sixty-seven before he got tired. It was not enough. He wondered why his wife Clara had decided not to cancel her plans to cruise the Caribbean, why she had called in just once, yesterday, and if she felt any remorse at all while she sunned herself by the ship's pool. He remembered how the rabbi sat, motionless, attentive, by his bed. The rabbi had gripped his arm and whispered, “Norman. I will pray for you.”

Norman looked at the group and said, “My name is Norman Weiss. Many of you know this, some of you should. Rabbi Golden is a great man. I say he is great because he has a true heart and compassion for the ailing. When I was in the hospital, he came to see me every day. I know he is a busy man. But he made the time in his day to come see me, to be there.” Norman paused. “How many of you — ” his voice caught briefly, “how many of you can say that you have done that?”

There was Donna Steinberg, a therapist, who said, “If he wants to
be helped, we should try to help him through this difficult time. If he does not, we should not.”

The room grew warm, thick with emotion. Serena's forehead became damp, and it was difficult to concentrate on the voices.

Seymour looked depleted. “We have time for one more speaker, and then we will turn the bima back to the person who knows best how to use it . . . Rabbi Golden. Last speaker — Lillian Hoffman.”

Lillian slowly ascended the bima and took her place at the podium. “I have listened to both sides,” she said. “I have heard good and bad. Everyone has their ups and downs.” Murmuring, nodding. “I had my own experience with Rabbi Golden. I'll tell you this, and you make up your mind if he should be our leader or not.”

She leaned toward the microphone. “I wanted a prayer for my granddaughter who died. In May. May eighteenth. She was eighteen years old. Car accident. I think of her when I wake up. I think, perhaps we can have lunch, but then I remember. It is like a weight falling on me. A boulder. Every morning.” She closed her eyes. There were reflexive, low sounds of sympathy. “She was an alternate for the Olympics in 2000. Figure skating. I loved her. She was the light of my life.” She stopped for a moment. “I went to the rabbi because I wanted a prayer for her. I wanted a special prayer that would . . . ” she stopped for a moment. “That would acknowledge the fact that she almost made it into the Olympics. I wanted the prayer because I couldn't sleep.”

She paused. “I went to him. He said there was no special prayer. Why was I so special to ask for one, he said. He yelled. It was not for me. It was for my granddaughter. Why do you want to change the religion? I said, I loved her so much. He said it was stupid. He threw me out of his office. He took me by the shoulder and marched me out. I remember his grip on me. Then he slammed the door in my face.”

Her voice was quiet. Serena suddenly thought of the rabbi listening to this, in his office, Lillian's telling him about her deep love for her granddaughter, about the Olympics, the triple axels, pirouettes, sequined costumes, and Serena imagined an emotion he could not control flaring up in him: jealousy.