That Day the Rabbi Left Town (2 page)

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know.” Macomber got up and walked around his desk. He went to the door with the rabbi. “Then we'll expect you here in September.”

“I'm looking forward to it,” said the rabbi.

Driving back to Barnard's Crossing, he thought of his previous experience at Windermere, of the initial indifference of his class, then their hostility, and finally their enthusiastic acceptance of him. He thought of the peculiar pleasure teaching afforded, the sense of superiority involved in imparting information, and then wondered idly if this was the reason why people enjoyed gossiping.

When he got home Miriam could see that he was pleased and happy and merely asked, “Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

Chapter 2

Early in June, David Small formally resigned from his position of rabbi of the Barnard's Crossing Temple. In his letter of resignation read by the secretary at the regular Sunday morning meeting of the Board of Directors, he mentioned that having served twenty-five years, he was eligible to retire on pension. Except for Al Bergson, the president, with whom he had previously discussed it, the members had had no inkling of his intention, so their reaction was one of bewildered incredulity.

“What's he want to resign for? It's a cushy job with nothing to do except maybe give a little sermon—ten, fifteen minutes—once a week at the Friday evening service.”

“He goes to visit the sick at the hospital.”

“Big deal! What's he do there? Bless them?”

“And he's in his study practically every day, advising, helping with personal problems.”

“These days, you want advice you go to a lawyer, or a doctor, or to a shrink. Let's face it, most of the time he does nothing.”

“So maybe he's tired of doing nothing.”

“Boy, I'd like a job where I could get tired doing nothing.”

“He's going to be teaching,” explained Bergson, who was a personal friend of the rabbi. “He'll be professor of Judaic Studies at Windermere College in Boston.” Bergson, who ran a travel agency in nearby Salem, was the same age as the rabbi but looked younger because his hair, although thinning, showed no touch of gray. He was a friendly man with a ready smile, and it was hard not to like him.

“Hey, didn't he give a course there a few years back?”

“That's Windermere Christian College. Why would a rabbi want to teach at a Christian college?”

“No longer,” said Bergson. “It's just Windermere College of Liberal Arts now. The name was changed this year.”

In spite of Bergson's attempts to get them to deal with the other business scheduled for the meeting, they continued to discuss the resignation and its ramifications.

“Look, we'll have to give him some sort of party, won't we?”

“We'll sure as hell have to do something. We can't just say, ‘So long, Rabbi. Glad to've met ya.' Not after twenty-five years.”

“So what do we do? Have a big dinner?”

“We've also got to give him some sort of gift.”

“What sort of gift? We'll be giving him three quarters of his salary year after year. I figure that's a pretty good gift.”

“We won't be giving it; the insurance company will.”

“I was thinking something like maybe a silver
kiddush
cup with something engraved on it, like, ‘From a Grateful Congregation'!”

“How about a set of books?”

“Nah, he's got a roomful of books.”

“Look, guys, does it have to be a dinner? How about a luncheon instead?”

“What's the difference?”

“Oh, you know, a luncheon can be light, maybe even dairy foods. A dinner is going to run us a whole lot more.”

“So if you're looking to save some money, how's about a brunch?”

“Yeah, that's the ticket; a bagels-and-lox brunch.”

“Whatever it is, when would we have it? We can't have it now, in the summer.”

“Why not?”

“On account a large portion of the congregation will be going away to their summer places. How do you suppose they'd feel if there's some kind of do and they couldn't take part? The way I see it, we can't have it before September, maybe just before the High Holidays.”

“Hey, that's when the new rabbi, the guy we hire to replace Small, will be coming. Right? So we'll have to throw some sort of party for him, won't we? So why don't we plan on combining the two, like a Hail and Farewell party; Hail to the new rabbi and Farewell to the old.”

“You know, Ben, you got something there.”

“Yeah, that's the ticket, Hail and Farewell.”

“But we've got to make some sort of reply to his letter.”

“Sure. ‘The Board accepts with regret—'”

“With deep regret.”

“Yeah, ‘With deep regret.' And what do you say, we all sign it? I mean not just the secretary.”

“Yeah, that would show him that we're real sorry. So what do we do about getting another rabbi?”

“Oh, the Ritual Committee handles that,” said Bergson. “We'd notify the Seminary and—”

“And they'd give us the names of half a dozen young graduates and we'd have to choose one?”

“I think we ought to get someone with experience.”

“Oh, I'm sure the Placement Office at the Seminary has the names of quite a few older, experienced men who want to change jobs for one reason or another,” said Bergson.

“So what do we do? Tell the Seminary to get in touch with us?”

“Well, I've got to be in New York next week,” said Bergson. “I could drop in on them and talk to them about our needs. They would have those who might be interested send us resumes.”

“Nowadays, if you're applying for a job, you might have a video made.”

“Yeah. They may even have some on file with the Placement Office. If they have, I'll look at them.”

“Then what do we do, Al? Have them come here and preach a sermon some Sabbath?”

“Only the finalists,” said Bergson.

“The finalists?”

“Sure. The Ritual Committee will check out all who apply. Maybe we'll visit some congregations if they're not too far away. We'll narrow it down to a short list of three or four, and those we'll invite to come here for a Sabbath. My guess is that as soon as our people hear that the rabbi has resigned, we'll have a flood of applicants; relatives, friends of people in our congregation.”

“Come to think of it, Al, I've got this uncle in Rhode Island who—”

“So tell him to apply if he's interested.”

“What kind of money will we be paying?”

“Same as we've been paying Rabbi Small, I suppose.”

“Shouldn't we start the new man lower and let him work up to what we're paying Small? After all, he's been with us for twenty-five years.”

Bergson pursed his lips. “I don't think so. The fact is, Rabbi Small's salary is, has been, a little below the standard.”

“How come?”

“I suppose because he would never ask for a raise, and he didn't develop a clique who would do it for him,” said Bergson quietly.

“Why wouldn't he ask for a raise if he thought he deserved one?”

“And if we turned it down, what would it signify? That we're willing to tolerate him at his present salary, but not at anything more.” Bergson shook his head. “No, no, the only way he could ask for a raise would be on an ‘or else' basis. ‘Give me a raise or I leave.' Just to ask with no indication of leaving if the request is not granted would be begging.”

“That's right. A guy asks you for a raise, and you turn him down, you know he's going to begin looking around for another job.”

“And it would have been a lot lower if it hadn't been for Howard Magnusson,” said Bergson. “When he became president, one of the first things he did was check salaries of temple personnel. As a big business tycoon, he knew you get what you pay for. And when he found the rabbi's salary was low, he forced through a raise.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, finally broken by Dr. Ross asking, “So if we're paying below standard, why would anyone want to come to us?”

“Because the guy might be having trouble with his congregation, I suppose,” Ben Halprin suggested.

“Or he might have a kid going to one of the colleges around here. He could save himself a lot of money having the kid live at home.”

“Fat chance, a kid in college willing to live at home.”

“He might just want to live near the ocean.”

It was shortly after Miriam had finished with the dishes that the doorbell rang and she opened the door to Police Chief Lanigan, whose friendship with the rabbi and Miriam went back to the year of their arrival in Barnard's Crossing. He was a stocky man with a square face surmounted by a brush of white hair cut so short that the pink of the scalp showed through. “I just happened to be passing,” he said, his usual formula when he appeared unexpectedly.

“I hear you're retiring,” he said to the rabbi.

“News travels fast,” the rabbi remarked dryly.

“It does when you listen for it,” said Lanigan. “In a town this size with a small police force, we manage to stay on top of things by keeping our ears open. Sergeant Phelps heard a couple of your members talking about it down at the harbor as they were putting their boat in the water.” He sipped at the coffee Miriam had poured for him. “You planning to stay on, or you moving to Boston?”

“To tell the truth, I haven't given the matter any thought,” said the rabbi. “It's not easy staying around when you are rabbi emeritus. You're a fifth wheel. I suppose that's why so many rabbis go to Israel when they retire. But I like it here, so I expect I'll stay on, at least for a while. I can drive in every day as I used to when I last taught at Windermere.”

Lanigan shook his head doubtfully. “That was a few years back,” he said. “There's been a pretty sizable increase in traffic since then, and this new tunnel they're building hasn't helped any.”

“It's really bad now, David,” said Miriam. “I drove in the other day with Edie Bergson and we just inched along. We went by way of the bridge because she said the tunnel was worse. And in the winter when it snows …” Her voice trailed off as she thought of the hazard.

“I'll bet you could arrange for a ride in and a ride home every day,” said Lanigan. “Quite a few students from here go to Windermere, and several members of the faculty live here. There's a Professor Miller on Evans Road. I could ask him for you.”

“Why don't I wait and see how it goes. If the weather is bad, I can always go in by bus.”

“The bus goes by the old Boston Road and takes an hour and twenty minutes, and you end up at Haymarket and you've got to take the streetcar from there,” Lanigan pointed out.

“Well, I could drive over to Swampscott station and take the train. It's only twenty-three to twenty-five minutes by train,” said the rabbi.

“Yes, you could do that,” Lanigan admitted. “When is the new rabbi coming?”

“I suppose sometime before the High Holidays. That's right after Labor Day this year.”

“How is he chosen? Do you have a chief rabbi who picks one out for you?”

“They have one in England, and in France, and a couple of them in Israel, but we don't have one here in the United States. Here every temple and synagogue is autonomous. It's the Board of Directors through their Ritual Committee who select one from among those who apply or are available. Sometimes they have a likely candidate come down and celebrate a Sabbath so the whole congregation can judge him.”

“It seems a funny way to pick a spiritual leader,” Lanigan remarked with a shake of the head.

“Ah, but he isn't a spiritual leader,” said the rabbi. “Nothing so grandiose. Basically, he's supposed to be sufficiently learned in the law so that he can sit in judgment, although here in America he rarely does. So he does other things: He may be the voice of the congregation in dealing with the rest of the community; he presides at weddings and funerals; he gives sermons during the Sabbath services, following the example of the Christian clergy.” He chuckled. “Most of all, in congregations like the one here, he's supposed to be the one practicing Jew.”

“Then I'll have to make a point of getting acquainted with this new guy when he comes,” said Lanigan.

“I hope it won't be the way you got acquainted with me,” said the rabbi, thinking back to his first year when the body of a young woman was found on the temple grounds.

Lanigan grinned sourly.

Chapter 3

It was after the departmental meeting, at the start of the Summer Session, that Mordecai Jacobs was informed by Professor Sugrue, the head of the English Department, that he had been granted tenure with the accompanying raise in rank from assistant to associate professor. As a result, he felt he could now propose to Clara Lerner.

Later, in the faculty cafeteria, he saw Professor Roger Fine, the other Jewish member of the English Department, and told him the good news. “I suppose Thorvald Miller was also promoted,” he added.

Fine shook his head. “Nah, not likely.”

“Why not? He came here about the same time I did.”

“It used to be that way: if you were hired the third year, you got tenure. Nowadays, it's a matter of scholarship and publication. You've had a couple of papers published—”

“Three.”

“All right, three. That's pretty darn good, and they've all been in the
PMLA
, not one of the phony journals that have sprung up in recent years. Besides, your field is Old English, which practically implies scholarship, whereas his field is Modern Literature. People read modern novels and poetry for pleasure. No one is going to read
Beowulf
for pleasure. Thorvald Miller is a nice guy, but they don't grant tenure for niceness.”