The Rabbi (53 page)

Each of the four pledges was made quickly and cheerfully. Too fast and too pat, the work of amateur dramatists. An embarrassed silence hung in the room like a fat lady's bosom. Michael saw that Leslie was looking at him and he knew that now she too understood what the doctor had meant when he had said he was a shill. Each of these bids had been made before. They were being made again in a mechanical effort to create a giving mood.

“Well?” Kahners said. “Don't be bashful, my good friends. Now is the opportunity. The need for sacrifice is now.”

A man in the corner named Abramowitz rose and pledged one thousand dollars. Kahners' face lighted until he consulted a list in his hand and checked off his name. Obviously, he had expected more from Mr. Abramowitz. When Abramowitz sat down another man at his table leaned forward and engaged him in strenuous conversation. At each table now, a planted salesman began to sell. Nobody at Michael's table was urging anyone else to pledge. They sat and looked at one another in an uncomfortable muteness. Could it be, Michael wondered, that the committee had expected him to deliver a sales pitch? But Kahners was approaching them, smiling broadly.

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay,” he said.

“Goldsmith,” Sandy Berman said gloomily.

“Ah, a student.” Kahners placed a blank pledge card in front of him.

“Worse, a teacher.” Berman made no move to pick up the card.

Kahners smiled. He placed a card in front of each of the
men at the table. “What are you gentlemen afraid of?” he said. “They're only pledges. Take your pens and sign. Sign!”

“Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay,” Berman said.

“Ecclesiastes,” Kahners said, this time without a smile. He looked around the table. “Look,” he said. “We've been working like dogs on this campaign. Like dogs. For you. For you and your kids. For your community.

“We've got advance gifts from principal donors that could knock your eyes out. From one man alone, from Harold Elkins alone, we got fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand. So come on now, be fair. Be fair to
yourselves
. This is a democratic temple we're trying to build. It's got to be supported by the little guy as well as the big guy.”

“The trouble is, it isn't democratic at all,” an owlish young man sitting at the front of the table told him. “The littler a guy you are financially, the more of a personal burden your contribution will be.”

“It's all proportionate,” Kahners said.

“No, it isn't. Look, I'm an accountant. On salary. Say my salary is ten thousand dollars a year. That places me in a twenty per cent tax bracket. If I give the temple five hundred dollars I can deduct one hundred dollars in taxes, so my donation actually cost me four hundred.

“But take another guy, a businessman who earns forty thousand dollars a year,” he said, nervously adjusting his glasses. “In his bracket, he deducts forty-four and one-half per cent. If he gives two thousand dollars, which makes him four times the good guy I am, he saves almost half his donation.”

The people seated near him began discussing this phenomenon.

“That's a lot of doubletalk. Mathematics can tell you whatever you want it to. Gentlemen,” Kahners said. “Is anyone prepared to sign his pledge card now?”

Nobody moved.

“Then you will excuse me. It was a pleasure to meet you.” He moved to another table. In a few minutes the party began to break up.

“Join us for coffee?” Leslie said to June Berman. “Howard Johnson's?”

June looked at her husband and then nodded.

As they passed Kahners, Michael saw that he was talking to Abramowitz, the man who had pledged one thousand dollars. “You'll come tomorrow night at eight-thirty in David Binder's house?” he was saying. “It's very important or we wouldn't ask. We appreciate it.”

In the restaurant they ordered without enthusiasm.

“Rabbi,” Sandy said, “I don't want to embarrass you, but that was pretty bad.”

Michael nodded. “Bricks and cement cost money. It's a miserable, thankless job, dunning for it. But they have to get it.”

“Don't let them aggravate you,” Leslie said. “Only
you
can tell how much you can give. Give whatever you can afford, and forget it.”

“What we can afford?” June said. She waited until the waitress had served their coffee and sandwiches and left. “It's no secret how much assistant professors are paid at Wyndham. Sandy gets fifty-one hundred from the university—”

“Junie,” Sandy said.

“Fifty-one hundred, plus another twelve hundred for teaching summer school. Because we need a car, this fall he'll teach two evening sections of business English; another eighteen hundred. That gives us an annual income of eighty-one hundred dollars, and those . . .
fools
. . . suggest we pledge seventeen hundred and fifty dollars to the temple.”

“Those were preliminary suggestions,” Michael said. “I know for a fact the committee will be happy to receive less. A lot less.”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Sandy said.

“If that's it, then give them the check and when they say thank you, say you're welcome,” Leslie said.

Michael shook his head. “They're going to set a minimum pledge at seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

There was a small silence.

“I won't join, Rabbi,” Sandy said.

“What will you do about Hebrew school for your kids?”

“I'll pay the tuition the way I always have. A hundred and forty bucks a year for the three of them, plus thirty dollars a month for transportation.”

“You can't. The executive board has voted that only paid-up members can send their children to the Hebrew school.”

“Wow,” June Berman said.

“What happened to the grand old idea that the
shul
was a place where any man, no matter how poor, could seek God?” Sandy said.

“We're talking about membership, Sandy. You'll never be chased away from the temple.”

“But there may not be a seat for me?”

“There may not.”

“Suppose somebody just can't afford seven hundred and fifty dollars?” June asked.

“They've set up a hardship committee,” Michael said wearily. “It won't be an ordeal. I'm on it. Your friend Murray Engel. Felix Sommers, your husband's boss. Joe Schwartz. All reasonable guys.”

Leslie had been watching Berman's face. “That's horrible,” she said quietly.

Sandy started to laugh. “Hardship committee. You know what the executive board can do? I'm not a hardship case. I'm a teacher. A university professor.”

They finished their food. When the check came Michael struggled for it. Finally, knowing that tonight Sandy would insist interminably, he let him pay.

An hour later he and Leslie argued as they got ready for bed.

“Don't criticize the drive in front of congregation members,” he said.

“Must it be this kind of a drive? Christians raise money for buildings without this . . . loss of dignity. Couldn't they tithe or something?”

“They aren't Christians. I'm a rabbi, not a minister.”

“But it's wrong,” she said. “I think the methods they're using are disgusting. They're an insult to the intelligence of the membership.”

“Don't make things worse than they are.”

“Why don't you tell them, Michael?”

“They know how I feel. Raising the money is their responsibility. They're convinced this is the one way to raise it. If I stay in the background, eventually the temple will be built and then perhaps I can make it something very fine.”

She didn't answer. She put down the brush and he saw
that she was actually taking out the thermometer, and something inside of him pulled back. “Don't wait up for me,” he said. “I have some work.”

“All right.”

He read until 2
A.M
. When he crawled into bed he was sure that she was asleep, and he drifted off almost immediately. But the luminescent hands of the bedside clock said 3:20 when he woke and realized that she was no longer lying at his side. She was sitting by the open window, smoking and staring out into the dark. The chirping of the crickets was piercing and he realized that it had been the shrill sound that had awakened him. “They're loud, aren't they?” he said. He got out of bed and sat on the window sill facing her. “What are you doing?”

“I couldn't sleep.”

He took one of her cigarettes and she flicked her lighter for him, her eyes enormous and her face sad and wakeful, smooth light planes and dark hollows in the sudden yellow flare. “What's the matter, Leslie?” he asked gently.

“I don't know. Insomnia, I guess. I just can't seem to sleep lately.” They were silent for a moment. “Ah, Michael,” she said, “we've gone sour, haven't we? Too sour to make anything as sweet as a baby.”

“What are you talking about,” he said roughly, and immediately felt exposed as a liar and a hypocrite, knowing she knew him too well for pretending. “That's a great theory. Very scientific.”

“Poor Michael.”

“It will work out,” he said. “There's always adoption.”

“I don't think it would be fair to the baby.” She looked up at him in the dark. “You know what our real trouble is?”

“Come to bed.”

“You're no longer the young Jewish Lochinvar of the mountains. I'm no longer the girl you caught that big fish for.”

“For God's sake,” he said, enraged. He returned to bed alone but while she continued to sit in the dark and smoke he lay unable to sleep, and watched the red glow of her cigarette ember, recalling that vanished girl with a remembered love so intense it refused to be blotted out by the pillow he pulled over his face like a do-it-yourself slumber mask.

Kahners had reached the stage in the campaign where he
was ready to sell the temple in sections. A mimeographed list entitled
Living Memorials and Tributes
was readied for the congregation members; it reminded them that a good name was rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold. Certainly the highest virtue, it said, is a name that attaches itself to the betterment of a community, the education of youth, and the molding of good character. It offered the unique opportunity of inscribing the member's name or the name of a dear departed one in a building that would serve through the years as an inspiration to future generations.

For twenty-five thousand dollars, the synagogue itself would be named for the individual specified.

The chapel went for ten thousand dollars. So did the auditorium, while the religious school could be named for seventy-five hundred, along with the recreation room and the air conditioning system.

The
bema
could be named for six thousand dollars. The Torah (Complete—Cover, Yad, Breastplate, Crown), at twenty-five hundred dollars was a bargain compared to the inscribed brass nameplate that would be placed on the door of the custodian's quarters for thirty-five hundred dollars.

The list was mimeographed on four pages, stapled. Kahners used the same list for every Jewish campaign. He had brought bundles of them with him in one of the crates, so that all that was necessary was for Temple Emeth's name to be placed on the top of the first page and then the bundles could be run through the temple's addressograph.

Kahners came to Michael, groaning. “I've got both girls to work late tonight, addressing. But the lists. Go depend on rich volunteers. That Elkins woman took them home to cut stencils yesterday and now she says she can't come in today. A summer cold.”

“I'll try to find somebody who can go out and get them this afternoon,” Michael said.

“By seven o'clock we need them. Seven-thirty the latest,” Kahners said, leaving to answer a querulous secretarial summons.

The constant ringing of the telephones, the thunk-thunk-thunk of the mimeograph and the steady clatter of the two typewriters blended into a claw of sound that raked him again and again, until by midmorning there was dull pain in his forehead and he began to search his mind for business that would take
him out of the office. He fled at eleven-thirty, stopping at a sandwich shop for a light lunch and then making pastoral calls, one of which yielded tea and strudel for dessert. At two-thirty he stopped at the hospital and sat with a woman who had just surrendered three gallstones to a surgeon, remaining until two-forty-eight, four minutes after she showed him the stones like gems on a black velvet cloth, future family heirlooms.

He was getting into his car in the hospital parking lot when he remembered the membership lists, and he took off his jacket and turned up his sleeves and rolled down the car windows and then drove through the town and into the country, squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun.

At the farmhouse he rang the front-door bell and waited, but nobody came to the door. Carrying his coat, he walked around the house to the barnyard. Mrs. Elkins was slumped on a chaise in the shade of a big oak, her long slender feet flat on the lounge and her knees spread so that through the brown V of her legs he could see the pan of corn on her bare belly. The ducks were all around her, quacking as she fed them corn with little flicks of her long fingers. Her short shorts revealed what clothing designers easily hid, the beginning of the age-dappling on the backs of her thighs. The shorts were white and her halter was blue and her shoulders were round but freckled. But it was her hair that surprised him; instead of straw blonde it was a soft shiny brown.

“Rabbi,” she said. She took the pan off her stomach and stood, slipping her feet into loafers.

“Hi. Mr. Kahners would like the membership lists,” he said.

“I'm all finished with them. Can you wait a few moments while I feed these monsters?”