Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red (30 page)

When they left. Miriam set about preparing dinner, as she worked, she talked – about the children, about conversations she had had in the supermarket that morning, her voice raised so that it would carry from the kitchen. But the rabbi was unresponsive.

When she finally came into the living room to tell him that dinner was ready, he said. “I don’t think I care for anything right now. Miriam.”

“Is something wrong. David?”

“No. I’m just not hungry. I – I’ve got some work to do.” And he got up and went to his study.

Later, much later, he was still there, not reading, not working, but abstracted, gazing off into space. When she asked if he were coming to bed, he did not answer but just shook his head in momentary annoyance.

The morning traffic was heavier than usual and the rabbi did not find a parking spot until a few minutes after nine. By the time he reached his office, it was ten minutes past, he was quite certain that his students had already left, but he hurried nevertheless on the chance that a few might have waited. To his surprise, when he reached the classroom he found the normal complement of students.

“There was a breakdown on the bridge,” he explained by way of apology, “and traffic was single lane all the way.”

“Oh; that’s all right Rabbi,” said Harvey Shacter magnanimously. “We voted to wait until a quarter past.”

“That was very considerate of all of you.” said the rabbi, he smiled. “It shows perhaps you have begun to acquire the traditional Jewish attitude toward learning and study.”

“You mean we got a special one?” asked Shacter.

“Of course.” said his friend Luftig scornfully. “Get A’s and make honors or Phi Beta.”

“No. Mr. Luftig, that’s not it” said the rabbi. “Quite the contrary; in fact, the rabbis held that learning should not be used as a spade to dig with, by which they meant that it should not be put to practical or material use. Learning and study are with us a religious duty, and hence not competitive, A’s, honors, Phi Beta Kappa – these are the rewards of competition.”

“So if you’re not going to get any practical benefit, what’s the sense?” asked Shacter.

“Because the desire for knowledge, knowledge for its own sake, is what distinguishes man from the lower animals, all animals have an interest in practical knowledge – where the best food supplies may be found, the best places to hide or bed down – but only man goes to the trouble of trying to learn something merely because he does not as yet know it, the mind of man yearns for knowledge as the body yearns for food, and that learning is for himself alone, just as is the food he eats.”

“So you mean it’s not kosher if a guy studies to be a doctor or a lawyer?” asked Shacter.

“He means he’s not supposed to get money for it.” said Mazelman.

“No. Mr. Mazelman, that’s not what I mean, the learning one acquires to become a doctor or a lawyer, or a carpenter or a plumber for that matter, is of a different kind. It is practical learning for the purpose of society, and we favor that kind of learning, too, there is also a rabbinical saying that a father who does not teach his son a trade is making a thief of him. So you see, there are two kinds of learning: one for yourself and the one for society.”

“What a doctor or a lawyer learns, isn’t that for himself?” asked Lillian Dushkin.

“It feeds his mind, to be sure; everything one learns does that. But primarily he is training himself to serve society, a doctor does not learn about all kinds of sicknesses just to cure himself. Certain branches of medicine don’t apply to himself at all, such as obstetrics –”

“They apply to women doctors.”

“You’re quite right. Ms. Draper.” acknowledged the rabbi.

Luftig was struck by a thought. “If there are two kinds of learning, shouldn’t there be two kinds of teaching, too?”

The rabbi considered this. “That’s a good point. Mr. Luftig. Professional study should be relevant. I don’t see any sense in teaching medieval church law to the law student or the humours theory of disease to a medical student.”

“Shouldn’t all study be relevant?” asked Luftig.

“Why? Why should that matter in liberal arts study? There, anything that interests you – and it could be medieval church law or Latin epigraphy for that matter – is worth studying. Or to put it another way, in liberal arts study everything is relevant.”

“Then how do you justify quizzes?” asked Mark Leventhal. “Aren’t you breaking your own rules by giving us grades?”

“Yes. I suppose I am. But I have to follow the regulations of the school.”

“What would you do if you had your way?” Leventhal persisted.

The rabbi thought a moment. “Well, since you receive credit toward an earned degree. I’d have to distinguish between those who made a proper effort and those who didn’t. So I’d just have two marks – pass and fail, and I’d try to devise an examination that would indicate interest rather than just information.”

“How could you do that?”

“I don’t know offhand. I suppose you might have the choice of answering all the questions, or just a few, or even one at great length.”

“Hey; that’s a good idea.”

“Right on. Why don’t we do it that way?”

“Maybe the other teachers –”

“Hey Rabbi, you going to teach next semester, too?”

It was one of numerous questions, but the class fell silent after Shacter asked it, as though it had been in all their minds.

“I have not arranged to.” said the rabbi.

“Maybe you could teach full – time.” said Lillian Dushkin.

He realized that the questions indicated their approval of him as a teacher, and it was pleasant to hear. “Why would I want to do that. Miss Dushkin?” he asked.

“Well, it must be a lot easier than rabbi-ing.”

“Yeah, but you make less.” Shacter pointed out. “Aw, he wouldn’t care about that.” Luftig countered.

“A rabbi is a teacher anyway;” Leventhal pointed out. “That’s what the word means.”

It crossed his mind that earlier in the year he would have considered this free discussion of his future career impertinent, but he had come a long way since his first week of teaching. “You’re quite right. Mr. Leventhal,” he said. “And you’re right, too. Miss Dushkin, teaching is easier. But I intend to go on being a rabbi and ministering to a congregation.” He looked out the window at the apartment across the street and saw what he assumed were plainclothesmen moving purposefully between the Hendryx apartment and a car parked in front of the building, he turned to the class once again and smiling wryly; he said. “As for teaching next semester. I’m not sure I’ll even be able to finish this one.”

Later, when the class was over and he was returning to his office. Mark Leventhal fell in step beside him. “You know. Rabbi, my folks want me to go to Cincinnati when I get through here, they’d like for me to become a rabbi.”

“Is that so? And you, how do you feel about it?”

“Well, I was planning to go to graduate school and then get a job teaching at some college.”

They reached the office and the rabbi fished for his key. “Do you have a class. Mr. Leventhal?”

“Yeah, but I’d just as soon cut it.”

“Come in, then.” He motioned the young man to the chair and took the swivel chair behind the desk. “Are you looking for advice as to which career to pursue?” he asked.

“Oh well, you know. I’d like to hear how you feel about it, you doing both, kind of.”

The rabbi nodded. “It’s changed, of course,” he said. “In the small ghetto towns of eastern Europe, which was the main center of Jewish culture, the rabbi was hired by the town, rather than by a synagogue, he was subsidized by the townspeople to spend most of his life in study; serving the community by sitting in judgment when the occasion required, he didn’t conduct services or even preach sermons, he was required to address the community only twice a year, and usually it was not a sermon but a thesis on some religious or biblical question.”

As he continued, he realized that he was talking as much to clarify his own thinking as to advise the young man. “He was usually highly respected by the congregation, if for no other reason than that he was the most learned man in the community in the only kind of learning they had – religious, biblical. Talmudic. But here in America, things are entirely different, he no longer sits in judgment, we go to the courts for that, and his special knowledge is no longer the only kind; it isn’t even considered a very important kind by his congregation. Medicine, law, science, engineering – these are regarded as much more significant in the modern world and of course by his congregants.”

“You mean he doesn’t get the same respect he used to?”

The rabbi smiled. “You could say that, he’s had to make his own job, and it’s largely administrative and – well, political.”

“Political?”

“That’s right, and in two senses: he’s usually the contact point between the congregation and the rest of the community; and he has to maintain himself in his position. Like any public figure, he always has an opposition to contend with.” He remembered what Miriam had said. “But actually; although the job appears to have changed enormously, it’s still the same job.”

“How do you mean?”

“Basically; his job was to guide and teach the community, well, that’s still his job, only now his community is less plastic, less docile, less interested, and even less inclined to be guided. It’s much harder job than it used to be. Mr. Leventhal, and a much, much harder job than teaching in a college where your teaching is limited to a rigid framework of classes at specified times, quizzes, credits –”

“Well then, why would you choose the rabbinate over college teaching?” the young man demanded.

The rabbi smiled, for he now knew he had found his own answer. “We say it’s hard to be a Jew, and it’s even harder to be a rabbi. I suppose, who is a kind of professional Jew. But haven’t you noticed in your own life. Mr. Leventhal, the harder the task, the more satisfaction there is in doing it?”

Diffidently the rabbi rang the Hendryx bell. “Oh, it’s you.” Sergeant Schroeder said belligerently. “I’ve got some things to say to you.”

“It will keep. Sergeant.” said Bradford Ames. “Come in, Rabbi.”

The room was ablaze with light from floodlamps mounted on collapsible stands, and several plainclothesmen were busy measuring, photographing, dusting for fingerprints, Ames explained that Hendryx’s relatives from the West Coast were coming for his effects, so this was their last chance to give the place a final going over.

“How about the bureau? You want me to take some pictures of the drawers. Sergeant?” asked the photographer.

“Yeah, take each drawer. It’ll give us a kind of inventory.”

Ames motioned the rabbi to the bed. “Sit there. You’ll be out of the way,” he said. “I’m accepting your explanation on the Kathy Dunlop story, but I might as well tell you, your little investigation at the Excelsior Motel, well, that depends on what you came up with.” He showed no anger, but his tone was distinctly cool.

The rabbi told them what he had learned – that no one at the Excelsior had seen Roger Fine and that the motel switchboard had been out of order that day. “So no one could have called him from outside.”

Schroeder rubbed his hands. “Well, that’s all right then, that’s just fine.”

Ames, too, smiled his satisfaction. In a more friendly voice, he explained. “You see, if it had been the other way; if there had been some chance of a possible alibi, then your inquiries could have fixed it in the person’s mind, or even insinuated it there.”

“I didn’t really expect an alibi from Kathy’s story:” said the rabbi. “All she remembered was the time she called him at school, she did suggest that if Fine had just killed someone, however, he would scarcely be likely to visit her immediately after.”

“And yet.” said Ames, “there are cases reported in the literature of just that sort of thing, adds a certain zest to the lovemaking as I understand.”

“Well.” said the rabbi, “the next day I checked with Fine in jail on the chance there was something Kathy had overlooked, but he didn’t want it known he had been with her at all, he said even if that offered a possible alibi he wouldn’t use it. To see for myself whether Miss Dunlop’s story was true. I decided to check with the motel people.”

“I can follow your reasoning.” Ames admitted, “but that phase of the inquiry should have been left to the police.”

“Hey Sarge.” the photographer called out. “this bottom drawer is empty.”

Ames went over and the rabbi joined him, feeling he was not actually required to remain seated on the bed. “Hendryx probably used that bottom drawer for his soiled laundry;” Ames said. “It’s what I do when I’m staying in a hotel.”’

“I don’t think so, sir.” said Schroeder. “There’s a hamper in the bathroom.”

“Then he probably didn’t have enough stuff for that last drawer.” said Ames.

“And yet the other drawers seem pretty full, even crowded.” the rabbi offered.

“Is that so?” Ames chuckled. “It looks like we’ll have to use that Talmud trick you told me about, and wait for – who was it, Elijah? – to come to solve that little problem.”

“Talmudists didn’t use it until they had exhausted all other possibilities.” said the rabbi reproachfully.

“Well now. I did a little reading on the subject after I spoke to you.” said Ames, “out of idle curiosity, you know, and according to this article in the encyclopedia, a good part of your Talmud is just a bunch of stories and old wives’ tales and moralizing. But even the legal part, I gathered, was largely unsystematic arguing sometimes about the most improbable cases.”

“The Talmud has a little of everything.” the rabbi admitted, “but perhaps the most useful function it serves is the method it developed.”

The technicians had finished and had packed up. Schroeder asked Ames whether he could give him a lift downtown.

“Just a minute. Sergeant, the rabbi is giving me a lesson in the Talmud.” He chuckled. “And what was this method. Rabbi?”

“Basically/ said the rabbi seriously, “it consisted of examining every aspect of a problem from every possible point of view, which is what I assume your encyclopedia meant when it suggested that some of the cases were highly improbable, they had plenty of time, those old Talmudists, and the more recent ones, too, and they didn’t share the concern that you find in Common Law about the irrelevant, the immaterial, and the incompetent. Take this empty drawer, for example –”