Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 661 & 662, September/October 1996

Kaddish by Batya Swift Yasgur

© 1996 by Batya Swift Yasgur

Since she last appeared in EQMM Batya Swift Yasgur has sold short fiction to several other magazines. In collaboration with her agent and colleague Barry Malzberg, she authored stories this year for Fantasy and Science Fiction and Realms of Fantasy, as well as producing a story recently published in Science Fiction Age. Her new piece for EQMM concerns a police detective with an interesting moral dilemma.

“Why me?”

“A nice Jewish question,” MacAllister answered. “Why you? Because you’re of their faith, that’s why.”

“But I haven’t been a practicing Jew for years—”

MacAllister shrugged. “Jews will probably open up more to another Jew than to an outsider.” He smiled his toothy smile and clapped me on the shoulder. “Go on, Schwartz. Here’s the file. Find out who murdered the rabbi.”

But you don’t understand, I wanted to shout at his fleshy back as it retreated from my little cubicle. I’m worse than an outsider. Worse than a goy. I’m an apikores, an apostate, my own parents won’t have me in the house. You don’t understand, MacAllister. I don’t want to prowl around the study of some dead rabbi any more than I want to sit at the feet of some living rabbi. Can’t I slosh through the mud and investigate that body that washed up on the banks of the Hudson last week? Or risk my neck in Harlem dredging up information on that missing baby? I’d gladly take a gunshot or two, but keep me away from ghosts with yarmulkes, keep me away from the shadowy echoes of Hebrew prayers and Talmudic chants.

But there’s no arguing with MacAllister once he’s made up his mind, once his red face creases into its smug folds, once he thinks he knows. You do as you’re told, like a child in religious school.

So here I was, uncomfortably edging my way into the shivah, the room where the mourners, family of the deceased Rabbi Weissman, were receiving guests to comfort them.

A hushed room, covered mirrors, a buxom woman in a formless dress, torn at the collar in memory of the dead, her head modestly draped in a scarf, dabbing red eyes. The rebbetzin, I guessed. Mrs. Weissman. Two young men, Rabbi Weissman’s sons, on either side, one with earlocks and a Hebrew book open on his lap, the other looking more modern, with The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning in his hand. A bevy of people, men with yarmulkes, women with wigs or scarves, long skirts, long sleeves. Murmured snatches reached my ears: “Yes, he was a tzaddik, a holy man...” “To think, such a tragedy!” “A murder — in our community — what next—”

I elbowed my way gingerly to the front. Conversation ceased, as a dozen Orthodox eyes turned to look at me. A stranger in their midst. A stranger who should belong.

“Rebbetzin Weissman? I’m sorry to intrude, I know what a difficult time this is for you, but I need to ask you some questions. I’m Jack Schwartz.” I displayed my badge.

“Oy, more questions?” She turned her red eyes toward me. “I thought I’d answered them already and genug schoin, enough, let me be.”

I shrugged, feeling worse than ever. “I’m sorry, really, but I’ve been assigned to the case, and I always ascertain the facts for myself.” (Indeed, that had been my undoing in the religion: take nobody’s word for things, not the rabbis, not the Talmud, and trust nothing that I haven’t experienced. A bad idea for a religion which relies upon the testimony of others.) I glanced at all the open-mouthed visitors, glaring at me. “Is there someplace where we can talk privately?”

Of course not, I realized. Stupid of me. No Orthodox woman would converse alone in a room with a man. I was about to apologize yet again when, as if on cue, the guests all rose, muttered the obligatory Hebrew words of consolation — “May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem” — and filed out, leaving Rebbetzin Weissman and her two sons.

An awkward silence, punctuated by sobs. I opened with the usual questions.

“Where was your husband when he was killed?”

“In his study at the shul — at the synagogue,” she translated for my benefit.

“Why was he there?”

She shrugged, a look of disbelief on her face. (You mean you don’t know? What kind of detective — and worse, what kind of Jew — are you anyway? it said.) “He always saw congregants in his study. They came to him in droves, especially at night. After evening services and his evening Talmud class. He rarely came home before ten o’clock at night. I always said to him — Levi, you work too hard. You should take better care of yourself. But he was such a devoted man, always doing chesed, acts of kindness and charity. He always put the congregation before himself.” And she began to cry again.

“Mama, don’t,” said the earlocked son, handing her a tissue.

“Father was like that,” said the second son, the modern one. “And such an exponent of the faith! I wasn’t always religious — I strayed away from the Torah — but he brought me back with his love.”

I didn’t want to hear this, the eulogies, the paroxysm of posthumous worship. “So who came to see him that night?”

“I don’t know. Levi never talked about who came with shailos — you know, religious questions — or for counseling. It was personal.”

“But he had a diary,” Modern Son added quickly. “You should find it in the top right-hand corner of his desk.”

I wrote that down. “Any enemies?”

The three began talking at once, a hubbub of denials. I held my hand up.

“No one, especially a rabbi, is universally loved. Come on, tell me the truth.”

Exchanges of glances, a few “hmm”s and “er”s. Then a big sigh from the rebbetzin. “All right, yes, there were a few. But you can’t seriously suspect someone within the shul? Surely it was an outsider, maybe a hit-and-run driver who shot him through the window of the study as he drove by on the street, maybe some anti-Semite, a neo-Nazi, there’s a whole bunch of them in the next town over—”

“We’re investigating all that. A neighbor thought she might have heard a car, we’re looking into that, but we can’t rule anything out.”

“Even other Jews — I can’t believe that, that another Jew would—”

The familiar irritation rose to the surface like a rash. “Jews aren’t immune. They’re — we’re — as prone to pettiness and crime as anyone else.” My voice was sharp; I realized I’d have to tone it down or these people would never open up and trust me. “Just tell me — please. Was there anyone in the shul who disliked your husband?”

“Well. There were a few people who made tsuris for him, tried to block his contract renewal. Reuben and Rachel Glassner. They’ve hated my husband because he didn’t visit Reuben’s father in the hospital. He couldn’t help it,” she burst out, “nobody told him old Mr. Glassner was sick till it was too late — but they won’t believe that. And Simon Siden, he thinks my husband’s sermons were too long.” A pause, the rebbetzin’s knuckles pressed to her eyes. “Oh, and Judah Mackler. He thought my husband’s religious rulings were too lenient. Oy, was he angry that my husband allowed KosherTaste Caterers to cater in our shul, because there was that scandal about rabbinic supervision there a few years ago, and lots of Orthodox Jews won’t eat their food.”

I scribbled busily. “Anyone else?”

Another pause, more glances exchanged, more sighs. “No, but — you’ll check the neo-Nazis? My husband, he was a Holocaust survivor.”

“I’ll check everything.”

The rebbetzin nodded, grasped her sons’ hands.

“Anything else you can tell me?”

She shook her head, her eyes welling again.

“Anything about your husband? How did he spend his time? Did he have any hobbies, involvements, something which could help me to—”

The babble of praise broke out. Hospital visits, charitable acts, hours spent over Talmudic tomes. “He loved to read mysteries,” the modern son mentioned diffidently.

“Ssh.” It was a sort of hiss from the earlocked son. “It doesn’t honor our father’s memory to have people know that.”

I swallowed the bile that had risen bitterly to my throat. “What kind of mysteries?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” the young man said, glancing apologetically at his brother. “Whenever Father wanted to relax, he used to read Sherlock Holmes. He had a copy here, and one in his study at shul.”

Thank God. It made the late unfortunate Rabbi Levi Weissman a bissel more human.

I put my notebook away and turned to leave. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything out.”

“Wait.” It was the rebbetzin, holding out a tremulous hand which she almost put on my arm, then remembering the religious restriction against touching men, she dropped it. “You are Jewish, aren’t you?”

I nodded, a lump suddenly blocking my throat.

“Orthodox?”

“No, I’m not Orthodox.” I managed to get the words past the lump.

She shook her head. “My husband would have fixed that. If you had met him—”

Fixed that. Fixed me. I muttered something — not the prayer of comfort and consolation — and fled.

Interviews, interviews, establishing alibis. Nothing. The Glassners had been at a bar mitzvah (plenty of witnesses), Simon Siden had been resting in bed, his wife shrilly and indignantly protested, Judah Mackler had traveled to New York to attend a Talmud class. (He wouldn’t set foot in Rabbi Weissman’s, he informed me, enunciating every syllable as if I were an infant or mentally retarded, because the rabbi was far too lenient in his religious rulings, and so even his Talmudic scholarship couldn’t be trusted.) The synagogue’s neighbor mentioned something about a car, but couldn’t be sure. She’d heard the gunshot and called the police, but was it really a car she’d heard First? It had been so late at night, and she had been so deeply asleep, and her boiler often made noises that sounded like an engine—

All blank. The study had better hold more promise.

And so, timid and trembling, I pushed open the door to Rabbi Weissman’s study.

And found myself, after years of running, face-to-face with the angels and demons of my childhood: the volumes of Torah and Talmud, commentaries and sages, titles of gold gleaming seductively and wickedly at me from their maroon covers. Rashi. Nachmanides. Maimonides. The Code of Jewish Law. And there, dimpling like an old friend, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, as well thumbed as any Talmudic tractate, sitting on the desk.

I nosed around the office, prowled like a caged lion, glancing out of the window. The front window looked out onto the street. Sitting at his desk, where he was shot in the head, Rabbi Weissman could have easily been targeted by the hypothetical neo-Nazi in a car. It had been a warm night, the windows were open—

No one could have come through the back window. A small stream ran muddily under the window. Anyone shooting through that window would have had to slosh through the murky water and would have alerted the rabbi to his presence. But the rabbi had been found slumped over his desk, facing away from the back window, facing the front. That would be well and good except that the shot was to his left temple. Anyone shooting from the street couldn’t have hit his temple unless—

Unless it wasn’t someone shooting from the street.

I shook my head. The old dictum of childhood rose, rumbled, warned. “Never suspect another Jew.” It would be easy, too easy, to drown the appointment book, to look no further, to gloss the whole thing over and the hell with MacAllister.

But no, there was also a commitment to the truth, to justice. (And more phrases from childhood rose, unbidden: “God’s first word is Truth and His Justice is eternal.”) Slowly, reluctantly, I opened the desk drawers. And, sure enough, the appointment book was where the young man had said it would be: in the top right-hand desk drawer. Feeling like an intruder, as I always did when going through the personal effects of someone else — living or dead — I opened it to the date of his death.

Appointments: Mrs. Faige Cohen, 9:00, Mr. David Brown, 9:30, Mr. and Mrs. Hyman Nahmanson, 10:00.

A new round of interviews, as I trudged from door to door.

Faige Cohen, a diminutive, white-haired, shriveled-up old lady, had come to see the rabbi regarding a confusion of pots and pans. She had cooked a chicken in her dairy pan, and had her grandchildren coming tomorrow. Was the chicken kosher, since dairy could not be mixed with meat? Could she serve the chicken? Her voice shook as she recounted the rabbi’s remarks. “I–I was so upset, you know, since my husband Joseph died, may he rest in peace, I don’t have much money, just my little pension, and I didn’t know how I would replace a whole chicken. And the rabbi, may he rest in peace, said I should just go ahead and use the chicken.” No, she knew no one who could wish him ill, she was home by 9:25, and the bus driver on the number 155 line could identify her if necessary.

David Brown was a young man, barely out of his teens, a yarmulke resting unevenly on a shock of red hair. “It was a weird situation I went to see the rabbi about. A religious question, you know, and I was sure the rabbi would say no, no way.” He shook his head and folded his arms. “But he said yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“Well, I’m in college, you know. And, like, most professors usually don’t schedule exams on Saturdays because of Shabbos, the Sabbath. They’re usually pretty considerate of the Orthodox students, and they know our rules. See, we don’t write on Sabbath, you know.”

I nodded. I knew.

“Well, I couldn’t get microeconomics rescheduled. A bitch of a professor, she’s real nasty and I’m sure she’s anti-Semitic. You know. And she had to go and schedule our big final right on Saturday. I couldn’t get out of it, I would’ve failed, you know, and, like, I didn’t know what to do. But Rabbi Weissman threw me for a loop. He said yes, I should go take the exam, I could write if I needed to.”

To write on Saturday? This was bizarre. To violate Sabbath? The chicken was possible, even though my own training told me that a chicken cooked in dairy utensils was treif, unkosher, and had to be discarded. But maybe the rabbi, with his learning and his expertise, knew of some loophole, some leniency that I wasn’t aware of. But Sabbath was inviolable, except in life-threatening situations. Something was odd, incongruous. It was with a strange, queasy feeling (not dissimilar to the squishing in my stomach the first time I ate pork) that I proceeded to the Nahmansons.

The door was opened by a thin, bearded, bespectacled young man, obviously in the middle of dinner — (he was still holding his fork, and a napkin was tucked in his pants). A petite, kerchiefed woman peeked out shyly from the kitchen.

Greetings, apologies about the interrupted dinner, then on to business. “Why did you come to see Rabbi Weissman the night of his death?”

A jump, the couple was obviously startled. A glance passed between them, frightened, tremulous. “How did you know? This was a — a very private matter, nobody was supposed to know we came.”

“And nobody did.” I tried to make my voice as soothing as possible. “Your names were in his diary, that’s how I found out.”

The news didn’t seem to relieve them. “I’m sorry,” said Hyman. “But it’s too private to talk about.”

“In a murder investigation, I’m afraid nothing can be kept private.”

Again the flutter, the frightened glances. “Please believe me when I say that nothing we talked to the rabbi about could have possibly been connected with this horrible tragedy. It was — it was a highly personal matter.”

God, how I hated this part of it. The pushing, the prying. “I’m sorry, really I am, but a man is dead, and these are questions I have to ask.”

The petite woman burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Hyman glared. “Well, if you must know—” He thrust out his lip belligerently. “We’re newlyweds. Married three months ago. Rabbi Weissman performed the ceremony.” He paused, licked his lips, his beard trembling. “I — we — I mean, my wife — are you familiar with the Orthodox marriage laws?” Before I could nod, he plunged on. “A man can’t touch his wife — make love, even hand her a plate — during her menstrual period, and for seven days afterward. My wife has had something which Jewish law sees as a long period. She just won’t stop staining. The doctor says that’s normal during times of stress and transition. But it’s been hell.” His voice broke, he covered his face. “A tease, a miserable tease, to share a room with your new bride, a woman you can’t even touch. Your wife. We couldn’t stand it anymore, we went to Rabbi Weissman hoping there was some leniency he could find. And he studied the holy books and — well, he found a way.” A tiny smile creased the tormented face. “Even when she’s staining, we can still hug, hold hands, and—” his face reddened and he looked at the floor “—well, you know.”

I knew. I knew. I knew the torment, I knew the liberation, and I knew so much more.

I knew before I reentered the study, before I opened the holy books that were strewn across the desk, that the rabbi had consulted (or pretended to consult). I knew before I unearthed my rusty Hebrew, cleaned it and oiled it and used it to delve into those ancient tomes. There was no way, not within Jewish law, that Hyman could be allowed to touch his wife while she was staining. Not during her period. It was a cardinal sin, a violation of all the tenets and codes, tantamount to eating on Yom Kippur, and worse, far worse, than eating pork, worse than violating the Sabbath, the penalty for which is death.

The rabbi was cutting corners. No, that was an understatement. Rabbi Weissman had completely dumped Jewish law — at least any law that made life inconvenient, difficult, or painful for its followers.

And, sitting in his chair, I thought I understood. “You do not understand a man until you’ve stood in his shoes,” so say the rabbis. Sitting in Rabbi Weissman’s chair was enough.

The stream, the endless stream of sorrows and pleas, the burden of being spokesman for a God of dread and restriction, of rules and penalties, when inside, it was all crumbling, the demon of doubt growing, consuming him, chasing him from pulpit to lectern to podium to sing the praises of the faith in flawless Hebrew and propound its mystery and its wonder. To sing to himself, to that part of himself that held the memory of swastikas and babies’ blood, still raw, still screaming from within the void.

Yes, I knew. I knew the demon and I knew its devil’s pact: escape. As I had escaped into the world of the goy, the non-Jew, into the police force, into the arms of women, and into restaurants that served pork and milk together, and my parents had mourned me as dead — as I had so escaped, so had he. He had taken a more courageous step, mourned as dead because he was dead. Dead, I was now sure, by his own hand.

But how? No suicide note, no murder weapon — how could someone shoot himself in the head and conceal the murder weapon with such skill?

The answer lay in this study, it had to. This was his home, his abode, his haven, and his prison. Someplace here, there was a clue, there had to be. I searched again, crawled along the floor, peered in every corner. Nothing.

Desk drawers: nothing. Floor: nothing. Bookshelves: nothing.

I sat down again, moving things around on the desk. If I were Rabbi Weissman, and I was tense, beleaguered, strung out, persecuted, what would I do? Where would I turn? Not to prayer; God had abandoned me, had abandoned six million of my brethren. Not to the holy books; they held nothing but torment.

Then I remembered what the Modern Son had said. Whenever his father needed to relax, he read Sherlock Holmes.

There was a bookmark in Sherlock Holmes and I opened to the story “The Problem at Thor Bridge.”

And there, in the story, was the answer. No suicide note needed. The story was enough. A suicide plan right there, all laid out.

Like the woman in the story, Rabbi Weissman had a gun. Who knows where he got it? It really didn’t matter. He had tied a string to the gun, weighed it down with a rock which he hung out of the window. Immediately after shooting, he let go and the gun was whisked out of the window, away, away, into the muddy pond below.

So I went. Schwartz the desanctified Jew who knew exactly what to do, I went there.

And saw the pond yield its muddy evidence, then, as I dragged it, and that terrible testimony surfacing.

The gun, complete with string and rock.

Suicide.

But, oh, the shame and stigma of a suicide in the Orthodox community. The rabbi’s grave would have to be dug up so he could be buried outside the cemetery, outside the community, a sign of his sin, that he had disposed of himself, damaged a life and a body not his own but God’s. His secret wrenched and paraded before the congregation, the merciless light of truth glaring upon his remains, upon the remains of his widow, his children, upon the ruins of their temple of memory and faith.

But that is not what happened, because it was not what I decided I would tell them.

Instead, this: Let this crime be filed as unsolved (another rabbinic dictum rising to the surface, evidence muddy but unmistakable: “One can alter the truth for the sake of peace.”). Let MacAllister grumble, let the rebbetzin mutter about police incompetence, but let the dead remain buried intact, let the living hold on to their illusions.

And so I entered that house of mourning, that shivah, again, the mourners flanked by congregants who parted as the waters of the Red Sea to let me through.

“No answers,” I told them, the sobbing rebbetzin, the somber sons, the murmuring congregants. “Hit-and-run driver makes the most sense. We’ll never know.”

She nodded, they all nodded, then shook their heads, a swell of Yiddish and Hebrew and Aramaic growing louder, louder, until the earlocked son glanced at his watch. He stood up. “Mincha!” he announced. “Time for afternoon prayer.”

The women took off like frightened rabbits while the earlocked son did a count. “Seven, eight, nine... not enough for a minyan.” Not enough for a prayer quorum, which requires ten adult men. He turned to me. “Can you be the tenth man?”

Me? Apikores, apostate, sinner. Me?

Me, a Jew. Still a Jew, always a Jew.

I took the prayer book, opened it to the correct page, memory casting aside disuse, words ancient and terrible rising, arcing from my throat, words I swore I’d never recite again.

But this was right. Somehow, this was right, to participate in this one last act of prayer. I could do it, I had to do it. A memorial to the dead. Not to the dead rabbi, no, he was beyond memorials, beyond tributes, he was someplace where none of that mattered. No, this was a memorial to his faith, now dead, shattered, dissolved in a blast of gunpowder and blood. A memorial to his faith, that broken vessel of light, its sparks scattered and lost.

And to mine.

Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’mei rabboh.

May I be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.