Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The rabbi had intended to go right home after seeing Mrs. Hirsh, but once outside and behind the wheel of his car he found himself driving in the opposite direction, downtown, and presently he was caught in the maze of narrow crooked streets of Old Town. After two turns he got lost and turned up one street and down another in the hope of finding himself on familiar ground; but each time he thought he spotted a house he knew, the road curved another way. Perched on a hill tantalizingly close he could see the town hall which was on familiar territory, yet none of the streets seemed to lead toward it. All the while, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of lovely old-fashioned gardens hidden behind charming weather-beaten houses, most of them with a golden eagle over the door lintel, interesting shops of hand-crafters and artists, and most fascinating of all, the ship chandler’s shop with its windows stuffed with fascinating gear-brass compasses, coils of nylon rope, bells, curiously shaped nautical fittings of mysterious function, and, incongruously, a pair of stout rubber boots.

Suddenly he found himself on an extremely narrow street which had cars parked on both sides and traffic going in both directions. He slowed down to worm his way through and his car stalled. Horns blared behind him as he twisted the key viciously; the only response was the high-pitched whine of the starting motor. As he pumped the gas pedal in vexation, a voice at his side said, “You’ve probably flooded it, Rabbi.”

He looked up and was tremendously relieved to see Hugh Lanigan. The local chief of police was wearing a sport shirt and chinos, and under his arm he had the Sunday paper.

“Here, let me try it.”

The rabbi set the brake and moved over so that the other could get in. Whether because those behind recognized the chief or they realized the offending driver was in genuine difficulty, the blaring horns stopped. The chief pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, turned the key, and miraculously the motor caught.

He grinned at the rabbi. “How about a drink at our place?”

“I’d love one. You drive.”

“All right.” Effortlessly Lanigan threaded the maze between oncoming and parked cars, and when he reached his house he ran the right wheels up on the sidewalk to obstruct as little of the road as possible. Opening the gate of his white picket fence he marched the rabbi up the walk and short flight of steps that led to the verandah. He shouted through the screen door, “We got some company, Gladys.”

“Coming,” his wife shouted back from inside, and a moment later appeared at the door. She was dressed in slacks and sweater and looked as though she had just finished helping her husband with the lawn. But her white hair was carefully combed and her makeup was fresh. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise, Rabbi Small,” she said and held out her hand. “You’ll join us in a drink? I was just fixing Manhattans.”

“That will do very nicely,” said the rabbi with a grin.

“I can’t help thinking,” said the rabbi, as she left to prepare them, “that on the few occasions I have called on you it always starts with a drink-”

“Spirits for the spiritual, Rabbi.”

“Yes, but when you dropped in on me, I always offered you tea.”

“At the rate I was coming around it was just as well,” said Lanigan. “Besides, I was usually on business, and I don’t drink during business hours.”

“Tell me, were you ever drunk?”

The chief stared at him. “Why, of course. Haven’t you ever been?”

The rabbi shook his head. “And didn’t Mrs. Lanigan mind?”

Chief Lanigan laughed. “Gladys has been kind of high herself on occasion. No, why would she mind? It isn’t as though I’ve ever been really blind drunk. Always it’s been on some special occasion where it’s kind of expected. Why? What are you getting at?”

“I have just been to see Mrs. Hirsh-”

“Ah-hah.”

“And I’m just trying to understand. Her husband was an alcoholic, and that’s something I haven’t had much experience with. We Jews don’t run to alcoholism.”

“That’s true, you don’t. I wonder why.”

The rabbi shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. The Chinese and the Italians also have low incidences of alcoholism, yet none of us are teetotalers. As far as Jews are concerned, all our holidays and celebrations involve drinking. At the Passover feast, everyone is expected to drink at least four glasses of wine. Even the young children partake. It’s sweet, but the alcoholic content is there nonetheless. You can get drunk on it, but I can’t remember any Passover when anyone did. Maybe the very fact that we do not forbid it enables us to enjoy it in moderation. For us, it doesn’t carry the joys of forbidden fruits.”

“In France, I understand, they drink wine as freely as water, but they have a lot of alcoholism there.”

“That’s true. I don’t suppose there’s any single explanation. There are certain similarities among the three groups that do encourage speculation. All have a strong family tradition that might provide a sense of security other people may look for in alcohol. The Chinese, especially, feel about their elders somewhat as we do. You know, we have a saying that other people boast of the beauty of their women; we boast of our old men.”

“Well, that might apply to the Italians, too-respect for elders, I mean, although they seem to lean more toward the mother than the father. But how does that help?”

“Simply that the embarrassment of being seen drunk might act as a deterrent in societies where elders are greatly revered.”

“Possible,” Lanigan said judiciously.

“But there’s another explanation-and here we share a similarity with the Chinese. Their religion, like ours, emphasizes ethics, morals, and good behavior; and like us they attach less importance to faith than you Christians. This helps to keep us from being guilt-ridden.”

“What’s faith got to do with it?”

“In Christianity, it’s the key to salvation. And faith is not easy to maintain at all times. To believe is to question. The very act of affirming implies a doubt.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We don’t have that much control of our minds. Thoughts come unbidden-unpleasant thoughts, awful thoughts-and if you believed that doubt could lead to damnation, you’d be apt to feel guilty a good part of the time. And one place you might find solace would be in alcohol.”

Lanigan smiled easily. “Yes, but any mature, intelligent person knows how the mind works and discounts it.”

“Any intelligent, mature person, yes. But how about the immature?”

“I see, so you think one reason Jews don’t become alcoholics is because they don’t have guilt feelings?”

“It’s a theory. I’m just speculating idly while waiting for a drink.”

“Gladys,” Lanigan bawled. “What are you doing in there? The rabbi is dying of thirst.”

“Coming.”

She appeared with a tray of glasses and a pitcher. “You can replenish your glass whenever you’ve a mind to, Rabbi.”

“And how about Isaac Hirsh?” asked Lanigan as he raised his glass in silent toast to his guest. “As I understand it, he didn’t have any interest in the Jewish religion, let alone the Christian.”

“But he may have felt guilt. At least so thinks his superior, a Dr. Sykes. He suggested he may have become an alcoholic because of the work he did on the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

“That so? And how are you involved? Was Hirsh a member of your congregation?”

“No, but his widow thought he should be buried in our cemetery.”

“I think I’m beginning to see. You’re wondering if it really was an accident, or if it was suicide. You people have the same attitude toward suicide that we have-I mean as far as burial is concerned?”

“Not quite. In a sense, our practice is similar to yours. The suicide is not publicly mourned, no eulogy is said, and he is supposed to be buried off to one side rather than in the main part of the cemetery. But your church is a large authoritarian organization-”

“And what difference would that make?”

“Just that there’s a sort of hierarchy, a chain of command that tends to keep the rules of the church uniform.”

“And you are your own boss. Is that it?”

“Something like that. At least no religious body passes on my decision.”

“So if the rabbi is easygoing and soft-hearted-”

“He still has his own integrity to live up to,” said the rabbi firmly. “But apart from that, the philosophical basis for our disapproval of suicide is somewhat different from yours, and that in itself permits greater flexibility.”

“How so?”

“Well, the attitude of your church is that each and every one of us was put on this earth to fulfill some divine purpose, and life is essentially a test to determine an individual’s eventual destination-Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. So the man who takes his own life is in a sense dodging the test and flouting God’s will. For us, on the other hand, life on this earth is the sum total of man’s destiny. But we hold that man was created in God’s image, and hence to destroy himself is to commit a sort of sacrilege by destroying God’s image.

“At the same time, we do not condemn the man who is driven to suicide by reason of insanity or by great pain, grief, or mental anguish. In the Old Testament, there are several suicides whose memories we still honor. Samson for one. He pulled down the pillars of the Philistine temple, you remember. That could be defended on the grounds that it not only killed him but large numbers of Philistines who were the enemy. In a sense, then, his could be regarded as death on the battlefield. King Saul is another example, a more clear-cut case perhaps. After the death of his sons in battle and realizing he was likely to be captured by the enemy, he asked his armor-bearer to run him through with his sword. When he refused, Saul thrust the sword into his bosom with his own hand. Here it has been argued that the suicide was justified on the ground that if he had been captured, the enemy would have made a mockery of him which would have brought great shame and dishonor to the Jewish nation. Then too, there was the certainty his men would have tried to recapture him and that many would have died as a result. So his death could be regarded as a sacrifice to save the lives of his people.

“Martyrdom is really a form of suicide even though the actual blow is not dealt by one’s own hand. And starting with Hannah and her seven sons, all of whom died rather than bow down to Greek idols as recorded in Maccabees of the Apocrypha, we have had a long record of martyrdom. It is referred to, in fact, as kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of the Name. Not all the rabbis were in agreement on the matter. Maimonides, for example, held that it was justifiable to pay lip service to false gods to save one’s life. But the general consensus was that there were worse things than suicide; that where a man had to choose between killing himself and killing another, suicide was preferable. So, too, with the woman forced to transgress the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’; rather than permit herself to be ravished, a woman should commit suicide.

“These attitudes still prevail today. Look at the enormous pride the modern State of Israel, an Orthodox theocracy if you please, takes in the reconstructed fortress of Masada, where, according to Josephus, some nine hundred Jewish defenders were besieged and with-stood the might of the Roman armies for several years and then committed suicide en masse rather than be captured and enslaved.”

“But if you condone suicide when a man is not in his right mind or when driven to it, what’s left?” Lanigan asked. “It seems to me that that would include just about every suicide.”

“Well, it certainly gives us a lot of leeway,” the rabbi admitted. “But I don’t think you’d find many rabbis who would approve of the Japanese practice of hara-kiri, where it is considered proper to take one’s life because of some fancied dishonor to one’s house or loss of face. Nor would we condone the old Indian practice of suttee where a wife, to show her loyalty, throws herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.”

“How about those Buddhist monks who set fire to themselves in Viet Nam? We’ve even had a couple such cases here.”

The rabbi nodded thoughtfully. “That would pose quite a problem. My guess is that most modern rabbis would dodge the issue by considering it a form of insanity; on the other hand, a stickler for the rules might treat it as a bona fide suicide on the grounds that it presumed a sound mind and was being done knowingly, out of philosophical conviction.”

“Still, there are plenty of loopholes-enough certainly to include Hirsh.”

“Then you do think it was suicide: Why did you call it accidental death?”

“To answer your second question first, Rabbi, because we couldn’t prove it either way. So naturally we called it accidental death, which is kinder to his widow. Remember, suicide is a crime and we can’t go labeling a man a criminal with no definite or positive proof.”

“And my first question?”

“What was that?”

“I asked whether you thought it was suicide, setting proof aside.”

“No, Rabbi, I don’t. You tell someone that a man was found dead of carbon monoxide in his garage and the first thing that comes to mind is suicide. But actually, there are plenty of accidental deaths from carbon monoxide. It’s pretty tricky stuff. A few years back, a couple of kids parked their car, a leaky old rattrap of a jalopy, right up here near Highland Park. They were just planning on a little fancy necking, but it was midwinter and cold so they kept the motor running to stay warm. The stuff seeped through the car and we found them both dead. It happens all the time. A man goes into the garage to tinker with his car. It’s cold, so he keeps the garage closed and passes out. If he’s not found in time, he’s dead.

“Another thing. You wouldn’t think so in a town of this size, but in my time I have seen quite a few suicides. Most of them, curiously enough, are apt to be young people. But there have been grown-ups too. The grown-ups almost always leave a note of some kind. The kids don’t for some reason. Maybe they’re just trying to make their folks feel sorry. You know that poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Rabbi? ‘Richard Cory’? About this young fellow who had everything and then for some reason put a bullet through his brain? A bachelor might do that, but somebody who has a family, they usually leave a note.”

“Is that your only reason? That Hirsh left no note?”

“There’s another reason, although it wouldn’t be much good in a court of law. This is a heavy drinking town. We’ve got a lot of pretty rich people with idle time on their hands, and they drink. Then we’ve got a lot of high-strung executive types who are busy raising ulcers-and they tend to drink more than is good for them. And finally, we have a bunch of fishermen, and they know what to do with a bottle. Well, I’ve never known a heavy drinker, what is apt to be called an alcoholic these days, I’ve never known one of them to commit suicide. I once asked a psychiatrist who was down here for the summer why that was. And do you know what he said? He said they don’t commit suicide because they’re already doing it. According to him, these alcoholics are really suicides who are doing it the long way. Does that make sense to you, Rabbi?”

“Why, yes, I can understand that. But how about legal proof? Anything?”

“Well, except for the absence of the note and the fact Hirsh was drunk, there’s nothing definite. It’s the drinking that tips the scales with me. A man taking his life usually does so with a clear head. My experience is that in that last final step he’s not thinking about chickening out, because he has thought it through and made up his mind that this is the logical-the only-thing to do.

“Now you look at the facts leading up to his drunk, and they certainly don’t seem the pattern of a man determined to commit suicide. In fact, it seems all a grotesque accident.

“When Mrs. Hirsh called in that her husband was missing, we notified the State Police as well as various police departments hereabouts to be on the lookout. A State Police cruising car remembered seeing a car matching the description parked on Route 128 at one of the turnouts not far from the Goddard Lab. So they drove over, and the car was gone. But they found a ball of rumpled paper and cardboard-the wrapper from a vodka bottle. It had a gift card enclosed and was addressed to a party who lives right across the street from Hirsh. A little routine police work showed that the bottle had been delivered after the Levensons-that was the party-had gone off to the temple. The driver asked Hirsh if he would sign for it and give it to the Levensons, and Hirsh agreed.”

“I see.”

“Now, he wouldn’t have taken the wrapper off just to look at the bottle. He must have taken an experimental drink or two. In fact, why else would he have pulled up at the turnoff? He must have started for the lab, and stopped at the turnoff for a drink, then decided to go home and do a good job of it. As a matter of fact, it might explain his drinking in the first place. He wouldn’t go out and buy a bottle-he was trying to keep off the stuff. But receiving a bottle out of the blue, you might say-getting it on the eve of the Holy Day, too-well, I can see where he might regard it as almost foreordained.”

“I doubt if even a devout believer, and I don’t suppose Hirsh was, would think of a bottle of vodka as having been sent by the Almighty,” said the rabbi with a smile. “But, in any case, in your view, the weight of the evidence is on the side of accidental death.”

“Well, that’s the way it seemed to us. But keep in mind we naturally preferred that finding to suicide. Of course the insurance company is likely to look at the picture a little differently.”

“Oh? Have they made inquiries?”

“No, not yet,” Lanigan said, “but they will, they will.”