Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

Chapter Nine

Nice sermon. Ted.” said Meyer Paff. Most of the congregation had already filed out of the sanctuary to go down to the vestry, where a collation had been prepared. Paff, standing athwart the middle aisle, had waited for Brennerman and Gorfinkle, who were making their way from the pulpit.

“Did you really like it?” asked Brennerman eagerly, too eagerly.

“Sure, I liked it fine.” Paff said in his deep rumble. “All through it I was thinking—here we’re paying the rabbi a big salary. For what? To give sermons mostly. The rest of his job—making little speeches to the Bar Mitzvahs, marrying people, visiting the sick—we could have the cantor do it or the president. The one thing was the sermons. And now you prove that any fresh young punk can do just as well.”

“Now look here—”

“This is no place to pick a fight, Meyer,” said Gorfinkle quietly.

“Who’s fighting?” Several tailenders of the congregation filing out stopped to listen. “Would I fight in the sanctuary? Believe me. I wasn’t brought up that way. I’d as soon get up in the pulpit and insult one of the members.”

“Insult? Who was insulted?” asked Gorfinkle.

“I don’t know. Maybe Doc Edelstein. He doesn’t favor the temple getting into politics. I doubt he cared much for being called an idol worshiper. Or maybe he doesn’t know any better. He always thought he was a good Jew. He helped start this place and gave a lot of money to get it going. My friend Irving Kallen, he wasn’t here tonight, but he gave a lot of money, too, for this temple. And maybe you don’t know it but the Kallen Family Fund has made a contribution to the NAACP for years. But Irv Kallen never suggested that because he wanted to. I had to.

“You are talking about some of the seats that have little nameplates on them. I don’t suppose you happened to notice, but on that stand you were talking from and on the reader’s desk behind you and on the very chair you were sitting on, there was a little brass plate telling that it was contributed by the Kallen Family Fund, all the pulpit furniture, including the ark and the public address system you were talking through. Maybe he wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to give it if he had known some young wise guy was going to use it to call him a worshiper of the golden calf.”

“Money isn’t everything.” said Gorfinkle, “and it doesn’t give you the right—”

“Sure. I know money isn’t everything. Some people can talk and make speeches instead. I didn’t go to college like you boys. I grew up in the streets, but I learned a couple of things there. One was talk is cheap. And when some wise guy would sound off about something he claimed to know for sure, we would say. ‘Put your money where your mouth is.’”

“Well, let me tell you—”

“I just want to ask you one question. Ted. It’s about your sermon. I’m not going to ask you what the purpose of it was. That was pretty clear: The temple is growing; it’s getting too big for the both of us. Maybe you think it would be better for all concerned if you cut it down some in size.”

“I didn’t—”

“No. what I want to ask you is, in your sermon, in laying down the law the way you did, did you think of yourself as Moses? Or God?”