Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

Chapter Sixteen

“So then he says. ‘I’m going to pass out copies of the new committees. I’ll ask you to take these sheets home with you so that you can study them at your leisure, and then at the next meeting three weeks hence we can vote intelligently on confirmation.” Malcolm Marks had been unconsciously mimicking the president. Now he resumed his normal tone. “And he passes out these mimeographed sheets, and I’m watching Meyer Paff. He’s got his on the table in front of him, and he’s reading the lists, sliding his finger on the page down the list and kind of making noises in his throat like he’s pronouncing the names. And then he gets to Roger Epstein’s name as chairman of the Ritual Committee, and I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”

“But why should he be so upset?” asked his wife. “He must have known that Ben Gorfinkle wasn’t going to reappoint him.”

Marks made no attempt to hide his impatience. “Of course not. But Roger Epstein, for God’s sake!”

The telephone rang. “I’ll take it.” called their daughter Betty from another room. And a moment later. “It’s for me.”

“Well, what’s wrong with Roger Epstein?”

“With Roger Epstein as a person, maybe nothing. In fact, he’s a very idealistic type who carries the whole world on his shoulders. But this is the Ritual Committee. You take the Building Fund Committee or the Membership Committee or even the High Holy Day Seating Committee, which all are important committees. Okay, Roger’s fine and dandy. But strictly speaking, for the Ritual you should have not only a real pious type, I mean one who don’t work on Saturdays and eats strictly kosher, but somebody who knows all about the rules of ritual. He’s got to be practically a rabbi, strictly speaking. All right, we don’t have too many like that. Maybe Jake Wasserman, but offhand I can’t think of anybody else to speak of.”

“So if nobody can do it, what’s wrong with Roger Epstein?”

“Well, it’s not exactly that nobody can do it. The point I’m making is that if you haven’t got the type person who should be chairman of Ritual, you got to at least get somebody who, on the surface at least, seems okay. Now,

Meyer Paff, maybe he doesn’t know so much, but he keeps a kosher house—”

“Pooh! That’s only because his mother-in-law lives with them, and she wouldn’t eat there if they didn’t have two sets of dishes. He couldn’t let her starve to death, could he?”

“That’s what I’m saying. It don’t matter if he really believes in it, so long as he does it. That’s what I mean by on the surface.”

“All right. So what happened?” his wife asked. “What do you mean?”

“When Paff saw that Roger Epstein was made chairman of the Ritual Committee. What happened already? What did he do? What did he say?”

“Nothing!” said her husband triumphantly.

She looked at him in amazement. “So what’s the big shpiel? What’s the excitement?”

“Don’t you see? Paff has been the big wheel in the temple ever since it was built. He’s never been president, but he’s always been a power behind the throne. So Friday night Ted Brennerman gives him a ribbing right out in public. And don’t tell me that Gorfinkle didn’t know what Ted was planning. And from what I hear—we were down in the vestry at the time, so we missed it—Paff catches Ted up in the sanctuary, and he really lays him out in lavender. That’s round one.” He rotated a hand. “Mezzo, mezzo. Call it a draw; Paff gave it to Ted a lot harder than Ted gave it to him, but on the other hand, only a few people heard Paff, and everybody heard Ted. Yeah, I guess you could call it a draw.

“All right, round two. Gorfinkle doesn’t let it lay; he comes out fighting. He says like, ‘Make your play, Paff. Go for your gun. I’m not afraid of you. And I’m proving it by appointing my friend Roger Epstein to be chairman of Ritual, which not only you used to be chairman of and which, moreover, is a very special job that I wouldn’t normally appoint Epstein to on account of his background, but I’m doing it right now, the first chance I got after Friday, just to show you who’s boss. So put up or shut up.’”

“So he shut up.”

“Not Meyer Paff. He don’t give up that easy, and he don’t back away from a fight. He just gets on his bicycle and goes in for a little fancy footwork to keep out of the way of Gorfinkle’s reach so he can save his strength for the next round. The talk after the meeting was that he would line up his gang and either try to take over the town or bum it down.”

“What do you mean bum it down? You mean he’d bum the temple?”

“Of course not. That’s what they call a figure of speech.” he said loftily. Then he lowered his voice. “Some people I talked to said they wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled out of the temple and started one of his own.”

“Over appointing Roger Epstein head of the Ritual Committee?”

“That and other things.” said Marks defensively. “This thing has been building a long time.”

She looked at him. “So where does that leave you?”

“That’s just it. I’m like betwixt and between. I was appointed by Schwarz, and I got another year to go on my term. Ben Gorfinkle and Roger Epstein and the rest I’m kind of friendly with, but on the other hand. I’m friendly with Meyer Paff s gang, too. After all, if God forbid somebody needed an operation, we’d call Doc Edelstein, wouldn’t we? So I can go either way. And my guess is both sides will be pulling for my vote.”

Their daughter. Betty, sauntered into the room. She was short like both her parents. Her long blond hair was parted on one side and hung straight down over her shoulders, although one strand was looped over her ear with a barrette and pushed forward to partially conceal her left eye. Where the hair was parted, one could see a trace of dark hair, suggesting it was time for another color rinse. Her innocent dark eyes were made knowing with eye shadow and a thin line of darker coloring that edged the lids. Her breasts pushed aggressively against her sweater, and her little rump rotated suggestively as she walked.

Her mother looked up in automatic question.

“A bunch of the kids are having a cookout tomorrow evening, at Tarlow’s point.” she explained. “That was Didi Epstein. She wanted to know if I could make the scene.”

Mr. Marks shot a significant glance at his wife, but she appeared not to notice. “Did you say you would go. dear?”

“I guess so. She said Stu Gorfinkle would pick me up—around five tomorrow.”

“Did Didi say who else was going to be there?” asked her mother.

“Sue Arons and Gladys Shulman and Bill Jacobs and I think Adam Sussman—you know, the kids who have been away to college and are back for the vacation.”

“It’s a lovely idea,” said her mother. “It’ll be nice to see all your old friends again.”

When she left the room. Mr. Marks said. “See, it’s started already.”

“What’s started already?”

“Buttering us up. All the time she was in high school they never gave her a tumble—that Epstein girl and the Gorfinkle boy, they always acted as though she wasn’t good enough for them.”

“That’s ridiculous. Didn’t she go to Didi Epstein’s for the after-prom breakfast last year?”

“Sure, the whole senior class was invited.”

“Well, you’re wrong. They started making up to her before that—when she was accepted at Connecticut College for Women. She got more brains in her little finger, let me tell you—and they know it. That Stu Gorfinkle was turned down by all the schools he applied to, and he had to go to his fallback. Mass State. And Didi ended up at an art school in Boston, for God’s sake, and she was so sure she was going to Wellesley because her mother was an alma mater there. And that little Sussman pipsqueak. I remember his mother distinctly telling the girls at her table at a Sisterhood lunch that her son had applied to Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. So he ends up at a dinky little college out in Ohio that nobody ever heard of.”

“All right, all right, but you mark my words—”

The telephone rang. “It’s for you, Dad,” Betty called out.

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Paff.”

Mr. Marks favored his wife with a triumphant smirk and left the room to answer the phone.