Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

Chapter Thirty

Harvey Kanter, Ben Gorfinkle’s brother-in-law, was ten years his senior. Although in private he was radical, atheistic, and irreverent, in public, as the managing editor of the Lynn Times-Herald, he was Republican, conservative, and a staunch defender of the status quo. He wrote editorials supporting book censorship, prayers in the schools, law and order in the cities, and attacked student rioting, the coddling of criminals, and the hippie movement. He was a tall, rangy man, with a shock of iron-gray hair brushed back impatiently. Everything about him was impatient. He was nervous, fidgety; he could not sit still; he either got up and paced the floor, or if he remained seated, he would slide forward to rest on the end of his spine or pull a leg under him or slouch around if the chair permitted it so that his head was on one arm and his legs on the other.

His attitude toward Gorfinkle tended to be mocking and derisive, and his wife, Edith, was also apt to be somewhat patronizing to her younger sister. Mrs. Gorfinkle. Nevertheless, the Gorfinkles came to dinner when they were invited, partly as a matter of habit and partly because in a perverse kind of way Ben Gorfinkle enjoyed the discussions.

After dinner the two men lounged into the living room while the women cleared the table and proceeded to wash the dishes. Kanter bit off the end of a cigar, and as he held a match to the end he said, “I heard your rabbi the other day. Did I tell you?”

“No.” said Gorfinkle cautiously. “When was that?”

“About a week ago. He was the speaker at the Chamber of Commerce meeting, save the mark.”

“I didn’t think you went to those.”

“Hell, the paper has to be represented, and I drew the short straw. Your man wasn’t bad.”

“What did he talk about?”

“Oh, the usual—the place of the temple in the modern world. Seems to me I’ve heard a dozen priests and ministers and such godly folk at one affair or another in the last six months, and all they talk about is the place of the church, or in this case the synagogue, in the modern world. I figure if they talk about it so much, it’s because it ain’t so, but your guy seemed to make some sense.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, the point of his talk, as I remember it. was that the modern civilized world was finally coming around to the positions that the synagogue had been preaching for a couple of thousand years or more—social justice, civil rights, rights of women, importance of learning. His idea was that finally, after nearly two thousand years, the Jewish religion was coming into style.”

“That’s very interesting.” said Gorfinkle. “I had a long talk with him—just before I came here, as a matter of fact. And it was about somewhat the same subject, but he took what I thought was the opposite point of view in his discussion with me. I guess there are some people who can take either side of the discussion, depending on how it suits them,” he added.

“He didn’t strike me as that type of man.” said Kanter quietly. “What happened?”

“Well, you know, as in any organization, we have two parties—mine and what you might call the opposition, which is headed by Meyer Paff. You know him.”

“Yeah. I know him.”

“Well, we want the temple to get active in various movements that are current—like civil rights, for one. Paff s bunch want to keep it a place where—you know—you just come to pray on the High Holidays or on Friday nights. And I found out that the rabbi was carrying on some pretty active propaganda for the Paff group. So I had it out with him.”

“And how did it end?”

“I told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t going to stand for it and that the group that I represented—and we’re a clear majority—weren’t going to stand for it.” He leaned forward in his chair. “You see, what he was doing was talking to the kids—telling them that we were in the wrong. He’s kind of popular with the kids, and he was planning to use them to influence their parents.”

“How did he take it?”

“Oh, he got on his high horse and said no one was going to tell him what to say, that he was the rabbi and he would decide what was proper for him to say and what wasn’t.”

“So?”

Gorfinkle was pleasantly conscious that he had captured his brother-in-law’s interest and that, for once, what he was about to say would startle him out of his customary superciliousness. He smiled. “So I told him that I’d had a meeting with a majority of the board prior to our little talk and that we had decided that if he refused to go along, at the next meeting a motion would be offered—and passed—calling for his resignation.”

“You fired him?”

He pursed his lips and canted his head to one side. “Just about.”

“Nothing personal, of course.”

“I flatter myself that I handled it pretty well.” said Gorfinkle with a smirk.

Kanter got up from his chair and strode across the room. He turned and glared down his long nose at his brother-in-law. “By God, you nice respectable people can blunder into a situation and foul it up to make the angels weep. You get elected president, and before you have a chance to warm your arse on the chair you start firing people.”

“An organization can’t go in two directions at the same time.” Gorfinkle protested. “If we’re going to make any progress—”

“Progress? Why the hell do you have to make progress? Do you think everything has a balance sheet that has to be matched against the balance of the previous year to show you’re going ahead? What the hell kind of progress does an institution that has lasted a couple of thousand years have to make?”

“If it’s to be a living institution—”

“It’s got to hop aboard the bandwagon, is that it? Civil rights, slum clearance, job opportunities—they’re all in style now and respectable, so all the bleeding-heart liberals and social democrats try to get in on the act. Faugh! You guys make me sick. When did you get to be so goddam liberal? How many blacks have you hired at Hexatronics?”

“I don’t do the hiring.”

“But of course you picket the office of the one who does.”

“I don’t notice any great liberalism in the policy of the Times-Herald, said Gorfinkle drily, “and you run that.”

“I run it for the owners. And I run it their way. Oh, I’m a prostitute, all right.” he added cheerfully. “Most newspaper men have to be. But I don’t fool myself. A prostitute yes, but no hypocrite.”

“Well. I have reason to believe that Rabbi Small is, which had something to do with my decision.” said Gorfinkle smugly.

“Doesn’t wrap his phylacteries properly? Wears his prayer shawl inside out?”

“I had no idea you were so concerned about rabbis and things religious.” said Gorfinkle.

“I’m not, and I hardly know your rabbi. I just don’t like to see people hurt.” He studied his brother-in-law for a moment. “And the effect on the congregation? Have you thought about that?”

Gorfinkle shrugged. “He really has no following, except maybe among the kids, and they don’t count. As a matter of fact, it was the congregation I was thinking of when I had this talk with him. Fact is.” he lowered his voice, “I was trying to prevent a serious split in the congregation. You see, there is this handful of dissidents—the old guard who are opposed to every aspect of our program. Well, they’ll either knuckle under or they’ll get out. If they leave, it doesn’t bother us too much; they’re just a couple of three dozen of them. But if we let the rabbi continue, he might stir up enough opposition so that we could lose a hundred or more. That would be serious.”

“So the strategy is to silence the opposition?”

“What’s wrong with that? Why should we furnish the opposition with a rostrum?”

“Because it’s democratic. The government does it.”

They argued long and frequently loudly; and when, quite late, the Gorfinkles finally prepared to depart, neither man had convinced the other. They said their goodbyes with formal politeness no different from the way any number of their discussions had ended in the past.

Five minutes after they had left, the phone rang and Harvey Kanter answered.

“Barnard’s Crossing Police Department. Sergeant Hanks speaking. May I speak to Mr. Benjamin Gorfinkle?”

“He’s just left.”

“Is he on his way home, sir?”

“Sure. I guess so. What’s this all about?”

“We’ll get in touch with him there.”

“Just a minute. I’m his brother-in-law. Harvey Kanter of the Times-Herald. Was there an accident? Was his place broken into?”

“No. Mr. Kanter, nothing like that.” And the sergeant hung up, leaving Kanter wondering uneasily what he should do.