Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

Chapter Thirty-Seven

You bothered about something, lover?” asked Samantha as she sipped her coffee.

“Troubled? No. Why?”

“Well, you’ve been pretty quiet all evening.”

“Oh, I was just wondering how Ben made out with the rabbi.” said Roger Epstein. “I thought he might call and tell me about it.”

“Well, they were going to her sister’s in Lynn. Sarah mentioned it the other night when they were over. I suppose he just explained to him what the new policy of the temple was and told him that he expected him to go along with it.”

“That’s just the point. From what I’ve seen of him, the rabbi isn’t the sort of man you can just tell what to do.”

Samantha looked up from her glass. “You mean he’s stubborn?”

“No-o, not exactly stubborn. Maybe it’s just that he knows just what he believes. Most people don’t, you know. And he isn’t the sort to do something that he believes wrong.”

“But if Ben tells him—”

“All right, suppose he tells him and he refuses?”

“Well, gosh, doesn’t he have to go along with Ben? Or is there some Jewish law about it? I mean, he isn’t like a priest who is put in a parish by the bishop. You can ask him to leave, can’t you?”

“Yes, we can. And that’s what we agreed at the meeting. Ben was to spell it out for him, and if he refused to go along or if Ben decided that he wasn’t going to go along—we left it up to Ben to use his judgment—why then, he was to tell him that a motion would be brought up before the board calling for his resignation.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But I’ve been thinking about it, Sam, and I’m not so sure it was such a good idea. The way Ben explained it at the time, he could use the pulpit to help the opposition every chance he got—the Sabbath services, the community seder next week, there’ll be a lot of people attending that, the holiday services the following week—besides all kinds of people who come calling on him or who he sees, like the kids yesterday, which precipitated the whole business. If we couldn’t neutralize him, it would be better to fire him before he could do much damage. That was Ben’s view, and we all went along with it.”

“Well, it seems reasonable.”

“Maybe it is, but I can’t help feeling that maybe Ben exaggerated what the rabbi might do, and even more—” he hesitated.

“What?”

“I personally feel funny about it.”

“How do you mean, lover?”

“Well, here I am—new to this whole game. I became a member of the temple only a few years ago, partly because Ben Gorfinkle urged me and partly because I thought, as an institution, I could use it to further the things that mean a lot to me—the Social Action Fund, for example. But I’m still only a new man. Before that, I never entered a temple from one year to the next. And here I am, one of the group who’s laying down the law to the rabbi, even firing him maybe, and he’s been in it all his life.” He shook his head. “Well. I’m beginning to think it’s damn presumptuous of me.”