Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

CHAPTER FIFTY

The morning traffic was heavier than usual and the rabbi did not find a parking spot until a few minutes after nine. By the time he reached his office, it was ten minutes past, he was quite certain that his students had already left, but he hurried nevertheless on the chance that a few might have waited. To his surprise, when he reached the classroom he found the normal complement of students.

"There was a breakdown on the bridge,” he explained by way of apology, "and traffic was single lane all the way."

"Oh, that's all right Rabbi," said Harvey Shacter magnanimously. "We voted to wait until a quarter past."

"That was very considerate of all of you." said the rabbi, he smiled. "It shows perhaps you have begun to acquire the traditional Jewish attitude toward learning and study."

"You mean we got a special one?" asked Shacter."Of course." said his friend Luftig scornfully. "Get A's and make honors or Phi Bete."

"No. Mr. Luftig, that's not it" said the rabbi. "Quite the contrary; in fact, the rabbis held that learning should not be used as a spade to dig with, by which they meant that it should not be put to practical or material use. Learning and study are with us a religious duty, and hence not competitive, a's, honors, Phi Beta Kappa— these are the rewards of competition."

"So if you're not going to get any practical benefit, what's the sense?" asked Shacter."Because the desire for knowledge, knowledge for its own sake, is what distinguishes man from the lower animals, all animals have an interest in practical knowledge— where the best food supplies may be found, the best places to hide or bed down— but only man goes to the trouble of trying to learn something merely because he does not as yet know it, the mind of man yearns for knowledge as the body yearns for food, and that learning is for himself alone, just as is the food he eats."

"So you mean it's not kosher if a guy studies to be a doctor or a lawyer?" asked Shacter."He means he's not supposed to get money for it." said Mazelman."No. Mr. Mazelman, that's not what I mean, the learning one acquires to become a doctor or a lawyer, or a carpenter or a plumber for that matter, is of a different kind. It is practical learning for the purpose of society, and we favor that kind of learning, too, there is also a rabbinical saying that a father who does not teach his son a trade is making a thief of him. So you see, there are two kinds of learning: one for yourself and the one for society."

"What a doctor or a lawyer learns, isn't that for himself?" asked Lillian Dushkin.

"It feeds his mind, to be sure; everything one learns does that. But primarily he is training himself to serve society, a doctor does not learn about all kinds of sicknesses just to cure himself. Certain branches of medicine don't apply to himself at all, such as obstetrics—"

"They apply to women doctors."

"You're quite right. Ms. Draper." acknowledged the rabbi. Luftig was struck by a thought. "If there are two kinds of learning, shouldn't there be two kinds of teaching, too?"

The rabbi considered this. "That's a good point. Mr. Luftig. Professional study should be relevant. I don't see any sense in teaching medieval church law to the law student or the humours theory of disease to a medical student."

"Shouldn't all study be relevant?" asked Luftig.

"Why? Why should that matter in liberal arts study? There, anything that interests you— and it could be medieval church law or Latin epigraphy for that matter— is worth studying. Or to put it another way, in liberal arts study everything is relevant."

"Then how do you justify quizzes?" asked Mark Leventhal. "Aren't you breaking your own rules by giving us grades?"

"Yes. I suppose I am. But I have to follow the regulations of the school."

"What would you do if you had your way?" Leventhal persisted. The rabbi thought a moment. "Well, since you receive credit toward an earned degree. I'd have to distinguish between those who made a proper effort and those who didn't. So I'd just have two marks— pass and fail, and I'd try to devise an examination that would indicate interest rather than just information."

"How could you do that?"

"I don't know offhand. I suppose you might have the choice of answering all the questions, or just a few, or even one at great length."

"Hey, that's a good idea."

"Right on. Why don't we do it that way?"

"Maybe the other teachers—"

"Hey Rabbi, you going to teach next semester, too?"

It was one of numerous questions, but the class fell silent after Shacter asked it, as though it had been in all their minds.

"I have not arranged to." said the rabbi.

"Mavbe you could teach full— time." said Lillian Dushkin. He realized that the questions indicated their approval of him as a teacher, and it was pleasant to hear.

"Why would I want to do that. Miss Dushkin?" he asked. "Well, it must be a lot easier than rabbi-ing."

"Yeah, but you make less." Shacter pointed out. "Aw, he wouldn't care about that." Luftig countered.

"A rabbi is a teacher anyway," Leventhal pointed out. "That's what the word means."

It crossed his mind that earlier in the year he would have considered this free discussion of his future career impertinent, but he had come a long way since his first week of teaching. "You're quite right. Mr. Leventhal,” he said. "And you're right, too. Miss Dushkin, teaching is easier. But I intend to go on being a rabbi and ministering to a congregation." He looked out the window at the apartment across the street and saw what he assumed were plainclothesmen moving purposefully between the Hendryx apartment and a car parked in front of the building, he turned to the class once again and smiling wryly, he said. "As for teaching next semester. I'm not sure I'll even be able to finish this one."

Later, when the class was over and he was returning to his office. Mark Leventhal fell in step beside him. "You know. Rabbi, my folks want me to go to Cincinnati when I get through here, they'd like for me to become a rabbi."

"Is that so? And you, how do you feel about it?"

"Well, I was planning to go to graduate school and then get a job teaching at some college."

They reached the office and the rabbi fished for his key. "Do you have a class. Mr. Leventhal?"

"Yeah, but I'd just as soon cut it."

"Come in, then." He motioned the young man to the chair and took the swivel chair behind the desk. "Are you looking for advice as to which career to pursue?" he asked.

"Oh well, you know. I'd like to hear how you feel about it, you doing both, kind of."

The rabbi nodded. "It's changed, of course,” he said. "In the small ghetto towns of eastern Europe, which was the main center of Jewish culture, the rabbi was hired by the town, rather than by a synagogue, he was subsidized by the townspeople to spend most of his life in study, serving the community by sitting in judgment when the occasion required, he didn't conduct services or even preach sermons, he was required to address the community only twice a year, and usually it was not a sermon but a thesis on some religious or biblical question."

As he continued, he realized that he was talking as much to clarify his own thinking as to advise the young man. "He was usually highly respected by the congregation, if for no other reason than that he was the most learned man in the community in the only kind of learning they had— religious, biblical. Talmudic. But here in America, things are entirely different, he no longer sits in judgment, we go to the courts for that, and his special knowledge is no longer the only kind; it isn't even considered a very important kind by his congregation. Medicine, law, science, engineering— these are regarded as much more significant in the modern world and of course by his congregants."

"You mean he doesn't get the same respect he used to?"

The rabbi smiled. "You could say that, he's had to make his own job, and it's largely administrative and— well, political."

"Political?"

"That's right, and in two senses: he's usually the contact point between the congregation and the rest of the community; and he has to maintain himself in his position. Like any public figure, he always has an opposition to contend with." He remembered what Miriam had said. "But actually, although the job appears to have changed enormously, it's still the same job."

"How do you mean?"

"Basically, his job was to guide and teach the community, well, that's still his job, only now his community is less plastic, less docile, less interested, and even less inclined to be guided. It's much harder job than it used to be. Mr. Leventhal, and a much, much harder job than teaching in a college where your teaching is limited to a rigid framework of classes at specified times, quizzes, credits—"

"Well then, why would you choose the rabbinate over college teaching?" the young man demanded.

The rabbi smiled, for he now knew he had found his own answer. "We say it's hard to be a Jew, and it's even harder to be a rabbi. I suppose, who is a kind of professional Jew. But haven't you noticed in your own life. Mr. Leventhal, the harder the task, the more satisfaction there is in doing it?"