Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Chester Kaplan's closest friend in Barnard's Crossing was Al Muntz, even though the doctor was openly and argumentatively agnostic, they visited back and forth regularly, informal evenings in which the wives tended to talk together of clothes and cooking while the two men argued about the larger concerns of politics and religion.

Afterward, Kaplan might say to his wife, "I don't know how a smart guy like Al Muntz can be so dumb about everything except his own little speciality. Did you hear what he said about my going to the temple every moming?"

And at the Muntz household, Mrs. Muntz might say, "Gee, Al, why do you always argue with Chet, and always about religion? I think he was hurt by what you said about his going to the minyan."

"I said it because of what he said, he started it. If he says something that my common sense tells me is just plain superstitious nonsense, am I supposed to just sit there and say nothing?"

Tuesday evening, before they set out for their dinner data with the Kaplans. Mrs. Muntz adjured her husband, as she always did, not to spend the evening arguing about religion.

"Hell, religion is his bag, not mine. I don't talk about it, he does."

"Well, you don't have to answer."

"Sure. I'll just sit there like a dummy and nod my head."

And when they left their car and walked up the path to the front door, she reminded him, "Now, let's keep it light and pleasant. Let's have one evening without arguments."

"All right, all right."

And to be sure, all through dinner, under the watchful eye of his wife, Muntz resolutely refused every gambit offered by his host that might have led to argument. Even after dinner, when the women were in the kitchen loading the dishwasher, and Kaplan began to expatiate on the wondrous calm and peace of the weekend at the retreat, the doctor agreed that it certainly was nice up there. But, when encouraged, Kaplan went on to describe the positive physical benefits that some had experienced, the doctoa could not help remark. "I'm willing to believe that Joe Gottlieb's sinuses may have stopped bothering him— temporarily— but don't try to tell me that God did it. Just don't try."

"I didn't say it was God," Kaplan said stiffly. "I merely said that he felt his head clear up right after the first period of meditation, and that it stayed clear all through the weekend."

"So what? I bet it's happened plenty of times, a lot of that is psychosomatic, and if you can kind of switch your mind off— Hell, it sometimes happens if you go to a movie or get absorbed in a book. But it doesn't last. Or, if it does, then you develop some other symptom. If you're trying to peddle this retreat as a cure for what ails you—"

"I am not trying to peddle anything," said Kaplan. "I merely gave Joe Gottlieb as an example of the sort of thing that can happen when you succeed in shutting out the everyday world and concentrate on higher things, that's essentially the meaning and the effect of the Sabbath."

"So we've got the Sabbath, weVe had it for a couple of thousand vears. Whv do you suddenly have to go off in the woods to celebrate it?"

"That's just the point." said Kaplan eagerly. "An institution that's as old as the Sabbath tends to become just a matter of form, the substance evaporates. It's the same with prayers, the people who wrote them, and maybe for some time after, they really prayed just as they honored the Sabbath, and maybe while Jews lived in the close-knit community of the ghetto, and their lives were hard, they were able to retain the initial enthusiasm for prayer and the Sabbath, to really feel their meaning. I know when my father spoke of the Sabbath in the old country his eyes would light up as though it was a wonderful experience he was remembering. But nowadays, we just go through the motions, the prayers don't mean anything, and the Sabbath doesn't mean anything, especially here in America. So they have just become rituals, and because they don't mean anything, they don't have any effect on our lives, that's why it's necessary to go off into the woods, to a new place, to start all over again to recapture their essence."

"But why now, Chet? It was just as true ten years ago and twenty years ago."

"Because it's in the air, the young people sense it and show it in their dissatisfaction with the old ways, they are searching for something new, the time is ripe. You probably feel it too, but you won't admit it to yourself. Tell me, why did you vote to buy the retreat, if deep down—"

"Hell. I voted for it because you presented it as a sort of package deal: sell the Goralsky property and buy this place up-country. I'm all in favor of selling the Goralsky property because I know that if the temple retained it, the place would just go downhill and be worth less next year than it is this year and even less the year after, an institution can't manage commercial property, not even a bank can. Besides. Bill Safferstein was giving us a crazy price for it, maybe half again what it's worth on the market today. So I'd be a fool not to vote to sell it, as for the place up in New Hampshire, I figured we were getting a pretty good deal on that, too, we might develop it into a sort of camp where members of the temple could go for a week or two in the summer, or even as a kids' camp. But as far as anything else is concerned, don't expect me to go along. My training has been scientific. I've got to have proof, hard, scientific, mathematical proof before I believe something."

"How about your own colleague. Dan Cohen? He came. Now you've got to admit he's had the same training you have. His attitude is as scientific as yours, isn't it?"

"Well, I'm not so sure, he's a G.P. Some of them get into all kinds of things. I've known some of them to give advice on family matters, even legal matters. But all right, let's say he is strictly scientific in his thinking. What about Dan?"

"Have you talked to him?" Kaplan asked. "Since he went on the retreat. I mean?"

"As a matter of fact, no. I’ve been kind of busy the last few days, and we just didn't happen to get together. Why, what did he say?"

"I saw him Sunday afternoon, and he was positively euphoric. When I asked him how he'd enjoyed the retreat, he grinned from ear to ear and said it was a tremendous experience, he felt it might have changed his whole life. How about that?"

"Well..."

"Go on," Kaplan taunted him. "Go on and talk to him. You'll see what he says."

"Well, because a man has had scientific training doesn't mean he's going to be scientific all the time." said Muntz lamely.