Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Lounging in the doorway of the kitchen watching Miriam putter, the rabbi said. "How would you like to take a long drive in the country to look at the foliage?"

"With the children? Hepsibah gets carsick."

"Not with the children. Just the two of us. Can you get Sandy to baby-sit for the afternoon?"

"She's coming tonight, David, we're due at the Berasteins. Remember?"

"Oh yes, well, maybe she'd be willing to come for the whole day. Why don't you call her?"

Sandy was willing. So, with a plastic bag of sandwiches, fruit and a thermos of coffee, the rabbi and Miriam started out.

"The foliage is probably as good around here as it is up-country right now," Miriam remarked.

"Sure, but I'd rather be up-country, we'll drive along the back roads and stop whenever we feel like it, then when we get hungry, we'll eat and then—"

"Are we going anyplace in particular, David?"

"No, just away."

"Any reason for running away?"

"I'm not running away. I just want to be away. I don't care to sit around chewing my nails waiting for the phone to ring or for a visit of a delegation from the board to tell me that they decided not to reconsider the vote to sell the Goralsky property."

"You think they'll vote against you?"

"I'm pretty sure of it."

"And what are you planning to do?" she asked anxiously.

He grinned. "I'm doing it right now. I'm not thinking about it, and we're not going to talk about it. Look at that maple."

It was a lovely sunny day with a blue sky and picture book clouds, and because they kept to the back roads, they encountered little traffic. Once, they stopped and watched the elaborate procedure of pulling a large boat out of the water for winter storage, at another place, they stopped in a small town to watch a football game, munching on their sandwiches as they sat in their car. For the most part, they rode, pointing out to each other things of interest, a view of the lake nestled in the hills, a majestic tree in spectacular red and gold, a herd of cows grazing on a grassy slope. When they saw a road that looked interesting, they turned into it and when they became bored with it, they branched off at the next turn.

"Do you have any idea where we are, David?" Miriam asked at one point.

"No, but we're traveling north— in a general sort of way." "How do you know?"

"By the sun, of course," he replied scornfully. "When you're used to facing east to recite your prayers, you develop a sense of direction."

"What if it's night time?"

"Then you can tell by the North Star."

"And if it's cloudy?"

"Oh, there are ways," he said airily. "You've no doubt heard of the chasidic rebbe of Chelm, the village of simpletons. It was easy for him, since he could perform miracles. Whichever way he faced when he recited his prayers automatically became east."

They stopped for gas and found out where they were. "It's time to turn around," he said, "if we want to get home before dark."

"Do you know what road to take?"

"No, but we'll just travel south now, we should get home around six."

To Miriam's surprise it was just six o'clock when they came in sight of the tower of Barnard's Crossing's Town Hall, the children, on their bellies on the living room rug, engrossed in the television screen, greeted them— as expected— perfunctorily. Miriam asked the usual questions of the baby-sitter. Did they behave? Did they eat well?

"They ate fine and they napped," Sandy assured her. "At least Hepsibah did, and Jonathan a little, and they've had their supper, there were quite a few phone calls, Rabbi, here's the list. Some wanted to know what time you'd be back."

"And what did you tell them?"

"I said I didn't know," said Sandy., "but sometime before eight, because I know you're going out for the evening."

"Good girl."

They had a snack, and then while Miriam readied the children for bed, the rabbi went to his study to recite the evening prayers, he had no sooner returned to the living room when the doorbell rang. It was Dr. Muntz.

"I phoned earlier and you weren't in," he explained, "but going by I saw your car."

"Come in, Doctor."

"Since you weren't at the meeting"— he chuckled— "by invitation. Chester Kaplan thought you ought to be notified."

"And he found it embarrassing to come in person because he had won and I had lost, so he sent you?"

Muntz laughed again. "Just about. Chet is a very sensitive guy, the vote was fifteen to five."

The rabbi nodded. "That's better than I expected."

"With some, maybe most, it was because they felt the sale was a good deal for the temple and they didn't want to lose it."

"A vote to reconsider didn't necessarily mean that the property could not then be sold, only that Aptaker would have been considered."

"Well." Al Muntz said, "there were others who felt that there was no consideration due him since he wasn't a member of the temple and hardly had any connection with the Jewish community, he doesn't care anything about us, so why should we go to any trouble about him, that was the attitude of some of the members. Even from your point of view, Rabbi, I don't think you should worry too much about Aptaker, the chances are he'd have to give up his store sooner or later anyway, he was getting mighty careless in filling out prescriptions, he balled one up for a patient of mine only a couple of days ago. Luckily., no harm was done, but there have been other cases. Now, how long before that gets around? Then who'll come to him to have a prescription filled, even if his license isn't revoked?"

"How could he have made a mistake in the last couple of days when he's been in the hospital for the last couple of weeks?" the rabbi protested.

"I mean I heard of it a couple of days ago," said the doctor. "It actually happened when Marcus Aptaker was still in his store." He recounted the events on the night of the big storm.

"And there was something the matter with those pills?"

"No, no, the pills Safferstein obtained the next day to replace the ones that had been in his coat pocket were all right, and his wife got better. But a couple of days ago he found the original bottle of pills, and he noticed they didn't look the same as the others, they were a different color from the refill pills. So naturally he was a little concerned. Which were the right ones? If his wife took the wrong pills was there danger of some aftereffect? You know how your mind runs on. So he called me, and I stopped off on my way home to look at them." Dr. Muntz paused to give dramatic effect to his words. "Rabbi, they were the wrong pills, they weren't what I'd ordered at all, the label was right, but the pills were wrong."

"And if Mrs. Safferstein had taken those pills?"

"Well, it so happens that nothing would have happened. But that's not the point, the point is that they were the wrong pills. Now, how many times can a druggist pull a stunt like that and continue to stay in business?"

"You told this to the board?" the rabbi asked.

"Oh no. If I told them, it would be all over town by the next day. I'm telling you because— well, because I know you won't spread it around, for one thing, and because you were so upset at the raw deal Aptaker got and kind of hinted you might resign. I thought you ought to have all the facts before you made up your mind, about resigning, I mean."

The rabbi looked at him in surprise. "Are you concerned whether I—"

"I wouldn't want you to resign."

"Strange." the rabbi mused. "I wouldn't have thought of you as—"

"As being on your side?" Muntz chuckled. "It's like this, Rabbi. Chet Kaplan is a good friend of mine, but on certain matters, he's a damn fool, he's so caught up with the retreat and religion that he can't think straight, well, I think the congregation needs you to counterbalance him."

"I see." The rabbi smiled. "You'd like me to continue as rabbi here because you're afraid I'd be replaced by a religious rabbi."

The doctor laughed. "It sounds funny put that way, but I think you know what I mean."

"Yes. I do. I just wonder if you do." "I don't understand." said Muntz.

"Well, most Jews, like people generally nowadays, have given very little thought to their religion. Nevertheless, they have a subconscious feeling for it, and sometimes, when they go at it with great enthusiasm, it is with little discrimination, and they're apt to get it all wrong, like Mr. Kaplan. So you're likely to find that his Judaism doesn't square with what you feel subconsciously. You see. Doctor, ours is an ethical religion, a way of life."

"Aren't they all?"

The rabbi pursed his lips. "Why, no. Christianity, for example, is a mystical religion."

"You mean that Christians are not ethical?"

The rabbi made a gesture of impatience. "Of course they are. But it is a secondary thing with them. What is enjoined on them primarily is faith in the Man-God Jesus, and their ethics are derived from the principle that if they believe in Jesus as the Son of God and their Saviour, then they will try to emulate him and hence will behave ethically, there is also the belief, common among the evangelical sects, that if you truly believe, 'if you let Jesus come into your life' is the usual formula, ethical behavior will come automatically, and sometimes it works." He cocked his head to one side and considered, then he nodded vigorously. "Sure. If you have your thoughts on heaven, you are less likely to covet the things of this world. Your foot may slip occasionally, of course, but not as much as it would if that were all you had to think about. On the other hand, you might get to thinking that any fancy that flits through your mind is the word of God.

"With us, however, faith in the Christian sense is almost meaningless, since God is by definition unknowable. What does it mean to say I believe in what I don't know and can't know? Theoretically, Christianity has the same view of God, which is why His Son was born on earth and lived as a man. Because being a man, he could be known. But we don't share this belief. Our religion is a code of ethical behavior, the code of Moses, the Torah, is a set of rules and laws governing behavior, the prophets preached ethical behavior, and the rabbis whose discussion and debates form the Talmud were concerned with spelling out in meticulous detail just how the general rules of behavior were to be implemented. I might mention in passing, that's why we have done so little proselytizing over the years. Because we have nothing to sell; no secrets, no magic formula, no ceremonial initiation that will open the gates of heaven. When a Christian comes to me for conversion, as they do now and again, that's what I tell them, because, of course, we have nothing to offer except our ethics and our way of life, and if he says that's what he's interested in, that he'd like to share it, I tell him to go ahead, there's nothing to prevent him, that with us the ethical Gentile stands as high before God as does the High Priest of Israel."

"You mean that's all there is to our religion? Only ethics?"

"That would be all if we were robots with minds programmed by a computer. But since we are human, with all the normal human failings and imperfections, we need rites and symbols and ceremonials to remind us and to combine us into a cohesive group, also, some of us learn better that way, and because we remember, our history and our traditions take on importance. But it is our ethics that is the basis of our religion."

"But you do convert sometimes, don't you?"

The rabbi nodded. "Yes. Conversion usually is involved with marriage to a Jew, there are practices and ceremonials, tribal customs really, which implement and ingrain our ethical ideas, and conversion is largely adoption into the tribe, the convert takes a new name and it is as though he were born a Jew. But that's quite different from conversion to one of the mystical religions."

"But there have been Jewish mystics, haven't there?" Muntz objected. "I was reading—"

"Oh yes." the rabbi interrupted impatiently. "The Essenes, the Dead Sea community, the Kabbalists, the Sabbatean movement, and I might add. Christianity, all were mystical movements in Judaism. But we sloughed them off, because from the point of view of traditional, central Judaism, they are errors. Only Chasidism has persisted, and that's because their mysticism is in addition to their adherence to traditional ethics and the Jewish customs which reflect and symbolize them, the chasidic legends of wonder-working rebbes are so much superstitious nonsense. But the chasidic rebbe who is most revered is the one whose charitable way of life, whose concern for people, made him a saint."

Rabbi Small leaned forward. "I don't deny the validity of mystical experience. It's just that my bent is not in that direction. Perhaps it is a failing in me. But in the present case, we are breaking a Talmudic law which is clearly ethical, and peculiarly Jewish, I might add, in order to promote not religion but religiosity. You suggest that Mr. aptaker is not worthy of our concern. But how about Mr. Goralsky?"

The phone rang, and the rabbi picked up the receiver, as he listened his face grew grave. Finally, he said, "All right, I'll be right down." He turned to the doctor. "I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me."