Гарри Кемельман - Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

"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?"

Diffidently the rabbi rang the Hendryx bell. "Oh, it's you." Sergeant Schroeder said belligerently. "I’ve got some things to say to you."

"It will keep. Sergeant." said Bradford Ames. "Come in, Rabbi."

The room was ablaze with light from floodlamps mounted on collapsible stands, and several plainclothesmen were busy measuring, photographing, dusting for fingerprints, Ames explained that Hendryx's relatives from the West Coast were coming for his effects, so this was their last chance to give the place a final going over.

"How about the bureau? You want me to take some pictures of the drawers. Sergeant?" asked the photographer.

"Yeah, take each drawer. It'll give us a kind of inventory."

Ames motioned the rabbi to the bed. "Sit there. You'll be out of the way," he said. "I'm accepting your explanation on the Kathy Dunlop story, but I might as well tell you, your little investigation at the Excelsior Motel, well, that depends on what you came up with." He showed no anger, but his tone was distinctly cool.

The rabbi told them what he had learned— that no one at the Excelsior had seen Roger Fine and that the motel switchboard had been out of order that day. "So no one could have called him from outside."

Schroeder rubbed his hands. "Well, that's all right then, that's just fine."

Ames, too, smiled his satisfaction. In a more friendly voice, he explained. "You see, if it had been the other way, if there had been some chance of a possible alibi, then your inquiries could have fixed it in the person's mind, or even insinuated it there."

"I didn't really expect an alibi from Kathy's story," said the rabbi. "All she remembered was the time she called him at school, she did suggest that if Fine had just killed someone, however, he would scarcely be likely to visit her immediately after."

"And yet." said Ames, "there are cases reported in the literature of just that sort of thing, adds a certain zest to the lovemaking as I understand."

"Well." said the rabbi, "the next day I checked with Fine in jail on the chance there was something Kathy had overlooked, but he didn't want it known he had been with her at all, he said even if that offered a possible alibi he wouldn't use it. To see for myself whether Miss Dunlop's story was true. I decided to check with the motel people."

"I can follow your reasoning." Ames admitted, "but that phase of the inquiry should have been left to the police."

"Hey Sarge." the photographer called out. "this bottom drawer is empty."

Ames went over and the rabbi joined him, feeling he was not actually required to remain seated on the bed. "Hendryx probably used that bottom drawer for his soiled laundry," Ames said. "It's what I do when I'm staying in a hotel.»‘

«I don't think so, sir." said Schroeder. "There's a hamper in the bathroom."

"Then he probably didn't have enough stuff for that last drawer." said Ames.

"And yet the other drawers seem pretty full, even crowded." the rabbi offered.

"Is that so?" Ames chuckled. "It looks like we'll have to use that Talmud trick you told me about, and wait for— who was it, Elijah?— to come to solve that little problem."

"Talmudists didn't use it until they had exhausted all other possibilities." said the rabbi reproachfully.

"Well now. I did a little reading on the subject after I spoke to you." said Ames, "out of idle curiosity, you know, and according to this article in the encyclopedia, a good part of your Talmud is just a bunch of stories and old wives' tales and moralizing. But even the legal part, I gathered, was largely unsystematic arguing sometimes about the most improbable cases."