Chapter 55

Sam wasn’t ready to call his mother, or any other member of the family, yet he had to get closer to who he’d been as a child before he could find himself as an adult. He compromised by phoning his old friend Bernie, who was surprisingly calm when he heard Sam’s voice.

“Did your father tell you I’d be calling?” asked Sam, who’d gotten the number from him.

“No.” Bernie chuckled. “I’m a rabbi now. I believe in miracles.”

Sam couldn’t get over this twist in their fates. As a boy, Bernie had been a competent, if not inquisitive, Torah student. Sam tried to imagine what kind of rabbi he’d become. He took a train to the Bronx where they sat in the sanctuary of Adath Israel, not far from Yankee Stadium.

“Don’t call it a shul,” Bernie had warned. “My congregants, most of whom started on the Lower East Side, prefer the English word temple.” Its crushed velvet seats, mahogany railings, and silver embroidered Torah covers were as far from Eldridge Street as America was from Europe.

Bernie gave Sam a tour. The congregation was a quarter-century old, but this permanent home was recent. “I was hired fresh out of seminary, a young rabbi for a new generation.” Bernie spoke with pride of his rapid rise in the hierarchy, never pausing to ask Sam about his life. Rather than being relieved that he didn’t have to account for his absence, Sam was annoyed. He was learning that opening up about his past was the way to discover where he wanted to go next.

He interrupted Bernie’s monologue. “What’s Yaakov doing now?”

“Plumber, I think. We lost touch.”

“When you moved to the Bronx?”

“Earlier. Yaakov works with his hands. My people work with their heads.” Bernie sniffed. “The guy never was very bright. Dimmer than me, a bare bulb compared to you.”

Sam grimaced. “That’s not a very rabbinic thing to say.”

“I’m not a typical rabbi. I spend more time raising money than spiritual awareness.” Bernie showed Sam blueprints for a school they’d soon break ground for. It had a white marble exterior, stained glass windows, and ten classrooms. The study halls had low tables and chairs so boys could sit, not stand, to pore over Torah scrolls. Dotted lines were drawn around an eleventh classroom. “For girls, once I convince the congregation it’s kosher. Sometimes I go too far, even for them.”

Sam remembered Dev secretly listening from the front room as he and his father debated Torah in the kitchen. She would have loved studying the arcane language in the old texts.

Bernie fingered the tzitzit on his gold embroidered tallit. “Avram may come to regret giving this to me. I’m afraid he disapproves of my liberal ideas.”

“My father gave that to you?”

“You don’t recognize it? He planned to give it to you after you were ordained.”

Sam had never seen it before. His father had hidden it well in their tiny apartment. Why had Avram given it to Bernie? Should Sam be grateful that he was off the hook, or resentful that his father had replaced him? Avram’s gift felt like an act of post-mortem revenge. Sam, shot through with pain, averted his eyes and changed the subject to Bernie’s wife. He remembered his sister’s best friend Leah as being Orthodox, and asked how she felt about Bernie straying from tradition.

For the first time that day, a small frown shadowed Bernie’s face. “She goes along with it because she’s my wife, but she has her ways of letting me know she’s not happy. For example, I’ve urged her to help me convince parents that schooling their daughters is a good thing.”

“And?”

“She’d rather stay home and take care of our daughter. And son. Plus a third on the way.”

Sam shuddered. “Three children in five years. Maybe she’s just tired.”

Bernie laughed “The irony is that when Leah gets really annoyed at my nudging, she quips that Dev would have made a better rebbetzin after all.”

Sam filled in the untold story. Bernie and Dev must have dated and been serious enough to talk marriage. The idea made him uncomfortable. How had Avram felt about it?

Bernie continued. “Your sister is too modern, even for me. Frankly I’m glad all Leah wants is to take care of me and the kids. Still I love hearing Dev talk about her studies. Sometimes I think we’re better friends than she and Leah ever were.”

“Does my sister still use slang?”

Bernie grinned. “Not as much. After all, she’s a serious student of science now.”

Sam smiled back. “I’m glad. Her expressions could drive a person crazy.” Then he frowned. “Although it’s also a shame. The way she talked was sort of endearing.”

“Don’t worry. She still uses big vocabulary words, especially technical ones.”

Sam felt mollified, a Dev word. He asked how often Bernie saw her. He couldn’t picture two people he’d known well as children having a serious adult discussion. He tried to imagine himself talking to this older, more mature Dev and came up equally blank. What if he’d stayed away too long and she’d changed so much that they were doomed to remain strangers? Sam was different, but in his mind, everyone else was frozen in time.

“Dev’s busy, ‘assiduous’ according to her, with school, but sometimes she comes for Shabbas dinner and plays aunt to our kids. The older one calls her Tantee Devee. She takes them to the park to collect stuff: leaves, berries, dead insects.” Bernie laughed. “Leah throws them out as soon as Dev is gone. Dev looks for them the next time she visits and I think she’s gets angry at Leah for being such a compulsive house cleaner.” Bernie’s chest swelled under the tallit. “Or she’s mad at Leah for marrying me, after all.”

“Were you angry at me for leaving without confiding in you and Yaakov?” Sam had given up waiting for Bernie to raise the subject.

“I was angry at myself for not seeing it coming.”

Like my uncle, Sam thought, Bernie had turned his anger and blame inward. Was it too much to hope that his father might do the same?

“You should come to Shabbas dinner too,” Bernie said. “And then go with me to services.”

Sam was puzzled. “Don’t you mean the reverse?”

“The modern way is to eat at home, then go as a family to temple. Men and women still sit on opposite sides, but now there’s a coed middle section where most of the younger couples sit.”

Sam explained that he couldn’t see Bernie’s family until he’d contacted his own. He swore his friend to secrecy. “Don’t mention it to Leah either. She might tell Dev.”

“Then just come to services. Leah stays home with the children, and if Dev comes to dinner, she goes straight home to study.” Bernie grinned. “Biology, not Torah.”

Sam extended his hand, but Bernie wrapped the tallit around them both in a bear hug. He handed Sam a fund-raising pamphlet and a silk yarmulke, embroidered with the temple’s name. Having abandoned his faith, Sam had no right to judge others, but it seemed Bernie had replaced the worship of God with a reverence for money . If Sam had never left home, and become a rabbi after all, would the mission to serve today’s Jews make him succumb to the same temptations? Sam thought not. He slipped the yarmulke into his pocket.

“Welcome home Shmuel ... Sam. Which do you want be called?”

Sam ... Shmuel ... took a final look at the Torah scroll nestled in its shiny wooden ark at the front of the ornate and cavernous sanctuary. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.