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A cold front moved in that night, and Wednesday morning when I took Rochester for his walk around River Bend, fog lingered on the manicured lawns and the piles of fallen leaves. I fed Rochester, hurried through my own breakfast and skipped the crossword puzzle so that we could get to the Talmud study group on time.
Lili was still asleep by the time my dog and I were ready to leave, but I lingered a moment in the doorway of the bedroom. She always scrubbed off whatever makeup she’d worn as part of her bedtime ritual, and in the clear light coming in through the window I could see every laugh line, every crow’s foot, a few strands of silver in her auburn hair. Those little imperfections made me love her even more, and as I blew her a goodbye kiss, I vowed I’d do whatever I had to in order to keep her by my side.
Since there was little to see through the fog, Rochester slumped into the front seat beside me as we drove through what had been farmland when I was a kid but was now a welter of suburban developments. He perked up as I pulled into a parking space in the lot at Shomrei Torah, perhaps remembering the blessing of a few days before and hoping for another.
Or thinking of Sadie, the female golden.
The rabbi’s hybrid sedan was parked in his reserved spot, along with a half-dozen other cars in the lot. Aaron Feinberg, the synagogue president, pulled up and parked as Rochester was nosing a row of azalea bushes. “Your dog is a Talmud scholar, too?” he asked. He held out his hand for Rochester to sniff, but the big golden was too intent on pulling toward some other scent.
“He likes to get his nose into everything.” At that moment the golden’s big black nose was down to the ground, intent on something ahead of us.
Feinberg wore a dark blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a red power tie, and I worried that I looked like a schlep in my polo shirt and khakis. Saul Benesch and Henry Namias arrived together, and Feinberg waited in the parking lot for them as Rochester tugged me forward.
He wanted to go in the wrong direction, though, toward the sanctuary, and I had to keep a tight hold on his leash and nearly drag him around the corner to the entrance to the rabbi’s study.
There were three other men and two women sitting in a semi-circle of chairs in the room when we walked in, all of them in their forties or fifties. Rabbi Goldberg sat in his ergonomic desk chair facing them. His desk was in one corner, crowded with papers and framed photos of him and Sadie. On the edge of the desk was a bright green piece of malachite, with a depression in the center that made me recognize it as a worry stone, the kind you rubbed with your thumb whenever you were stressed. I should probably get one of those. It would come in handy when Rochester was getting into trouble.
I sat beside one of the women and let Rochester off his leash. He immediately hustled over to Sadie to give her a good morning sniff. While I waited for the session to begin, I looked around at the walls lined with bookshelves, most of them half-empty, the gaps between books filled with menorahs, a statue of a fiddler on a roof, and other bits of Judaica.
When Feinberg, Namias and Benesch arrived and took the last three seats, the rabbi introduced me to the group, and everyone seemed very welcoming. I was curious to know how such a study session would operate – had there been homework I didn’t know about? Would we be reading in English or Hebrew – which I could only sound out if the vowels were present?
“This is an interesting time in the annual cycle of reading the Torah,” the rabbi began. “We’re wrapping up the past year and preparing for the new one. Since a year encompasses a great deal of events, so do our services in the month of Elul. As we prepare for the redemption offered us by Yom Kippur, we focus on what I like to call the three T’s: Torah, tefilah, and tzedakah.”
He smiled. “Unfortunately saying Torah, prayer, and deeds of kindness doesn’t give that satisfying sense of alliteration.”
Now the rabbi was speaking my language – peppering English-major terms like alliteration into his speech, and it didn’t look like there would be any reading. I relaxed.
It had been a tumultuous year since last Rosh Hashanah, I thought. Rochester and I had been involved in several murder investigations, and we’d put ourselves in danger more than I was comfortable with. I hoped that the new year would be one of peace.
Then the rabbi continued. “The blessings for this service are found in this week’s Torah portion, Parshas Ki Seitzei. This deals with a Jew’s ‘going out to war,’ i.e., going out to involvement within our material world.”
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good. Rochester and I had seen enough of our own kind of war.
We began to talk in Socratic fashion, as Rabbi asked us how we thought we could spread tzedakah, or blessings, in the material world, to prepare our souls for our reckoning with God during the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Rochester eventually settled down between me and an older man named Daniel Epstein, whose name I knew because he was often listed in the program for Sabbath services as the greeter, who handed out prayerbooks and welcomed everyone to shul.
In response to the rabbi’s question about tzedakah, Epstein said that in the past he’d made his charitable contributions at the end of the calendar year, for tax purposes. “But I’ve begun to spread them out during the year,” he said. “I know a lot of charities rely on contributions to function, and it’s hard to budget if all your donations come in during a few weeks in December.”
“That’s an interesting approach,” Rabbi Goldberg said. “And it provides you the blessing of tzedakah throughout the year, instead of just in a short period.”
“When I was in Sunday school here, my parents gave me a dime every week for keren ami,” I said. “Do kids still do that?”
The rabbi laughed. “Yes, we still collect charitable contributions for the State of Israel from Sunday school students, though they usually bring a dollar now. You’re right, it’s an excellent way to get them into the habit of making regular charitable contributions, though most often that money comes from their parents rather than their own pockets.” He sat back in his chair. “And you, Steve? How do you prepare?”
“Well, I work for Eastern College,” I said. “So I’m still in that academic routine of believing that the year starts in September, like on the Jewish calendar. My regular job involves computer work and administration, but I occasionally teach a course as an adjunct instructor. This fall I’m teaching one on Jewish American Literature, so I’ve been reading a lot about the immigrant experience and thinking about my own family history, in the old country, in Trenton, and here at Shomrei Torah.”
We continued around the room. Feinberg spoke about how his father survived the Holocaust and what that meant to him. I noticed that Henry Namias glared at him as he spoke, and I wondered why. Was it bragging to say you had a survivor in your family? Why would Namias be bothered?
My reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by a middle-aged black man stepping inside. “I’m sorry to interrupt, rabbi, but there’s a problem.” He was out of breath, as if he’d been running, and his hands were shaking.
The man was dressed like I was, in khaki slacks and a polo shirt, but his was embossed Temple Shomrei Torah, and he wore a name tag that identified him as Walter Johnson, Facility Manager.
“What is it, Walter?” the rabbi asked.
“I had to call the police. There’s a man’s body behind the sanctuary. I found him when I was walking around the property.”
“What do you mean, a body?” Feinberg demanded.
“He’s dead, Mr. Feinberg.”
The group erupted in murmurs to each other as Johnson moved over to the rabbi to speak more closely to him. Johnson had left the door to the study open, and as he passed me, Rochester jumped up and took off out the door.
“Rochester!” I scrambled out of my seat. “Sorry, sorry,” I said as I moved past Johnson and hurried out the door, leaving behind a hubbub. I followed Rochester’s erect, plumy tail as he rushed along the side of the sanctuary building. Then he disappeared around the corner.
That was the direction where he’d been trying to go as we walked in. Had he scented the body and tried to tell me about it? Dumb human that I was, I had only about five million scent glands in my nose, whereas a large breed like the golden retriever had nearly three hundred million. So I hadn’t sniffed out the problem the way he had, and instead of following his instincts, I’d dragged him into the rabbi’s study.
I heard a siren in the distance as I rounded the corner. Tendrils of fog still hung in the air, but I saw Rochester sitting at his alert position beside a man’s body, on the ground beside the back wall. The man’s face was turned away from me, but as I observed him I got a sinking feeling. He wore a gray T-shirt torn at the neck, then a plaid shirt, with a pea coat over that. His jeans were ragged at the cuffs, and he wore stained white tennis shoes. His brown hair was shaggy and his beard was unkempt. There was a dark stain on the grass beside him that I thought was probably blood.
When I moved around so that I could see his face, I realized my instinct had been correct. It was Joel Goldberg. The rabbi’s brother.
