Weeks went by, and Lee did not go with Mom and Pop to Holy Joe’s temple, or do much of anything else. They were woebegone at her glum idleness. What was the point of the whole Manhattan move, if Lee would not cross the street once a week to visit the temple? How else was she going to meet young men? She lay around reading rented best-sellers, now and then rustily playing Palestinian songs on the piano. Pop hinted that she could have a job at the laundry, but she did not respond. Virtually since puberty Lee had been mulishly bent on marrying one or another shlepper, so she had never thought of going to work, and had learned no gainful skill. Now she was counting on marrying Moshe Lev, but obviously she had not heard a word from him.
That subject was uppermost in all our minds, but never mentioned. We sat around the big costly new dining table, almost as quiet as the Quats. I had the deep-frozen Dorsi on my mind. Pop’s forehead was corrugated with his chronic worries. Mom had Faiga’s wedding, which was gathering complications, to fret about. Lee was far inside her shell. All in all, there was a cold gloomy stillness in that fancy West End apartment of ours such as we had never known in the Bronx, for all our spells of hard times.
I could now walk to Columbia and I had downtown status, which was all very fine, but the move was taking its toll of Pop. He was often missing at dinner, remaining uptown to work late, or to eat with Bobbeh or Zaideh, or to attend a board meeting of the Minsker Congregation, where Zaideh was now the Rov. Or he would be in a rush, when he came downtown, to get to a Zionist meeting, or a Masonic meeting, or a temple trustee meeting. Half the time he either didn’t show up, or he would bolt his food and leave.
Never, however, on Friday night. The candlelit Sabbath meal remained inviolate, and the menu had improved. In honor of Lee’s birthday, Mom one Friday night made a rare rib roast. When Lee saw the red slices she inquired with a giggle whether we were still kosher. It was a happy evening, and she made Mom and Pop happier by volunteering that she would go to the temple next morning.
“Got to catch Holy Joe Geiger’s act,” she said, “sooner or later.”
Whereupon Pop astonished us by saying he was resigning as a temple trustee. The board had voted to start taking up a collection at Sabbath services. Pop had told them that though he knew times were changing, he could not condone that. Mom was saddened. A rabbi’s a daughter could hardly disagree with Pop, but she loved being a downtown temple trustee’s wife. Lee just sat there glowering until I mildly remarked that since the women came to the temple with pocketbooks anyway, and the men with their wallets, why not? Well, Lee burst out at me as though I had endorsed the clubbing of baby seals. Pop was right, she snapped, and I was just a sneak and a hypocrite, playing up to Zaideh all those years, putting on my pious Talmud act, and now coming out with this! She turned on Pop and asked why on earth Rabbi Geiger hadn’t put his foot down and forbidden it.
“He tried. He and I both fought it. He even talked of resigning. But nobody can do anything with E. F. Kadane.”
“And who the hell is E. F. Kadane?”
“Come to the temple,” said Mom, “and you’ll meet E. F. Kadane.”
“By God, I will.”
***
Now, mind you, my sister Lee had been irreligious for years, so I can’t say why she fired up like that. I guess she was spoiling for a fight, any fight, and took Pop’s side. She had never been much of a synagogue-goer at best. Nor had Mom been, for that matter. In the Bronx the women’s section of the shule was all but empty on Saturday because mothers, daughters, and grandmothers were at home, “making Shabbess.” The women showed up in force on holy days to say Yiskor, the memorial prayer for the dead; to hear a maggid speak, and have themselves a good cry. The keening and sobbing behind the women’s curtains really used to frighten me as a boy. “Ooo! Ow-ooo-ooo! OOOO!” The saddest movie you ever saw was nothing to one of those Yiddish Yiskor sermons by a maggid. It is a lost art form. The women left the synagogue wrung out, drying their eyes, and quite content not to come again until the next Yiskor and the next heartrending sermon.
In Rabbi Geiger’s temple things were different. The women came every Friday night and Saturday morning, and sat right beside their menfolk. Huge arched stained-glass windows gave a religious yet smart tone to the broad auditorium, where the expanse of pink plush seats could seat maybe a thousand in all. When there was a bar mitzva, the place would fill up as for a hit play, otherwise two or three hundred worshippers would come, and the empty rows made a forlorn picture. Two podiums on either side of the stage were manned by the rabbi and the cantor. Behind them, an immense ornately carved Holy Ark was flanked by thronelike chairs, where temple officers sat in high hats and frock coats. A big change from that Minsker Shule in the Bronx cellar, altogether; no women’s section, and no good cries on Yiskor days.
***
“I don’t believe this,” Lee said, or rather gasped, as the Holy Ark opened by itself. “I simply don’t believe it.”
I myself was used to Rabbi Geiger’s services by now, but I think my sister Lee may never have been inside a temple before. All she knew was the old-time religion of the Yiskor days, and she was full of white-hot indignation at every departure from the familiar format. She objected at the outset to sitting with Pop and me; said it “felt wrong” to be with the men. She objected to the cantor’s microphone, because it “used electricity.” When for the Reading of the Law the auditorium lights dimmed, and a rosy glow brightened the stage and the Holy Ark, she muttered at me, “Davey, that rabbi is working the lights himself. I can see him. He’s pressing electric buttons!”
This from Lee, who had probably abandoned the religion because of Zaideh’s timers, and had never stopped railing against them, and smoked like a fiend on Saturday in her closed bedroom. Of course Holy Joe was doing the lighting effects, and making no pretense of hiding it, though the broad sleeves of his bright lilac robe did cover his hand at the control buttons on his podium. At the other podium, the cantor, in a matching lilac robe, was pouring out in a rich baritone the traditional melody, “And when the Ark set forth,” to a grand swell of organ music. Holy Joe’s hand moved under the sleeve, and the great carved Ark doors majestically and slowly slid aside to reveal sixteen lilac Torahs, banked four above four, exactly matching the robes of the cantor and Holy Joe. This was what brought the big gasp from my sister Lee, “I don’t believe this!” The people in front of us turned to look at her.
Pop murmured, “Lee, respect.”
She kept snorting during Holy Joe’s sermon. Yet there was nothing to snort at. Rabbi Geiger’s style was worldly, easy, sonorous, and witty. The sermons were cut to one pattern. They started with a Bible text, wound off for about half an hour into current events or a new best-seller, and curled back to the Bible text. Those sermons were popular. Latecomers all were in their seats before Holy Joe Geiger spoke. Maybe the religious content was something like an aspirin tucked inside a banana split, but I have to say that that was the dose his audience wanted, and how they wanted it. Zaideh’s sort of old-country Talmud discourse was certainly not for these prosperous West End Avenue Jews. They liked Holy Joe’s service just as it was, and they liked him. Over near Amsterdam Avenue on Ninety-fifth Street there was a big Orthodox shule with no organ or lighting effects, for others whose taste or convictions differed. Lee was all wet about Rabbi Geiger, and just being cantankerous. Mom and Pop kept looking sadder and sadder as my sister fumed, for they had hoped that Lee would go for Geiger’s updated service. That was undoubtedly why they had joined the temple instead of the Ninety-fifth Street shule, where they eventually did end up.
After services they could hardly prevail on Lee to stay for the kiddush, the buffet brunch. “I’ve had it with this place,” Lee said.
“The rabbi wants to say a word of welcome to you,” Mom pleaded. “Why can’t you be a good mixer?”
“I’ll give him a welcome,” said. Lee. “I’ll give him a purple eye, to match his sixteen Torahs.”
Pop took her by the arm. “Come, Leah-Mira.”
Crackling with hostility, she came. At the crowded brunch in the social hall, Holy Joe, still in lilac vestments, said a lot of nice things about Pop as he welcomed Lee. He also mentioned Mom’s revered father, Rabbi Levitan, and got some giggles with remarks about Lee’s beauty; but he said not a word about her having returned from a year in Palestine. He was still talking when a very portly, very red-faced man in a horsy tweed suit and a green polka-dot bow tie stood up. “Just a moment, Rabbi. I’d like to greet the young lady myself.”
I whispered to Lee, “E. F. Kadane.”
“Aha!” growled Lee.
“As president of this temple, and on behalf of myself and all the other officers, let me welcome you, Leonore—if I may call you that—to our midst.”
E. F. Kadane was a bachelor who had hit it big in real estate. He would not wear a frock coat and top hat, so other officers sat in the places of honor, but he was the unchallenged boss man of the temple. He gave the most money, and he called the tune.
“You are not only a very beautiful young lady,” he went on, “anybody can see that, but you obviously have rare common sense. For you have left behind that stinkhole in the Middle East, to return to the good old U.S.A.”
Nobody reacted except Lee, who sucked in her breath with a hiss, like a Japanese. E. F. Kadane was somewhat touched on Zionism. All one had to do around E. F. was mention Palestine, or Chaim Weizmann, or Theodor Herzl, to set him roaring about the stinkhole in the Middle East. E. F.’s little foible was, by general consent at the temple, always ignored. Even a Zionist like Pop shrugged it off. A big giver like E. F. was entitled to his crotchet, especially as there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“That’s about all I want to say, Leonore. Except that I’m sure the land of the free looks mighty good to you, after that stinkhole in the Middle East. And I want you to know that you look mighty good to us. Especially to the bachelors among us.” With a wink at her, and another at Holy Joe, he sat down.
“Rabbi Geiger,” said Lee, getting to her feet, “let me thank you and Mr. E. F. Kadane, and tell me, do you also regard Palestine as a stinkhole in the Middle East?”
Consternation in the social hall. All faces turned to Holy Joe, including E. F. Kadane’s stern red balloon of a face. Slowly Holy Joe rose, gathering the lilac robe around him. “Well, Leonore,” he said, “that can be discussed on several levels. And I’ll tell you what, let’s have a good discussion of it in my study soon, shall we? Just the two of us.” It was perfectly done, with just a faint wag of the eyebrows and an Errol Flynn grin. He got a big laugh in which even E. F. Kadane grudgingly joined, and he was off the hook. Fast on his feet, was Holy Joe.
The kiddush broke up. Both E. F. Kadane and Rabbi Geiger came over to shake hands with Lee. The yearning expressions on their bachelor faces made me realize again how pretty she was. To me she was just Lee, but I guess she was every bit as enchanting as Dorsi Sabin, if one could look at her that way. She went right on the attack. “I think it’s awful,” she said, “your taking up a collection on Friday night. I think it’s disgusting. I don’t blame my father one bit for resigning. I may not be all that religious, but I know what’s supposed to be right and wrong.”
E. F. and the rabbi looked at each other. Holy Joe said, “The idea may be reconsidered.”
“We have a lot of respect for your father,” E. F. said. “Maybe we’ll find the money some other way. I have two fine tickets for Of Thee I Sing for tonight, Leonore. Do you happen to be free?”
“I’m not,” said my sister.
“And tomorrow night?” inquired Holy Joe. “We are having a men’s club dance, but alas, I have no girl, Lee.”
Lee had heard plenty about the dance from Mom, and had kept declaring with rising tartness that wild horses wouldn’t drag her to it.
“You have one now,” Lee said. “I’d love to come.”
***
To wind up this part of my story: thanks to Pop, Rabbi Geiger won the battle over the collection. E. F. Kadane had it in for him after that, and about a year later tried to terminate his contract, for immorality. Pop defended Geiger, and saved him from dismissal that time. But Holy Joe was no match for the all-powerful E. F. Kadane, and eventually he was ousted. His career suffered badly from that black mark. He went to a temple in Texas for a few years, then returned to the New York suburbs, drifting from one pulpit to another. After a while he had no pulpit, but continued to do funerals, weddings, and such. A widower in his later years, he married a wealthy widow, so he is okay, but rather sad.
Now I want you to understand about Holy Joe. At Pop’s funeral several rabbis spoke, including both Zaideh and Holy Joe Geiger. Geiger broke down and cried. He was the only speaker who did, and he wasn’t faking. I saw him conduct many funerals, and at none of the others did he lose his composure. If I have seemed here to be satirizing a man, I’ve missed the mark and done a wrong, while trying to paint a true picture. I’ve given the light and shade of Holy Joe Geiger, but I will never forget that he wept for my father.
I dwell on this because I fear I am partly responsible for that celebrated comical rabbi in Onan’s Way, “Holy Moses Schmuckler,” one of Peter Quat’s more colorful creations. I made the mistake, if it was a mistake, of telling Peter about Holy Joe. He was convulsed and insisted on meeting him, so I asked Peter to Aunt Faiga’s wedding, since Mom had invited Rabbi Geiger. It made quite an impression on Peter, that wedding, but I must say his portrayal of it is preposterous—all that business about the rabbi feeling the bride’s behind under the canopy, and putting his hand up her dress under the table at the wedding dinner, not to mention that unspeakable scene in the hall closet. All that was pure Quat. Holy Joe Geiger was a good fellow, and the soul of decorum: only, like any bachelor his age, somewhat on the make.
I did once come upon him in the hallway outside our apartment late at night, trying to snatch a kiss from my sister Lee, holding his derby in one hand and pawing at her with the other. A pitiful sight, that was. Lee could have fended off an octopus holding seven derbys, if she had had a mind to. It was no more than she expected, and she did not hold it against him. Once we both got inside the apartment, in fact, she about died laughing. I think she led on Holy Joe. Lee always has had a mean ultra-female streak.
In any case, I will now tell you what really happened at Aunt Faiga’s wedding. It was nothing like Quat’s raunchy fantasy, yet lively enough, in all truth.