The Sydenham Highlands North synagogue is an imposing old double-storey building of red brick. White pillars flank each door and the external walls are decorated with thick rectangular slabs of yellowing white terrazzo. Just down the road, the once popular kosher delicatessen and men’s hairdressing amenities, catering for the needs of the diminishing local Jewish community, have given way to a newer blue-painted kosher butchery. Around the corner, in Louis Botha Avenue, are dingy cafes, a Nigerian video shop, assorted motor spares vendors and overcrowded flats with laundry draped over the balconies. Only the Doll’s House, a landmark drive-in fast-food emporium, has survived. Even the academic tone of the boys’ high school nearby has changed. Its front gate now sports five large red rings, each cut by an oblique diagonal and depicting, in order, a cigarette, a bottle, a needled syringe, a gun and a clenched fist overlying the words, ‘NO SMOKING, NO ALCOHOL, NO DRUGS, NO WEAPONS, NO VIOLENCE’.
Dr Koekentapp was impressed by the synagogue. The sound of the choir practising inside floated clearly through the early night air. The melody aroused in him a bitter-sweet nostalgia that he found totally inexplicable. Standing on the pavement he listened to the solo song of a boy soprano. Absorbed by the purity of the child’s voice he failed to notice Rabbi Zindelman standing at the top of the stairs to the main entrance. With a half-smile on his face Rabbi Zindelman watched Dr Koekentapp for a moment then approached him.
‘Good evening. I see you are a little early,’ Rabbi Zindelman said.
Dr Koekentapp started. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. I was listening to the choir.’
‘No need to apologise. Come in. Come in, my dear boy.’
Dear boy, Dr Koekentapp thought. It had been a long time since anyone had called him ‘dear boy’. They walked up the steps and entered the empty foyer of the synagogue. Dr Koekentapp felt suddenly uncomfortable. The ordered tranquillity of the entrance; the gold-lettered inscriptions on polished wooden wall boards naming previous respected and now largely deceased members of the synagogue committee; and a huge mosaic depicting two hands held in benediction over a candelabrum unnerved him. Rabbi Zindelman sensed his insecurity.
‘You have never been in a synagogue, have you?’ he asked.
Dr Koekentapp recalled Peruvnick’s confession: ‘He knows everything. He knows you aren’t Jewish and he knows I put you up to making a brocha.’
Dr Koekentapp took the plunge. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Good!’ Rabbi Zindelman said. ‘Put on Peruvnick’s yarmulke. I will show you around.’
Dr Koekentapp looked askance at Rabbi Zindelman. Peruvnick’s yarmulke? Good? Dear boy? What was going on? Fumbling in his pocket, Dr Koekentapp retrieved Peruvnick’s present, patted it onto the back of his head and followed Rabbi Zindelman into the synagogue.
‘Now this is where the congregation meets to pray,’ Rabbi Zindelman explained.
Dr Koekentapp curiously looked around the now deserted synagogue. Its décor wasn’t very different from a church’s except for the very noticeable absence of any crucifix. Rows of seats and benches occupied the floor. A raised platform stood in the centre of the room.
‘That is the bimah,’ said Rabbi Zindelman. ‘The service is conducted from there. In an orthodox synagogue the men sit apart from the women. Here the men sit downstairs and the women sit up there.’
He pointed to the upstairs balcony running around three walls of the prayer hall. Dr Koekentapp gazed at the fourth wall. A scarlet velvet curtain, ornately embroidered with gold, was its main feature. Mounted above this a single red lantern gleamed.
‘That is the ark,’ elucidated Rabbi Zindelman, ‘and in it, behind those curtains, is the holy Torah, the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses, handwritten on parchment by a scribe. It is the very heart of Judaism.’ He smiled benevolently at Dr Koekentapp. ‘So now you can say you have been in a synagogue. Come with me to my office. We have things to discuss.’
Feeling rather like a schoolboy summoned by his headmaster, Dr Koekentapp followed Rabbi Zindelman through a small waiting room into a simply furnished office.
Meanwhile, Mrs Levy climbed laboriously out of Levy’s car and joined Sylvia who, being more nimble, was already waiting on the pavement outside the synagogue.
‘Wait here,’ Mrs Levy yelled to the car, ‘I’m in one of my moods and this is Jewish women’s business!’
Behind the wheel, Levy nodded. He wasn’t sure why it was exclusively Jewish women’s business but from bitter experience he knew enough never to argue with his wife when she was in one of her moods. With Sylvia in tow, Mrs Levy walked rapidly into Rabbi Zindelman’s waiting room. They could hear Rabbi Zindelman talking to Dr Koekentapp behind the closed door to the office. Mrs Levy changed tactics. Abandoning direct confrontation, she decided to eavesdrop. In order to eavesdrop more clearly, Mrs Levy placed her ear to the door.
‘Shh,’ she hissed to Sylvia who, expecting the door to fly open at any moment, regarded her mother with silent trepidation.
‘To save time I’ll tell you that Peruvnick has already explained about the brocha training,’ Rabbi Zindelman was saying.
Mrs Levy snorted in exasperation. She didn’t want to save time. She wanted details.
‘Peruvnick said it would be an honour,’ remarked Dr Koekentapp.
Rabbi Zindelman smiled gently and stroked his beard. ‘An honour? Is that what he said? As a matter of fact and without knowing it, Peruvnick was absolutely right.’
Mrs Levy’s loud grunt of disbelief went unheard as Dr Koekentapp squawked. ‘What?’
‘An honour,’ repeated Rabbi Zindelman, ‘it was an honour for you, for me, for the Levys, for everybody.’
Dr Koekentapp was dumbfounded. ‘I don’t understand?’ he managed.
Behind the door, Mrs Levy and Sylvia both nodded. They didn’t understand either.
‘At this stage, it is not necessary that you do,’ Rabbi Zindelman said. ‘What is necessary is that I have your solemn assurance that what you felt that night was absolutely genuine, that the upliftment I witnessed was not a cheap Peruvnick-inspired trick.’
Dr Koekentapp recalled Sylvia’s chagrined disbelief. ‘Sylvia didn’t believe me either,’ he murmured.
‘Sylvia? What didn’t Sylvia believe?’ Rabbi Zindelman asked.
‘That I wasn’t play acting. She couldn’t accept it. She walked out on me when I told her I wasn’t Jewish.’
Mrs Levy clutched at her breast on hearing incontrovertible first-hand confirmation of the very worst.
Dr Koekentapp looked straight into Rabbi Zindelman’s eyes. ‘Rabbi, I give you my oath that what I felt came straight from my heart!’
‘I know it did,’ Rabbi Zindelman said. ‘That’s why I want you to come to shul this Saturday.’
Mrs Levy nearly fainted.
Rabbi Zindelman reached into a desk drawer, retrieved a prayer shawl and placed it on the desk.
‘You will need this tallith. Please accept it as a personal gift from me.’
Dr Koekentapp stared in amazement at Rabbi Zindelman and wordlessly accepted the tallith. ‘I don’t know what to think or say,’ he said after a long moment.
‘So think about your Sylvia and say nothing,’ Rabbi Zindelman replied. ‘Just trust me and come to shul.’
In the waiting room, Mrs Levy and Sylvia gaped at each other in utter consternation.
‘They can’t discuss me like a piece of merchandise,’ Sylvia muttered. She made for the closed door. Mrs Levy extended an arm like a bar of iron.
‘Let’s go,’ she hissed. ‘Rabbi Zindelman has gone mad! He has gone meshugge!’
Sylvia shook her head, pressed briefly against the unyielding arm and capitulated. All this was too much for her. She quietly followed her mother back to Levy’s car.
‘So what did you find out?’ Levy asked as they drove home. In the darkness he could not see his wife’s face. Her expression was one of unconcealed dismay.
‘I found out that Rabbi Zindelman is senile,’ she said. ‘I found out he’s got Alzheimer’s. Oy vey iz mir!’
Once at home, the Levys called an emergency gathering of the family to decide how to handle this inexplicable lapse in Rabbi Zindelman’s behaviour.
Mrs Finkelstein was incredulous. ‘He invited him to shul?’
‘And gave him a tallith as a personal gift!’ Mrs Levy repeated for the sixth time. ‘And told him to think about his Sylvia!’
Finkelstein watched the proceedings with decreasing interest and an increasing appetite.
‘You don’t perhaps have a little something to eat?’ he asked Mrs Levy.
‘How can you think of food at a time like this?’ demanded Mrs Finkelstein. ‘This is a community crisis! Our rabbi has gone meshugge!’
‘Food helps me think,’ explained Finkelstein.
Mrs Finkelstein snorted. ‘You? Think? Since when did you become such a philosopher?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Finkelstein, ‘sometimes I have a good idea. For instance, suppose our rabbi gives Dr Koekentapp a tallith, invites him to shul and is friendly to him. To me it seems he is trying to interest Dr Koekentapp in Judaism. Perhaps he is even thinking of converting Dr Koekentapp to Judaism. Is that more meshugge than saying the rabbi’s gone senile?’
There was a hush as everybody contemplated this interesting possibility.
‘Hymie, you’re a genius!’ declared Mrs Levy. ‘I’ll microwave a parogen for you. You’ve earned it!’ She rushed to the kitchen and on the way gave the pink roses a beaming smile.
Mrs Finkelstein was using the telephone when Mrs Levy returned, carrying a plateful of steaming meat pies.
‘Hello, Mrs Goldin,’ Mrs Finkelstein was saying, ‘I think you should be at shul this Saturday. Rabbi Zindelman will be bringing his latest student. A doctor, who is also a brocha-singing goy. Can you believe it? No, I’m not joking. Dr Jeremiah Koekentapp. By my life, I swear it’s true. Will you do me a favour? Will you phone Hannah Lignaitzky and Sarah Tabatznick? I’ve still got to call Rikva Kindel and you know how she is on the telephone.’