Read Online Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home by Harry Kemelman - Free Book Online

now and then without everybody noticing.”
    “How about if you find yourself downstairs in the vestry?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Last year we had to have two services, one in the vestry. Right?”
    “Yes, but the new members were assigned seats downstairs; the old members –”
    “Sure, but the whole idea now is to make the seating democratic. If there are no reserved seats, it means that if you come in a little late, you go down to the vestry because all the seats in the sanctuary are full.”
    “I don’t think I’d care for that.”
    “Well” said Kallen, “I don’t like to sit in the back. What’s more, my old man considers our seats in the first row a kind of honor.”
    “And how about the money we paid for those seats?” demanded Arons. “I plunked down a thousand bucks to the Building Fund – not a pledge, but hard cash – back when Becker was president. And it was supposed to reserve my seat for me each year, the same seat, mind you, until the last day of the ticket selling. Well now, I regard that as a contract that I entered into with the temple, and if anybody should live up to their contract, it seems to me it should be an organization like a temple.”
    “You’re one hundred percent right, Kerm,” said Kallen. “That’s how I feel. If you can’t trust the word of a temple, who can you trust?”
    “All right, what can you do about it?”
    “I’ll tell you what I can do about it, Meyer,” said Kallen, his tone determined. “I’m still a member of the board of directors. I could place it before the board and demand that they take action.”
    “So what would that get you? They’d take action, all right. They’d put it to a vote, and they’d vote Gorfinkle’s way. Remember, they’ve got a clear majority.”
    “Well, if the board should repudiate their solemn promises, I’d pick up my marbles and get out.”
    “And where would you go. Irv? To Lynn? To Salem? Where nobody knows you?”
    “I’ll tell you what I would do.” Edelstein asserted. “I’d stay, but they’d whistle before they got a dime out of me.”
    Paff shook his head. “It wouldn’t work, Doc. It might work in a church, but not in a temple. Our people don’t ask for it; they demand it. It’s part of the tradition. You know the old joke: The only thing two Jews can agree on is what a third should contribute to the support of the temple. No. if you were to give less than you gave last year, at the best everybody would think you had a bad year, that your practice was off. As for not giving at all – forget it. They just wouldn’t let you get away with it; they’d bother you and pester you until you came across.”
    “Meyer’s right.” said Arons. “And you know what it means? It means that from here on in, we’ll be putting up the big money, we and our friends, and Gorfinkle and his gang will be spending it. They won’t even do us the courtesy of consulting us about it.”
    “That’s right.” said Paff. “You don’t think this new seating plan was brought up before the board, do you?”
    “You mean it was just Ted Brennerman’s idea? Dammit, they can’t do that. A change like that has to be brought up before the board.” said Kallen.
    Paff shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, they’ll bring it up at the meeting, just to make it legal, and they’ll let us talk on it for a while, and then one of them will move the previous question and – zip – it’ll go through like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And that’s how it’s going to be from here on in. Make up your mind to it.”
    “And that’s how they’ll work this Social Action Fund. They’ll appropriate all kinds of money, and they’ll disburse it any way they want to. We’ll give it, and they’ll spend it.”
    “Aw, come on.” said Kallen. “How much of a fund will they set up? Five hundred? A grand? So what? I remember my old man told me that years ago, in all the shuts, they had a fund that the president used to control and to