Read Online Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red by Harry Kemelman - Free Book Online

students wrote, as each finished, he would hand in his paper and hurry out of the room. Long before the bell rang the rabbi found himself alone.
    He graded the papers over the weekend and returned them on Monday, there was an immediate reaction.
    “You said we wouldn’t be responsible for the begats.”
    “Benjamin is hardly just one of the begats. Benjamin is an important part of the Joseph story.”
    “How much will this count toward the final grade?”
    “It depends on how many hour exams I decide to give.”
    “Will they all be given on Fridays?”
    “I can’t say. Probably.”
    “Gee, that’s not fair.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well – a lot of us – I know I can’t get here Fridays.”
    This was it, he said coolly: “I’m afraid I don’t understand.
    The Friday session is a regular class hour. If it conflicted with some other course, you shouldn’t have arranged to take this one.”
    “It’s not that it conflicts –”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, I drive back to New Jersey weekends and I’ve got to get an early start.”
    The rabbi shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
    He opened his text to indicate that he considered discussion closed, but the atmosphere was charged, the students, even those who had taken the examination, were sullen. His lecture suffered as a result, and for the first time he dismissed them before the hour.
    When he returned to his office, he found Hendryx stretched out in his usual reclining posture, puffing gently on his pipe.
    “How’s it going, Rabbi?”
    “Well, I’m not sure.” In the few weeks that he had been teaching, he had seen Hendryx less than a half dozen times, and then usually for only a few minutes before or after class. “I get about twenty-six in my class, actually the official class list shows thirty, but twenty-eight is the most that have appeared at any one time.”
    “That’s not bad.” said Hendryx. “In fact, darn good where students are allowed unlimited cuts.”
    “Well, I’m not dissatisfied with the attendance on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Friday afternoons I’m lucky if I get a dozen.”
    “At one o’clock? On Friday? I’m surprised you’re getting that many.”
    “But why?” the rabbi insisted. “I can understand that one or two might have a trip planned for the weekend and want to make an early start –”
    “They’ve all got plans for the weekend. Rabbi. If it’s a girl, she’s been invited to another college for the football game on Saturday. If she attends your class, she finishes at two and can’t start much before three, so she’ll get wherever she’s going too late for all the fun on Friday.
    And young people nowadays can’t afford to miss any fun. It’s a kind of commitment, even a kind of religion, you might say.”
    “You mean that all those absent have weekend dates?”
    “No, not all.” said Hendryx. “Some stay away so that their friends will think they’ve got a date. Some figure they might as well make it a long weekend. Some – although personally I doubt it – use the time to study for other courses, supposedly the rationale behind unlimited cuts: they’re supposed to be mature enough to organize their own time.”
    “And what am I supposed to do on Fridays when less than half my class shows up?”
    “Well.” said Hendryx, drawing on his pipe, “that’s a good question, there aren’t too many courses given Friday afternoon. Joe Browder has a geology class at one over in the Blythe Building. Offhand I don’t know any other. By noon the place is deserted. Even the cafeteria is closed. Haven’t you noticed?”
    “But what am I supposed to do?” the rabbi persisted. “Not give the lecture?”
    “I’ve known instructors to do just that. Not that they openly cancel out, but every other week or so they announce they’ll be unable to meet with the class.” He looked at the rabbi, a faint derisive smile on his face. “But I guess you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
    “No,