Monday the Rabbi Took Off Read Online Free PDF

exactly where they stand with him. As I got it, he doesn’t play up to them and he doesn’t talk down to them.”
    “I think I get the picture. So what are you worried about?”
    “Well.” said Ben. “for one thing, these kids don’t vote.”
    “Oh, you’re worried that this Drexler and his friends will maneuver him out?” said Harvey, trying to see what his brother-in-law was driving at.
    “That, and – well” – Ben looked away – “I wouldn’t like to see him hurt.”
    “Is that all?” Harvey laughed and got up from the armchair. “Forget it, Ben. People like that, people with personal integrity, people like Drexler can’t hurt.”

Chapter Five
    The young graduate of the seminary was eliminated from serious consideration almost immediately. Why would he want to come in the first place? With the demand so great for rabbis, why would he want a temporary job when he could get a full-time job?
    “He said he wants some time to look around.11
    “So can’t he look around in a regular job? If he should decide he wants to go someplace else, would they hold him there by force? I’ll tell you why he wants this job: It must be because he can’t get another one. And why should we want someone like that? Besides, he’s got a beard. That’s all we need is a rabbi with a beard.”
    “And his wife – did you get a load of her? With all that mascara junk on her eyes like a raccoon and her dress up to her pupik?”
    Rabbi Harry Shindler. on the other hand, made quite a different impression. He was in his mid-forties and had an ingratiating and yet forceful personality. The main objection to him was that he had been out of the active rabbinate for several years. He explained it with disarming candor. “Well I’ll tell you. When I got out of the seminary. I was offered this job – associate to the rabbi of this large congregation in Ohio. Now I was told that the rabbi was going to retire in a year or two and that I would be given his job. Mind you, I wasn’t just an assistant. I had the title Associate Rabbi. So in the middle of the second year I was there, the rabbi gets sick and I took over for the remainder of the year. Then when the next year begins and it’s time to draw up a new contract, there’s a group on the board that say they ought to have an older man but I could stay on as associate at the same salary. It’s really a one-man operation, you understand, but they had me come in because the rabbi there was not in good health.
    “Now a man’s first duty is to his family – I mean. I had a wife and family – and the associate rabbi job, the salary I mean, just wasn’t enough. Now one thing I want distinctly understood: It was not the fault of the congregation. And it wasn’t the fault of the board. It was just one of those misunderstandings that happen. Maybe it was my fault for not getting everything down in black and white, but I’m not holding the congregation to blame.”
    This insistence that the congregation was not at fault made a great impression on the committee.
    “So I took this selling job, and I’m not sorry I did. I sometimes think the seminary ought to require all their graduates to serve an apprenticeship of a year or two in business so they can get an idea of how their congregation thinks, what concerns them, what bothers them, what problems they have. I think most rabbis are out of touch with everyday life, and from where I stand that means out of touch with reality.”
    “How do you mean. Rabbi?”
    “Well, take the business of our holidays. Mostly they’re two days, and most rabbis are pretty concerned about the observance of that second day. Now. having been in business myself, I know that sometimes it’s almost impossible to take that second day off. So I can understand and sympathize when one of the congregants, who might be a big businessman, just can’t make it to the temple on that second day. And I don’t hold it against him. I don’t take the point of view that