The Outsider Read Online Free PDF

the Osners maintained a small apartment in New York City. The two Osner children, Adam, twelve years old, and Susan, nine years old, were brought in briefly to meet the new rabbi and then disappeared. Osner brooked no nonsense around him.
    â€œThat boy has to be a Bar Mitzvah in about six months. You’ll have your work cut out for you there, Rabbi.”
    Then the two other members of the pro tern committee and their wives were introduced. Joe Hurtz, about the same age as Osner, had a men’s furnishing store in Danbury. His wife, Phyllis, a few years younger than he, appeared to be overly shy. She smiled and nodded and said nothing. Mel Klein was the oldest of the three, a successful dress manufacturer in New York, who kept extolling the local air and school system, as if to account for his presence there. Like Joe Hurtz, he had three children, and a bright-eyed, perky wife, Della, whom Lucy immediately liked. She was years younger than her husband — a round, pretty, and bright lady.
    Dinner consisted of roast turkey and trimmings, served by a skinny, unsmiling local lady who, as Shelly explained, helped out when they had guests. The food was delicious, as was the wine served with the meal. Most of the conversation was pointed toward the rabbi, either directly or obliquely, as when Phyllis Hurtz finally spoke and informed Lucy and David that there was a kosher butcher in Danbury.
    â€œI’m sure that’s not very important for a Reform rabbi,” Shelly Osner said.
    â€œWe prefer it,” Lucy said loftily, which made David glance at her in astonishment.
    â€œI hear you were with the Seventh Army,” Osner said to David. “What division?”
    â€œThe Forty-fifth.”
    â€œThey took quite a shellacking. Were you with them all the way?”
    â€œWhen I wasn’t too frightened to lift my head up. I got to love the smell of wet mud.”
    That drew a general round of laughter, and Osner said, “Joe and I were both in it, both of us old farts, but we both had commissions out of World War One. Just desperate for human flesh.”
    â€œI was in the D.F.B. in World War One. D.F.B. — defusing bombs. You know, a bomb or a shell comes in and it doesn’t explode. At age nineteen, I was just crazy enough to volunteer for the double pay and the conviction that I was immortal.”
    â€œVery crazy,” his wife said softly.
    â€œThis time, they pulled me in as a teacher. I spent the war at Fort Dix. Jack there had more sense. He spent the war at a desk in Washington.”
    â€œSomeone had to. As a matter of fact,” he said to David, “we have a very decent representation out of the congregation, five army, one air force.”
    â€œI don’t think the rabbi wants to hear about who was in the army and who wasn’t,” Della Klein said. “I know this isn’t a meeting — perish the thought that women should be invited to a meeting — but it is Wednesday and we’ve been talking about a Friday night Sabbath service, and where shall we have it and what do we need? Do we need prayerbooks? And where will Rabbi Hartman and his wife sleep? They can’t sleep in that wretched parsonage with its lumpy beds, and anyway it’s cold and smelly. So may I offer our guest room?”
    â€œThey’ll sleep right here tonight,” Shelly said firmly.
    â€œAs the mistress says,” Della whispered to Lucy.
    â€œAnd what about it, Rabbi,” Osner asked, “could you do a Shabbas service Friday, day after tomorrow?”
    â€œNo reason why not,” David said.
    â€œWe could have it right here,” Shelly said.
    â€œOur living room’s much bigger,” Della Klein said with particular emphasis. “You know everyone will come, and most will bring the kids, and then if word spreads to Redding and Ridgefield —”
    â€œYou’re talking about ten Jewish families, if that.”
    â€œIt could be