Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red Read Online Free PDF

large plaster cast on the top shelf immediately above him, he tilted back in his chair and stretched out his legs so that he was almost lying down, in what the rabbi would come to know as a characteristic pose.
    Fishing in his pocket, he brought forth a tiny brass figurine with which he tamped down the tobacco in his pipe, he puffed gently during the operation, and when his pipe was drawing satisfactorily again, he returned the tamper to his pocket.
    “So you’re the new instructor in Jewish Thought and Philosophy,” he said. “I knew your predecessor. Rabbi Lamden, according to one of my students who took his course, he used the time to give little lectures on morality. Believe me, it was a most satisfactory arrangement all around, as far as the students were concerned, it was an easy three credits, as far as Lamden was concerned, it was a pleasant few hours a week for which he got some extra money, and I suppose he could always salve his conscience with the thought that he was returning his students to the religion of their forefathers.”
    “I see.”
    “Of course, the administration stood to gain from the course.” said Hendryx. “As you know, the official title of the school is Windemere Christian College, the catalogue and the bulletin we send out to prospective students are careful to explain the school is completely non-denominational, and that’s the actual truth. I’m sure the trustees – one of whom is the insurance tycoon Marcus Levine, one of your kind, I presume, judging by the name – would be happy to drop the. ‘Christian,’ but it would involve all sorts of legal complications. Now we get quite a few Jewish students, not only from around here but also from the New York-New Jersey area. It’s a fallback school, you see, and their parents are apt to jib at sending them to a school clearly labeled Christian. So it helps if there’s a course in Jewish Thought and Philosophy, taught by a real honest-to-goodness rabbi.” He grinned broadly. “From their point of view, you’re a kind of Judas sheep. I suppose.”
    “You don’t like Jews, do you?” asked David Small curiously.
    “How can you say so. Rabbi? Some of my best friends are Jews.” He smiled sardonically. “I know you people consider that the stock rationalization tag of the anti-Semite, but I suspect that in a way it’s true. You people are just the opposite of the Irish in that respect, the individual Jews one knows are dedicated, idealistic, selfless; and yet one is convinced that all the rest one does not know are cunning, grasping, and crassly materialistic, the Irish on the other hand, are supposed to be gay, quixotically gallant, unworldly, even though the Irishmen of one’s acquaintance might be drunken, quarrelsome blackguards whose word no sensible person would accept.” He smiled, showing even white teeth. “No, I don’t consider myself the least bit anti-Semitic, but I guess I’m rather outspoken, and when a thought occurs to me I don’t hesitate to say it. You might call me a sort of devil’s advocate.”
    “Some of my best friends are devil’s advocates,” said the rabbi.
    There was a knock on the door. Hendryx jerked into a sitting position and circled the desk to admit a man carrying a short aluminum ladder. It was the telephone serviceman.
    “I’m here to install the phone,” he said. “Where do you want it? On the desk?”
    “Right.”
    Resting his ladder against the shelves, the serviceman began measuring the wall with a folding rule, he moved his ladder behind the swivel chair and climbed to the top shelf, he grasped the plaster bust with both hands as if to remove it, and then finding it too heavy to lift easily, he slid it along the shelf.
    “Hey; what the hell do you think you’re doing with that statue?” demanded Hendryx. “I want it right there.”
    “I’ll put it back, don’t worry;” the man said. “The wire has to come through behind it so I can run it down to the desk.”
    “Well