Reckless Endangerment by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page B

with a star of David and a lion looked Karp over, frowning. Karp told him he was here to see Reb Lowenstein, and the youth handed him a yarmulke and waited until he had placed it on his head. Then he led the way through dim and crowded hallways to a small chamber fitted out as a waiting room, told Karp to wait, and left. There were a dozen or so men waiting with him, talking softly or reading. The room was warm and stuffy; from time to time men would be called to the door at one end of the room and exit, but the room did not seem to grow less crowded. No one spoke to Karp.
    After fifteen minutes of this, a thin young man with a sparse reddish beard emerged and beckoned to Karp and then led him through the door. On the other side was a small, windowless, cluttered office within which, behind a desk piled with papers, sat Mendel Lowenstein. There were several other men in the room, engaged in some business around an adding machine, which clicked and buzzed as they talked. Lowenstein looked up as Karp walked in and gestured to a straight chair in front of his desk.
    Karp had been in drug dens, in wretched apartments where people had been murdered, places with blood on the walls, and he had been much in the company (almost always without rancor) of some of the worst people produced by his society, but he had not often been as angry or as uncomfortable as he was at this moment. He really didn’t like these people, and although he kept his face neutral, he sensed that Lowenstein knew it. The rabbi was a stocky, brush-bearded man with a high, domed forehead and the large, liquid, intense eyes of a fanatic or a saint, assuming there is a difference.
    These examined Karp for a long, uncomfortable moment before the man spoke.
    “So, Mr. Karp, here you are. What have you got to tell me? Are you going to stop this pogrom?”
    Clearly no pleasantries were going to be exchanged, which was fine with Karp. He said, “I’m not sure what you mean, Rabbi. I thought a pogrom was an anti-Semitic mob organized by the government.”
    Contempt blossomed on the rabbi’s face. “Bah! What, you didn’t see the police beating our boys with clubs? We get slaughtered and the police beat us ? What do you call it, then?”
    “I would call it controlling a riot, sir. Objects were thrown at the police station, and several police were injured.”
    Lowenstein pointed a stubby finger at Karp, “See! This is how it starts. This is what happened before the Nazis took over. You, a Jew, sit here in the house of God, may his name be blessed, and defend the beating of Jews. It’s a shandah! A shandah! ”
    At this word the clicking of the adding machine ceased, and all the men in the room stared at Karp. Their faces indicated that they had accepted their leader’s verdict. It was indeed shameful.
    Karp felt his face heat, and he allowed himself a calming breath. The rabbi was not finished, however. “You think because you act like the goyim, and eat like the goyim, when the time comes the goyim are going to protect you? Like they protected the six million?” And more of the same for some time. Karp let the man run out his spiel. He was more than adequately familiar with the Holocaust. Karp’s mother had been a fierce Zionist and something of a connoisseur of Holocaust details, and had imbued Karp from an early age with the necessity for Jews to be ever vigilant in an implacably hostile world. The lesson had not taken deep root in Karp’s soul, however, although he had considerable experience with practical anti-Semitism. On the streets of Brooklyn, where he had been raised, it was given that a group of Irish or Italian kids would beat up any Jewish kid they found, and Karp’s own little gang of Jews was not loath to return the favor. That they used fists, sticks, and rocks rather than the semi-automatics that later became fashionable in settling youthful disputes did not detract from the sincerity of their violence, and this experience had, perhaps