Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red by Harry Kemelman Page A

marry her brother-in-law?” demanded Mazonson.
    “Or the other way around?” said the rabbi with a smile. “It’s all in how you look at it.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “You evidently don’t know what the law was or its purpose, for that matter, the law called for the widow and her brother-in-law to marry only if she were childless. But the obligation was on both of them and the purpose, according to the Bible, was that she might have a child who would be named after her dead husband, ‘so that his name should not be lost to Israel.’”
    “Well, I heard –”
    “Why would –”
    “It seems to me –”
    “How about Golda Meir?”
    The rabbi rapped his knuckles against the lectem for quiet.
    “So why do they keep us separated in the synagogue?” asked Miss Dushkin.
    “Certainly not because they regard women as inferior,” he said with a smile. “It goes back to primitive times when in many religions a service that included both sexes ended in an orgy, was arranged for that purpose, in fact, since it had to do with fertility rites. In more recent times, it was felt that the natural attraction of the sexes would interfere with the concentration on prayer.” He spread his hands and added wryly; “How long ago was it that co-education was disparaged on the grounds that boys and girls sitting in the same classroom would be unable to keep their minds on their studies? But look here,” he went on, “you’re all making the mistake of forming your opinions on isolated bits of information or misinformation instead of on your own experience. Think about your own families and then ask yourself if the women, your mothers and grandmothers, your aunts, are registered as inferiors by their husbands or their families.”
    As they trooped out at the end of the class, Harvey Shacter turned to Henry Luftig. “I thought you were going to set him straight.”
    Luftig shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought we had him on the ropes in the opening rounds, but he came back strong, he might turn out to be one tough baby.”

Chapter Seven
    How did it go?” Miriam asked when he returned Wednesday morning.
    “It was nice,” he said, and then smiled. “I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it tremendously. I’ve been thinking of it all the way home, Miriam, and I’ve concluded there are few quiet pleasures in this life to compare with that of imparting knowledge to a receptive listener. I remember noticing it the last time we had trouble with the heating system, as the plumber explained to me how the system worked and what was wrong, you could see he was enjoying himself.”
    “Why not? He was getting about nine dollars an hour for it,” she remarked.
    But the rabbi refused to be dampened. “I’m sure it wasn’t that. It’s a sense of superiority. You’re bound to get a lift to the ego from dispensing information about anything you know better than others, and when that knowledge can change a person’s way of living, his lifestyle, it’s even more satisfying. It’s quite something this – this ego trip, I think the students call it.”
    “I’m not sure they consider it a particularly nice thing, David. I think they use the term disparagingly.”
    “Really? Well, that just shows how little they know. I suppose it’s part of the Anglo-Saxon ethic. In sports, for example, the champion is taught to attribute his success to his trainer or his teammates or to luck, to anything except his own superiority. It’s so obviously false. No one believes it; but the tradition continues, all I can say is that I frankly enjoyed my first lecture.”
    “So I see,” she said. “And it’s done wonders for your modesty.”
    “I was only trying to answer your question,” he said stiffly, and then they looked at each other and both smiled.
    But Miriam was anxious to pursue it. “But lecturing is nothing new to you. You give a sermon, which is a lecture of sorts, every Friday night and on all the holidays.”
    “No,” he said,