Irv’s Recaptured Aliyah

Irv’s Recaptured Aliyah

Irv’s latest tantrum from the Shabbat bimah. Rob Engelman and the other forty mostly senior men in attendance experience this performance maybe five or six times each year. These can be annoying, exasperating, entertaining, disruptive, provocative. Or more than one. Irv can be very elegant in his presentation, perhaps a Toastmasters alum. Fluent sentences that mesh together one to another, adjectives of vivid imagery, rarely a passive verb. And rarely on topic with anything unique about that Shabbat morning, not the Torah portion, not the Haftarah, not a special insertion welcoming the New Month. While the Rabbi listened politely like everyone else, undoubtedly less entertained by this than Rob and some others, Irv Feldman knew to stop at about six minutes lest Rabbi Horowitz chime some Shabbat adaptable facsimile of a Gong. Adon Olam will not conclude this weekly service appreciably later than other weeks. Transient amusement, transient remarks bordering on heresy, does not quite enter the prohibition of Tircha D’Tzibburah but skirts it on some of his diatribes.

Rob, who had defected from his town’s United Synagogue affiliate for cause some four years earlier, adapting easily to his Modern Orthodox alternative, must have witnessed about twenty of these seemingly impromptu, though maybe planned, mini-discourses. They never announced them in the weekly Shabbat bulletin, but if other members knew about them in advance, their entertainment value alone would enhance and expand attendance. Or maybe some who understood their randomness had just stopped coming rather than chancing worship on the wrong Shabbat. But about five shabbatot in any given year, Irv would ascend the bimah, or perhaps already be there as Baal Shacharit or departing from his Aliyah, to offer his brief oration. Not often enough to establish himself as either a mascot or a pest. But Rabbi Horowitz, who benefited in many ways from Irv’s decades of loyalty to the congregation, much preferred the Saturday mornings without these interruptions.

Most people in Bnai Yisrael’s sanctuary attend Shabbat morning services every week, other than the doctors who have to take their turns on weekend call. They have been witnesses to this long before Rob’s joining them. Rob never inquired of the Rabbi or anyone else how long Irv has been taking center stage for his six-minute messages, though he has stumbled on feedback preferring that they not occur, and on the High Holy Days when attendance is a significant multiple of what it is on Shabbat, the choreography of the services is much more highly controlled. Irv never capitalized on this expanded audience.

His speeches would span a thesaurus of harangue: tirade with the barest twinge of anger, diatribe, critique, scolding, never quite a real sermon. And never quite what the fictional Reverend Elmer Gantry or a real life evangelical preacher would do with his podium allotment. In Irv’s view, we are inferior in the usual ways, don’t study the Parsha in advance, are too lenient with our kids, don’t insist that our wives join us in shul each week, we tell our Nominating Committee representatives we are too busy to be on the Board, and perhaps borrowing from his Methodist friends, we lack faith in the people who most deserve our faith. All fluent. All verbally elegant. All with illustrative citations that he likely looked up during the week. Irv Feldman’s homiletical skills exceeded the Rabbi’s, who had to figure out a meaningful, though mostly unmemorable, fifteen minute message every week.

Irrespective of the theme, which Rob, despite his polymath recall ability, managed to never store in the easily retrievable memory neurons, Irv on the bimah had a presence that few other members had. He also had an array of professional and personal achievements that few other synagogue members matched. It made no difference whether chanting shacharit or haftarah from the reader’s table or expressing his thoughts from the Rabbi’s lectern. People took note of Irv whenever he became the congregation’s focus of attention. He stood 6’2” with just enough forward flexion of his neck to suggest his height might have measured another two inches when fifteen years younger. And he wore a suit every Shabbat, always some tone of gray, never navy, most typically striped but some weeks with a muted Glenuquart plaid. White shirt, professionally laundered, some weeks broadcloth, other weeks Oxford button down. Black or brown laced shoes, a striped tie of a regiment that nobody recognized. Wool tallit with black stripes and custom woven multicolored atarah that his wife once gave him for Father’s Day, and a knit kippah whose color and design rotated through his ample kippah wardrobe. A person of habit, mostly good habit.

That morning he had Aliyah Revi’i #4 where he silently mouthed the scroll’s words as best he could while the paid Torah Reader pointed each short phrase with the congregation’s finest silver filagree yad, which as a southpaw he held in his left hand, though the silver hand was righty. His Aliyah successor #5 completed his blessings after a lengthy portion spanning more than a column in the scroll. Irv offered the first handshake. But instead of descending the Bimah to his seat with his son and school age grandson in the third row of wooden pews, he sauntered to the Rabbi’s podium. Positioning his hands above his head, left creating the horizontal, right making the vertical of the T, his baritone voice asked for and received the men’s attention. They had all been there before.

Customary subject, the congregation and its leadership have failed us. They’ve done no better these past two months than the last time he gave his Toastmasters level oration from that same lectern. Irv gave his Seiko watch with its black leather band a sideways glance, then proceeded to tell whoever would listen, maybe forty men and just shy of twenty women on the other side of the traditional gender separation barrier, not only how we lacked faith in what we could do for ourselves but in what we should expect of others, most particularly in what the men who should be transforming us had neglected to do. He told us, or thought he reminded us, that we undermine ourselves with that gender barrier with both sides only visible when ascended onto the Bimah as he now was. Too much stress on the legal niceties at the expense of pure faith. Too wide a gradient between our few weekly hours in the sanctuary and the other 160 hours of our weekly lives. Our Christian friends, all now more than cordial to us personally and as a local community, offered us the part of their message that would have remedied some challenges that we might have already solved but it eluded us. Six minutes elapsed. Irv returned to his seat. Rob Engelman paid more attention to the quips that peppered the text than the central message that Irv tried to impart. Rabbi Horowitz kept his poker face pointed toward his more generic wristwatch with stainless steel band, not chuckling at all at the occasional witty asides. And the First Gabbai, who also chaired the Ritual Committee, expressed his desire to those he greeted at Kiddush to eliminate these mostly unwelcome messages. While not messianic, comments of Christians having something to advance us if only we heeded did not register well.

He and the Rabbi met during the coming week. Religious discipline had gotten a little too loose at the Bnai Yisrael synagogue. Not decorum. Not talent. Discipline.

At kiddush the following Shabbat, David Sternberg, the chairman of Bnai Yisrael’s Ritual Committee, approached Rob and Nat Goodman, who had exchanged some weekly thoughts on the likely outcome of their shared alma mater’s football game later that afternoon. Nat at 6’6” and a playing weight in the mid-200s as a student had been on that team thirty years and forty pounds earlier, never losing his fondness for that experience. Mediocre football skills, top academic prowess brought him to medical school, an ENT residency, and head and neck oncology fellowship. Along the way, he married an orthodox girl, then an undergrad at his medical school, now head of pediatric infectious disease at the regional Children’s Hospital. David took a sip of 7-Up, then cut in, informing the two that he would call a ritual committee meeting before Thanksgiving. The committee had not met for two years. Rob inquired the subject that prompted the need to meet. To discuss an apikores promoting Messianism in the congregation, he responded. He and the Rabbi had agreed to remain hushed until the full committee sat together.

Email notification of the meeting arrived in everyone’s inbox the following Wednesday. A very limited agenda, two items. 1. Suggestions for expanding the cadre of Haftarah readers which had dwindled to eight from fourteen three years earlier. 2. The Rabbi does not want unannounced speakers from the Bimah. Do we agree? Perhaps more interesting than the agenda was the email list itself, the composition of this committee, previously known only to the Chairman himself, if that. David had chaired this for about seven years. A largely passive-aggressive fellow by nature, CPA by profession, obedient alumnus of every leadership seminar ever offered from Hebrew High School of his childhood community to Federation training program’s potential movers & shakers as a newlywed, he knew how to say YES when asked, not how to create a program de novo or assemble a competent team, which is probably why despite being committee chair, somebody more capable serves as Bnai Yisrael’s Ritual VP. Sharon Cohen received that email invitation as a CC. Somehow, the required committee annual report of activity gets submitted to the Board before the annual meeting, even if the committee did not assemble. Rob never kept minutes of previous meetings, distributed by email for at least a few years, so he had no way of know if David had expanded the membership of his committee since it last met. Not all the names on the email list registered in his mind, his brain having the most intimidating ability for detail of any current congregant. He suspects David learned from Leadership Training that he needed to appoint reliable votes when he could. Seven men, one woman comprised the committee that would assess and deliberate the following week, assuming all eight came.

They did. Pre-Pandemic, pre-Zoom. Even Dr. Goodman had returned home in time for a leisurely weeknight supper, ditched the tie, put on a kippah, and headed over to the ten seat elongated table where committees and classes commonly met. Haftarah first. Eight reliable men to rotate on schedule does not burden any of them. Maybe somebody who knows how to chant this will join before the Grim Reaper or a condo near Boca Raton siphons a person already in the rotation. No action needed, as it is unlikely the congregation had capable men the Officers didn’t know about or that anyone not currently proficient would want to acquire this skill in the next year.

Agenda item #2, Irv as Rabbinical irritant, framed instead as disruptive communal force. Despite the lack of elaboration when the email went out, there was a loop for pre-meeting discussion that included neither Nat nor Rob, nor Gail, the lone female on this committee. David, the chair, deferred to the Rabbi to open the discussion. While advertised as limiting unannounced presentations from the Bimah, something straightforward as policy, Rabbi Horowitz thought the best prevention would be to deny Irv access to the Bimah at all. If not there for an Aliyah or as Haftarah chanter, he could not loop his way to the lectern when done. But why go beyond just a rule? Irv and everyone else at Bnai Yisrael do pretty well adhering to the norms of decorum, traditional gender separations, proper attire, timeliness of worship, and adequate preparation when it is their turn to lead services. Just say no more speeches. It became apparent as the Rabbi proceeded to the second part of his opening remarks. Irv’s content does not align with the Rabbi’s desired image of the congregation, especially internally. Are we inferior Jews? Well, for a Modern Orthodox congregation to have only eight men capable of reading the weekly Haftarah fluently on a week’s notice, perhaps Irv might be right, we underperform as Jews. Unlike many other Modern Orthodox communities, we have to pay a young man not far past his college degree to read our Torah portion three weeks each month as the congregation’s men, indeed its Rabbi, lack the skill to do that each week. But Rabbi Horowitz knew the level of talent when he sought the position nine years ago, and he has not succeeded in upgrading it. The real agenda, for the Rabbi and for those in the loop discussion prior to the physical assembly, were the harangues of how our own gender separation rules, the very tradition that gave us uniqueness in our town but also caused newcomers to accept membership elsewhere, needed to be reconsidered. And the passages about our Christian friends having levels of faith that we could not approach. The Rabbi saw this as heresy. He could not excommunicate, but he had begun to view Irv less as an Apikores, a skeptic, and more as a Rodef, that pursuer of his personal agenda which undermines stability and religious discipline. He strongly believed the action, which Rob saw as retaliation, had to go beyond a mere cease and desist from impromptu comments. The opportunity to do it had to be eliminated.

Rob did not expect this at all. He did not seem religiously threatened, not by Irv, not by the real Christians, including some evangelical, who proved themselves worthy workplace colleagues and good neighbors. Rather, he found the episodes amusing at times, provocative at others. In one way, a desirable uniqueness that the USCJ congregation that he left could not hope to have. For all of Irv’s eccentricities, Bnai Yisrael did not have very many people with Irv’s presence on the Bimah in all the capacities that he assumed. If he never did another haftarah again, bringing us to seven, we could manage. If his son with Bimah skills not that much less than his father left, or boycotted the shul in solidarity, we would be worse off. But as valid as that was, Rob believed that was not what the discussions should be about. The issue as he saw it was one of targeting somebody, and in Rob’s mind, that becomes a Never Event.

He had seen vulnerable people exploited at his previous congregation. Three rich machers bought out two years of a Rabbi’s contract and then some with their own money, making him a deal that he could not duplicate by employment, so they could have a different Rabbi without contract renewal with its assessment of rabbinical performance coming for congregational discussion. For real. Youth directors played favorites, Influencers blackballed members from their committees who they thought pledged too little on the annual congregational appeal. The offenses were many. All learned at Leadership Training Programs. Rob himself had his idiosyncrasies expressed more at work, where his expertise as a PhD economist brought significant profits to his firm and bonuses to himself. He’s a sucker for uniqueness, whether his own, the smartest subordinate on his staff, or Irv as the most Jewishly capable man at Bnai Yisrael. He believed organizations flourish when talent avoids restraints, even when annoying. Or especially when annoying. The personal array of abilities becomes the common good. He, in no ambiguous terms, would only ask Irv to steer clear of the lectern. And he took his five minutes at the committee table to recommend solving the dislike of Irv’s uninvited presentations in the least restrictive way.

Dr. Nat almost agreed, but committees must function by majorities which went to David and Rabbi Horowitz. Irv would no longer have access to the bimah under any circumstances as a Rodef. As a practical matter, unlike Spinoza centuries earlier, the Feldmans remained congregational members in good standing. And since Irv invariably arrived before the first Kaddish, allowing him to count as one of the ten men needed for that prayer seemed prudent to the Ritual Committee. The following night, Rabbi Horowitz conveyed the committee’s action to Irv by phone. Neither expressed animosity toward the other. Irv then told his wife Helen on whom much of the weekly kiddush depends, and his son and daughter-in-law by phone. They agreed to accept the vote without challenge and without a threat of departure or even reduction of financial support. And for the ensuing two years, Irv continued to arrive before the first Kaddish. No one ever offered him an Aliyah, even on Simchat Torah, yet he offered his most generous handshake to those returning to their seats from honors now out of his reach, including Dave. To the best of Rob’s knowledge, Irv never once collared anyone at kiddush to extend his perspectives in an alternate way. Helen mixed the tunafish for kiddush, using her bare fingers to blend the mayo, celery, and seasonings while the men davened shacharit each week. His son Jeff did a little more on the bimah than before. Yet Irv and Jeff each seemed less animated than before.

Rob Engelman, however, found himself with flashbacks of his worst recollections of multiple indignities distributed in his Jewish past. Always external to the USY Clique. Ramah alumni at Hillel’s Kosher dining room reunited in college. He had gone to camp two summers elsewhere. His PhD and income got him invited by Federation as a hot communal prospect, but he had to pay his dues by asking for money on the annual phonathon before anyone would place him on a committee. OK. Follow the instructions and nudge each caller for $50 more than they wanted to pledge in lieu of a quiet thank you for their generosity, not OK, even if his obedience score will suffer. No amount of personal success, which Rob had achieved in abundance, adequately erases that hurt of rejection. Everybody could be pounced upon and subdued. Now Irv, who had done no harm, or maybe the women of the congregation, often highly accomplished in their secular worlds but their Jewish literacy sometimes devalued at Bnai Yisrael. Or maybe not too far into the future, one of the succession of Black custodians, who usually find a job above minimum wage within two years, will arrive at work one morning to find the VP Facilities changed all the locks. In Rob’s assessment, observant as he and his family have become, competent with his liturgical skills as any other member raised Orthodox, Judaism’s bottom line has always been the dignified treatment of the people you encounter and the people who you know are out there but haven’t met yet. And despite Irv’s equanimity with his new limitations, Rob could only regard this experience as sub-Jewish, one more encounter on a growing list. While Irv’s remarks never found a place in Rob’s stored memory, his retrievable mental list of congregational improprieties and its victims is why Rob regards his memory and recall as one of God’s gifts to him. Yet Rob also values his professionalism, his ability to sort these adverse experiences without punitive response. Like Irv, he did not diminish his participation, decline invitations to take his turn chanting Torah when needed, maintained his committee assignments, accepted an invitation to serve on the Board, and maintained his periodic financial contributions.

Irv had been silenced for two years. Rabbi Horowitz accepted a larger pulpit a three-hour plane ride away. A Search Committee, chaired by David Sternberg, appointed by Sharon Cohen, now congregational President who ceded her role as Religious VP to Dave, went through its processes over about six months of deliberations and interviews. On board, a rabbinical successor, a personable young man of maybe thirty, semicha from an independent mentor, college from a branch of his state university, two years doing something for Home Depot before deciding that he much preferred the life of a rabbi. And now it’s within grasp. He spent July moving in and recycling his school’s Rashi outlines for summer sermons. He wanted to meet the Ritual Committee formally to understand previous precedents and identify potential improvements. When the email of the meeting arrived, Rob responded to Dave that he wanted Irv’s situation revisited. Dave put it on the agenda.

Meeting arrives, new Rabbi with the wave of a palm dismisses Rob’s agenda item. The meeting ends with Rob following, perhaps almost stalking, the new Rabbi to his office. First impression, Little Man Big Desk. For some things, nothing could deflect Rob. He made his case, returned home thinking he had just gotten a flashback of his Judaism past, one in which position and authority are coin of the realm. But the novice Rabbi still needed his chance to make his mistakes, create opposition, and deal with it. High Holy Days came and went. Donation from the Engelman’s $100 less. Rob then told Dave, still First Gabbi, that he would opt out of any role on the bimah for the month of Cheshvan and Kislev. Shabbat morning once a month at Chabad, where he accepted an invitation to chant Haftarah. At Bnai Yisrael, he became closer friends with Jeff Feldman, Irv’s son, who seemed less irritated with the new Rabbi’s presence and his unwillingness to revisit his father’s place in the synagogue. Or maybe not.

Come Shabbat Hanukkah, by now, just over thirty men remained who endured Irv’s Shabbat morning random rants, as typical attendance and paid membership were also reduced. Dave was out of town attending a nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, so Dr. took the stack of seven sterling plated aliyah cards from its drawer. Nat Goodman who substituted as Second Gabbai in the absence of one regular. Parsha Miketz. Two scrolls. As the Baal Shacharit repeated the slightly expanded Amidah, Nat went about distributing honors for the Torah service. Ark Openers, carrier of second Scroll, Seven Aliyot, Haftarah, a lifter and binder for each of the two scrolls. Plenty of men were present. While Rob’s bimah hiatus still had another few days to go, he would not turn Nat down, agreeing to carry the second scroll in its procession around the Sanctuary. Aliyah #3, by Gabbai’s preference, goes to the man leading shacharit. But with no hesitation, the tall Dr. Goodman approached the slightly less tall Irv Feldman and handed him the plaque engraved #4. His son Jeff would lift the first scroll. But first he dashed to the kitchen to retrieve his mother. Apron set aside, Helen took a seat between her husband and son.

Kohen, Levi who also bentsched Gomel on his first Shabbat back after knee replacement. #3 the Sheliach. Then First Gabbi called Irv’s Hebrew name. Face still expressionless, wearing his customary gray suit with subtle stripes, he ascended the bimah, avoiding eye contact with the Rabbi who must have been relieved that he did not have to make a decision on this. In his years in Honors Limbo, the Gabbai never removed the 3x5 card with Irv’s Hebrew name and those of his family from its box. With a sweep of his tzitzit, he flawlessly recited the blessings before and after his portion was read. First handshake to Dr. Goodman, then clockwise to #3 recipient, the Torah Reader, and finally the First Gabbai. After #5 was chanted, Irv greeted the man honored and then proceeded to the Rabbi for a businesslike handshake. Then brief hugs to Helen and Jeff when back at his customary place in the third Pew. Not even a mournful glance at the Rabbi’s lectern.

At kiddush, Rob filled his plastic cup with about 20 ml of Jack Daniels. He seemed disappointed that his stridence at what he thought was his opportunity with a new rabbi not only did not restore Irv to where he should be but left him with less confidence in the new rabbi’s authority. But he also understood why Nat Goodman had become the man Rob and others sought for wisdom. Nat, that man gifted with binah, insight, also saw not only the right outcome but the time to implement it. He needed authority, this time in the form of the man who invited Aliyot. He acted quietly but with accountability. If the Rabbi considered a reprisal, Nat’s friendly demeanor at the Rabbi Search Committee interviews would deter this. Rob realized that his imposing intellect, which can identify injustice and articulate its features, could not surpass Nat’s derech eretz, his civility, his charm. And to a small extent, perhaps his size.

Dave returned irate to learn that Nat unilaterally had done a workaround in his absence. It would take another four shabbatot and a few words in private from the Rabbi for Irv to have his next Torah honor, but only two weeks beyond that to return to the Haftarah chanting corps. Eight seemed the right number of men available.