Read Monday the Rabbi Took Off for Free Online

Arnold Bookspan. “Those tapes, they were made right in the synagogue. Right? So. how come he made them?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean why should a rabbi make a tape of his sermon?”
    “Well, a lot of rabbis, they want to have a record.”
    “Yeah, but then they write them out first. I mean that if he was making tapes of his sermons, maybe he was already looking for a job back then and was making them to send out to congregations that might be interested in hiring.”
    “You got a point there, Arnold.”
    “Yeah, but that could’ve been toward the end.” said Barry Meisner, who was in the insurance business, “when he was looking around, and that would be all right in my book. I tell you frankly, I’m sold on the guy. I can just see myself acting the same way he did. I’ve been in positions where I’ve had a deal going, and it’s crapped out through some misunderstanding that was nobody’s fault really, and I’ve had to rethink the whole business and start on a new tack. We all have. And then we go ahead on the new angle, and plenty of times it works out even better than if the original deal had gone through as planned. So I can see myself in the picture he painted. And I can see myself working up a presentation for this meeting, same way he did, and I’d plan it out pretty much the same way.”
    “Well, maybe that’s what gets me.” Bookspan insisted. “I mean, like you say, if I were going to sell a couple of gross of raincoats to some big outfit where I’d never called before. I’d do it just this way. I think, I hope. I’d be as smooth as this guy.”
    “So?”
    “So that’s the trouble with him; he’s just like us.”
    “So we’re back where we started from. You know, all this takes time and we don’t have too much time.” Raymond observed. The boys were the salt of the earth, but sometimes it was hard to get them to come to a decision, especially when he tried to get complete agreement. Division, he felt, with one group voting down the other side just made for bad feelings.
    “Yeah, but we can’t just take anybody.” said Bookspan. “I’m not so sure. It’s only for three months.”
    “Or it could be a lot longer if the rabbi decides not to come back.”
    Geoff Winer was constrained to speak. He had only recently set up his business. Winer Electronics, in the area. Bert Raymond had done the necessary legal work for him and had got him to join the temple organization. “Look guys. I’m new in the area, and don’t think I don’t appreciate your asking me to serve on this committee. But I think, if you don’t mind my saying so. being new and all that, that we’re going about this in the wrong way. I mean, we’re going after the wrong sort of guy. You take a young man, there’s got to be something wrong with him or he wouldn’t want to come here to take a substitute job where he don’t even know how long he’s going to last. And a middle-aged man would be someone who has a job, and he wouldn’t leave to take a temporary job unless he were pretty bad and thought he was going to be fired. So I think we ought to consider an older man.
    “Now this rabbi that was the rabbi in the temple where I used to go in Connecticut where I came from – in fact, he married me – he’s just retired after being rabbi in that same temple for thirty years. They made him like rabbi emeritus. Now. don’t get the idea that Rabbi Deutch is some old geezer with a cane. He’s sixty-five, but he’s got a lower golf handicap than I have.”
    “Does he have an accent or something? I mean, does he speak good English, or is he one of those old-timers?” asked Drexler.
    “Does he have an accent or something? I mean, does him. Look, he was born here, and so was his father, and I think even his grandfather, or maybe he came here when he was a little kid. He’s related to the New York Deutch family, you know, the bankers.”
    “So why would he want to be a rabbi? Why didn’t he go into the