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your name in front of the public.”
    “I see.” said Rabbi Small. “Well, thank him for me, and thank you.”
    “You’ll do it?” Ben asked eagerly. “I can’t tell until I’m there.”
    “I really think you ought to try. Rabbi.” said Gorfinkle, barely masking his disappointment.
    “I understand. Mr. Gorfinkle.”
    Mr. Jacob Wasserman, the elderly founder of the temple, frail and with parchmentlike skin, came to see him. “You’re wise to go now, Rabbi, while you’re young and can enjoy it. All my life I’ve promised myself I’d go, and always something came up. so I couldn’t. And now, when I’m under the doctor’s care you could say every minute, it’s too late.”
    The rabbi led him to a chair and eased him into it. “They’ve got doctors there too. Mr. Wasserman.”
    “I’m sure, but to go on a trip like this, it takes more than just wanting. The heart got to spring up at the idea, and with me, the way I am now. a little walk or maybe a ride in the car for an hour when my son drives me. or Becker comes, is already enough. But it makes me happy that you’re going.”
    The rabbi smiled. “All right. I’ll try to enjoy it for both of us.”
    “Good, you’ll be my ambassador there. Tell me. Rabbi, this man who’s coming to take your place, this Rabbi Deutch. you know him?”
    “I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard about him. He has a very good reputation. From what I hear, the congregation is lucky to get him.”
    The old man nodded. “Maybe someone not so good would have been better.”
    “How do you mean. Mr. Wasserman?”
    “Well, there are parties, cliques. I don’t have to tell you.”
    “Yes, I know,” said the rabbi softly.
    “And you’ll be gone how long?”
    “Oh, three months anyway. Maybe more.”
    The old man put a blue-veined hand on the rabbi’s forearm. “But you’re coming back?”
    The rabbi smiled. “Who can tell what will happen tomorrow, let alone in three months?”
    “But right now you’re planning to come back?”
    His relationship with the old man was such that he could neither fence with him nor fib to him. “I don’t know.” he said. “I just don’t know.”
    “Ah.” said Wasserman. “that’s what I was afraid of.”
    Hugh Lanigan. Barnard’s Crossing chief of police, came to see him. “Gladys had a little gift for the missus that she asked me to drop off.” He deposited a gift-wrapped package on the table.
    “I’m sure Miriam will be very pleased.”
    “And look.” he said, “if you’re worried about the house being closed up all the time. I’ve given orders to have the man on the beat and the cruising car check the place regular.”
    “Why. thanks. Chief. I was meaning to drop down to the station to leave a key and tell them when we were going.”
    “I suppose you got to take this trip sometime.”
    “Got to?” The rabbi looked surprised. “I mean, it’s like a priest going to Rome.”
    “Oh, I see.” said the rabbi. “Something like that, only more so. Actually it’s a religious injunction with us, and for all Jews, not just for rabbis.”
    Lanigan still was trying to understand. “Like a Moslem going to Mecca?”
    “NO-o, not really. It doesn’t confer any special grace, any special religious points.” He considered how to answer. “I feel it like a kind of pull, like what I imagine draws a homing pigeon back to where it came from.”
    “I see.” said the police chief. “Then I guess not every one of you has it. or a lot more of you would go.”
    “A lot of homing pigeons don’t get back either, I suppose.” He tried again. “You see, our religion is not just a system of belief or of ritual practices that anyone can assume. It’s a way of life, but more than that, it’s inter-twined somehow with the people themselves, with the Jews as a nation. And the two, the religion and the people, are somehow tied in with the place. Israel, and more particularly Jerusalem. Our interest in the place is not accidentally