Read Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet for Free Online Page A

it’s an awful chore, and you come right here to your study. Okay, so maybe a parent or two comes in to see you. Chances are they won’t, because usually they go to the classrooms to watch first. But you stay here regardless.
    “In the meantime, down the hall the board has started their meeting and they’re listening to the secretary read the minutes and committee reports and maybe Old Business. I figure that will take until ten o’clock or so. You’d know that better than I do. I’m just guessing on the basis that the board meeting usually ends about the same time our classes do, at noon. So I figure the first hour must be mostly routine.”
    “Go on.”
    “Okay, then they get to New Business,” Brooks continued. “The way I figure it, there’ll be a group that is sold on the idea and they’re going to have to convince the rest. Now they’re afraid that if you were there, you’d throw a monkey wrench in the gears because it’s something you maybe wouldn’t approve of, or maybe you’d feel they ought to go slow on. Okay, so somebody gets up to make a motion.” He got up and raised his hand to suggest the person making the motion. “Somebody else seconds it.” He took a step to one side to indicate the seconder. “‘Discussion on the motion.’” He took a step back to represent the chairman. “So they discuss it for a while and maybe somebody calls for a vote.” Brooks went to the door of the study, opened and closed it with a bang, he posed in front of the door, his arms outstretched. “At that point you enter – Ta-ra!” He frowned and reconsidered. “No, better to play it in a low key.” He opened the door again and this time shut it quietly. “You kind of sidle in. Get it?” He looked at the rabbi eagerly.
    The rabbi’s lips twitched. “Then what happens? Do I say anything?”
    Morton Brooks frowned for a moment as he set the scene in his mind, then his face cleared. “Sure, that’s it. You’re playing it cool, so you say, ‘Would someone be kind enough to enlighten me as to the subject under discussion?’ Then you kind of look around and you notice a lot of red faces and maybe some that are too embarrassed to look you right in the eye. So you focus on one of them and he starts to squirm. You let him stew for a minute, and then you say, kind of sharplike, ‘Well, Mr. Meltzer?’” He looked expectantly at the rabbi who nodded and clapped his hands in applause.
    “One of your best performances, Morton, then I suppose Meltzer breaks down and confesses that they were just going to vote to convert the temple into a roller-skating rink. No, Morton, nothing is going to happen at the meeting Sunday that doesn’t happen at any other meeting. If someone comes up with a new idea, they talk about it and then lay it on the table for the next meeting, and usually for the next and the next until they’ve talked it to death and finally put it to a vote, as for the parents. I’ll see them because their kids are important to them, and what’s more, because they’re important to me, a lot more than the board meeting.”
    “If that’s the way you want it –”
    “That’s exactly the way I want it,” the rabbi said in dismissal.
    “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Chapter Nine
    Unlike his three colleagues, Dr. Daniel Cohen, the newest member of the Barnard’s Crossing Medical Clinic, was a general practitioner, actually, although Alfred Muntz was a heart man. Ed Kantrovitz an internist, and John DiFrancesca an allergist, they all did a great deal of general work, as is necessary in small-town practice.
    With his close-cropped hair, bow tie and sports jacket, Dr. Daniel Cohen looked like a college senior of a generation ago. But he was not a youngster who had just completed his internship; he was thirty-two years old and had been practicing for some time. Previously, he had had an office in Delmont and then closed it after a couple of years to open another in Morrisborough,