From my father’s book:
Long Island, 1943:
Most Friday nights my father now took me with him to services at the nearby Merrick Jewish Center. Once bar mitvahed, a child is deemed an adult for all religious purposes. As a self-professed mourner, grieving his parents, he rose up for the Kaddish prayer, rattling off his parents’ names aloud and dealt with the rest of his lines in confident Hebrew. I never elsewhere heard him speak that tongue and certainly neither of us understood it but even without knowing the mournful words every Jew understands its meaning.
“Hypocrites!” Seated before Rabbi Solomon we worshippers were excoriated from the pulpit. As a precocious reader of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” I suffered under Joyce’s priest and his pages-length cataract of horrors that would inevitably descend upon all in his hearing. He targeted as damned-to-be all those who would fail to immediately abjure the mortal sin of masturbation. I didn’t understand how that situation could be reliably monitored. These same abominations I believed Rabbi Lippman was calling down upon all of us who would fail to cease and desist in the equally mortal practice of hypocrisy. I felt strangely exhausted from all his doomsday predictions and accusations of hypocrisy committed by his flock – – including , of course, me.
But even as I considered myself among those to be laid low, I also sided with the rabbi in damning all hypocrite congregants. This despite the fact that I wasn’t entirely sure of the precise meaning of “hypocrisy.” It had connotations of greed, crassness and lying about what one does compared to what one professes in life. Implicitly conspicuous among the guilty by that standard was, of course, my own father. He and the other unnamed fathers condemned by Rabbi Lippman were in businesses. No one was singled out and none was exempted from his fury. The vague charge, regardless of what business they were in, was that they did whatever they needed to do without reference to morality. Why did they “need” to do what they did? Thinking of my own father and projecting to the others, it seemed they needed to support their families, and also to pay the rabbi’s salary. He took his money and railed against the hypocrites who gave him his podium. And on Friday evenings they all together – – earners, wives and the rabbi – – joined in praise of morality and blasphemed hypocrisy. Or was my father a hypocrite for pretending he could speak Hebrew? I was genuinely confused.
But I, too chafed—as well as marveled– at this collection of what I sullenly considered crass and greedy hypocrites, among my own father. They were in business doing what they need to do to get ahead but on Friday evenings they sang the praises of morality. No one among them seemed upset in the slightest, however.
During the post-service barrages of warm hand-shakes and mutual “Good Shabboses” I unhappily burrowed into that uneasy sense of being on the outside of yet another group which I should have comfortably regarded as my own. There was no place there that I could be a part of.
Except for Sunday morning. Then I’d spend an hour or so at that very same Merrick Jewish Center in the company of that same rabbi, together with four or five of my peers in attendance at what was known as Sunday School – – preparing for what was called confirmation. This could be either pre- or post bar mitzvah and was essentially a desultory study of Jewish history by way of a detailed exploration of Jewish holidays both major and minor. Essentially, it was a source of needed income for the center. There were a few girls as well as boys in attendance.
Likely for reasons of mutual economic self-interest, the Rabbi was employed as instructor. Here I got a wholly different view of the man. In this three-quarters-of-an-hour class he was kind, interesting, scholarly and unusually interested in each of us. Here were no exhortations, warnings or excoriations. He seemed comfortable, his actual self, simply serious and sincere.
It was in those classes that I decided I wanted to be like him. In fact, I wanted to be him. I would be a rabbi, a teacher, a helper. I would help young people not to be confused, to learn right from wrong. It was not the thundering Friday night rabbi that I wanted to be but the gentle, learned and interested Sunday morning Rabbi Lippman I’d be when grown up.
Fortunately or not, this yen evaporated. I was confirmed and I soon lost contact with the Merrick Jewish Center, as did my parents. I consciously thought no more of Rabbi Lippman or of becoming a rabbi. But always in the far recesses of my mind, admiration and respect for Solomon Lippman must have held steady.
This despite an onslaught of whispered derogatory remarks starting about his wife. From my parents and their friends I began to overhear occasional disconnected remarks about her being a pretentious over-spender, an addicted shopper who bought far beyond the rabbi’s means. She was said to be a deadbeat, a borrower from friend, relative or acquaintance, who never repaid. I once even heard her referred to as the “shrewish Jewess.” And the indictments didn’t stop there. She was asocial, rude, contentious, a bore. The rabbi stood by his isolated wife and, in the process, got accused behind his back of acquiring some of her traits. My father referred to her as Xantippe, who was, I later learned, Socrates’ ill-tempered wife.
Well after I’d left home, random scraps of news and gossip let me know that the Rabbi was in serious financial trouble. His contract at the Jewish Center was not renewed. But whatever sad information I received, in my heart I remained his acolyte.
Twenty years later at lunchtime I went into the clerk’s office in a Manhadttan courthouse to get information about a case. The only person in the room was on the office telephone. “No, Rabbi,” he was saying. “It’s already a judgment. That’s why they had to send it to you. Letting you know. You can try to vacate the judgment but if you do I strongly suggest this time you get a lawyer.” Then silence. Talking from the other end. Then, “I can’t. We’ve told you many times we’re not allowed to give legal advice. My opinion, if you asked, could be stop buying what you can’t afford, and if you can’t do that, then pay for it. Good luck, Rabbi Lippman.” He sounded sincere and sympathetic. “Someone else here needs help. Good luck, again.” He hung up and turned to me. “Poor guy. He has a few cases here. Now, how can we help you?” Years before I’d heard that as a young man Rabbi Lippman had graduated from law school but had never practiced or even been admitted to practice in any state. So now he’d decided to represent himself and his wife. And obviously he’d lost. Now he’d reached the end of the line.
My immediate impulse was to telephone my one-time role model and offer help. I would do the appeal for all of his cases free. But he likely had no money for research, printing costs, process serving, or filing fees. I couldn’t afford to pay these. If as seemed likely he’d lose these appeals, costs would be assessed against him which he’d surely be unable to pay so my help would get him in deeper debt.I faced the probability of unlimited free lifetime legal representation. I had a wife and young children and a small, growing law practice. . .
I thanked the clerk for his help and left his office. I never re-introduced myself to Rabbi Lippman. And I finally arrived at a working definition of his word “hypocrisy.”
c copyright 2019
All Rights Reserved by Joseph Lobenthal