Free One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross by Harry Kemelman Page A

I’m sure—”
    â€œNever mind,” said Gittel. “We must be getting along.”
    He did not persist. “All right, but you’ll come and visit, won’t you? Now that you know where I live.”
    As they drove off, Gittel said, “He seems a resolute man. These yeshiva hooligans better not start with him . It was in all the papers. They wanted to buy his place. One report claimed they offered a token, a shekel for the property. It must be worth half a million. But even if they offered a legitimate price—and those religious groups have plenty of money—does that mean he has to sell? And the one they tried to deal with was not the owner, only a caretaker or a manager, an Arab yet, who didn’t even have the authority. So they harassed him. They dumped refuse in front of the door. They even started small fires. That brought in the police, of course. And that brought in some of the crazier of the religious groups and that in turn provoked the crazies on the other side. Finally the mayor got involved, and I guess he managed to knock some sense into their heads. The director of the yeshiva was replaced, and things quieted down.”
    â€œBut what kind of yeshiva is it that would tolerate that kind of thing?” asked Miriam.
    â€œAsk your husband,” said Gittel tartly. “That’s his department. All I know is that most of the students are Americans. They look like a bunch of bums with their boots and overalls like farmers in those faded blue jeans. Some wear leather jackets with fringes along the sleeve. They are supposed to be Baalei Tshuvah. They are now presumably concerned only with holy things, and they prove it by throwing stones at anyone who drives by in a car on the Sabbath, even a doctor going to see a patient.”
    â€œIs that the yeshiva where the Goodman boy is?” asked Miriam.
    â€œI’m sure it is,” her husband answered. “Goodman said it was the American Yeshiva in Abu Tor. I can’t believe that there is more than one.”
    â€œOh, dear, it doesn’t sound very promising, does it?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” said the rabbi. “In any organization there are apt to be a few bad apples, at least extremists who lose all sense of proportion in their devotion to an ideal. I find it hard to believe that the yeshiva itself would foster that kind of thing.”
    â€œBut they changed the head of the yeshiva.”
    â€œThat doesn’t necessarily mean the first one fostered hooliganism—only perhaps that he failed to control it.”
    Back at the house in Abu Tor, only minutes after Gittel and the Smalls had left, Ismael drove up. He was full of explanations and apologies. He kept dabbing his upper lip and forehead with a large silk handkerchief as he told of the car breaking down and of the difficulty he had had in finding a garage with a mechanic. Then, when he had finally located one, there was the problem of getting the car to the garage. “He kept telling me, Mr. James, tomorrow. He would come for it tomorrow.”
    He stood over Skinner, his heavyset body leaning forward at an angle, as he then told of accompanying the car to the garage, of the disorder in the shop—“Five minutes, five minutes, Mr. James, he spent looking for a screwdriver. And then he stops in the middle because he must eat. And all the time I am looking at my watch”—he extended his hand to show the watch on his wrist—“I keep telling him I am in a hurry and it is an emergency and he tells me—this, this ignorant, illiterate—I had to write out the bill for him …” A high school graduate with even some college courses to his credit, Ismael, who wore polished shoes and a silk shirt and a shiny black suit, had difficulty expressing the indignity he had had to suffer out of loyalty to his employer in dealing with such riffraff as the garage mechanic.
    â€œAll right, all