Free Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman Page A

Softball. Everyone’s coming. It’ll be nice. We’re doing it up by the falls. You know.”
    Andras nods. The camp is of huge importance to the Lamkins. Really a windfall for them. Last summer there were great debates about whether there should even be a summer camp. The shul owned property, the old Thorne estate that Cecil’s father had bought years ago when he was treasurer. Mr. Birnbaum had bought the land as an investment for the shul, and now it’s worth some money. At the shul board meeting last summer the Lamkins proposed that they lease the land for just a few dollars a year, so that they could get a summer camp off the ground. Of course, old Mr. Birnbaum was not alive to respond to the suggestion, but Cecil stood up in his father’s place anddeclared that the land should be sold or rented at market value, not for a pittance—and if it wasn’t, he was quitting the board. Some people said that if Cecil wanted to quit, fine. The shul should invest in the children above all, not in real estate. Others said that starting a day camp was too difficult, and the children should stay home.
    Meanwhile, all through this controversy the Lamkins were holding their Shabbes afternoon onegs for girls and boys. Rabbi Lamkin was telling his group of thirty boys that they would have a basketball court if a camp were organized, and shiurs at picnic tables outdoors. And Beyla Lamkin was subtly campaigning among the girls. She would pass out Stella D’oro cookies, juice, and nonpareils; then she would launch into her stories: the little shul all alone and abandoned in the forest, discovered by a hunter who heard it weeping; the poor man who spent his last pennies so he could buy a fish for Shabbes, and then, cutting open the fish, found a priceless diamond there; the rich man and the silvered mirrors he learned to give up, exchanging them for clear glass so that he could look out onto the suffering of the world; the little Jewish boy who was stolen away and became pope. And she told tales of selfless men. Men who gave tzedakah at the highest level. They didn’t merely give gold and silver; they helped the unfortunate help themselves. Not only that, but they gave in secret. Such was the modesty of these saints that their work was known only after they had died. So tenderhearted were they that they wept to see a Jew breaking Shabbes. Beyla dwelt on the importance of a generous heart over and above all practical considerations, and even told the children of a piece of land left to a city, and how the king debated what to do, until finally he decided he would give it to the children for them to play in.
    The Lamkins got up and spoke before a meeting of the Kaaterskill parents, and they explained why it was necessary to establish a summer camp. The camp would protect the children from the dangers of summer; it would keep them learning, even when the weather was nice, so that they wouldn’t run wild and forget everything from the school year. Hashem shouldn’t be in one ear and out the other, but all year round! Of course, Andras thought these arguments were absurd. He would have walked out of the meeting, if it hadn’t been for Nina. Andras has no patience for this kind of thing, this cringingfrom the world in little enclaves, this desire to keep the children from outside influences, the building of a European ghetto in America. He grimaces now to hear the Lamkins go on about the camp. He came from the Old Country himself, after all, and he chose the new.

    T HE rain splashes Elizabeth and her daughters as they dash from their car into the Kendall Falls Library. They come every Sunday, because during the week they don’t have the car.
    Elizabeth opens the jingling glass door, and the girls walk past the box of sale books, twenty-five cents each. “Wipe your shoes, please,” the librarian, Ernestine Schermerhorn, tells the children. The girls are a little afraid of her. She is a proud librarian, watchful and keen, with short