Free The Outsider by Howard Fast Page A

synagogue, a very real synagogue.”
    â€œNo, sir, Rabbi, if you will permit me,” Osner said. “We do not have a real synagogue. We have an old, converted Congregational church.”
    â€œWe have painted that church, repaired it, reroofed it, scraped the floors and the pews, replaced the broken windows, and built a sanctuary for our Torahs. It’s a beautiful building, and except on the High Holy Days, we don’t fill it.”
    â€œDavid, David,” Mel Klein said, “it’s still a church. We are Jews and we worship in a church. Is that fitting?”
    â€œI don’t know what could be more fitting. We worship the same God, and you could say that church came to us as an act of love, a hand held out from Christian to Jew —”
    â€œFor a nice price,” Hurtz put in.
    â€œThat’s a low shot.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t,” Osner put in. “Marty Carter and his crowd had embarked on their own piece of church building, and they had overspent and used up every dollar they raised and still had not finished their new church when we came in as the buyers. We helped them out of a hole. The old church may be a museum piece, David, but nobody else wanted it.”
    â€œIt’s not a museum piece. It’s a signature for a great deal of what is best in America. The people who built this church are the same people who created Harvard and Yale, who laid the basis of a country where Jews could come and be free — for the first time, anywhere.”
    â€œDavid, David,” Osner said gently, “we are not going to destroy the old church. Do you think that any of us living here on the Ridge are without a sense of what Congregationalism means? We’re not that narrow or that foolish.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to indicate that you were. If I did, I must apologize.”
    â€œDon’t apologize to us, Rabbi,” Klein said, mollifyingly.
    â€œWe’re not going to destroy the church, David,” Osner said again. “There’s a group of Unitarians who’ve been meeting at the Elks Club in Danbury, and since most of them come from Brookfield and New Fairfield, they’re delighted at the thought of a church of their own here in Leighton Ridge. They’re crazy about our building, and they’ve offered a very good price, thirty thousand dollars for parsonage and church, which is more than double what we paid.”
    â€œSo you’ve sold my home,” David said.
    â€œNo. We’ve done nothing, and we won’t without your approval.”
    â€œI’m afraid you’ll never have my approval. On the other hand, I will not stand against any decision of the board. Like the people whose church we are selling, we are congregationalists and we rule ourselves.”
    â€œNow wait a minute,” Osner exclaimed. “If this goes through, David, we’ll build you a good, modern house. Furthermore, I am putting a restrictive covenant into the deed that will prohibit the Unitarians from making any changes in either building without the approval of the Leighton Historical Society.”
    â€œIs that legal?” Hurtz asked.
    â€œEntirely legal. Now what do you say, David?”
    â€œI plead with you to change your minds.”
    â€œWe need some things that we don’t have now,” Klein said. “We want to start a nursery school, a sort of crèche. We want a gym. We want a reasonable area to expand into. We want some classrooms and an office for you. These are the functions of a synagogue today, and I see nothing so awful about it.”
    â€œIn one of those ugly modern buildings.”
    â€œIt need not be ugly.”
    â€œWe’ll have the best and most innovative architect we can find,” Osner said. “And you’ve got to admit, David, that Jewish kids growing up in a Congregational church in Connecticut are bound to be a little confused.”
    â€œSuch confusion might not be the