Brooklyn Noir Read online

  In the kitchen my wife was washing up, putting things away. I joined her at the sink with a dishtowel, and told her about following the rebbetzin to a strange address.

  Don’t you know anything? my fine rebbetzin asked rhetorically. The poor woman remarried about a year ago, to a widower about fifteen years older than her. People say she was led by the nose for a long walk, to the end of the block and back again. By a scheming brother-in-law who convinced the world, the wife, and the children of the Dobrover’s sins.

  And what happened to the younger children? I asked.

  Taken in by the brother-in-law, Reb Shloimele. The younger daughter, barely seventeen, was palmed off to her first cousin, Reb Shloimele’s son, a bum, rumor has it, who would have had difficulty finding a father willing to hand over his daughter. The younger son, still a cheder boy at the time, was raised in Reb Shloimele’s home, and at the age of thirteen, sent off to a Litvak yeshiva, with the intention, it was said, to further hurt the father.

  That explained the strangeness of a Dobrov son in Litvak garb. And again Reb Shloimele made himself felt in this sordid story. I shook my head. So much evil under the noses of the most pious men, and in their names. I felt an obligation to bring this murder to light, to clear the innocent and accuse the guilty, but how to go about it? And whom to name? This brother-in-law was a mover and shaker, a makher in Yiddish, but he couldn’t have acted alone. There were powerful men behind him but I couldn’t accuse all of Szebed. And who would risk the congregation’s ire, help point the finger, and haul the shameless sinners into Jewish court? None of the rabbis appointed to our house of judgment would risk political suicide. Since I couldn’t expect assistance on the inside, I would have to go outside.

  I attended my evening study session, then started walking toward home, but found myself instead on Keap Street again, in front of the Szebed residence, looking for something, I wasn’t sure what. The door opened, I stepped into a nearby doorway and watched the young Dobrover son in his short coat and hat emerge alone, hurry down the stairs, and turn right on Lee. I followed at a distance, curious, wondering where he would go. He led me to 446 Ross, to the Dobrover home, dark and shuttered, and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. Would he go up the stairs and enter his old home, which the angel of death had invaded? He didn’t. After long minutes, he turned away and walked back. What struck me as exceptionally cruel was his inability to mourn publicly, a ritual intended as an aid to grief and recovery. Standing in the way of mourning were the laws of excommunication. An excommunicated man, considered dead, was denied living mourners; there would be no one to say kaddish for the Dobrover’s soul. His enemies had succeeded in cutting him off both in life and in death.

  It was my turn to walk the streets and think.

  The perpetrators had used public opinion to help make their case to the judges. I too would have to take my case to the public. And since I couldn’t afford print—even the cheapest pamphlet costs a goodly sum—I would have to use the poor man’s version: the Internet.

  At my desk the next morning I found a chat room with organized religion as its topic, soon steered the conversation to religious politics, and posted my story as an example of corruption, proclaiming the Dobrover’s innocence. I didn’t have to wait long for the important questions to come up, the who and why of every whodunit, and I pointed my finger to the brother-in-law as prime perp, offered as explanation the oldest motivation, envy, the reason Cain raised his hand against his brother Abel. I was convinced and was able to convince others that without the green worm of jealousy, the Dobrover rebbe and his family would have remained untouched.

  Consider this brother-in-law: a promising yeshiva boy who in maturity proved to be a minor scholar with an impatient mind incapable of complex argument. Marrying the sister of the Dobrover rebbetzin, herself a woman of fine rabbinical stock, was his undoing. He would have sat at the table, listened to the deeply scholarly talk, and squirmed in ignorance. The first years of his marriage, he sat pressing the yeshiva bench unwillingly, because the husband of the Dobrover’s rebbetzin’s sister had to be a scholar, then seized the first opportunity that came his way and became the director of the newly founded Szebeder boys’ school. The position fulfilled his need to move about and accomplish things, but at the Sabbath table the sense of his own inferiority would have deepened. And without scholarship to occupy his mind, he became a plotting busybody. The rivalry between the two congregations presented him with an opportunity. Knowing he would never be a significant player in Dobrov, he determined to curry favor at Szebed. Indeed, his reward for interfering in the life and marriage of Dobrov was proof enough of his motivation: He had recently been appointed administrative overseer of the entire Szebed congregation, not a scholarly position, but respectable enough to protect him from his detractors. In taking him on, in other words, I was taking on the whole of Szebed. The anonymity of the Internet, I hoped—I hadn’t used my name—would protect me.

  And that’s where I miscalculated. I didn’t count on the Internet’s long and wide reach, nor its speed. Religious corruption, whether among priests or rabbis, has a captive audience in America. Well-meaning, sympathy-riddled letters came pouring in, as if I was the one who had suffered the heavy hand of the court. The chat room conversations went on for hours and days, and when I was too exhausted, continued without me, spilled over into new chat rooms. I spent hours online, returned to my office after services and dinner, and remained until midnight typing.

  Who were the people chatting? A mixed group—the word crowd would be more correct—it turned out. There were both knowing and unknowing participants, meaning Hasidic and not. Also a good number who asked questions that revealed they knew nothing at all about Judaism. Within days, a reporter from the Village Voice asked for an interview, then a staff writer writing for the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.” I agreed to give the interviews as long as I remained anonymous. I didn’t meet them in person.

  Is it necessary to say that I wasn’t making my wife happy? She argued that I would remain anonymous only to outsiders. Anyone on the inside who wanted to know who was behind this would soon figure it out. Once known, my name would be mud, and our lives would be shattered. And of course she had a point. Good women are often prescient.

  First an anonymous threat to cease and desist or suffer consequences was posted in what I was by now thinking of as my chat room, named Hasidic Noir by a participant, a wise-guy. I was accused of lying. Where were the mourners? this faceless voice asked. No one had performed keria (the ripping of the lapels), no one was sitting shiva (seven days of mourning), and no one had recited the mourner’s kaddish (the prayer for the soul of the dead). He concluded with a declaration that there was no Dobrover rebbe or Dobrover congregation, that I was a careerist who had fabricated a murder for the sake of publicity.

  Clearly this was coming from an insider with knowledge of the vocabulary and customs, someone who knew that excommunication rendered a man nonexistent to the community, hence his argument that there was no Dobrover rebbe.

  The chat room became a divisive hive, with people taking sides, demanding to know what the words meant, who was the liar in this story, how to find out. One cynical participant raised the irrelevant question of my, not the murderer’s, motivation. If the brother-in-law is jealous Cain, he asked, who is this snitch, and what’s he going for? The next morning the Village Voice published the interview, and late that evening, when my wife and I were already in bed, there was a knock at the door.

  I drew on my flannel dressing gown, removed the Glock I keep in the locked drawer of our night table, and instructed my wife to remain in bed. I opened the door, loaded gun in hand, pointing. These men should know what there is to know. Three Szebeder bums stood red-faced, mouths open, breathing hard. They must have used the stairs. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they’d been imbibing. But I knew that if there’d been any excess, it had been verbal not alcoholic. To achieve a tough’s appearance they’d had
to talk themselves into a frenzy.

  The barrel end of the gun quickly quieted them, as it often does those who want to live. The middle one in the group produced a letter. I opened it in front of them, keeping the gun aimed, keeping them fearful and rooted in place. At a glance, the letter appeared to be a court summons. The Jewish court, made up of the same rabbis who’d helped bury the Dobrover, was now calling me in.

  I congratulated myself on achieving something of a goal. Two weeks ago these men wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Now they were all ears. But if I didn’t want to lose all that was precious to me—my wife, my children, and my livelihood—I would have to plan well. I would tell my story, but I would tell it publicly.

  I looked at the quivering men at my door and felt sorry for them, mere messengers. We were told to bring you in, one mumbled.

  Tell the court I’ll see them tomorrow, at 9 a.m. sharp, in the revealing light of day. There will be no nighttime shenanigans. Good evening.

  I shut the door and waited for the sounds of their steps, first shuffling, then sprinting to get away. I bolted the door, inserted the police lock, looked in on the children who had slept through it all, assured my wife that everything was under control, and got to work on the small laptop I keep at home.

  When I finally returned to bed at 3 in the morning, my wife hugged me silently and did her best to remind me that I am only a man, of flesh and blood, not iron. I knew that even though she was against what I was doing—for reasons of safety rather than principle—she couldn’t help but be proud of the way I was handling it.

  I slept well, and in the morning dressed as usual, in my charcoal gray suit, white shirt, black overcoat, and silk muffler. I pocketed the Glock as protection against the court’s manhandling, their method of intimidation. This was a non-jurisdictional court, therefore without metal detectors, and without the routine of body searches, both unnecessary. A handful of appointed rabbis, intrinsically honest, would act as judges, but they owed their livelihoods to their patrons, the men who nominated, appointed, and paid for their services. There would be some younger scholars available to act as mediators. Also present would be the man who was bringing the case against me. Who would it be? I expected to see the man I’d fingered, the jealous brother-in-law, or if he didn’t want to show his face, a representative.

  I followed my regular routine, stopped first at the mikvah which was buzzing. It was a perfect setting for murder, an underground hell, where locker room odors envelop you on entrance through the unassuming side door. Hurrying down the stone stairs and long tiled hallways, the curl and drip of the waterlogged vapors take over and then the low rumble of bass and tenor voices. At the entrance to the lockers, the bath attendant hands you your towel, one per person, and you move along toward your designated locker and the bench in front of it. You undo your shoes, remove your socks, left foot first, then the left leg of your pants, and so on, in the order in which you were taught to undress. Dressing, you reversed it, right foot first, insuring against the possibility of getting the day off on the wrong foot. And still the act of undressing provokes other indiscretions. While your hands are at work, your ears don’t remain idle. They tune into the nearest conversation in the aisle, then onto the next nearest, and so on, staying with each one long enough to hear whether it’s of interest. And of course there always is something of interest, a bit of information, gossip someone heard at home the night before, husbands picking up at the mikvah where their house-bound, child-bound, telephone-addicted wives left off the night before.

  I didn’t have to wait long to hear my own name, and then the name of the man I’d fingered, Reb Shloimele, the chief administrator of Szebed, though to hear the talk, not for much longer. A well-respected man of the community the day before, today his name was mud. With the generous helping of hyperbole typical of mikvah gossip, someone equated Reb Shloimele’s crime with that of the biblical Amelek’s, Israel’s oldest enemy. In other words, Reb Shloimele was a sentenced man.

  This time I expected the crowds, and the journalists with cameras. And I knew how much Szebed would hate it. The rabbis wouldn’t approve. No one would like it, but the publicity would serve to protect me. I pulled the brim of my hat down to conceal my face and made my way through the throng. Questions, microphones, and cameras were pressed on me. I walked straight through, succumbing to none. The Internet had done the work, the chat rooms had been devilishly successful; it was enough. I had no reason to add fuel to the fire and further enrage the sitting judges.

  Inside, without much of a greeting and none of the usual friendly handshakes, two men attempted to lead me, strongarm style, to my place at the table, completely unnecessary since on my own I’d shown up at the courtroom. I shook them off and walked alone, pulled out the chair, sat. The judges frowned, but said nothing. They were pretending at busyness, each taking a turn at thumbing through a pile of continuous-feed paper in front of them, the tabs and holes that fit a dot matrix printer’s sprockets still attached. Someone had provided them with a complete printout of the chat room conversations, a fat manuscript titled “Hasidic Noir.” I suppressed a smile.

  Throat-clearing and short grunts indicated the start of proceedings. One judge asked whether the defendant knew what he was accused of.

  No, I said. As everyone here knows, I am a God-fearing, law-abiding Hasid whose livelihood is detective work. I solve petty crimes, attempt to bring to justice those who break the law, my small effort at world repair.

  There was a long pause. Read this then, the judge said, and handed me a sheet of paper.

  The complaint against me: libel, for attempting to besmirch a man’s name, to ruin a reputation.

  The rabbi sitting directly across the table waited for me to finish reading, then said, You know as well as we do that a man guilty of libel must be judged, according to Jewish law, as a murderer. Destroying a man’s reputation is a serious crime.

  I nodded and said, I’m well aware of that law because it is precisely what I believe Reb Shloimele guilty of.

  I made a long show of extracting the cheap pamphlet from my briefcase, pushed it across the table, and announced, as if this were a courtroom complete with stenographers, Let the record show that this slanderous pamphlet was submitted by the defendant as evidence of Reb Shloimele’s guilt. Murder via slander, false slander, moreover, since not one of the accusations have been proven true without doubt.

  I paused, looked from face to face, then continued slowly: And this court is guilty of acting as an accomplice to this murder. Even if Reb Shloimele managed to gather enough signatures to support the excommunication, and all the signatories were surely his Szebeder friends, by what right, I ask on behalf of Dobrov, did it grant the Dobrover rebbetzin a divorce and break up an entire family. Since you’re citing Jewish law, you also know that breaking up a marriage unnecessarily is equal to taking life.

  The rabbi’s fist came down on the table with a thump. Enough, he said. Neither Reb Shloimele nor this court are on trial. Our sins are beside the point right now. You, however, have a lot to answer for. If you thought or knew that someone had been wronged, you ought to have come directly to us, and quietly. Instead, you took the story to the public, and not just the Jewish public. You are guilty of besmirching not only the name of a respectable man among us, but also the name of God, and worse, in front of the eyes of other nations. Retribution for befouling the name of God, as you well know, arrives directly from heaven, but this court will also do its part. You will be as a limb cut away from a body. Your wife and children will share your fate.

  I took stock of the situation, decided that I was willing to take my chances with God, and since in the eyes of these men I was already judged guilty, I couldn’t make my case worse. I took a deep breath and went all the way.

  Which of you here would have been willing to listen to my story? Which of you here isn’t paid, one way or another, by the Szebeder congregation. According to the law of this nation in which we live, you qualify
as collaborators, and therefore ought to recuse yourself from this case. I exhaled and stood. And if, as further proof of your guilt, you require a body, here it is.

  I took long strides to the door, opened it. As planned, an EMS technician wheeled into the room the Dobrover rebbe himself, frail and wraithlike, a man of fifty-three years with an early heart condition, attended by his young son in the Litvak frock.

  The Dobrover appeared before us all as the Job-like figure that sooner or later every mortal becomes, but in his case the suffering had come at the hand of man rather than God, and that made all the difference.

  The room remained silent for long minutes. An excommunicated man shows himself in the courtroom for only one purpose: to have the excommunication nullified, to be reborn to the community. This court had difficult days, weeks, probably, of work ahead.

  I’d done my part for Dobrov. Now it remained to be seen what Dobrov would do for me. In the meantime, no one took notice when I snapped my briefcase closed loudly, adjusted the brim of my hat, and left. I had become a dead man, unseen and unheard.

  ©2004 Pearl Abraham

  NO TIME FOR SENIOR’S

  BY SIDNEY OFFIT

  Downtown Brooklyn

  I’m talking murder. Murder!” she says.

  It’s past noon. I’m sitting in my office near DeKalb and Flatbush, knocking off a corned-beef-lean bathed in cole slaw on seeded rye from Junior’s. And there stands Sylvia Berkowitz O’Neil, not looking her age, in high heels, short skirt, and enough makeup to drown Esther Williams and Mark Spitz on a bad day.

  Before I can crack wise, Sylvia takes her first shot. “Yer eating at Junior’s? I’m working day and night, night and day, with an economy deli for the neighborhood, and you’re supporting the competition? And don’t tell me you never heard of Senior’s!”