Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out

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WHEN HER HUSBAND WAS PREPARING A SERMON. MIRIAM was careful to stay out of his way, not for fear of disturbing his train of thought, but lest she give him an excuse for interrupting his work. For David Small, the rabbi of Barnard's Crossing Conservative Temple, did not like to prepare sermons, or for that matter to preach them, he had begun as usual by laying out paper, sharpening pencils, adjusting the lamp—all to postpone the agony of beginning, he was thin and pale, and sitting over his desk, his shoulders had a scholarly stoop. His thin hair, which was beginning to gray at the temples, did not make him more distinguished looking, only older, he wrote a few words, peering down at the page nearsightedly through thick-lensed glasses, he crossed them out, drummed his pencil on the desktop, and then began to doodle, the sermon forgotten as he became completely engrossed in working out a complicated design of straight lines and loops, of circles and squares joined by cross-hatching, he as delighted when the doorbell rang. "I'll take it,” he called out from his study.

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