Members of the Tribe by Zev Chafets Read Free Book Online Page A

his son’s choice of life-style. A hundred years ago his people had left a European ghetto for a new life in America. Now Arnold, Jr., was swimming against the tide, recrossing the ocean to the Eastern European pietism of long-departed ancestors. Arnold, Sr., clearly didn’t understand how or why this genetic time bomb had gone off in his son.
    I promised to say hello to Arnold Jr., and suddenly I remembered Port Gibson. “I met a man over there who runs a store called Frishman’s,” I told him.
    “Yeah, he’s a cousin of mine,” he said.
    “He goes to Hattiesburg for his religious needs,” I said, and Arnold, Sr., whose boy has gone to Jerusalem for his, looked at me blankly.
    Macy approached with Sammy Davidson, a wizened old man with a bulldog face. Davidson was born and raised in Meridian and he was related to many of the guests at the Herzogs’, but as the president of the rival Orthodox synagogue he had discreetly waited outside until the temple people had finished their business.
    “Ah’m gonna carry y’all over to the shul now,” he said, “so’s Macy B. can talk to the minyan.”
    As we followed Sammy’s car through the Sunday morning quiet, Macy described him admiringly as “the stubbornest old Jew in Mississippi.” The shul’s membership was down to eleven and finding the requisite ten men for prayers is an ornery problem, but Sammy refused to give up. Occasionally one of the men from the temple dropped by, but most days were a scramble. That year Davidson had taken out ads in several national Jewish newspapers, offering to pay transportation and expenses for Jews willing tocome down to Meridian for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But there had been no takers, and the regulars were forced to spend all day in synagogue, a team with no bench.
    Sammy stopped alongside a tiny white shingled building with no identifying sign, located on the corner of two run-down residential streets. As we walked around front, I saw half a dozen old men leaning against a red pickup truck, like characters in a Jack Daniels advertisement. These were the good ole boychiks of Meridian. One wore a fishing cap over his yarmulke, another sported a baseball hat compliments of “Red Pylate’s Machine and Welding.” They greeted us with a chorus of howdys, pushed themselves off the truck with effort, and ambled into their clapboard shul.
    The synagogue consisted of one room. Six wood benches faced a small platform decorated with dusty Israeli and American flags. On the far wall was a small ark and a memorial plaque. The wood floor was unvarnished, and the other walls, made of pea-green plasterboard, were bare. A small storage closet contained some prayer books and a King Edward cigar box full of filmy shot glasses for the morning schnapps. Off the sanctuary was a small restroom with a brass spittoon on the floor next to the sink.
    Only two of the men were under seventy, and only one, Jeff Winters, was not a native. Winters, a Brooklyn-born flight instructor at the nearby naval base, was discovered and recruited by Sammy in the course of his relentless pursuit of a minyan. He told me he wasn’t particularly religious and was married to a non-Jewish woman, but he felt a sense of solidarity with the boychiks and came to services when he wasn’t on duty. His presence lent a touch of vitality to the congregation, and the old men were obviously fond of him; but military life is unpredictable, and they knew he might well be gone before they were.
    Sammy introduced Macy to the men, and for the first time on the tour there were several people who didn’t know him. Still, they were able to place him with a couple of questions—“Are you Ellis Hart’s boy from over in Winona? Is Miss Riva your momma?”—and he went to go into his appeal. Looking around the chapel there seemed little of historical value, although the spittoon would make an interesting addition to Macy’s aggregate temple in Utica. But the men were noncommittal,