The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart by Larry Kramer

Author:Larry Kramer [Kramer, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780374712976
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

Herman starts saving the foreskins. Secretly. Nobody sees him. One day he just starts doing this. Does he think it peculiar? No, he thinks it will prove useful. He does not believe in waste, in any of his businesses, in any of the buildings he is having built all over the place. All these foreskins from all these healthy kinder, they should prove useful. He will find a way.

During the service, as usual, he covers them; but one day, when his assistant, who is called the sendek, reaches for the muss to dispose of it, Herman whispers emphatically that he himself will take care of this part of the ceremony from now on. Now after every service Herman extracts the little bits of foreskin, looking like twists of bloody lemon peel, and drops them into a tiny bottle filled with formaldehyde. In his basement he transfers them to a larger bottle, which soon contains many foreskins. When he has a full bottle he starts another. He hides these bottles in a cavelike room in the back of the basement, way under the farthest reaches of his big house.

Yes, Herman has built himself his first big house, moving from the Southeast to downtown Northwest, on Scribbs Place, near where Rabbi Chaimoff has built the first of the enormous Washington Jewish Congregation temples that will appear over the years, a palace to God—Herman’s house, that is, though there are many who compare the two, both in opulence and chutzpah—of a splendor even the least conservative Jew finds too showy. The rabbi’s temple has an organ more fit for a Loew’s movie palace, and a Star of David window high above the pulpit, made from stained glass with colors seen only in cathedrals. Herman’s just has a grand piano, though it is a Knoodorf made in Vienna by Beethoven’s piano maker, and his stained-glass windows were created by the Meister of Leinwort himself, huge panels that bathe the many hallways in vibrant rays as if God were shining through them, which Herman believes. The joyless cranks who criticize either edifice are countered by Rabbi Chaimoff, who states quietly and firmly that God now encourages such effusive, munificent outpourings or why else would He have scattered money and success upon them so abundantly, His long-suffering people who for so many centuries in so many lands under so many tyrants have been punished so harshly and forced to live such miserable paupers’ lives; surely they are entitled to relief. Exactly, Herman chimes in.

Herman’s house is surrounded by land, which is unusual for downtown Washington. Space is expensive, neighborhoods are growing crowded, police protection is feeble, and buildings and their builders usually huddle together. That’s not for Herman. Russia was nothing but earth and none of it was his. Now he can walk around his land, 80 krechas down, 90 krechas across, a handsome piece of land. When the house is completed it takes up 17 drinels, even more than Rabbi Chaimoff’s new temple takes up.

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