A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [191]
EVEN PHYSICALLY DETERIORATING from Parkinson's disease, Chaim Rottenberg poured enormous energy into building his Orthodox community. When Daniel Altmann joined the community, his was one of fifty families. But by the 1990s, a decade later, more than three hundred families were directly involved, and some thousand families followed the leadership of the Rue Pavee synagogue. On a Saturday morning, the tall, elegant, art nouveau chamber was filled with men wrapped in their white prayer shawls, swaying and bobbing and bowing like frenetic bearded angels, periodically resting and gossiping with friends, the Hebrew chanting sometimes barely audible over the conversations in French and Yiddish. Occasionally, a thumping noise from the bimah would uselessly try to hush them, while their children ran and wrestled in the aisles and the women chatted and prayed high up on the balcony. The children covered their heads with major league baseball caps and ran playfully between the men's prayer shawls and took turns to see who could jump high enough to touch the mezuzah on the doorway. It was a large, lively, noisy community.
To a great extent, this was the work of Rottenberg's own charisma and energy. But it continued to grow after he fell sick. There seemed to be an increasing demand for this kind of old-fashioned Orthodox community. Many of the people in it, both Sephardic and Ashkenazic, were, like Daniel Altmann, people who had turned away from a secular life. For Altmann it had to do with a need, in modern French society, to feel a sense of belonging, of not being alone. “You have this development in French society,” he said. “People want to put themselves somewhere. You are linked, or you are not linked. But also, it's like a snowball. When you have a very strong center, things start to grow.”
The community had a committee of elders, and Rottenberg got the idea of putting some younger men on the committee. He had built a diverse community with many younger people, and he wanted them represented too. Altmann became one of two younger men on the committee. Then he became the vice president, then the president died. “You be the president,” declared Chaim Rottenberg to Daniel Altmann. Daniel tried to protest, said that he was too young, that he had young children to worry about, that he didn't want to get embroiled in “shtibl politics.” But no one ever could say no to Rottenberg. Altmann became president. After this, he had Rottenberg to contend with on a daily basis. The telephone would ring at the Altmann house. It was the Rav. He had asked Daniel to raise some funds for a certain project, and a week had gone by and he had not done it. “You didn't do it because you have money and you think you don't have to do things because you are rich? You think it is some small thing? Not important! Here, I will put up fifty francs, and I want you to put up fifty francs! I don't understand! You are ruining this whole thing!”
Altmann spent years being shouted at by Rottenberg. But he also knew him as a compassionate man. He called him a dinosaur, “the last of the man alone who can hold together a whole community.” And while Daniel pursued his religious life, his chemical trading business prospered. Like his grandfather, he found good opportunities in barter arrangements with a disintegrating Russia.
In 1990, Rottenberg's wife Rifka had a hip replacement operation and was hospitalized for two months. When she was released, Rottenberg's severe face smiled. “You're back,” he said, and suggested they take a vacation together to Switzerland. He died while they were away, and their son Mordechai took over the community. “We went on vacation. Then he died,” said