A Hole In One by Paul Weininger (10 best books of all time txt) 📕

Beth Israel Synagogue of Sedona had a congregation of over twelve hundred people, which enabled the Rabbi to live a better life than he would have had with a congregation in Sitka, Alaska, where one may have been able to count the Jewish population on one hand. The synagogue in Flagstaff already had its own Rabbi, which is why Neil was assigned to Sedona.

Rabbis have always been permitted to marry but Bloom remained single. He may have been devoted to God, but he also knew how to have fun. When he wasn’t holding services or conducting other official duties, he enjoyed a good social life. Frequently, at the invitation of congregants, he joined them for dinner, either out at a restaurant (at their expense) or at their home. He dated a few times but strictly platonically, until he met Carol in Sedona.

The more affluent people who attended his synagogue had given substantial pledges and cash donations over the years. Much of that money had gone to deserving Jewish, medical, and Israeli charities in addition to allowing Rabbi Bloom to properly administer the synagogue. This included his four-bedroom home in a classy suburb of Flagstaff and the two cars in his three-car garage.

Bloom’s biological mother became pregnant at sixteen, giving birth at seventeen. His biological father was also seventeen and had promised to marry her. However, the biological father disappeared before she gave birth. His biological father had left a note for his parents. It read, “Sorry, Mom and Dad, but I did some stupid things and I have to move somewhere else. I’ll keep in touch from time to time and tell you why I left, but don’t worry, I did not break the law.”

Neil was a healthy baby weighing six pounds, two ounces, as his adoptive parents later told him. They were a loving Jewish couple, Harvey and Julie Bloom, and to them he immediately became their flesh and blood. He just didn’t know he was adopted. They named him Neil Robert Bloom and every time they called out for him to come in from playing outside with his friends, they would call out “Neil Robert.” He was named after his grandfather on his father’s side, typical of Jewish tradition that you can only name your male child after someone deceased.

His adoptive parents raised him as a typical Jewish family household did in Brooklyn N.Y. during those years. His wonderfully loving father, whom he adored, owned a corner grocery store. He grew up being happy and every Sabbath they brought him along to temple to daven. Neil was an only child and suffered from severe asthma until his early teens. The family decided that they should move to Arizona, where they heard had no dust, pollen, hay fever or any other allergens. Thank God, he thought, that turned out to be a great decision. Within six months his father had opened a more upscale and highly lucrative semi-supermarket in Sedona, which became their home city. His mother worked as a clerk at a gift shop in town. Within one year his asthma was completely gone.

As he grew older, the kids he played with called him Neil, and that stayed with him the rest of his adult life. As for the parents that adopted him, he knew them only as Mom and Dad. Yet, as mentioned earlier, they never told him that he was adopted. They intended to do so when he became an adult, but never did. They feared when he got old enough, he may have gone searching for his biological parents and if he found them, he might then have moved away from his adoptive parents to live with his biological parents. They never could understand that this would have been a total impossibility, since his love for them was total. No one, not the biological parents, not the police nor God himself, could take him away from the adoptive parents he loved so much, who loved him just as much as he did them.

Upon high school graduation he applied for and was accepted by Brith Achim Rabbinical School in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was intent on becoming a Rabbi because of his love of God, as he had been raised. He remembered feeling somewhat asexual all through high school, so he wasn’t thinking he would miss the company of girls. Sex was just not that important to him, yet. Yes, he liked how girls looked and was never interested in boys. He just never had sexual feelings in high school by looking at pretty girls.

At Rabbinical School, he studied four years in undergraduate studies for his Bachelor of Talmudic Law and then three more years leading to the MRb (Master of Rabbinic Studies). By then, he was twenty-four and ready for his own synagogue. He had also discovered the opposite sex, and began to find women more exciting; he occasionally looked at porn magazines, at times pleasuring himself to their pictures.

The assignment of getting his own synagogue came from The Central Conference of American Rabbis with the Union for Reform Judaism and The Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, which together established the Rabbinical Placement Commission. He was saddened that his parent’s, now deceased, wouldn’t see him obtain his own synagogue. Sadly too, he never learned that he had been adopted.

After twenty years as a Rabbi in Sedona, the B’nai Brith held a special fete for him dedicated to his many charitable and philanthropic endeavors, treating it like a royal dinner at a palace. Over five hundred guests were in attendance from several denominations, including the local Catholic priest, Father Timothy O’Reilly, who gave a wonderful speech about what a great addition Neil had been to the community and what a wonderful friend he was to him. He went on and on about how charitable Neil was to Catholic charities, even though he was Jewish. As corny as this may have seemed, his speech brought tears to O’Reilly’s eyes and to Bloom’s