What I thought about when I wrote Cantor Pepper

I was honored yesterday that Rabbi Jim Rosenberg devoted his Yom Kippur sermon to an appreciation and interpretation of one of my stories, Cantor Pepper. It's all a bit amusing to me in that I wrote this story more than 20 years ago; it won Ann award but it's long since been out of print - but rabbi Jim remembered the story (at my request he read an early copy for accuracy re matters of Judaica). In y view he had a great interpretation of the story - he's really he perfect reader, bringing to the story more a unity and insight than I could have imagined. He spoke about the rabbi's initial attempt to use the urban-set temple to build an alliances w the black community, an attempt that grows out of control as the rabbi finds that the congregants no longer feel comfortable in the synagogue. Rabbi Jim recognized that the story in part is about a failed attempt at a noble goal - an attempt doomed to fail because he temple in the process of its transition gave up too much of its unique identity. Great reading of the story - but was that "why" I wrote the story. Of course not! No writer begins let alone completes a story to advance an idea or an ideology. I began the story with an idea about the rabbi and his quest for a new cantor and I let the characters lead me along the narrative path. I never once thought about meaning or significance - but if a story works out well readers will have a sense about the characters, they will seem "round" and real (or realistic) and we will find meaning in their interactions and collisions, a heightened version of the interactions we see and the significances we derive from those we know or know of in our lives and our world.