Page 348 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
adviser and the chief speechwriter, as well as the White House Counsel for President Harry S. Truman. Harvey J. Yaverbaum, on the other hand, had been the Mayor of the City of Midwood. So it was a clear match.
It also turned out that, before the arrival of the 1969 class of seven associates, no Rosenman attorney had graduated from any law school other than Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. That streak was broken when Dave Abramson started with me in September. He had gone to NYU. On the other hand, Dave was a member of the NYU Law Review. Three other associates in the Rosenman Class of 1969 had been members of the Columbia Law Review. That left only two, and they had both been members of the Harvard Law Review. And then there was—you might remember him—me.
I guess, then, that the fact that I was more than a bit intimidated when I started at Rosenman is somewhat understandable. Indeed, “intimidated” doesn’t start to describe how I felt. But, before we get to my period of extremely nervous adjustment, let us talk first about the most important thing in the practice of law, and, before that, we must necessarily continue the saga of Harvey’s evolving religiosity.
September 23, 1969, my first day on the job, was a Tuesday. But, why start on a Tuesday? As the observant among you would have guessed, Monday, September 22, when I might have had to start at a less Jewish firm, was Yom Kippur, so Rosenman was virtually closed. Fur- ther, it was only appropriate that before I embarked upon life in a three-piece suit, I should spend a day in deep meditation, fasting, and praying. Now, given what you might recall about my religious upbring- ing, such as it was, you might think that I am kidding when I say that I was fasting on the day before my baptism, as it were, was scheduled to begin. But you should also recall that the Rebells did not take the prac- tice of religion lightly and that keeping up with the Rebells was of major importance to me. Thus, I had spent Monday sitting with my stomach gurgling and my head aching for hours in Phyllis’s family’s country syn- agogue in Lake Mahopac, New York. And believe me, when you’re fasting, but nevertheless smoking during synagogue breaks, you con- stantly watch the clock, the minute hand of which moves very slowly.
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