For Ecstatic Dusting

Beneath a perpetually flickering lamp in St. Louis' Temple Israel last week rested a plain coffin. In his pulpit, black-robed Rabbi Ferdinand Myron Isserman intoned three psalms in English, a Kaddish (Jewish mourning prayer) in Hebrew. Forsaken was played on the chimes. Two vocalists sang Beautiful Isle of Somewhere. Finally the organist thundered out Beethoven's Funeral March. Only half the throng of 200 who heard and beheld this impressive funeral service were Jewish. The rest were Negroes, friends and relatives of Henry Bibb who had died at 72 after serving for 47 years as Temple Israel's janitor.

Though Janitor Bibb's dust also was given the final blessing of the African Methodist Church, he was a member of neither sect which honored his memory. Reverently Rabbi Isserman declared: "His psalms were his services faithfully rendered and his prayers were his scrupulous conscientiousness. . . . There was almost an ecstatic rhythm in his dusting of the pews."

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