Rethinking the American Jewish Experience Forgotten Worlds: An Unfinished...

Rethinking the American Jewish Experience Forgotten Worlds: An Unfinished

Memoir Oscar I. Janowsky

My earliest memories go back to Suchowola, a Polish-Lithuanian town which nestled inconspicuously in the vicinity of the East Prussian border midway between and westward of Grodno and Bialystok. The town had a Jewish majority during my childhood in the first decade of the twentieth century; over 300 Jewish families, perhaps 1,600 or 1,800 Jews in a total population of some 3,000. However, the concept of majority is misleading, because the villages ringing the town were solidly non-Jewish and, apart from the normal exchange of goods and services, none too friendly in times of crisis, especially when the government authorities or the clergy chose to inflame the ignorant peasants against the Jews.

Snatches of childhood memories remain vivid and poignant: an overnight journey in an open wagon to a hospital in Grodno when I was stricken with typhus and no trained physician was available in the town; visions of mother in moments of consciousness shield- ing me against the elements in an exposed and plodding con- veyance, or hovering over me in the crowded ward. Lodged alongside the hospital bed, mother was bending over me whenever my eyes opened, her lovely face pale with fear and anguish, her whole being caressing and whispering encouragement. Alone, for father was "in America," she had already lost two of her four sons in infancy; now another was tossing in a high fever.

A glimpse of a happier genre was my first introduction to learning. Seated before an open book, I heard Haikel the Melamed, (instructor), a patriarch of indifferent pedagogical attainments, inton- ing in a weak and kindly voice "aleph, beys, gimel," as he rested a long pointer on the square letters. The situation was not con- ducive to learning, but the motivation was good. Mother and father, too, who was home at the time, were at my side chattering happily and pressing goodies upon me to render learning sweet, while an "angel" furnished another diversion by dropping a cop-

248 American Jewish Archives

per coin from above, apparently to underscore the functional potential of knowledge. The lesson done, I was directed to the "waiting room," the spacious undersection of a large poster bed, where a number of budding scholars were variously engrossed, among them my successor for a tutorial who was summoned by name. The call remaining unheeded, the handle of a cane appeared. I shrank back in terror, but my fears were groundless, for this was a sapient instrument which wiggled, probed, and finally hooked on to a leg and drew it forth along with its unprotesting owner.

Another tableau endures in every detail, haunting a mind addicted to rational thinking and still evoking a sense of awe and mystery as it did more than eighty-five years ago in a child of seven or eight. A protracted drought had been searing gardens and fields, and unrelieved alarm was mounting to panic. An agricul- tural society saw its means of subsistence wither and fade, the memories of crop failures in the past raising visions of hunger and death. The peasants had flocked to the church in supplication; images and icons had been carried through the streets and fields in solemn procession; but the obdurate skies retained their hard, cop- pery hue.

It was the turn of the Jews to appeal to their God to relent. A fast was proclaimed and the Jewish community was assembled in the old shul, a stately timber synagogue with stepped, hipped, and gabled roof, which was opened for prayer only on Sabbaths when not unduly cold and on special occasions, such as festivals and the High Holy Days. At such times it throbbed with life; the congre- gants were charmed by the portly and celebrated town cantor, Reb Yisroel, and thoroughly washed and bedecked in their finery, they exuded joy in anticipation of blessings to come. That afternoon was somber; weekday attire symbolized the poverty of the Jewish small town; wan faces heightened the mood of desperation. The man chosen to lead the improvised prayers was neither the official cantor nor one of the respected citizens of good voice and solid attainments, but Mote Shtumatsky, a poor, unlearned man whose hope for survival was the produce of several gardens he had leased for the season. That choice was meant to force the hand of

An Unfinished Memoir 249

the Lord, who simply could not fail to heed the broken sobs of a poor, simple Jew!

Outside, in the square fronting the synagogue, Gentiles had gathered and stood in mute fellowship, a kind of tentative ecu- menism of despair. The skies darkened, and as the congregation emerged from its devotions, a clap of thunder brought down the rains. The hushed throng was entranced, many of the peasants falling to their knees and touching forehead, breast, and shoulders.

Other incidents crowd into consciousness as I write. To relate them, however, would add to the idealization of the East European small town. It is high fashion nowadays to romanticize the shtetl; the very word has a romantic ring. Its quaintness and singular per- sonalities lend themselves to intriguing vignettes. Prone to nostal- gia, those who fled its confines recall only the picturesque and enchanting. No longer involved directly, they tend to view the shtetl as captivating, much as sentimental tourists once did the hideous slums of the Middle East. But life in the small town, as I remember it, was hard, terror-ridden, and constricting. To be sure, the community was an authentic unit of Jewish life, the people living in close proximity to one another with the center in the synagogue. Jewish identity was unequivocal, alienation an anomaly. Holidays were festivals of joy and pleasure; even the solemn Day of Atonement had its note of anticipated happiness in the remis- sion of transgressions. Family celebrations like weddings, especially when poor, orphaned girls had found their "destined" mates, were occasions for merriment which the entire town shared, the ripples of gaiety cresting as Zlatke Shlaptshike pranced backwards before the bride being led to the huppah. The Sabbath was a veritable presence-visible, almost concrete. It was Shabbat ha-Malka, the "Queen" whose arrival was heralded by a flurry of preparations: the hubbub and happy fuss on Friday afternoon when peddlers and craftsmen were returning from the villages; housewives busily astir with cooking, baking, scrubbing, sanding the earthen floors; the hasty ablutions in the public bathhouse; the change to Sabbath clothes. The serenity which descended upon the community with the evening services, the formal "reception of the Sabbath" and the leisurely evening meal lent substance to the


belief that an "additional Sabbath soul" or spirit possessed the Jew on the hallowed day.

Saturday evening, however, suited better the mood of the shtetl. The subdued and pensive stillness of the concluding hours of the Sabbath, when the "additional soul" was preparing to depart, the enveloping darkness and the sad, plaintive melody of the Havdalah, the "separation" of the Sabbath from the mundane weekdays, ended the illusion of ease and serenity. The inevitable "weekdays" loomed again with their da'agat parnasah, the worry and struggle for subsistence, the eternal fear in a hostile environ- ment, the toil and gloom of poverty and want.

The masses were poor. Except for the few families considered well-to-do, the population spent the waking hours foraging for the bare necessities. Artisans toiled in cramped quarters or trekked to the villages in search of work. Many of the inhabitants, far too many, kept store or dabbled in buying, selling, or exchanging services to the peasants on market days for the small quantities of produce or livestock they brought to the villages and garnering farmyard products, again in small quantities. On Sundays and Thursdays, when the peasants arrived in town, the competition for their attention and custom was grim and unenchanting, not unlike a flock of hungry birds pouncing on a crumb. The poverty was epitomized by an expression which has sunk deep in one's consciousness: "Farveissen oif nishtU<ooked cereal was whitened with milk when one could afford it; the poor "whitened it with nothing."

Fear and dread were unremitting: not just anxiety or alarm over a sudden menace, or the hysteria of panic, but constant and gnawing apprehension; dread induced not by timidity or cowardice, or by aversion to meet danger, but by the feeling of isolation and helplessness in the face of impending evil. The first decade of the twentieth century was an era of pogroms encouraged by the highest circles of government. Reflecting this mood, the local authorities were haughty and hostile, at best mollified by bribery; the malevolence of the bigoted clergy was immitigable; the peasants were easily aroused to ravage and rapine.

Our town did not suffer a full-scale pogrom during my time. But

An Unfinished Memoir 7-51

I recall the hushed whispers after the Bialystok pogrom of 1906, when a returning wagoner brought a corpse cast into the wagon to lessen the count of the dead. It was buried hastily and in silence.

We did have a near-pogrom. On a market day, a young peasant woman was slapped by a Jew when apprehended in the act of stealing. As she fell to the ground in a simulated swoon, crowds of young roughs began beating Jews and plundering the stalls. The danger was averted; a gendarme, well rewarded in advance, has- tened to the scene, and one sound blow of his whip brought the young woman to her knees, imploring mercy. I remember, however, the pall of terror which fell on our part of the town as it drew in on itself for shelter: shutters were closed, doors bolted, and mother herded her two sons into a neighbor's house, hopefully for greater safety.

Poverty and shared insecurity are presumed to promote kindli- ness and mutual helpfulness. There was a good deal of that at times of personal tragedy, such as the death of a breadwinner or the loss of home and belongings in a conflagration. However, genuine and intense as it must have been, the benevolence was inevitably short-lived. Widows and orphans outlast the shock of tragedy, and adversity often leads to beggary. When catastrophe lengthened into dependency, the channels of compassion ran dry. The poor can be as hard-hearted as the affluent, perhaps more so, because the margin of difference between them and the destitute is too narrow, the surplus available for sharing too meager. Public charity was insufficient, neighborly assistance uncertain. The destitute suffered hunger and want.

The idealized shtetl was belied by internal factors as well as mass poverty and terror. The social struche and cultural atmosphere were constricting. The town consisted of a hill (the mark, or marketplace) where the notables-the traders and storekeepers- dwelt, and a lower section (arup), inhabited mostly by workers and peddlers. This was no mere matter of topography; it signalized social distance not easily bridged, and stamped the poorer elements as inferior. To be sure, most of the hill-dwellers were themselves in straitened circumstances, but poverty has its gradations. It is a myth that the poor constitute a harmonious social class: they,


too, wrangle for status and preferment. The cultural milieu, too, was stagnant and by present assess-

ment obscurantist. It is true that learning was highly respected, but the circle of the learned was small, at least in our town. Large numbers of American Jews boast descent from rabbis; the latter, like the Maypower Pilgrims, would have had to be prodigiously fecund to furnish such abundant progeny.

Modem knowledge was meager. A few subscribed to a modern Hebrew journal; not many could read a Russian book fluently. The founding of a small library in 1906 was hailed as a great cultural achievement. Indeed it was, and a courageous one, too, for it was subject to police surveillance as an illegal innovation; the books had to be moved at intervals to new quarters and circulated sur- reptitiously. Those who sought a modern education fled their homes for Germany, and those who attained it often found their way to America.

Even traditional Jewish learning was far less widespread than commonly assumed. Very few boys were sent to a yeshiva for higher Jewish studies. The great majority received no more than an ungraded and truncated elementary schooling; the girls had far less, or none at all. All males could read the Bible and prayers and recite psalms, some by heart but with little understanding. The contents of the Pentateuch were known, especially with homileti- cal embellishments; the Prophets not so well. Jewish history was a jumble of fact and fancy even for many of the learned. The great majority had no Jewish learning. They absorbed the tradition from the intensely Jewish atmosphere.

Such was the shtetl in which my first ten years were spent. Born on the fifteenth of Shevat (January 15, 1900, I was told when I enrolled in school in New York), my childhood centered on the Jewish school. I received the usual Jewish education, considerably telescoped because I was a good student. A timid little fellow, not especially given to mischief, and endowed with an exceptional memory, I absorbed readily what I was taught and repeated it accurately. As soon as I could read, I was passed on to a teacher of Humash (the Pentateuch) with the Rashi commentary, and before I had mastered that or studied the Prophets and Writings (the other


sections of the Hebrew Bible), I was introduced to the Talmud, when not quite eight years old. Thereafter, practically my entire curriculum consisted of Talmud, for that was considered the peak and purpose of Jewish education.

Schooling was pleasant, despite the long hours, from early morning to suppertime, with an additional period for the rudiments of arithmetic on Thursday evenings. Naturally it was not all grind; short periods were allowed for play, and when the nature of the subject-matter as well as the teacher's mood were right, there were digressions which afforded glimpses of worlds that had passed. The Talmud, too, abounds in fragments of folklore, history, and legend which often caught a child's fancy. But I cannot say that I was entranced with the basic legal matter or enthralled, for example, by the goring of a cow by an ox and its legal conse- quences. Yet, the give-and-take of legal argument was stimulating, often absorbing. At all events, it never occurred to me to question the relevancy of the subject matter. Since it was taught, I learned it. By the age of close to eleven, when father summoned us to America, I was quite proficient in elementary Talmud study.

During my last year in the town, I was given private lessons in Polish. Whether this was directed by father from afar or mother's own idea, I don't know. But my teacher was impressed with my progress and suggested that I be sent to a Russian gymnasium, assuring mother of phenomenal results. Nothing came of this; I doubt that mother even dared mention it in a letter to father.

Of my ancestors little is known. Whence and when they came to Suchowola is a blank; genealogies and family records are scarce among people obliged to move in haste in recurring crises. There is a Hebrew inscription by my paternal grandfather on the fly-leaf of a Bible reading: "This book belongs . . . to whom it belongs it belongs; yet to whom does it belong? . . . to the one who bought it; who bought it? . . . the one who paid for it; still, who paid? -Moshe the son of Yaacob, the son of Jekuthiel, son of Yeheskel." Oral tradition had it that the paternal family was well-to-do, owning houses and possessions in a nearby town, Janowe (hence the name Janowsky); that the aforementioned Jacob, blessed with sons and fearful that they might be carried off as "Nicholas soldiers" for a

Aaron and Dinah Esther Janowsky, the Parents of Oscar I . Janowsky

An Unfinished Memoir

twenty-five-year stint, sold all and moved to south Russia to try his hand at farming and save his sons, since a farmer's sons were exempt. He returned destitute to Suchowola and become a shammash (sexton). Moshe, my paternal grandfather, succeeded him in the post. I remember the latter faintly an affectionate man who delighted in measuring us tots by hand to note growth. I have several of his books which show considerable interest in learning-among them, a book about Elijah, the Gaon of Wilno (Vilna), and a descriptive geography of northern and western Europe. A shammash was a poor man, and three of his four sons found their way to America in early youth.

My maternal grandmother lived with us while father was away. A tiny woman, pretty even in old age, she exuded affection. She loved to tell us stories, generally about demons who delighted in harassing and delaying pious Jews returning from the villages for the Sabbath. Balked by the recitation of psalms and utterly routed by the exclamation "Shema Yisrael," they would leap into the brook on the edge of town, with a clap of hands and a derisive laugh. When we were obstreperous at bedtime, she would cover each of us with a stocking to regale and quiet us.

Our departure for America was exciting. Free from school, we helped dismantle our two-room establishment. Packing was a lark, for we were not burdened with movables except for our prize pos- session, a Wilno edition of the Babylonian Talmud-twenty-odd beautifully printed and leather-bound folio volumes which mother had brought as a dowry. These were wrapped with utmost care as instructed by father. Going the rounds with mother to say good- bye to relatives and friends insinuated a trace of self-importance, as ill-concealed deference was shown us: we were embarking on a great adventure, and in the eyes of the townspeople we were already "Americaner" in the making.

The occasion was also marked by lingering sadness. Mother was pensive after a visit to the cemetery to take leave of departed loved ones and to pray for their intercession on so perilous a journey. It was common practice for emigrants to pray at the graves of ancestors before departing, apparently a usage hallowed by centuries of wandering and probably productive of similar unconscious


effects. Repeated migration no doubt lessened the deadweight of the past and impelled Jews to venture into new fields, novel thoughts, untried methods. It also accentuated the feeling of homelessness and impermanence, the lack of deep roots which nourish a sense of continuity. Portable roots require careful culti- vation; until they take hold in new soil, memories and traditions wither and life may become shallow and transitory.

Far more deeply affecting was the parting from grandmother. A son was to take her to his home in a neighboring town, but he was delayed in arriving. The aged woman was left temporarily with a relative. I remember the last glimpse of her, shriveled in a corner, utterly alone and forlorn, weeping silently; her parting words, "I shall never see you again, my children."

The journey to America was in great style. With few exceptions, emigrants from tsarist Russia left illegally (gonvenen dem grenetz, or "slipping across the border," it was called) in the dark of a moon- less night and at considerable risk, for the bribed guards were not always reliable. The price of legal exit was twenty-five rubles for a "Governor's Passport," a pittance compared with the ransom exacted by the recent Soviet "workers' utopia." The despicable tsarist regime was a tyranny tempered by corruption. The Communist rulers of Russia were not venal in the crude sense; their corruption was of a deeper blend, distorting the concept of freedom, making a mockery of human dignity, hypocritically pro- claiming the right to leave the country, while resorting to refinements of cruelty and raising insurmountable barriers. Father instructed that mother procure the proper passport despite the cost. We left Russia by train.

The ocean crossing was even more luxurious. Father, who had made five crossings in steerage, paid additional hard-earned dollars to spare his wife and children the misery of the inferior accom- modations. We traveled second-class but did not partake of the non-kosher food. On arrival, too, we knew nothing of the dread of Ellis Island. We disembarked with the notables on October 24, 1910, and father was there to welcome us.

Youth on New York's East Side, 1910-1922

A n Unfinished Memoir 257

Our first apartment was a second-story "railroad flat" on Montgomery Street, with a windowless middle room and an out- house in the backyard. There were, of course, no bathing facilities or running hot water. The sleeping rooms were oppressively hot in the summer and cold in the winter, when the warmth of the coal stove did not reach much beyond the kitchen. But we neither rev- eled in self-pity nor railed against "the system" or "The Establishment." One expected heat and cold to come with the seasons, and we made do as best we could.

When the house was marked for demolition, we moved to a more "modern" tenement on Clinton corner Division and Hester Streets. The modern feature consisted of two toilets in the hallway for four families. We had a "front room," a smaller kitchen, and a tiny bedroom; all the rooms, however, were light, fronting the street. This, too, was a cold-water flat, but the coal stove was less inadequate in the winter. No bath, of course, except for what mother's ingenuity contrived. Alongside the kitchen sink and stove there was a sturdy double washtub; mother had the partition knocked out and, with water heated on the stove, we enjoyed ultra-modern bathing facilities not unlikein principle, that is-the "Hollywood bath," the elevated contraption that graces super- deluxe condominium apartments in Miami Beach. When my brother left home to work on a farm, we generally had a "boarder"; during one of my college years, I shared the "front room" with Reb Yisrolik, a little man who would cover his face with his hand and peep at a pretty girl (later my wife) through the spread fingers. We remained in this abode until I was married and moved to the Bronx.

Several days after our arrival in New York, father enrolled my brother and me in a yeshiva, the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School on Henry Street, where general secular studies were appended to the intensive Hebrew curriculum. It was at this school that I was introduced to the English language. It was there, too, that I acquired my name, Oscar. That given name is not quite in character. It has a harsh ring and raises the image of a deity wielding a spear in northern forests, whereas my ancestors are supposed to have issued from southern deserts. The explication hangs on a tale.


My Hebrew name is Yehezkel Yeshaiahu (Ezekiel Isaiah), quite a mouthful, and I once inquired lightly and affectionately of my parents how they came to burden a tiny tot with so formidable an endearment. The quip was not appreciated. When I was enrolled at the yeshiva, the registrar was duly impressed with my patronymic luster, but he explained that I had to have an English equivalent of my Hebrew name. Then, while making the appro- priate notation, he nonchalantly declared, "Your English name is Charlie." I was aghast. "Oh no," I cried, "not Charlie!"

My consternation stemmed from an incident of the preceding day. I had descended to the stoop to survey the New World as an ice wagon drew up. The iceman delivered some chunks of ice, then remounted to the driver's seat, gathered the reins, and the horse responded readily to the command, "Giddyap, Charlie." The comedown from Ezekiel Isaiah, two major prophets, to a lumber- ing horse was too high a price for incipient Americanization. I protested, but the notation had been made, and Charlie I remained for four years and some months. When I completed the English elementary course and was graduated, I enrolled at De Witt Clinton High School as Oscar. Why Oscar? I haven't the faintest idea. Like so many who change their names, I was not in quest of something specific. I was running away from Charlie.

Tuition at this day school was three dollars a month per student, or six dollars for my brother and myself, a tidy sum in those days. It pinched our budget, but for my parents, education claimed highest priority. I was placed in grade five, soon advanced to seven and at the end of the year to grade nine. School hours were 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The morning hours and early afternoon to 3:30 were devoted to Jewish studies-Talmud, except when a feeble breeze of modernism brought an American Orthodox rabbi or a Hebrew scholar for an occasional period of Bible or Modem Hebrew. The end of the day, 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., was relinquished for English studies-an abridged curriculum similar to that of the public school.

The long hours were not oppressive. During recess we played "pussy-cat" on the street, easily dodging the slow-moving vehi- cles. The game involved striking a leaning wooden pellet with a stick and running the bases. Once, when I was "up," I espied


father crossing the street and, too eager to show my prowess, I lost my sense of timing and garnered all three "outs." That evening at supper father said casually that my swing was good and when I connected the pellet would go far. On occasion we played ball in Seward Park. Father did not associate ball-playing exclusively with "bums." Other boys were less fortunate; a pal who fractured his thumb in a ball game mollified his father with the assurance that he had inadvertently walked into a post, thumb outstretched for the occasion.

We had fun in the classroom, too, making life difficult for our teachers, that is, the Talmud teachers. Immigrant boys, we stood in awe of our English teachers, who were moonlighting public school pedagogues.

At the age of twelve or thirteen, we studied the laws of marriage and divorce, and the Talmud, like the Bible, minces no words. The subject matter was rather mystifying, for in those backward days we did not "go steady" with girls at the age of twelve. When we studied about the charge of a benedict that he had found "an open door," we encouraged a lad more innocent than we were to inquire of the teacher why the bride should be blamed for a burglar's forced entry. The lad did and received a resounding slap in the face for his intellectual curiosity. The more knowing among us were far from expert in the ways of contemporary youth, but we did have a general idea and a sense of direction; the specifics eluded us, that is, until visual aid miraculously turned up.

Directly across the street was a tenement with the name "Nellie" inscribed on the cornice. From 8:30 to 9:oo in the morning, a young lady of high visibility went through the ritual of dressing without drawing the blinds. Our interest was, of course, purely educational and clinical. We saw heaven-sent illustrative material supple- menting the talmudic text. During that half-hour, the text was ignored and attention was riveted on the exhibit. The teacher, a learned talmudist innocent of pedagogical methods, could not hold our attention. He pleaded, warned, threatened, all to no avail. We watched "Nellie." After many days it dawned on him to take a look. He was near-sighted, to be sure, but after some adjustments, he saw what we saw. He turned to us, a strange expression on his

Professor Oscar I. Janowsky (circa 1943)


face; not a smile or a frown, but a mixture of pity and contempt. He glared at us for a long moment and then said, "You fools! In time you will tire of this." Poor man! He was wrong, of course.

Mischief apart, we were good students and, when examined every Thursday by Rabbi Green, a visiting dignitary, we acquitted ourselves well. At times, when not adequately prepared for the oral test, we limited the range of inquiry by badgering the eminent visitor with questions dug up in the commentaries. Wise and benign, he saw through our ruse, but smilingly and affectionately joined in the game.

In the highest class, formal teaching was reduced to a mini- mum.In teams of two or three, we prepared the text in the morning and were heard as a group by the teacher before the noon hour. The afternoon review session, when we were left to our own devices under general supervision of the teacher, we found super- fluous. We traded postage stamps, visited with our fellows in the guise of learned consultations, and otherwise whiled away the passing hours. The teacher, a wily pedagogue, did not censure or scold; instead, he would approach a team and casually pose a question on the text, or indicate a contradiction. We often slaved over these, trying to meet the challenge.

Graduation was signaled by the completion of the English curriculum, and I was graduated in February, 1915. My future was staked out by father: I was to continue my English education at the Eron Preparatory School during the evening; the days were to be spent at a higher yeshiva, the antecedent of Yeshiva University, in preparation for the Orthodox rabbinate.

On the last day of classes, Mr. Hershkowitz, my 8-B teacher, heard of this and took me to the principal, Mr. Phillips. Both men disapproved vigorously and insisted that I go the next day and register at a general high school. I went home and told father.

My parents were devout Orthodox Jews, for whom the Talmud was the beginning and end of knowledge. They were, however, aware of secular education. To them, my English teachers were not learned men. Yet, such was their respect for education of any kind that my teachers' opinion was not to be spurned without careful consideration. Deeply perplexed, father turned for counsel to Reb


Pesah, an old, learned rabbi with whom he spent evenings in Talmud study. Incapable of popular preaching, this sage was a failure in America; he eked out a miserable living from peripheral rab- binic functions.

My immediate fate hung on the decision of the two troubled men. I remember them walking back and forth on East Broadway deep in conversation, while I trailed along behind them. Finally, Reb Pesah said, "He can be a good Jew without becoming a rabbi!" The next day I enrolled at De Witt Clinton High School. My Jewish education, however, was not terminated; for several years, I continued to attend a special class in Talmud after high school sessions. Thereafter, when at college, I studied with father on week- ends until I was married and left my parentsf home. By that time, I had covered more than nine of the sixty-three tractates of the Babylonian Talmud.

At thirteen, I naturally became Bar Mitzvah (not "was Bar Mitzvahed," please; that abominable term is an ultra-modem invention.) We had no "hall," no caterer, no smorgasbord, no ban- quet, no music or dancing, not even a soulful guitarist to serenade the individual tables; these refinements were beyond the ken of benighted, old-fashioned Jews. Relatives and friends were invited to a modest Kiddush, a reception at home after Sabbath services.

I did not spend months learning to chant the weekly section of the Pentateuch and the Haftarah, the concluding portion from the Prophets. Hearing these chants at Sabbath services every week, I knew them long before Bar Mitzvah. In fact, at thirteen I became the regular ba'al keri'ah, or Torah reader, of the congregation; and the plaintive Haftarah melody always haunted me; even today, when especially absorbed in some work, I find myself humming the tune. The Bar Mitzvah speech, already a staple at that time, did pose a problem, for neither my parents nor I were eager to announce to a breathless world: "Today, I am a man." I, therefore, memorized a segment of the Talmud, embellished by acute argu- mentation-not a great feat, because the logical sequence of ideas readily flows from memory. I was going great guns when a fool of a rabbi at the head table interrupted me; he had recently remarried and feared that undue delay would irritate his young wife. He


therefore stopped me, saying that I knew the subject well and need not continue. Father's face clouded and I heard him mumble, "A shayte"-a fool; that was the only protest father ever made at rab- binic authority.

I had one sad disappointment in connection with my Bar Mitzvah. I hoped to receive a good fountain pen as a gift; my pens invariably leaked. However, ours being a devout home, I received a number of small prayer books and prayer shawls. No serviceable fountain pen; that had to wait until my college days.

What I have said about my schooling on New York's East Side must have conveyed the impression that I had not yet reached "America"; that I had been brought overseas into a transplanted shtetl, or rather, a congeries of East European towns and cities. More than half a million people were packed in tenements on less than a square mile of territory. The language-Yiddish-the syna- gogues, institutions, customs, mores, even the clash of ideologies were those of the Old World. But the comfort and warmth of community which the shtetl had provided were gone. The Sabbath and Jewish holidays, while observed by large numbers, no longer cast the spell of a community at rest; large numbers went to work on those days. Community festivals became family observances, in many instances by the "old folks" alone, who made their peace with the nonobservance of the younger members. The inhabitants of the American counterpart of the shtetl were a huge, amorphous mass of bewildered men and women caught in a web of contra- dictions. The old life lingered on without its warmth or zest; the new one was long aborning.

The East Side mirrored the poverty, toil, even the dread of the shtetl. Though perhaps not as stark and subhuman as in the 1880s and 1890s~ which Jacob Epstein, William Dean Howells, Hutchins Hapgood, and Jacob Riis portrayed, misery was widespread and visible. It was still the mass poverty of an early industrial society unrelieved by a social conscience. In some respects it was worse than the shtetl, where one spent a good part of summer days out- of-doors. The crowded homes, some in stifling cellars, the stench of hallways, the cold of the winter, the heat of summer when people slept on fire-escapes and rooftops, the noise and frenzy in


search of a livelihood were oppressive. It was not uncommon to see the belongings of a family heaped on the sidewalk for nonpay- ment of rent, with an outstretched hand or a cup into which neighbors dropped small coins. There were rats then too. I remember a terrifying battle in our "front room" between our cat and a huge rat. We closed the door and looked on in awe. The rat was finally mastered, but the cat was ill for many days.

There are gradations of poverty, and by prevailing standards we did not regard ourselves as poor. Father was a good craftsman and we did not lack for food, shelter, and decent clothing. The toil, however, was unremitting. Father was a fitter in a men's clothing factory, located west of Broadway. Unlike workers who knew only one step in the manufacturing process, he was skilled in the entire oper- ation. He would arrange the parts sectioned by the cutters, do his own cutting of the lining, and ready the fragments for the operators.

He was up at dawn, went to the synagogue for morning prayers, had a hasty breakfast, and walked about a mile to the "shop." He put in a nine- or ten-hour day all of it on his feet and under pressure, for he did piecework. Since he did not work on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and his preparatory operations were indispensable for the section hands, he worked full-time on Sundays, and during the winter months, when the Sabbath ended early, he would spend long hours working alone in the factory on Saturday evenings; at times my brother went with him for company. At the end of the working day, after supper, father went to the synagogue to study Talmud or, in later years, to expound it to an informal class of adults.

Mother did tailoring at home to supplement father's earnings. Housework in those days was burdensome enough: mother shopped and carried the loads home; she cooked, cleaned, scrubbed, laundered, and mended. In addition, coal for the stove in winter had to be carried in a bucket from a basement cubby, and a chunk of ice for the ice box from a street vendor in the summer; and my brother and I were not always home to help. Still, mother found time to make boys' pants for neighboring families. I learned to operate our Singer sewing machine and would help her from time to time. But this was not encouraged; my studies were


deemed more important. It is said that the poor are not thrifty. If true, the East Side Jews

must have been exceptional. They denied themselves necessities to save part of their meager earnings. Jacob Riis saw this as a passion for money. It was not that at all, at least in my home. My parents saved for the dreaded slack seasons and the not infrequent strikes and work stoppages. These were the nightmare of the East Side. I recall a strike in the men's clothing industry not long after our arrival in New York which dragged on for weeks. A pall of fear hung over our home, and father and mother often talked in hushed voices. We learned to do without needs we had thought indispensable, for every cent had to be marshaled for the uncertain days ahead. My brother and I had been allowed five cents a day as spending money. We had saved the allowance, and during the strike we turned over our savings of several dollars to mother.

The horror of the Triangle fire caused a tremor of terror and indignation, reminiscent of the pogroms in tsarist Russia. On Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, the premises of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company (a non-union shop) on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asche Building on Washington Place and Greene Street went up in flames, and 146 workers, mostly young girls, perished in the flames and smoke or leaped to their deaths. I recall the mass funeral, ~oo,ooo (it was said) marching behind the hearse. Stores were closed, the streets draped in black. Everyone knew that many if not most of the factories were fire-traps; all feared that, like the pogroms, the next tragedy might engulf them.

There were other fears and anxieties, far less alarming than industrial catastrophes or foreboding of unemployment, yet sug- gestive of the isolation and insecurity of the shtetl. The ghetto ended at the Bowery and Fourteenth Street on the west and north, and several streets from the river on the south and east. One felt hemmed in, surrounded and restricted. If one ventured beyond these limits, especially along the riverfront, physical attack by young roughs was not uncommon. Father, who wore a beard when it was a religious symbol rather than a demonstration of virility and independence or a mark of the "counterculture," once returned home with a soiled coat: a large fish had been thrown at him.


We did walk on Saturday afternoons to the Aquarium, then located at the Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan. We occa- sionally went to Central Park and rowed boats on the lake. We sought out an automat on Fourteenth Street where an iced drink could be contrived without cost. During my early college years, some of us would walk to Prospect Park on Saturdays, the less observant ones supplying the nickels for the journey home when the Sabbath had ended. We would buy bread and a can of sardines for a snack. Once we stumbled on a can of anchovies which looked suspiciously like forbidden seafood; the taste of herring reassured us. These were ventures into unfriendly territory, mere excursions from the ghetto, which afforded some sense of physical security.

There was, however, a striking difference between life on the East Side and memories of the shtetl which was not obscured by gestures of hostility on the periphery of the ghetto, the exploitation of a greedy industrialism, even the Triangle inferno. In my circles, one did not regard the government as malevolent. It was distant and aloof, hardly concerned about poverty, health standards in the factories, or unemployment. But it did not foment pogroms or resort to house searches or block the path to a better life. Secular education was not rationed, as under the tsarist regime, but furnished free and even pressed on all children. And while some public school teachers were haughty, arrogant, and supercilious, one did not suspect them of conscious efforts to promote baptism or alienation from Judaism.

I had a pinched youth on the East Side but not a beggarly one. I did not peddle newspapers or shine shoes or scramble for food; father provided for the necessities. The things I lacked I was hardly conscious of, for there was no basis for comparison. Darwin remarks about the earthquake in Chile in 1835 that when destruc- tion is universal, one does not feel humbled more than another; mass poverty has the same effect. My friends and neighbors had no more than I did; many had less.

In my surroundings, poverty was not a disgrace, except in doing nothing to mitigate it. One did not revel in drunkenness; one sought work. There were some thieves in the neighborhood, but no one told them that their trade was a means of income redistribution.


When we became aware of a brighter life beyond the ghetto, we made the effort to reach out for it. We did not demand that some- one teach us to read; we applied ourselves to learn, and our parents saw to it that we respected and cooperated with our teachers. "Meritocracy" had not yet become a deprecatory or disparaging term; we assumed that a better life could be attained through education and that every skilled job or profession required special competence. We sought to qualify.

There was another aspect of the East Side to which I can only allude, for I was not part of it. The ghetto teemed with ideologies and movements, which Ronald Sanders has portrayed so well. There were socialists, anarchists, free-thinkers, free-lovers. Yiddish newspapers, learned journals, clubs, literary societies, and a great variety of lectures nourished an atmosphere of intense idealism and ardent debate. A popular orator, Zvi Hirsch Masliansky, preached on Friday evenings to packed halls at the Educational Alliance. Stephen S. Wise's Free Synagogue held services on Clinton Street. The trade union movement won hard-fought bat- tles which eliminated or mitigated the worst evils of the factory system and won the admiration of the larger world of American labor and reform. I remember well the political rallies and the jubi- lation when Meyer London was elected to the House of Representatives on the Socialist ticket in 1914 and again in 1916 and 1920.

This phase of East Side life was intense and idealistic, marked by intellectual ferment, eagerness for a better world and for self- improvement. Centering largely on East Broadway close to my home, I attended some of the meetings and rallies, but I did not become involved, partly because I was never a "joiner," mainly for lack of time. My studies and afterschool jobs left neither time nor energy for anything else.

The ideological skirmishing was largely an exercise in futility, for the subject of contention was often the decor of Utopia. In fact, ideological purism gave way within a decade or two to social reform of the "welfare state" variety. However, there was a clash between generations which estranged children, isolated parents, and rent the fabric of traditional Jewish society. The root cause was


economic, the necessity of working on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, against which the older generation fought blindly and in vain;.the force could not be stemmed. But feelings were exacerbat- ed by ideology. Karl Marx, whose condemnation of Judaism was vitriolic, was the font of knowledge and truth for a large part of the "illuminati." The pseudo-intellectuals took up the refrain, often to display their enlightenment or to plague the devout. The provoca- tions ranged from the silly to the truly hurtful.

The stoop of a tenement teemed with life during the summer, as people came out for a breath of air. Since the ultra-devout men would not pass between two females, young women would delib- erately position themselves to thwart the "fanatics" returning to their flats. Old men would linger until an older woman took command and cleared the way.

More serious conflicts tore families asunder. Young men smoked on the Sabbath in defiance of parents; they scorned the ways of the old and hurled challenges gleaned from the radical press and plat- forms. As a result, many young people left or were driven from their homes, harboring resentments, even hatreds, which still sur- face in some of today's writings.

M y Parents

At this point, current fashion would dictate that I bare my hang- ups and frustrations and lay them at the door of my parents. In all honesty, I cannot do so; to project upon them my inadequacies or failure to realize presumed potentialities would no doubt flatter the ego, but it could satisfy only the obtuse and infantile because deeper causes might be ignored.

My brother and I had a self-sacrificing father who raised his children by his own lights-a father who by current assessment would be adjudged narrow-visioned and authoritarian; an exces- sively solicitous mother whom amateur psychologists would ridicule and condemn as "castrating." We grew up, however, and fashioned our own lives. They tried to transmit to us the standard of values and priorities they found right and satisfymg. When we deviated they were irritated and pained, but in the main they bore their hurt in silence. They sought to help us achieve an easier life


through marriage; as we made our own choices, they bowed to the inevitable.

The children reared by my generation were far more sophisti- cated than we had been, more articulate, more assertive. But, material success apart, I doubt that they attained as adults greater happiness or more balanced maturity. Their offspring (in turn) enjoyed a highly permissive upbringing which no doubt contributed to the "liberal" propensities of some at least of that generation of youth, those who were wide-awake intellectually, uninhibited socially, disdainful of the vulgar display of affluence, clamorous for social justice. But the alienation and withdrawal, the utter disregard of the rights of others, the rebellious posing and invective, the scorn- ful rejection of the past, including past social achievements, the non-negotiable demands and arrogant certainty that simplistic for- mulas will yield instant and far-reaching reforms, the ready resort to violence-these tantrums hardly bespeak happiness or maturity or responsibility.

Writers have exploited this mood, gaining popularity by heaping scorn upon parents, the "domineering" Jewish mother especially being the butt of hilarity on stage, screen, and in fiction. In fact, Jewish mothers, and fathers too, were more often the servants of their children than their masters. A historian who has noted changing fashions in literature, art, ideology, and the "science" of human behavior, too, may perhaps be pardoned for hoping that in time some other scapegoat will be found on which to project one's inadequacies.

It is natural for children, including grown sons and daughters, to attribute their unhappiness to their parents. They are prone to take the good for granted and harp on the insufficiencies. In unguarded moments, rueful words fall from the lips of elderly friends and acquaintances. An aged mother who bequeathed health and beauty to a daughter and lavished love upon her feels rejected; with a suppressed sob she impulsively reveals that the favored child, grown to radiant womanhood, holds her responsi- ble for a gnawing lack of self-assurance. Her image of the darling and considerate child has given way to the reality of a hardened adult whose very glance is a reproach. Another oldster, a sad gray-


beard, is obsessed with a sense of guilt. His son, a pharmacist, has charged him with neglect during the formative college years. "He t ~ l d me," he says, disconsolately, "that 1 should have skinned him alive and compelled him to work hard and earn admittance to a medical school."

A friend I knew well made it a practice for many years to spend Friday evenings at home in a holiday setting; friends dropped in with their adolescent children, there was singing and good conversation in which the young people were encouraged to take part. The latter were the envy of the youth of this intimate circle, some continuing as adults to make invidious comparisons and reproach- ing their parents for not imbuing them in similar manner with the Sabbath spirit. Years later, however, a daughter of the favored family, when her marriage failed, pained her aged parents with the charge that the tight family relationship which had claimed her time, especially on holidays, had contributed to her subsequent unhappiness.

Parents do the best they know how for their children and pray for the optimum. Their prayers often go unanswered. They are saddened when grown children are unhappy, and anguished by a son's or a daughter's reproach that their inadequacy as parents lies at the root of the troubles. And aged parents are pained, too, by the realization that in years ahead their sons and daughters are likely to hear similar taunts from their own grown children. It is of the nature of the human condition. In moments of despair or dejec- tion, one projects one's own frustrations upon the closest and dear- est. Parents, the mother in particular, are the inevitable targets for arraignment and ridicule.

One suspects that in many instances the propensity to transfer culpability to parents is nourished by the immaturity of the children. In a keen review of Portnay's Complaint, Bruno Bettelheim observed that some persons who as children had the devoted attention of a mother crave continued solicitude in adulthood; they cannot let go of mother's breast. Having failed to attain maturity, they seek vengeance by heaping ridicule upon the parent. To this one may add that our latter-day young rebels had so much done for them that they resented the failure of their parents to


eliminate all social ills and furnish them with a ready-made just, harmonious, and peaceful world.

My own parents were not in a position to bequeath to me a Utopian social order or instant happiness. Mother was orphaned in infancy and raised by an uncle in a village; her mother's second husband was rarely alluded to, and never in affectionate terms. When Uncle Zelig was driven from his village by the tsarist authorities and left destitute, he would disappear for long periods "uprichten gales," that is, wandering and suffering penury and want, the better to merit bliss in the world-to-come.

Mother was affectionate, pretty, and vivacious, with a quick mind and a fetching sense of humor. The youngest of a large family, she bore the brunt of adversity. Her brothers, the older ones men of learning, scattered: two were murdered in South Russia during the massacres of 1919; the family remaining in Eastern Europe, and father's too, were destroyed by the Nazis.

Mother had no schooling whatever. As an adult, she taught her- self to read the Hebrew prayers and the Yiddish version of the Bible. Later, in 1936, when I traveled extensively in East-Central Europe studying national minorities, she went to night school to ease her mind and learned the rudiments of English at the age of sixty-four.

In the shtetl, when father was "in America" and sent regularly the stipend for our support, she did not spend her days in idle gos- sip or lolling in the sun: she worked applying glue to wadding which was in demand for heavy winter coats. In New York, too, she helped supplement father's income, as I have indicated.

Father was apprenticed to a tailor in early youth and left for New York as soon as he had learned the trade. He returned, was married, and remained for several years. Unable to make a living, he was off again, this time to Montreal. A devout man and uneasy about raising his children in "godless" America, he came back again with the idea of making clothing "for the marketu-an idea he had conceived in New York or Montreal. However, the Russian Revolution of 1905, with its attendant turmoil and insecurity, drew him forth a third time. He settled in New York, and we joined him in 1910, when he and mother were close to forty years of age.


The story of mass immigration generally overlooks the separation of families. Contemporary writers, who find the life of the immigrant generation so amusing, forget that the old people were once young too; that they spent years apart, the men subject to temptation, the women left in the old home in eternal dread that they might be abandoned. Correspondence was often by proxy, for many, if not most, of the wives were illiterate, and evil-minded neighbors were not always above writing disparaging letters about a spouse. My parents spent many years of their married youth apart.

I did not really know my father until the family was reunited in New York. He was home for only brief periods during my childhood. Flashes across the memory summon up visions of father car- rying me into the steamroom of the town bathhouse affectionately enough, but the atmosphere was oppressive; of father usurping my place in mother's bed, while I was relegated to a "sleeping bench nearby. These were not happy moments for a small child, yet they left no "Oedipus hang-ups."

Father was a handsome man, relatively tall and spare, erect, and dignified, of light and graceful carriage, with the sad eyes not uncommon among men of the immigrant generation. Reserved and taciturn to a fault, his few words were serious and meaning- ful, and relatives and friends came to him for counsel. When pro- voked, he could annihilate a pompous "do-gooder" with a phrase. Father had a poor brother in the old home to whom he sent small sums from time to time. Once a recent arrival came to our home and tried to lecture father on the need to help a brother. Father interrupted him with the question: "Who do you think is older, my brother or I?" "You, of course," was the quick reply. "My brother," said my father quietly, "is eight years my senior."

Of uncompromising personal integrity, father despised sharpers and chiselers. We had a young boarder, Mr. K, who had some vague job "on Wall Street" and induced father, in secret sessions when the family had gone to bed, to invest a good part of his savings. With father's approval, mother helped the man make a "good match," but shortly before the marriage the scoundrel revealed to father that the stock had become worthless. I found the certificate


(the Ohio Tonopah Mining Co.) among father's papers, but he never uttered a word about the matter, nor mentioned the man's name. He knew he had been taken, but was too proud to dignify the sharper with a charge. I once asked father for the certificate, suggesting that I would confront Mr. K with his fraud. He waved the idea aside with the remark, "He isn't worth it."

As a father, he was solemn, even stern, but I did not fear him. He evoked respect, not fear. Reserved and undemonstrative, he was not given to gushing endearments or lavish praise; his love was evidenced by unremitting self-sacrifice to render possible an easier life for his children. Father appeared humorless, his manner unrelieved by light-hearted moments. Yet, he was aware of human folly, of bungling incompetence and pompous pretensions which give rise to mirth. His reaction was that of the puritan who regards life as too serious for merriment, too sad and hurting for irony or satire, too sacred for indelicacy. When I returned after a year of travel and research abroad, which included two visits to Palestine (1935-1936)~ he was eager to hear about life in Eretz Israel. He sat down at the table, raised his spectacles to his forehead, and lis- tened attentively. I described the reclamation of wasteland, the revival of the Hebrew language, the dedication of the halutzim (pioneers), the collective life in the kevuzah and kibbutz, and the Jewish atmosphere on the Sabbath and festivals. He was entranced, viewing it all as a miracle.

The setting was too much for me, and I resorted to a bit of indecorous drollery to dispel the mystic mood, to which I am aller- gic. As a conclusion, I said that the visit to Palestine had clarified for me a passage in the Bible. Father was delighted that, in spite of my secular interests, the Bible was still on my mind. I turned to the second chapter of the Book of Esther, where the marital troubles of King Ahasuerus are recorded. With Queen Vashti no longer available for His Majesty's delectation, numerous "fair young virgins" were rounded up and given the full-year treatment with the oil of myrrh, "sweet odors and with other ointments of the women." I never understood, I said, why the girls had to be soaked for a year; give them a bath and they would be ready. However, I added, a good look at some of the Arab peasant women had confirmed the


precautionary wisdom of the king's procurers. As I told the tale, mother chuckled happily and earned a hard look from father, whose face clouded with disappointment. He remained silent for a long moment; then he said quietly, "One should not make sport of such matters."

There was an air of nobility about father, of veiled suffering and compassion which could not mock or rail at human frailty. I never heard him swear or curse; under provocation, he would dismiss the doings of a nuisance or a bore with the word "a shayteU-a fool. After his death, I found records of every dollar he earned, with careful computations of ten percent set aside for charity (the tithe for the poor), generally given to persons who did not know its source. He was too proud and considerate for ostentatious dis- plays of generosity.

Father was rigid in his religious faith and regimen of conduct. Those who disparage that kind of zeal would undoubtedly consider him a bigot, but it would be a superficial judgment. Mother was more flexible. Though punctilious in observance, she disliked the shaytel (wig), then a symbol of concealment rather than display. Instead of outright rejection of the time-honored adornment, she complained of headaches, perhaps to soothe her own conscience, and discarded the wig. Father acquiesced with a smile-a conces- sion to feminine vanity. Undeviating in every detail of Orthodox observance, he once violated the Sabbath by striking a light when mother was seriously ill, knowing that Jewish law permitted it to save human life. Jewish labor leaders of the time were socialistic and ungodly; before World War I, some would schedule a "ball" for Yom Kippur Eve to display their "enlightenment" and to out- rage the devout. To father this was anathema, yet he believed in labor organization and was a good union man. He was able to dis- tinguish between positive efforts for good and what he regarded as misguided follies. It took many years for the East Side radicals to attain such tolerance. The communist zealots are still wanting in such flexibility of mind.

I have never attempted to "psychoanalyze" my parents; I haven't the professional competence, and amateur dabbling A la Philip Roth is distasteful to me. However, I became aware early in

A n Unfinished Memoir 275

the 1920s that father had attempted, together with a congenial partner, to build a subcontracting business for the manufacture of men's clothing. The two young men worked at their factory jobs during the day, and in the evenings they spent many hours pro- ducing garments for sale to small wholesalers at bargain prices. The demand for their wares grew so rapidly that they felt secure in renting a modest storefront for use as a "shop," and sights were raised. The new plan called for the pooling of all earnings, with father, for the time being, devoting only evenings to the venture, while his partner worked at it full-time, that is, day and evening. The realization that some of the flourishing cloak and suit houses had their origins in such schemes was encouragement enough to press on to the goal, which seemed attainable. However, father dis- covered that his associate had, in his enthusiasm, come in and worked on a Sabbath. Father immediately resigned; he would neither violate the Sabbath himself nor profit from such action by another. The less punctilious partner did become in time a wealthy clothing manufacturer and, it was said, president of a synagogue as well.

Why father was so unhappy with the shop I can only surmise on scanty evidence. That he did not spurn physical labor, as a species of intellectuals and clergymen do, I am certain; when he left the shop, he enjoyed doing work for the family. Moreover, father's attitudes were largely determined by talmudic precedent, and among the ancient sages were not a few poor and hard-working artisans. What was fitting for them, he would not consider beneath his own dignity. It may have been due to a hankering for status, because the tailor's was a lowly occupation in the shtetl. Stray remarks of his, however, lead me to believe that he disliked the coarse behavior, the horseplay, and the shallow anti-religious manner of many of the operatives in the shop. Not that he was in any way victimized by his fellow-workers; on the contrary, he was highly respected, always addressed as "Reb Ahron." For afternoon prayers, he would repair to a corner of the shop and attend to his devotions unmolested. No one took liberties with him, not even the boss. I recall an incident when father was offended for some reason and did not go to work until the boss or foreman came to


our home to apologize. In all likelihood, the vexation of spirit stemmed from the vul-

garity and profanity common in the shop, the ill-behaved person being a grober yung (coarse fellow) whose speech or conduct father might perhaps condone, but he did not relish such fellowship. The type was also regarded as wanting in learning, not totally unlet- tered or ignorant but superficial. Having attained knowledge in depth in one field of study-the Talmud-father could not abide the glib certainties and ready clichks, the invective and obscenities of the shallow radical or person of little knowledge gleaned in the peck-and-hop manner of the sparrow.

Father admired and cherished talmudic learning; he came by it at high personal cost. Apprenticed early, he had had little schooling. It was only after marriage that he took to study, He engaged a teacher and, without adequate preparation, plunged into the "sea of the Talmud." Every word, every phrase, every concept had to be mastered by main force, for he had had only the rudiments of Hebrew or Aramaic, lacked training in the use of reference works, and was totally innocent of comparative analysis or ancient legal usage. Yet, he achieved respectable proficiency in the Talmud, suf- ficient in later years to teach a group of his own. His forte was eru- dition, attained through diligence rather than acuteness. Mother's mind was keener and far more agile.

Father also resented the shop because it left so little time for study, and he sought repeatedly to contrive an alternative means of livelihood. He tried importing tobacco from Russia but could not provide for its distribution. Later he bought men's clothing and notions in quantity at an auction; he was a good buyer but his standard of value was quality, not salability. Besides, his sales mechanism was primitive. The family would rise at dawn on Sundays, load the goods on a rented pushcart, and cart it off to a public market for a morning of frenzied haggling.

Once, during my high school days, I was sent out with a stock of handkerchiefs to crowded Delancey Street to try my hand at business. I was a total failure. Too shy to bawl the virtues of my wares, too timid to accost strangers, I stood unnoticed and forlorn. After what seemed a long evening, I returned home crestfallen, my


inventory intact. My career in merchandising ended abruptly. The real handicap for father's ventures into business was his

skill as a craftsman, which afforded assurance of a livelihood. A man without a trade would have had no choice but to give up his job for what was at best a gamble. Father could devote only a frac- tion of his time to the effort; and when success was not immediately apparent, he abandoned it and fell back on his trade.

In the end, he ventured into real estate, the burial ground of a poor man's savings. Badly advised, he bought an old tenement in the slums. This proved a fiasco. He was saddled with mortgages, rents were not paid on time, and he would not have a poor family thrown into the street. Since repairs were costly, he would attempt after a day's work in the factory to tinker with the most pressing effects of deterioration. For the first time, he appeared a defeated man, but the very hopelessness of the situation afforded the oppor- tunity for Pauline, my wife, and myself to broach an idea we had discussed for some time. We suggested that he abandon the house, retire from his job, and allow us to support him and mother. A proud man, he declined; it took a year of coaxing before he acquiesced. He was then in his middle fifties. Thereafter, he spent his days in Talmud study and volunteer teaching. He became a changed man-relaxed, mellowed, at peace with himself. For us it was no great sacrifice; all it involved was a delay in the purchase of a car.

Since their world was on the East Side, we did not press him and mother to move "uptown." With the help of friends, we contrived to secure for them an apartment in the Vladeck Houses (an early version of low-rent housing) with all the modem improvements. For many years, they were like happy children "playing house," that is, until a new element appeared in the complex and occa- sioned rapid deterioration.

This was the world of my parents, a limited world to be sure, but one of dignity, integrity, and genuine nobility. This is the world which contemporary scribblers disdain and even serious social sci- entists condemn. It is customary among men of letters not to disparage as backward the culture even of aborigines. The culture of the devout immigrant Jews has yet to win the respect and appreci-


ation which are its due.

Oscar I. Janowsky, of blesssed memory, was born in Suchowola, Poland on January 13, igoo.He came to the United States in 1910 and ultimately received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. From 1924 until his retirement in 1966 he was a professor of history at the City College of New York and from 1951 to 1957 its director of graduate studies. A prolific author, Professor Janowsky was the author of, among other volumes, TheJews and Minority Rights and People at Bay: The Jewish Problem in East-Central Europe and edited, among other volumes, The American Jew and The American Jew: A Reappraisal. Professor Janowsky completed the following memoir shortly before his death on November 4, 1993.

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