Revisiting my childhood streets

The streets have the same names and numbers as then but close to fifty years have passed since we moved out. I recognize Liberty Avenue and the deafening sound of the "A" train over our heads is, if anything, louder than I remember. That has not changed. I point out the kosher butcher store which now sells mobile phones. The Casino movie where we used to see double features plus a newsreel and cartoons is now a colorful fruit market stripped of its marquee. On the four blocks between the house where I was born and the one we moved to when I was 3 there are four or five stores selling Indian clothing and fancy wedding sarees and other objects of Indian art and culture. Bearded Siekh men in turbans are on the streets as well as their colorfully dressed wives and children. About the only shops that remain the same are the bank (which has a different name now and the laundromat. 

We turn up our side street which used to be shaded by canopy of tall oak trees which in summer made our street feel appreciably cooler than the hot elevator covered main street. But today many if not most of those original trees are gone. There is much more cement than front gardens which once flourished. A few tall trees are left and a few more young trees are optimistically planted where the old ones used to be. They give hope, but for now, the street looks sad as if forcibly shorn of its locks.

Everything looks smaller too, as if some alien force shrunk the houses. What I remember as a big apartment house turns out to be just three stories high. And then we are standing in front of my house. The siding has been redone and the front porch taken down and new steps lead to the front door. At first I say to David 'that's not my house'. But that's the door that my father and grandfather installed when we bought the house and they 'fixed it up'. Then I look at the picutre window in the front bedroom where we used to put our Chanuka menoras and it looks more familiar. My mind is racing, flooding with memories and trying to reconcile the proportions. I am expecting to see my Italian and Irish neighbors, but like us, they have moved away making room for the newer immigrant communities. 

I am reminded of the summer evening between the 7th and 8th grade. My best friend (from the neighborhood, not the Jewish day school I attended) had graduated Catholic elementary school and her parents made her a party in their backyard. They played records and we danced the Twist ('round and around and up and down we go again!). I didn't eat the hamburgers they served. A friend named Frankie walked next to me from Ginger's house to mine (all 4 houses down the block) and my mother saw us from the window. That was all it took, she told my father it was time to move on to a neighborhood with more Jewish kids. By January we were out of Richmond Hill.

We drive on the street where the shul used to be. I know it is not there. It was sold and then there was a fire. It was painful to see an apartment house standing  where the double staircase had been. I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it and we didn't stop the car. I was afraid I would cry. I loved that synagogue with its stained glass windows and crystal chandeliers. My great-grandmother used to be there every week with her green covered t'chinos book. It was where I learned to daven and love Israel. If we had stopped, I might have cried.  

 

Honoring my father's memory

  Oz Avraham 'Finishing' a Tractate a few months ago

On the Shabbat before Passover my whole family all my children and grandchildren were in Mitzpe Ramon where we enjoyed each other's company and had our meals together in a local guest house, so that no one had to interrupt their Pesach preparations to cook and we didn't get any new chametz in any one's house. A lovely time was had by all. On Saturday night we all gathered together to mark my father's eleventh yahrtzeit (anniversary really, but it sounds so much more appropriate in Yiddish).
A traditional way of commemorating a yahrtzeit is by making a siyyum. studying a book or a tractate (of Talmud or Mishna) and gathering a minyan, reciting the last sentences of the book, teaching the meaning of that section and then reciting a formula in which the one who learned acknowledges that he has finished learning the section and promises to return to learn it once again. A special kaddish is recited.
David did a siyyum marking the culmination of his studying a tractate of Jerusalem Talmud. (Hopefully, he will write about that himself.)  
My first-born son and his first-born son (named after my father) learned a tractate of mishna together in time to do a siyyum too. So we had three generations participating. I felt particularly blessed that we were able to be together and remember my father. Both David and I spoke about him and I explained to my family the significance of the direct descendants of the deceased doing mitzvot especially (but of course not exclusively) on his yahrtzeit. (I explained it here but my kids don't really like reading in English.)
My father, Abraham Rich was the son of hard working Jewish immigrants, educated in New York City's publics schools and also in the traditional Jewish synagogue after school program, where he learned to read Hebrew for prayers and prepared for his bar mitzvah. Richmond Hill was a warm community, I know that because it was my first synagogue experience too, and my father's teacher, Mrs. Tombeck, taught me the ins and outs of shabbat prayers. I have been told he was known as 'honest Abe' and I know that he always believed in fairness and equality.

I remember my father only with a mustache

He and my mother were determined that their children would have a better Jewish education than they were able to get. To that end they looked for a school that would be suitable. They enlisted my mother's cousin, a Hebrew teacher and her husband a Rabbi to help find a school in the wilderness of Queens. (Yes, in the 50's orthodox Jews lived in Brooklyn.) I clearly remember sitting in the sunshine in my grandparents backyard in Richmond Hill when he came out calling 'who's got my girl?' with a braod smile on his face. My mother looked up and asked 'you found a school?' and he answered 'certainly looks like it!' And in the end, it did work out. (Along the way, there was a point when money was tight and someone suggested that maybe it wasn't necessary for a girl to have a day school education. My father told the man, if my daughter doesn't get the education, my son won't either. I have always more than appreciated that.)

This is the Saba my kids knew

A very early memory of mine is of my father putting on tfillin in the morning and standing at certain parts and then sitting down again. I remember asking about why he sometimes stood and sometimes sat. As we learned more, he learned more and as a family our observance became stronger. By the time my parents planned my brother's bar mitzvah keeping shabbat had become so important to them that instead of a party their invited the whole family to a hotel for the entire shabbat, so that no one would have to desecrate shabbat to come. I remember a long difficult phone conversation of his with a first cousin (of his) who wanted to come only to the service in the morning. He did not give in, she did not come. Everyone else did and it turned out to be a wonderful celebration.
My father became an active member of a number of shuls and was gabbai for a while. He was not the gabbai concerned with giving out the honors, he was the gabbai who had the key. You could rely on him to get there first and set things up. And of course, tell people to keep quiet during the service.

Savta & Saba

Another thing about him was his amazing patience. I don't think I every would have learned the multiplication tables if he hadn't made flashcards and taken the time to drill it into me, over and over and over again. I can also say that I did not learn long division in school. I learned it from him. And when my kids were being taught some new-fangled system for 'understanding' division I sat them down and said, "I'm not sure what they want you to do but let me teach you what Saba taught me." And I taught them the way he did. (My mother taught me to 'borrow' when subtracting. Most of my arthmetic skills I learned at home.)

I always felt secure in my home and with my family. Whether it was at the beach with the waves crashing around us or climbing the stairs to the crown of the Statue of Liberty I aways felt safe and secure when my father and mother were around. I am also grateful for the encouragement and understanding shown for my Zionist activities and later when I came to Israel. He was a very creative grandparent and overcame language difficulties to create a lovely relationship with our children.
May his memory be a blessing to us all.
יהי זכרו ברוך

Passing On Our Traditions

On Rosh Chodesh Tamuz (ok, it takes me a while to blog things) my first-born grandson received his first siddur.
All the first graders, each one accompanied by a parent made the trip in a chartered bus from Mizpe Ramon to the Kotel Hamaravi in Jerusalem. They were given a tour of the of the Kotel Tunnels (click here for an amazing virtual tour) followed by lunch and mincha. Saba and I joined them (and other proud grandparents as well) as they were given their first siddur by Rav Shlomo Aviner the head of Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim located in the Old City.
It is one of those moments where I have to ask myself how it is that we are so priviledged to merit this.
My thoughts naturally turned to my own first siddur given to me in the presence of my classmates and our families at a special Sunday gathering somewhere perhaps in Kew Gardens. It was in a small hall which had a stage. My teacher and the principal asked the grandfathers to come up to hand us our books. To them, our grandfathers represented the tradition being passed on. But though I had the amazing good fortune to be accompanied by two grandfathers, most of classmates had none. Many of their parents were holocaust survivors (although they were called D.P.s or maybe refugees). They had no grandparents. My American parents were special because although their own Jewish education was basic they realized the importance giving us the kind of formal religious education that they missed out on during the Great Depression. So there we were, ready to take our place in the chain of tradition. As children usually do, I took that moment for granted. But I was young and now I have grown old and I am so thankful to my parents for that opportunity and Hashem for this priviledge.

It's nice to spend a day marvelling at how far we've come. Hold onto that thought, we still have a long way to go.

Welcome new Israelis at HH#225 where Maya did an excellent job of gathering and organizing the Jewish and Israeli blog posts of the week. She also has a really nice blog which I'm glad I 'discovered'.

Confessions of a 4 Year Old Zionist

Mosey over to me-ander or read it here:

After being released from Unity Hospital in Brooklyn my proud parents took me home to Richmond Hill a neighborhood heavily populated by Irish and Italian Catholics who were the more recent immigrants and German Protestants who were there before. Although it was never a predominantly Jewish neighborhood the there were at least 3 synagogues which thrived when my father was growing up. The buildings were still there and at least on Shabbat they still functioned.

But the Pied Piper seemed to have made off with the children, or maybe the parents of the children. In any case from the time I can remember there were very few Jewish children on our block and none of them went to our shul. That doesn't mean I had no friends. There were lots of kids around in those post WWII baby-booming years. They were just named Virginia Gallagher and Michael DeMarco and such. We all played together and in December we often got presents Santa Claus left under someone else's tree by mistake. And we gave them gifts which we said were left under 'our tree' for them too. My parents explained that we didn't want to spoil anybody else's holiday so we kept our knowledge a secret.

One of my earliest memories is of being in a pre-school group that met on Sunday at the shul. I don't remember much about the activity there but when my father came to pick me up I was given a booklet of tickets about 3 by 2 inches with a picture of a soldier with a rifle. I couldn't read what it said but the teacher explained to me and my father that I was to sell the pages for a dime (10 cents if there are any non-Americans reading) each and return with the proceeds the following week. I don't remember asking but I was told that the soldier was in a country where all the people are Jews, that has a Jewish president and Jewish soldiers.

Leapin' latkes! A whole country full of folks who celebrate the same holidays as me! On the spot I decided that was the place I was going to live when I got old enough to decide these things for myself.

I sold Grandma Bessie the book of tickets and she gave me a little black purse to hold the 20 dimes she paid me. The next week I got a jump rope from the UJA (I guess it was them) for my entrepreneurial efforts and life has never been the same.Well, I guess the guy was right, everything you know you learn by the time you finish kindergarten.