Like many of us, I had four grandparents. And, also, like many of us two of those grandparents were grandfathers.
My father’s father “Jacob” emigrated to the United States from Romania in 1902 aboard the La Champagne sailing from Le Havre, France. On that same ship was Rachel Moskowitz who would soon become his wife and, later on, my grandmother.
To say that Jacob Raphael was taciturn would be an understatement. There may have been a time when he smiled – but I have no memory of such. Every Sunday our family would pile into our Pop Jacob and Nana Rachel’s home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn for a seemingly interminable visit. And each, Pop Jacob and I had the same conversation:
“Duvid, he would say from his lounge chair near the front door, “what is the Parsha HaShavuah” – (the weekly Torah Portion).
And, each week, I would answer: “I don’t know.”
This must have been hard on him as, I learned later in life, he was paying my tuition at the Solomon Schechter School of Queens. As a successful businessmen, he must have been questioning his ongoing investment in my education.
Conversely, my mother’s father, Pop Max was extraordinary –loving and filled with joy and
warmth.
Born in “Russia – Poland” as he described it, he came to America in 1910 sailing on the Vanderland from Antwerp.
Pop Max was a suit maker – at age 12 he was taken from Cheder (an Orthodox Jewish school of learning) to learn this craft. As I understand it, his specialty
was lapels. Something you don’t hear much of these days.
Growing up, we saw Pop Max and Nana Francis almost every day and every visit was joyful. It was Pop Max and Nana Francis who first took me to the New York World’s Fair. We spent perhaps eight hours visiting exhibits and feasting on Belgium Waffles. It was also Pop Max and Nana Francis who, in 1968, took me to Israel for the first time.
“Duvid”, he said to me one day, “do you know how to take pictures”.
Sure, I said.
“Good, we’re going to Israel, and we need a photographer.” I still have the pictures.
We walked the cobblestone streets of a desolate and ruined Jewish Quarter. We visited Jericho and Gaza. And, years before the cable car was built, we climbed Masada. To this day, I remember so vividly walking atop Masada when an Israeli Mirage jet raced across the sky above us – so close that I could see the Jewish stars under its wings. And I was consumed with awe. Later that evening, he took me to the bar at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv, where we were staying, and he ordered a Johnny Walker Black and a beer chaser. Once again, I was consumed with awe. I was in the presence of greatness.
But I want to talk about an event that happened years earlier, when I was nine years old.
Now, I was an extremely shy, quiet, and reflective child. In today’s terms I would have been classified as clinically depressed. I’d like to suggest that, while I was chronically withdrawn and melancholy, I did have a highly developed sense of ennui for a child my age.
Anyway, like many Jewish families of our era, our family was kosher in our house but not kosher outside of the house. And, like many Jewish families of my era, Sunday night was reserved for dinner at our local Chinese restaurant; spare-ribs, wonton soup, chicken chow mein, fortune cookies, and orange slices.
For our family it was a Sunday night treat with Pop Max and Nana Francis at the “popcorn ceiling restaurant – so name because of the textured ceiling that reminded my sisters and me of popcorn. And so, it was for my grandparents, three sisters, and me, a somewhat withdrawn and ponderous nine-year-old, sitting at the Chinese restaurant on Horace Harding Boulevard in Little Neck New York.
This particular Sunday evening, I sat at the Chinese restaurant staring at the slivers of pork swimming in my wonton soup and began to ponder. It just didn’t make sense. How could we be one kind of Jew at one place (we had a kosher home) and a different kind of Jew in another place? I was not a particularly good yeshiva student, but I excelled in cognitive dissonance.
And so, without warning, and certainly without any thought of the long-term consequences, I pushed my chair back, stood up and yelled at the top of my lungs “You’re all goyim (non-Jews – a bit pejorative) !”
And my three sisters all froze. And the Chinese waiters and waitresses all froze. And all the member of all the other Jewish families eating Won Ton soup and spareribs all froze. There were lots of ways this could go – and not many of them were good.
But, Pop Max, stood up, put his arm around my shoulder, dug into his pocket, gave me a $20 bill, and said quietly: “There is a kosher deli around the corner, why don’t you get yourself dinner there and we’ll meet afterward.” And then he kissed me on my cheek. It was a moment in time over sixty years ago, but it is still so clearly etched in my consciousness. Without question, it was a moment that framed a spiritual path forward for me. That evening was the last time I knowingly ate non-kosher food. And when I met my wife to be, she became kosher and we built a kosher home and raised three kosher kids. And now my granddaughter is being raised in a kosher home.
As a grandfather, I now wonder, how will I react when my grandchild comes upon a moment or a decision that may impact the course of her life or frame her thinking. Will I show the sensitivity and the gentle acceptance of Pop Max?
But, I also wonder whether my grandchildren will know the stories of my grandparents. Will they know that my grandfather, Pop Jacob, was the inventor of powered garlic and my grandmother Nana Ray made “holipches” (miniature stuffed cabbage) and sponge cake for her whole family every week. Will they know that Nana Francis had pseudo-aphorisms, that we called “Nanaisms”. Among our favorites, “don’t hold your nose, the smell will go in your mouth”. In moments of extreme frustration with one of her eight wild grandchildren she would say, “I’ll slam you down” – which, of course, she never did.
Our family stories define who we are and link us to our collective Jewish story. How can we, collectively, ensure that they are not lost and that they continue to enrich our children, our children’s children and their children as well? If we don’t share them, who will?
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