April 6, 2007 — Forward Memories
The Loveliest Face of Them All
My mother appeared on the Forverts’s rotogravure page sometime in the l930s. She graduated from college in l933, like Marjorie Morningstar. Unlike Marjorie, though, she went on to earn a master’s degree at Columbia University in psychology, and got a job in Macy’s personnel department.
At some point during that decade, somebody sent her picture in. Her name was Ruth Skolnik then, and it was transliterated, letter for letter. The caption next to her picture was in English: “Types of Jewish Beauty!”
To me, hers was the loveliest face on the page, and I don’t think I’m prejudiced (as she always loved to say about me). But even I would have to admit she was up against some stiff competition.
I remember the first name of only one other young woman on that page, for reasons that go beyond her beauty. She was Jetty, and the text said she lived in Riga, Latvia. When I saw that page for the first time, years after the war, it hurt to realize that, probably alone of all the others, she could not have lived for too many years after that picture was taken.
My mother’s third yahrzeit will be coming soon; she died two days after Pesach in 2004. I’m grateful to the Forverts for giving her that first honor, and to the Forward for allowing me this timely commemoration of it.
Carol Jochnowitz
New York, N.Y.
At the Corner Store
My father took off only Sundays and the High Holy Days from his fruits, vegetables and groceries store, B. Olender’s Market in McKeesport, Pa. Almost every Sunday, he drove me and my mother and one or two of my five sisters the 15 miles to Murray Avenue, in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh.
He went to the wholesale produce markets in the Strip district of Pittsburgh every Monday and Thursday at 2 or 3 in the morning to buy a truckload of fruits, vegetables and produce for the store. The Sunday trips to Murray Avenue, though, were to the kosher stores to buy food for the family and to buy the Forverts.
At that time, in the early 1940s, Murray Avenue was almost totally Jewish, and the Jewish stores were located all along Murray, going up the hill for about 15 blocks. My father restricted his shopping to two blocks.
The major purchases were meat and poultry at Steinberg’s. Archie, the owner and head butcher, usually waited on my father himself. Smoked fish, butter and cheese were purchased at Ohringer’s. On special occasions, lean corned beef was bought at Hebrew National and sometimes my mother bought fresh fish at Benkovitz’s.
We children were allowed to go to Herman’s Bakery to buy fresh bagels or onion rolls.
We would all meet at the last stop, the corner drugstore right across from Herman’s. Sometimes we had a soda at the soda counter; always, though, my father bought the Sunday Forverts there. When we got home, my father always read the Forverts before indulging in his once-a-week afternoon nap.
Jack Olender
Washington, D.C.
Where Good Typewriters Are Found
The Forward has enriched my life time and again in ways I could never have anticipated. As a schoolboy during the 1920s and 1930s, I delighted in reading the family copy of the paper. The Sunday rotogravure section was the one I competed for with my three brothers. Why? Because the photos of exotic people and places were fascinating, and they were good for an A on any school project.
Years later, I wrote my master’s thesis at the University of Pennsylvania on “The Use of Time Limits in Family Therapy.” I needed an appropriate quotation for the topic, and chose Hillel’s, “If not now, when?” from Pirkei Avot. My esteemed thesis adviser, a Catholic woman, suggested typing it in Hebrew letters. Where, in 1953, could I find a typewriter with Hebrew letters? At the Forward, of course.
Now in retirement, I am an active member of my Yiddish club. In three different years, I have produced A Bintel Brief for our home-talent program, using the hard-bound anthology. Three times it was a smash hit.
I still eagerly await my weekly copy — in lazy man’s English.
Frank Avergun Magid
Boynton Beach, Fla.
A Taste of ‘Homemade’ Yiddish
My wife, Pat, and I were married in December 1959. In spite of my not being Jewish at the time, I was accepted by her family and made to feel at home. They were very special people.
I had studied German at college, along with linguistics. I taught myself the Hebrew alphabet and, together with my understanding of the sound shifts between Yiddish and modern German, was able to read Yiddish pretty well (though of course I missed all the words of Hebrew origin).
The following Rosh Hashanah, we were attending services at Pat’s Bubbe and Zayde’s shul in South Philadelphia. Back at their home, I sat in the parlor and picked up the Forverts and plodded my way through the front page.
A neighbor came in and saw me reading the paper. He expressed his pleasure at finding a young person reading the mamaloshn, and I replied in my “homemade” Yiddish. It was all very exciting for me: I was reading the Forverts, and carrying on a conversation in Yiddish with this gentleman.
When the time came for him to go, we shook hands and he said, “You know, you speak very good German.”
Avraham Hanadari Hod Hasharon, Israel
With Tea and Sugar Cubes
For eight years before his death in 1967, Zayde and I shared a bedroom, his desk at a right angle to mine. I would hear him talk to the Forverts, sometimes shouting, often laughing.
Zayde would sit at his desk, his glasses perched on his nose, reading his Forverts while sipping tea through sugar cubes held between his teeth. A sugar cube having melted, Zayde would argue aloud in Yiddish with this journalist or that letter writer, or laugh at a cartoon. Then he’d take another sugar cube from his Swee-Touch-Nee tin container and continue reading.
His voice was like background music to me as I did my high-school homework. He would occasionally interrupt me to share a political insight or a funny story and insist I see the page he was reading. Then he would ask me to make him another glass of tea.
Today his desk is mine, and I read the Forward — as much to stay connected to the “old country” of Zayde’s Brownsville and Canarsie as to stay current with the Jewish world. When our grandsons visit, they know they can go to Zayde’s desk to find toys. His scrapbooks and notebooks are still on the shelves behind glass doors, above the pull-down writing table.
One day, those books will belong to our grandchildren. Perhaps when the Forward turns 210, their descendants will have their own Forverts tales to tell.
Rabbi Alan Abraham Kay East Meadow, N.Y.
On Professional Advice
At the age of 9, I was allowed to walk by myself a half-block to the corner candy store to buy one piece of gum and to get my Dad’s weekend newspapers. One of the newspapers was the Forverts, which I had to hide within the confines of the The Daily Mirror.
Dad was afraid that if someone from the block saw me carrying a Yiddish newspaper, they would “start up” with me and call me names like “kike” or “yid.” We lived in a mixed neighborhood with Italians, Irish and other Jews. My father was a socialist and read his newspaper at home, like a secret document Ρ never on the street or in the subway.
Every Sunday morning, we kids would pile onto Mom and Dad’s double bed in the small bedroom of the three-room apartment where we all lived. We had to be very quiet so that Dad could read to us from A Bintel Brief. He read it in Yiddish, and then translated for us when we didn’t know what the words meant.
It was our moral and social education. A Bintel Brief was our guide to news and our consultant and guide to the psychology of everyday life. For that brief period of time, our family was together, laughing at some of the advice, considering some of it for our independent use. It gave me a better understanding of many puzzling situations.
I later earned degrees in psychology, psychoanalysis and family counseling, and for the past 35 years I have made my living seeing individuals, couples and families. My choice of my profession, I think, echoes some of what A Bintel Brief tried to impart.
Lenore Powell
Monroe Township, N.J.
‘Nap’ Time on Saturday Afternoon
My immigrant parents were teenagers when they came to America. My father was a kosher butcher, and we, their children, grew up behind the store in Philadelphia. Like every kosher butcher shop, our store was closed before sundown Friday and didn’t open till Saturday after dark.
Every Saturday afternoon, our parents closed their bedroom door and took a “nap.” Saturday afternoon in bed was their gift to each other. It was part of a long Jewish tradition that on the Sabbath, it was a blessing to make love to your spouse.
After their “nap,” our father read the Forverts out loud to our mother. He read the Isaac Bashevis Singer novels. He read A Bintel Brief, heartbreaking letters from abandoned wives and unhappy husbands, workers complaining about their bosses. He read her the news from Europe, which was not good in the 1930s and 1940s: reports on Hitler’s actions, the Stalin years, looming war clouds.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out what was going on during our parents’ “nap” time. It took me longer to understand that setting aside time to read the Forverts was also a Sabbath gift they gave to each other.
Sissy Carpey
via e-mail
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