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Friday, September 2, 1966
Til BODTIIIN ISRAELITE
Fa*e Three
OFF THE RECORD
(A Seven Arts Feature)
Time, it seems, obliterates
everything except memories uf
old enclaves. Of all nostalgic
moments, yearning for place of
birth, for soil of early roots, is
the strongest.
My early roots go back to a
Ukrainian shtetl that has been
obliterated by the Hitlerite
hordes and whose dwellers were
carried off to death and torture
by the twentieth-century barbar
ians. Yet its remembrance is with
me still as in a dream.
More real is the remembrance
of the planting of new roots in
the asphalts of the Jewish ghetto
that was New York’s Lower East
Side a decade after the turn of
this century.
The Jewish ghetto of my youth
is no more, having given way to
new tongues and what to us at
the time were forbidden houses
of worship, yet it has not re
linquished its hold on me. Often
I find myself walking on fam
iliar streets with unfamiliar
faces.
One of my fondest recollections
is of a visit to a synagogue that
brought a torrent of reprobation
from my father. At the time the
rabbinate was still my great
dream and my father could not
fathom how his bchor, his first
born son, could permit himself
to enter a Reform synagogue
where men sat together with
women and prayed without hats
to the tune of organ music and
beardless cantors.
The Reform movement at the
time was anathema to the mass
of Jews in the colorful area that
was the heart of Jewish living
in America then, and the word
“yahudim" in those days would
conjure up a picture of wealth,
power, affluence, frostiness and
of a religious path that was said
to lead to alien altars, if not
directly to church. Our parents
would no more consent to their
children marrying a Reform Jew
or Jewess than a sheigets or a
shiksa. When that happened —
and it happened quite infrequ
ently, if at all—they would sit
shiva as for the dead. In fact,
I recall a family that sat shiva
for a son when he abandoned
yeshivas court for Reform pas
tures in Cincinnati.
Only two men from the “other
camp” seemed to have an open
door to our paradise — Jacob
Schiff and Stephen Wise. Schiff
apparently because of his phil
anthropy and immeasurable hu
manity, and Wise because of his
identification with the Jewish
masses on the level of their daily
problems.
Bold and imaginative. Wise at
the time invaded the East Side
with his Free Synagogue, a move
we viewed with as much con
tempt as suspicion. Such was our
attitude toward those Reform
interlopers—whose purpose, we
imagined, was to snare Jewish
souls—that we would even avoid
passing their synagogue, which
was located in a red brick house
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then famous Clinton Hall—a site
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therings and labor meetings.
The strange house of worship,
which had punctured our religious
tranquility, was by this time be
ginning to arouse our intellectual
curiosity. But we could find no
hechsher to enter the impermis
sible domain. The area was out
of bounds for us, the young guar
dians of the gate and of the vine
yard.
But lure of forbidden fruit was
irresistible and in the end we
succumbed to temptation with a
perfectly legitimate excuse.
A1 Smith, who was then one
of the most colorful figures on
the political horizon and who was
later to make a brilliant record
as Governor of the State of New
York, was to be a Sabbath after
noon speaker at the Free Syna
gogue and that, of course, was a
delectable dish we young Jewish
intellectuals could not resist.
Smith, of brown derby fame,
was hatless, but we were able
to tolerate his hatlessness for,
after all, he was a goy. But rab
bis without hats in a synagogue
was an incredible scene to us,
even though we had heard it said
that Reform Jews davened with
out hats. Smith was a scintillat
ing speaker, his anecdotes bore
the intimacy and quality of folk
lore and he was a master at
weaving a tale that he was to
tell for many long years, one
which, but for his Catholicism,
would have brought him to the
White House.
As the short winter day was
drawing to its end and the sun
began vanishing from the lone
window in the rear, a young
rabbi on the dais rose majesti
cally from his chair, pulled a
string and there was Sabbath
light ere the sun had set. The
spectacle of illumination brought
on painful stirring in our midst
and some of us were clearly tor
mented by fear we would be
punished for the sin of having
contributed to the most grievous
of sins—desecration of the Sab
bath.
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