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PAGE 30RH THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE October 3, 1986
A happy and healthy NEW YEAR to you!
Darnell’s 76 Service
Mechanical and Transmission Repairs
636-9611
H.G. PINES DICK DIRKSEN
Best Wishes for a Happy New Year
from
Musical Entertainment
292-5471
Happy New Year
A. Montag & Associates
Investment Counsel
339 Equitable Building, 10O Peachtree Street
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
404-522-5774
Reveries of o childhood
by Joseph Cohen
the universe was
created on Rosh Hashana. Tradi
tion says that we therefore have an
obligation at the New Year to
recall that awesome beginning.
Now, I think obligations sanctified
by so much tradition should be
honored, and for me that poses no
problem. But the truth is that as'
the years keep circling around, I
am more inclined, when the First
of Trishrei hovers into view, to
think about my own origins rather
than those of the world. No offense,
oh Master of the Universe!
In terms of origins, human beings
are, to a marked degree, fashioned
into what they become by the cy
clical recurrence of the central ex
periences of their lives. Creation in
this respect is a matter of repeti
tion, return and renewal; its cycli
cal pattern marks us the same way
the rings of a tree mark its age. As
the rings on the tree of my life keep
increasing, my own sense of annual
renewal takes on a deeper meaning
for me through the thoughts and
reveries of past celebrations of cer
tain central experiences. Among
them Rosh Hashana has its special
place in the recollections of my
childhood.
That childhood—in the 1930s—
was spent in Clarksville, Tenn., at
that time the dark-fired tobacco
capital of the world. (The Euro
pean market preferred dark-fired
tobacco to any other kind; its prin
cipal source was middle Tennessee
and western Kentucky.) Situated
along the banks of the Cumber
land River in the broad heartland
of the Ohio Valley, on a line mov
ing almost due south from Cincin
nati and Louisville, and 45 miles to
the northwest of Nashville, Clarks
ville, set in rolling Tennessee hill
country, harbored 10 Jewish house
holds among its 10,000 gentile souls.
Most of these Jewish families
had stores, mainly clothing and
furniture, located on Franklin
Street, Clarksville's main business
thoroughfare. And most of those
merchants were my relatives, pri
marily my mother’s people who
came originally from Tolson in
Kurland (subsequently Latvia).
These included Uncle Isaac and
Uncle Shye who operated Ruben-
stein and Schindler’s. They were
my great-uncles. One more imme
diate uncle was Uncle Harry (Ber
man Bros.) who had married my
mother’s sister. One cousin ran a
furniture store (Brenner’s) while
another owned a bowling alley.
My father, who had been a pros
perous businessman, was in poor
health, and he had no store at all.
He and his family came from Dru-
skeniki, a resort city on the banks
of the Neiman River in what is now
Lithuania. What brought all my
family so far into the American
hinterland just around the turn of
the century and shortly thereafter
is a question no one has ever really
answered.
While my father had no store at
all, my Uncle Joe Goldberg, who
had married another of my moth
er’s sisters, owned a whole block of
them. Located at the intersection
of Franklin and Third streets, it
was known then as the Goldberg
Block, and though it has long since
passed into other hands, it still
bears the same name today. Unex
pectedly in 1926, Uncle Joe, very
much in his prime, departed this
life—he was said always to have
been impetuous, with a flair for the
dramatic—a scant three months
before I was born, bequeathing to
me his name. He remains memor
able to me not so much for that gift
as for another one, the opportunity
to see as often and as long as I liked
on Saturdays Tim McCoy, Hoot
Gibson, Ken Maynard and Rin
Tin Tin. Joe Goldberg had owned
the town’s two movie houses, and
one remained in the family after his
death. I got in free. I never knew it
was light outside on Saturdays
until 1 had to give up going to the
show to study for my bar mitzva.
Down Third Street, just over a
block away from Franklin, at Com
merce Street stood the Masonic
Temple, a three-story building. The
masons reserved the third floor to
themselves, renting the ground-
level floor to a furniture company.
The second floor was occupied by
WJZM (the call letters of the 250-
watt radio station stood for J.Z.
Miller, another Jewish merchant,
who got the original FCC license)
and by Beth El Temple, our tiny
shul, with a liturgy and a ritual that
was one minute Reform and the
next minute Orthodox. In that
sense our congregation was typical
of other small congregations in the
South. A number of them shared
property with the Masons, and
they all had to negotiate liturgical
compromises among their members
to accomodate the disparities be
tween traditional Jews and their
more assimilated brethren. If there
were ever any disputes over ritual I
did not know about them.
There was about eight double
rows of mahogany benches facing
the eastern wall of that small hall,
and with chairs packed tightly be
hind the benches when the coal
stove wasn’t needed, about a hun
dred Jews could be squeezed in for
the High Holidays. A hundred
Jews in my minute universe was a
veritable multitude.
Though it was easy enough to
assemble a hundred people for
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it
was next to impossible to get
enough men for a daily minyan. If
a traveling schnorrer—you could
never distinguish one of them from
the legitimate representatives of
distant, struggling yeshivas in
Poland and Palestine because they
Continued next page.
“Though it was easy enough to assemble
a hundred people for Rosh Hashana and
Yom Kippur, it was next to impossible to
get enough men for a daily minyan.”
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