Choosing My Religion
A Memoir of a Family Beyond BeliefBy Stephen DubnerHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Stephen Dubner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0061132993
Chapter One
My mother tells me that, even as a little girl in Brooklyn she had a stubborn streak. She dreamed of running away from home; she thought nothing of talking back to her mother, whose name was Esther.Every night, Esther would climb the stairs from the candy store, a sharp grunt on each step, and say, It's the shklofferai is what it is, the slavery. Your father, he works so hard he must be made from iron.
And Florence, in her singsong voice, always gave the same retort: Well then, he better not go out in the rain or he'll get all rusty.
It was only her mother that Florence made fun of. She loved her father very much. His name was Harry, and on Election Day he would carry her on his shoulders to the voting hall. He would step behind the curtain and say, I'm going to send a hello to Mr. Roosevelt now, sweetie. Shall I give him your regards? Florence looked so much like her father—the same round face and full lips—that some of the customers called her Little Harry, and she didn't mind at all.
Her father liked to laugh, but her mother didn't seem to know how. It's the arthritis, she would say, here and here and here, pointing at her swollen ankles and elbows and knuckles. It's because of the cold in this place, she'd say.
It was true that their apartment was cold. There was heat in the store, but that was a business necessity. The store was what mattered: Harry Greenglass, Candy and Cigars. Finally Harry was not failing at a business. Even now, with the Depression all around them, the pennies rolled in. Harry was lucky to be near Crown Heights, a Catholic neighborhood, with plenty of trolley drivers and policemen and garbagemen whose jobs were safe. The Lower East Side, where his brother, Barney, ran a sewing-machine shop, was choking on its own poverty.
Harry opened up every morning at six and closed whenever it got to be ten minutes between customers, usually near midnight. Esther spelled him for lunch unless it was so busy that the both of them worked. On Saturdays, Florence and Della, her older sister, helped stack the newspapers.No matter how well the store was doing, Esther let Harry know it wasn't good enough. That was her way. Harry had seen how it would be as soon as they were married and decided he would be best off keeping quiet. It wasn't always easy. Esther would prattle on about her brother, the big fabric man, who just bought a new house, and how his wife always had new hats and how their children were smarter and and healthier than their own children, how little Irving could eat a whole head of lettuce and drink a whole quart of milk at one meal, And did you see their bushes, Esther would say after a visit to the new house, how my brother carved the bushes so they look like big parlor chairs? So nice and fency!
Esther still had a lot of Yiddish in her English. Harry had worked hard to get rid of his. That, he knew, was the way to make it in America. Treat the customer well, a nice smile and a little talk but not too much, and nothing too serious. Harry loved America.
He was the first in the family to come, in 1898. He was eighteen years old, and his name was Herschel. He rode a bicycle all the way from Minsk to Hamburg, sleeping in ditches and barns. In New York, he fixed things, on the first day that he was allowed to file for citizenship, he did so.
Last name?
Greenglass, he said. He pronounced it American, GREEN-glass, not GRIN-glosh.
First name?
Harry.
Birth date?
The Fourth of July, he fibbed.
Do you renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatever, and particularly to the Czar of Russia, of whom you have been heretofore a subject?
You betcha.
Eventually his whole family came, everyone who hadn't starved to death in Russia: Harry's brother, Barney, their three sisters, and their uncle, old Moishe with the dusty beard. Moishe then sent for his wife, Sorah-Rukhel, and the two of their children who were still alive, one of whom was Esther.Esther's family settled in the Bronx. Old Moishe didn't seem to notice he was living in America. He would halfheartedly sell pencils on the street for half an hour, then spend the rest of the day in synagogue, praying and gabbing. And for what, Harry wondered, so the family could starve here the way they starved in Russia? Harry had no use for starvation and, truthfully, no use for God either. He was thirty-five years old already; his cousin Esther was twenty-seven. He was particularly fond of her—so much so, in fact, that just five months after they were married in the summer of 1916, Esther had a baby, whom they named Adeline, Della for short.
For several years, Harry fixed sewing machines alongside his brother on the Lower East Side, the streets crowded with Jews and horse manure. When he heard about an empty store in Brooklyn with an apartment on top, he moved quickly. He didn't understand why a Jew and a ghetto had to stick together. In Brooklyn you could plant a few flowers, maybe even a cherry tree in the backyard.
Florence was born five years after Della. She was a pretty little girl, with curly black hair, but frail, with a murmur in her heart. Esther took her regularly to Dr. Zatz, the Arbeiter Ring doctor with the slicked-back hair. The visits were free, and they got what they paid for. She just needs some fresh air, Dr. Zatz would say, checking Florence's pulse, his fingers oily from patting down his hair, what do you expect living in such a city? And Esther would bundle Florence off to Brighton Beach and ply her with cod liver oil and tomato sandwiches.
From the start Florence and her sister, Della, didn't get along. Florence's favorite playmate was her grandmother Sorah-Rukhel. When she visited, Esther didn't make bacon and told Florence not to say anything about ever having eaten bacon, because Bubbe believed in God and God did not allow bacon. Bubbe spoke only Yiddish, but Florence could speak Yiddish too, and they would giggle and cuddle like friends. Bubbe's cheeks were soft, like flower petals. At night she sat on the edge of Florence's bed and told stories about beautiful Queen Esther. She taught Florence how to thank God for the good day and ask Him for a good husband when the time came.
Continues...
Excerpted from Choosing My Religionby Stephen Dubner Copyright © 2006 by Stephen Dubner. Excerpted by permission.
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