A Bronx Yom Kippur, 1970

       
By Raanan Geberer                                                                                        
Four people were walking up the steep Kingsbridge Road hill on the way to the Young Israel of Kingsbridge for Yom Kippur. They were Sid Steinberg, an accountant in his late 40s; his two sons, Rob, 17, and Joel, 15; and Sid’s uncle Lazar, an elderly widower who lived a few blocks from the Steinbergs. Lazar was a retired grocer; but he was also a Yiddish poet and short-story writer who was often published in the Forward and the Workmen’s Circle’s magazine. They weren’t taking the bus because traditionally, one doesn’t travel on this, the holiest day of the year.

The one person who wasn’t with them was Mom, who had such bad asthma that sometimes she could hardly walk across the street to the store. But even if she’d been well, Mom basically had no use for religion. The rebellious daughter of former communists, Mom was proud of the fact that she’d rejected her parents’ pro-Soviet orientation while she was still in her teens; still, their strident atheism stayed with her. When Rob tried to talk to her about his growing interests in karma, reincarnation, Eastern religions and Kabbalism, Mom shot back with, “Maybe we should have sent you to that child psychologist for a few more years! Then you wouldn’t be talking about religion so much!” She’d conceded to Dad on sending the kids to Hebrew school, but she criticized the rabbi at every opportunity.

Near the end of the hill, where Kingsbridge Road transformed into a level plane, Lazar started to talk to Rob and Joel in the heavily accented, deep bass voice that made him a favorite in Yiddish choruses. “You know, kinderlach,” he said, “the Talmud says there are four kinds of students. One is like a sponge, he absorbs all he studies. One is like a sieve, he saves what is good in the study and leaves out what is not. One is like a funnel, that lets the liquid in one end and out the other. And the fourth is like a strainer that lets the good wine out but absorbs the dregs...” Lazar had been a yeshiva student in his native Lithuania and even though he was no longer observant, he still liked to show off his Talmudic learning.

Rob wondered why Dad would go to such an Orthodox shul as Young Israel. Dad was only half-kosher, didn’t observe Shabbos, never mentioned God or faith. It could only be, Rob reasoned, that Dad was so set in his ways that this was the type of shul he remembered from his childhood in the immigrant East Bronx; and on those few occasions when he did go to shul, he wanted to go to the kind of place he felt comfortable with. If Dad had a religion, it was loyalty to the Jewish people, especially Israel. Dad had been one of a small number of American volunteers in Israel’s ’48 War of Independence and had lived in Jerusalem with Mom for two years after their marriage. While he didn’t talk much about those days, his commitment was evidenced in the many photos and paintings of Jerusalem in the apartment.

Finally, the shul. They sat down, put on their tallises and took out their prayer books. Despite the name, Young Israel of Kingsbridge was what, years later, Rob’s wife would call an “old men’s shul”; varicose veins, stooped backs, croaking voices ruled. Rob idly looked into the women’s section see whether there were any teenage girls his age, but he already knew he’d be disappointed; the two or three that were there were yeshiva types with long sleeves, long dresses, too much makeup. A relationship with one of them was out of the question.

Joel, in the next seat, started kicking Rob playfully. They kicked each other under the seat, giggling with muffled voices, until their father caught on and said, “Will you guys cut it out!” They soon arrived at the Shema, the most important prayer in the Jewish religion, and Dad grabbed Rob’s hand and made him point to each line, word by word, apparently not knowing or caring that Rob knew enough Hebrew to follow it himself. When they got to Adon Olam, Dad called Rob’s attention to the fact that each line began with a successive letter of the alphabet. “It’s an acrostic,” Dad said proudly, pleased with his own knowledge. Rob was bored: Dad said the same thing every year.

Soon, it was time for the rabbi’s sermon, which served as break time for the Steinberg family. Dad encouraged Rob and Joel to go outside; he knew they needed an outlet for their pent-up energy. They walked the few blocks to the Eames Place shul, which was bigger, more modern, and had more families as members. As always, a crowd of kids gathered in front. Joel recognized Alan Greenstein, a tall kid in his class who was a big deal on the basketball team. Joel and Alan spent the next 10 minutes talking about the Knicks; Rob, who really wasn’t that much into sports, just looked on.

When they got back to the shul, the congregation was chanting Anu Amecha, or “We Are Your People,” a seemingly endless prayer whose melody was only heard on Yom Kippur. Joel leaned over to Rob and sang, in a mock-Yiddish accent, “Anu whore-echa, ve’ato hu elohaynoo, anu pimp-echa, ve’ato hoo mosheaynoo!” Rob started cracking up, and laughed until Dad told him to be quiet. After that came Ashamnu, a prayer of penitence that were part of the solemn holiday service. The congregation chanted, in Hebrew, the sins that they might have been collectively guilty of: “We have killed, we have stolen, we have borne false witness, we have committed adultery, we have mocked, we have been disrespectfulÿ” Dad tapped Rob on the shoulder. “Sounds like you!” Dad whispered, with a laugh. Rob, hurt by Dad’s remarks, just sulked.

When the morning service ended, the Steinberg family, because of the long trip up and down the hill, traditionally went home to stay rather than return for the evening service that ended the holiday. They’d already heard the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, anyway. (There was a synagogue closer to them, on their side of the hill, but Mom and Dad both decreed that the family would never have anything to do with that place!)

Walking down Kingsbridge Road near the V.A. Hospital, Lazar asked Dad, “So, how are the boys doing in school?”

“Oh, very good,” Dad answered. “They get that from their mother—she was a Phi Beta Kappa, you know. Not like me, with my C’s and D’s at CCNY!” He laughed, embarrassed.

“By the way, Israel canceled the municipal elections in the West Bank,” Lazar commented.

“That’s because they all voted for the PLO! We try to be nice to them by letting them have their own elections, and what happens? They vote for terrorists!”

“Dad,” Rob objected, “you know I’m not anti-Israel. But you gotta admit, the Palestinians were screwedÿ.”

“Palestinians? Listen, in my day, we were the Palestinians! They were called Jordanians! Look, I was there, remember? You’re telling me about the Arabs?” Rob retreated into himself; you couldn’t argue with Dad. If you presented a better argument than him, he’d only ignore you, as if he’d never heard what you’d said.

As the family got to the beginning of the hill, Lazar said in a low voice to Dad, “Look, zey hoven a bodega dort’n!”

“A bodega? Oh, maybe we can eat some cuchifritos!” Dad laughed at the foreign-sounding word. “That’s a bad sign! You mark my words, everybody will move out in five years, and it’ll be 100 percent Black and Hispanic! Then they’ll start burning the place down! If one of them has a fight with his brother, he burns his house down! If he has a fight with his girlfriend, he burns her house downÿ”

Now it was Joel’s turn to challenge Dad. “So,” Joel argued, “are you telling me that Earl Gardner and his sister from our building, who are probably straight-A students, would burn their house down?”

“Well, um, of course, er, some are OK,” Dad fumbled, embarrassed. “But most of them are poor people, up from the South or Puerto Rico. Half of them can’t read or write!” Rob had complained to Mom about Dad several times, but despite Mom’s self-congratulatory liberalism, when it came to race, she was almost as bad as Dad. Like most adults in this lower-middle-class neighborhood, Mom and Dad let their fears overwhelm everything else.  Even Grandpa Harry, the former communist who was still a socialist, said, “Vell, I vish it vas a class war instead of a race war, but in ah race war, you have to support your own race!”

Satisfied with needling his father, Joel turned to Rob. He sang into Rob’s ear an off-color parody of the Irish Rovers’ recent pop song, “Unicorn,” substituting the word “eunuch” for that of the mythical one-horned beast:

“Some cats and rats and elephants,

But as sure as you’re born,

You’re not gonna see no eunuch (chopping sound).”

Rob laughed uncontrollably until Dad noticed and gave both boys a dirty look. When they were all halfway down the hill, Lazar again went into his Talmudic shtick: “Sidney, remember, in the Talmudic tractate Pirkei Avos, it says that a father should do three things for his son: Teach him a trade, teach him how to swim, and get a wife for him.”

Rob was slightly interested in what Lazar was saying, but only slightly. Maybe, Rob reasoned, back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when Lazar and Dad’s long-deceased father, who’d been a lay cantor for his tiny East Bronx shul, presided over the family holiday celebrations, the observances had more meaning. But as it was now, Dad basically treated Yom Kippur like an oil change -- as an obligation.

When they got to the bottom of the hill, they bid Lazar goodbye, then went home. Dad went to sleep; Rob and Joel started reading their school assignments, since there wasn’t much else they could do. At about 3 p.m., Rob could fight his hunger pangs no longer. Surely, he said to himself, God wouldn’t mind if he had a drink of orange juice. He went to the refrigerator. Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind him. He froze with fear—Dad! But it was only Mom, wheezing and puffing her Primatene inhaler. She smiled.

“I won’t tell Dad,” she said, coughing. “How’s your good old uncle Lazar?”

“Oh, he’s OK!”

She smiled. “I’m glad. You know, Dr. Simon told me he’s going to start me on some new medication,” she said. “If it works, maybe I can start going to my French movies again.” Mom had been a high school French teacher before her health had forced her to retire; she loved everything French.  “Wanna go with me one of these days?”

“Um, I don’t know, Mom.” Going someplace with Mom was always a problem for Rob. One minute, she’d act sweet and nice; the next, she’d be telling him that he’d been considered a disturbed child when he was younger, that he still had “many problems,” and that he shouldn’t expect much out of life. And that was the last thing he wanted to hear.

“OK. Well, let me know. I’m gonna go back to the room: I got two magazines in the mail yesterday, the New Yorker and Commentary. You can read them when I’m through.” Giving herself an extra puff, she shuffled back in the direction of the parents’ bedroom.

About fifteen minutes later, Joel, less fearful of Dad than his brother, turned on WABC Top 40 Radio. Immediately, Dad yelled from the other room: “Turn off that junk! This is Yom Kippur, you know! Is something wrong with you?”

Suddenly, Dad’s and Mom’s voices were heard, arguing. After awhile, Mom addressed Rob and Joel, projecting her voice from the parents’ bedroom as best she was able: “Boys, we decided on a compromise. You can listen to the radio, but only to talk programs—no music!” Joel immediately turned to Lee Leonard’s sports call-in show on WNBC; for the rest of the afternoon, he was in heaven.

 At 6:30, 45 minutes before the end of Yom Kippur, Dad started cooking dinner. It was the same every year: rubbery chicken with bland, frozen carrots and peas. “I’m gonna give you the bird! Ha, ha, ha!” Dad joked. No one laughed—he used that line at least once a week. After it was served, the family ate in silence, a silence punctuated only by Dad slurping his tea. Dad soon turned on the all-news station, WINS, and opened up the Post, eating all the while. He later went to the refrigerator and started serving the cake, scattering crumbs all over the table.

 After Rob and Joel finished, they went to their room, without a goodbye, to watch the latest episode of Mod Squad. Mom walked slowly to the phone and dialed her old friend from Hunter College, Alice. The two of them spoke two or three times a day, yet rarely saw each other because of Mom’s illness.

 Seeing Mom at the phone, Dad said, with a hint of mockery, “Oh, you’re calling your buddy? OK, call your buddy! I’m gonna watch the ferdlach!” The ferdlach, or horses in Yiddish, was what Dad called cowboy shows and movies. “Yeah, the ferdlach! Ha, ha, ha!” Rob and Joel, hearing Dad’s voice from the other room, both wondered how often Dad could tell the same old joke--which wasn’t funny to begin with.

 And thus, the Steinberg family ended Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.