Part Three
Gershon, 1917
Chapter 6

“Shmuel wasn’t at evening services either.” Gershon Mendel handed his wife Yetta his coat and studied her from behind. She was much wider than when they’d stood under the wedding canopy in Lemberg twenty years ago, proof he’d fulfilled his promise to his wealthy father-in-law to become a good provider in America. “Did Rivka say anything to you at shul this morning?”

“When I asked her if Shmuel was home sick, Rivka frowned, so I thought maybe yes, but she didn’t really tell me. Did Avram talk to you?” Yetta draped her husband’s large tweed coat on a padded silk hanger, stroked the ermine lining, and hung it in the hallway’s double closet.

Gershon snorted. “My brother-in-law wouldn’t tell me the time of day, even if the poor shmendrik could afford a watch.” He and Avram had been rivals since childhood. Avram hated Gershon for marrying up into Yetta’s family, while Gershon never forgave Avram for marrying his sister out from under his nose and keeping her in poverty, despite Gershon’s attempts to help.

He gave his new Homburg to his younger daughter Ruchel, who threw it on the marble shelf, knocking the other hats askew. She was becoming increasingly disrespectful toward him. Gershon opened his mouth, but Yetta quickly straightened the hats before he could say anything. He decided to let it go; there were bigger things on his mind today. Gershon entrusted his worn sidur, the prayer book passed down by his father on the eve of his departure, to his older daughter Zipporah. As she set it carefully in the drawer of the inlaid table, he made a mental note to call the shadchen to see if the matchmaker had found her a suitable husband. Yetta still held out for a love match like theirs, but Gershon was adamant that his daughter not end up with some poor shlemiel. He’d never take a chance on his child’s welfare like Yetta’s father had with him. Gershon had paid the shadchen handsomely to find a future son-in-law who met his exacting qualifications, both financial and scholarly.

“I’m home a bissel late,” Gershon said, settling his girth into the embroidered chair at the head of the dining room table. “So many people asking me for help.” Unlike Avram, the other congregants at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, of which Gershon was president, couldn’t thank him enough for helping them make their way in this country. He joked that if they were Catholic and he were the Pope, his ring would be so covered in shmutz from their kisses, he’d have to hire an assistant just to polish it. “I need a good meal after dispensing all those favours.”

“Dinner will be a bissel late too.” Yetta poked the meat with a fork to see if it was done, and closed the oven door. “I sent Margaret home early, she should take care of her poor mother who’s not well. Then I had to wait until after sundown to put the roast in the oven myself.”

“Yetta, we’ve been over this a hundred times. You can’t cook on Saturday because it’s Shabbas, so we pay Margaret to do it. Sunday is her Sabbath. She gets the morning off for church and she can take care of Mrs. Fitzgerald then too.”

“Why not give her Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning both? According to Torah, even slaves should be allowed to observe a complete day of rest.”

“Since when are you a Torah expert?” Gershon’s talent for scholarship, evident since he was a small boy, was his ticket out of poverty. He saw no reason for his wife, or any woman, to be concerned with matters beyond the household. Yetta was from one of Lemberg’s esteemed families, the baalei h’batim, so unlike most girls, she’d been educated by a private tutor until age twelve. After that, however, she wasn’t allowed to read the Talmud, and that suited him fine.

“Mama’s right.” Ruchel tossed a linen napkin alongside each hand-painted china plate. “It says so in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy. A learned man like you should know that.”

Gershon grabbed his daughter’s wrist as she set his place with the silverware he’d given Yetta on their tenth anniversary. “One more word young lady, and I’ll pull you out of the girls’ cheder class.” He’d resisted sending either daughter to religious school until Yetta convinced him it would make them better wives and mothers. Zipporah had in fact been content to learn the scriptural reasons behind the rituals performed at home, but Ruchel showed off her knowledge of sacred texts by questioning their meaning. She was sixteen, the same age as her cousin Shmuel, but in this only, his brother-in-law Avram had been luckier than him. Shmuel was a good son, who, like Zipporah, didn’t disobey his parents. Ruchel both aggravated Gershon and set a bad example for her young cousin Dev. Worse, the more she defied him, the more Gershon found himself craving her approval and respect. He wanted them as the final proof that he’d succeeded in this new land, but she challenged his authority as readily as she did ancient Jewish laws.

“Shah!” Yetta shooed Ruchel away. “Your father’s right. What do women know of God’s intentions?” She turned to Gershon, “Next time, I’ll tell Margaret to start the roast, on low heat, it shouldn’t get overdone, then she can leave early.” Gershon started to protest, but she put a plump hand on his arm. “Sholem bayess,” she reminded him. “Always you make life easier for those at shul, you should stop arguing in your own home.” To reestablish peace between them, she gave Gershon double portions of gefilte fish and chopped liver while the meat finished cooking.

“You think I should go to Rivka’s after dinner? Maybe something really is wrong with Shmuel.” Yetta continued setting the table. “They don’t got money what to pay a doctor, but we could give ...”

Gershon cut her off. “It will be too dark by then. Besides, if the Levinsons need our help, let Avram come and ask us himself.” He hoped his nephew wasn’t sick, but he gloated at the thought of Avram being upset that his son had missed services last night and again today. Seeing Yetta’s reproving look, he hastened to say, “Even if Shmuel is under the weather, I’m sure by now he’s eating a slice of Rivka’s honey-nut cake and reading next week’s Torah portion.”

Yetta smiled. “Nu, nothing stops your nephew from studying. He’s like you.”

It was Avram who pushed the boy, but Yetta was right that Shmuel’s quick mind was more like Gershon’s than like his own father’s. Gershon had been the star pupil at cheder, besting not only Avram, but the older boys as well. When he was eight, his teacher made him recite a passage of Talmud in front of his parents and the curious customers who stood in the doorway separating the family’s living quarters from their store. Gershon was nervous, but he performed flawlessly. Old men pinched his cheek. His mother made him a glass of tea with condensed milk. It was a grown-up treat that his parents rarely made for themselves .

“Your son has the makings of a Talmudic scholar,” the rebbe told them. Minding the store was honourable labour, he said, but the Mendels should let their son use the talent God gave him. His parents turned over all but his heaviest chores to Rivka so Gershon could spend extra hours studying. His sister never complained; she was proud of him. And how had he paid her back? Four years later, he’d almost let her die. The only thing that kept him from giving up on Avram entirely was repaying a debt to his sister that he was too guilty to ever admit to her.

***

When the roast was finally ready, and Yetta had summoned the girls to the table, Gershon made a big ceremony of carving it. His wife had seasoned it with a heavenly blend of minced garlic, onions, and freshly ground paprika. Even though Yetta had grown up with servants, her mother insisted that she learn to cook and sew. Gershon could afford to pay others to do these things, but he accepted his wife’s need to take charge of feeding and clothing the family herself.

He served the others, saving for himself the end pieces dense with spices and the juiciest middle slice. Ruchel started eating right after the blessing, but the others waited until he’d taken the first bite and began the conversation. “Morris Shumansky pleaded with me to find him a job. He said he’d eaten everything but the shirt on his back. Just to think of Morris eating his own filth can kill a man’s appetite.” Gershon demolished his noodle kugel in two forkfuls.

“He lost yet another job?” Yetta cut her husband a second square of the savoury pudding.

“He’s got a tuchus for brains.”

“Still, you can do something for the poor man? He shouldn’t starve to death.” Yetta put smaller portions of kugel on the other plates.

“I told him to go to the Crisis Conference tomorrow to get food. He kissed my hands so hard, I thought he was going to eat them too. Meanwhile I’ll call Arnie Haber after supper and convince him that he needs to hire Morris as an errand boy.”

Ruchel slid the roast closer and cut herself another slice. “How do you intend to do that?”

Gershon moved the platter back toward himself. “My business methods are not your concern.”

Yetta fiddled with her silverware. “Nu, anyone else? Mrs. Meltzer?”

“They can’t keep the old woman at home any more. She wets the bed. The daughter flung her arms around me and wept when I said I’d find a place at Hadassah House. Her husband had given her an ultimatum, either your mother goes or I do.”

“Imagine saying such a heartless thing!” Yetta scrunched her napkin. Zipporah smoothed it out again and patted her mother’s hand.

Gershon couldn’t imagine threatening to leave his wife, his biggest prize, for any reason, but he was glad he’d never been faced with caring for an elderly, incontinent parent. He and Yetta had left when theirs were in good health. His mother and father died while he was still in night school, but Yetta’s lived long enough for him to write them about his success. It mattered more to him that his rich in-laws knew he’d made it in America than that his own parents did. He hoped they’d kvelled about it to the rest of the shtetl, rich and poor alike, before they passed on.

“The girls and I will help move her when a bed frees up.” Yetta smiled at Zipporah, who smiled back. Ruchel sighed and shrugged, earning a stern look from her mother.

“I’ll look in now and then to make sure Mrs. Meltzer is treated well. After all, she’s a landsman from Lemberg.” Gershon pushed away his plate, which Yetta quickly cleared and replaced with a glass of tea sweetened with raspberry jam and a thick slice of marble cake.

“Anyone else whose salvation you’ll engineer?” Ruchel lingered over her dinner plate, daring her father to wait until she was finished with her meal before he started his dessert.

Gershon scooped a large bite of cake into his mouth and chewed noisily. “In fact, Hymie Rosenthal sought me out after everyone else had left.”

The women, including Ruchel, caught their breaths. Hymie had married a gentile, a pretty Catholic girl who bought onions and peppers from his horse-drawn cart instead of shopping at the Italian produce store around the corner. Their marriage had been the biggest shanda of the shul last year. Even Yetta, that most tolerant of souls, had clucked her tongue.

“He’s unhappy,” Gershon continued. The faces around him looked satisfied, as if to say, “We told you so!” He was more sympathetic. Marrying a non-Jew was to some a sign of leaving behind the old country and being accepted in America. He didn’t approve, but he understood.

“Nu, what can the man do? He can’t make her not his wife. Catholics don’t believe in divorce.”

“Hymie doesn’t want a divorce. He still loves her.” Or perhaps, thought Gershon, he refused to admit defeat. “But it bothers him that she badmouths his Jewish friends.”

“He still has friends among our people?” Ruchel asked in the cynical voice she’d cultivated lately. It made Gershon want to plug his fingers in his ears.

“He just wants her to be as nice to the Jews as he is to her Catholic friends. He asked me for advice, he’s too ashamed to talk to anyone else.”

Yetta’s curiosity got the better of her disapproval. “So what did you tell him?”

Gershon spoke haltingly. “I told him to move into a building that has Jewish and Catholic families. You hang your laundry on the same line and put your garbage in the same cans, you act nicer to each other.” That’s how he was able to trade favours with the gentile aldermen. Some Jews didn’t approve, but no one complained when they benefitted. “Did I say the right thing?”

Yetta told him she supposed he knew best, and Zipporah silently deferred to her mother. Ruchel, however, rewarded him with a genuine smile. “Advice worthy of a King Solomon.”

Gershon suppressed a smile of triumph and nudged the cake platter toward Ruchel. He stood. “Ruven Kleinschmidt’s building has a vacancy. I’ll call him now.”