Scattered Seed

by Maisie Mosco

  But living in a pleasant, residential suburb was also a status symbol, an indication that they had “got on”, and, like Golders Green in London, both these districts had acquired a distinctively Jewish ambience.

  In Prestwich, where David and Sammy and the Kleins now lived, the stretch of Bury Old Road close to Heaton Park, and the thickly populated, tree-lined avenues on either side of the main highway, bore witness to the influx. On the Sabbath and High Holy Days, bowler-hatted gentlemen and their smartly-clad wives walked decorously to worship at the imposing Holy Law Synagogue. On fine days they would stroll in the park; or on the broad pavements where kosher grocery and butchers’ shops, bakeries and delicatessen had their blinds lowered as the stores in Strangeways had been respectfully shuttered on these occasions in the community’s early-immigrant days.

  “The only thing about Yom Tov that’s changed since I was a kid is the style of clothes,” David remarked to Bessie while they were walking to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, shortly after they had moved house and found themselves part of the elegant throng.

  Bessie was using the shop windows as a mirror to admire her new hat. “What else would you like to change?” she replied, as insensitive to the way Jewish tradition moved her husband as she was to all his deepest feelings. “It’s a lot nicer than Cheetham Hill, round here,” she declaimed with satisfaction, enjoying the air of middle-class affluence as they crossed the road to the synagogue in company with other congregants.

  “But Alderley Edge is even nicer,” David answered.

  “Alderley Edge he still wants to live in! With all those stuck-up goyim.”

  And one day I will, David said silently to his wife’s receding back when she left him in the crowded, synagogue foyer to take her seat in the gallery with the ladies. Meanwhile, he was content with the home he had now. No, content was the wrong word. That, he would never be until he reached his final goal and living in Cheshire epitomized it. But Prestwich would do for the time being.

  The familiar, soporific atmosphere that all shuls seemed to have, with a hint of fresh-smelling fragrance as if a spray had been recently applied, greeted him in a warm wave when he entered and walked to his seat beside Sammy and Ben.

  He donned his tallith and glanced up at Bessie, who was sitting with Esther and Miriam, next to a girl in ATS uniform. Shirley and Marianne waved to him from their seats at the back of the raked gallery, but he could hardly see their faces for the array of millinery on the heads in front of them.

  “Robin Hood feathers seem to be all the rage for women this year,” he said dryly to his brother and brother-in-law.

  “And my wife’s got the longest one,” Ben grinned. “I think Bessie’s trying to say something to you.”

  “Where’s our Ronald?” Bessie was mouthing.

  David shrugged and spread his hands. They had left their son eating the cold, fried plaice which was their traditional Yom Tov breakfast, singling it out from ordinary mornings when they only had tea and bagels. When they warned Ronald he would be late for the service, he had replied that his legs were younger and faster than theirs. Shirley, on the other hand, had gone on ahead of them, fearing her pace would be slowed down by her new four-inch-heel court shoes.

  “Kids!” Ben said expressively, eyeing Ronald’s empty seat and David’s frown. “They can drive you meshugah.”

  Sammy glanced around and noted the sprinkling of servicemen who were home on leave for Yom Tov. In one row of seats, several airmen were sitting together, and he surmised they were from the air-crew cadet base in Heaton Park. “I only wish mine was here, I wouldn’t mind how mad he drove me,” he said looking up at Miriam whose expression was haunted, as it had been ever since Martin volunteered for the RAF.

  “That’s how I feel about my boys,” Ben sighed.

  “So do I, about Peter,” David said. “I worry about him all the time.”

  “We all worry about them all,” Ben declared. “But Peter’s only in the Pioneer Corps, isn’t he?”

  “Because he’s a refugee. It reminds me of the last war when the sons of Austrian immigrants weren’t allowed to carry weapons. They’d been here for years and years and were ready to give their lives for the country that took the Jews in, just like Peter’s lot are, now. But tell that to the War Office!”

  “Anyone’d think you want him to be in danger, driving a tank like Harry, or in the Navy like our Arnold,” Ben said sounding shocked.

  “Or being an RAF bomb-aimer, like Martin,” Sammy added grimly as the rabbi and cantor entered, imposingly robed, and everyone rose for the commencement of the service.

  “Of course I don’t want Peter to be in danger,” David said sotto voce, with one eye on his son who was sidling towards them crabwise in the hope that his late arrival would pass unnoticed by the silk-hatted elders of the congregation. “All I’m thinking of is the lad’s pride. Imagine someone of his intelligence digging ditches for latrines!”

  “Sorry I’m late, Dad,” Ronald whispered from beside him.

  David made his customary terse reply. “We had more respect when I was young.” Then the cantor’s voice and the mellifluousness of the choir soothed his ruffled feelings and the changeless pattern of age-old Jewish ritual, impervious to peace or war, poverty or affluence, washed over him like a gentle brook lapping the pitted contours of a pebble.

  This was what he came to shul for. It was not just fear of the Almighty’s punishment, or the hope that observing the High Holy Days would mitigate all his non-observances, that drew him to God’s house year after year when the Festivals came around. The fear was there, conditioned in him from the cradle; he felt defiant when he lit a cigarette on Shabbos, as if doing so was tempting Fate, and he would no doubt experience those pangs to the end of his days, even though his brain told him it was ridiculous, that being a person of integrity and charity meant more than adhering to laws dating back to the Wilderness. But David was drawn to shul by an emotion stronger than fear, one he could not label because there was no name for it. It was born of the necessity to identify with his own, to assert his oneness with them, though some had personal characteristics he could not respect.

  That’s probably why we’re all here, he mused, glancing around the crowded synagogue. Even the ladies who want to show off their new outfits, whose eyes never read a word of the service because they’re too busy examining the other women’s attire. This could be any shul in the world on Rosh Hashanah. The prayers the men knew from memory being recited in unison whilst their minds toyed with other things. Business or family problems. Some were no doubt wondering what they would get for Yom Tov dessert, hot strudel or lokshen pudding. Was anyone thinking about God?

  It doesn’t matter, David reflected. The need to be here was all that counted and so long as that stayed as strong as it had until now, Judaism would remain invincible.

  He watched the synagogue president, his tall hat gleaming in the light from windows endowed as memorials by congregants, rise from his seat in a small pew at the front of the bimah and step up to the Holy Ark to draw back the heavy, velvet curtain behind which the Sefer Torah were kept.

  An elderly man was waiting there with a soldier and an airman who had also been called up for the mitzvah of lifting out the Scrolls for the Reading of the Law. Some self-conscious lads with a well-scrubbed look and Stand Grammar School caps on their heads, hovered beside them, weighed down by the responsibility of receiving an honour coveted by every other boy present. They had been called up to remove the richly embroidered covers from the Torah prior to their being unfurled.

  “I thought I’d feel like a stranger here, after all those years at the Central Shul, but it’s funny how you don’t,” Ben whispered.

  David smiled. “If we went to shul in New York, we’d feel at home.” Such was his conviction. “They call smoked salmon lox and eat doughnuts and Danish pastry for breakfast, but I bet you ten bob that in their orthodox shuls it’s exactly like here.”

  “I expect it is in Timbuct
oo, if there are any Jews there,” Ronald said thoughtfully and was ticked-off by his father for talking during the service.

  After shul they all walked to Sarah’s for midday dinner and did not make good time because of Sammy’s disability. But none of them would have dreamed of riding on the High Holy Days.

  “If we’d stayed in Cheetham, you wouldn’t have had this long shlep,” said Miriam – who had not wanted to move to Prestwich – to Sammy.

  “We’ll hire a bath chair and next time you can push me,” he joked.

  David’s expression tightened as it always did when his brother’s handicap was emphasized. These days, he rarely remembered that he was responsible for it. But occasionally, like now, guilt returned to taunt him. If he hadn’t disobeyed his mother and taken Sammy to play by the River Dvina that day, the Cossack wouldn’t have brutally cantered over Sammy’s leg. He noted the bluish shadows under his brother’s eyes. Were they caused by anxiety about Martin? Or was Sammy in pain? He could never make up to him for spoiling his life. But he would never stop trying to.

  “Uncle Sammy should’ve got on a bus,” Marianne declared whilst admiring her burgundy Cuban-heeled shoes. They had cost 16s 11d and were the most expensive she had ever had, but her mother had not minded because they looked so nice with the grey tweed coat she’d bought Marianne for Yom Tov.

  Shirley was a rhapsody in blue teetering beside her, still head and shoulders taller. The soles of her feet were burning, and she envied Marianne her low-heeled comfort, but had accepted that you sometimes had to suffer to look smart. Her cousin had no dress sense and wore no make-up, didn’t seem to care if she looked drab. Marianne was always coming out with shocking things, too! “God would never forgive Uncle Sammy if he rode on Rosh Hashanah,” she declaimed.

  “Nobody can be expected to walk a long distance if they’ve got a bad leg,” Marianne replied.

  “Shut up, the pair of you!” David thundered.

  But Marianne was not to be muzzled. “Why do people bother to keep all the Rosh Hashanah laws, when they break the Shabbos, which is a much holier day?” she demanded.

  “You’re talking through your hat, as usual,” Shirley said nastily. “If what you’ve just said was correct, everyone wouldn’t be walking today, would they?” she added, eyeing their well-dressed brethren thronging the pavements.

  Marianne gave her a withering look. “Perhaps they’re as uninformed about their religion as you are. And I have to admit I thought Rosh Hashanah was more important than Shabbos myself, until Bobbie Sarah told me it isn’t.”

  Shirley looked taken aback but could not question her grandmother’s knowledge of religious matters.

  “It’s a misconception that’s become accepted over the years,” David said. “And by now, most folk have probably forgotten it is one.”

  “Including you,” Shirley accused him. “I mean fancy me not knowing!”

  “Will it make any difference now you do? What’re you going to do about it, Shirley? Stop breaking the Shabbos, or start riding on Rosh Hashanah?” David smiled.

  Shirley did not reply.

  “She’ll go on doing the same as everyone else does,” Marianne said contemptuously. “Sticking to the false standards Jews who aren’t truly religious live by. All that seems to matter to most people is being seen to do what the majority do, and it makes me sick! Bobbie Sarah says keeping Shabbos is inconvenient because it comes every week and plenty of folk would ignore Rosh Hashanah, too, if it came around more than once a year.”

  “She’s probably right,” David said dryly.

  “But at least our family hasn’t joined the Reform Shul,” Ben said defensively.

  “I probably will when I’m my own boss,” Marianne informed him. “I’d rather keep revised laws that make sense to me than have to break old-fashioned ones that don’t.”

  Her father slapped her bottom and she ran off to hug her grandmother as they neared Sarah’s house and saw her peering impatiently over the garden gate.

  “Why did you smack her, Ben?” Esther, who was walking some distance behind with Bessie and Ronald, called.

  Ben pretended he had not heard and exchanged a glance with David. The thought of his eighteen-year-old daughter allying herself with the Reform Judaism Movement was anathema to him and to David also. If Esther knew Marianne had such tendencies she would throw a fit.

  “It’s a pity Marianne never joined Habonim, with our Shirley,” David declared. “She’d do better to be wrapped up in Zionism than mixing with Eva Frankl’s crowd.” The Frankls had recently joined the Reform Synagogue and Hugo had consequently sunk to the depths in David’s estimation.

  “And what would you say if Shirley wanted to go to Palestine after the war, to live on a kibbutz and work on the land?” Ben inquired.

  “I’d have to accept it,” David answered. “But I’m sure she won’t. She’s too interested in clothes and the good things of life. I’ve met some of the girls she knows who do want to be chalutzim and they don’t dress like she does.”

  Nor does Marianne, Ben thought, but it wasn’t because she was the chalutzim kind. His troublesome daughter didn’t fall into any category and how he wished she did!

  “The knedlach are ruined,” Sarah greeted them when they entered the house.

  Shirley was in the lobby taking off her hat and coat. “Don’t shout at us, Bobbie,” she winced. “My feet are killing me.”

  “So try wearing shoes instead of stilts,” Sarah said eyeing her footwear with disapproval. She surveyed the rest of the weary party. “And if nobody had removed to Prestwich, they wouldn’t have to shlep miles for their Yom Tov dinner and it wouldn’t be spoiled, either.”

  Esther took a comb from her handbag to rearrange her hair in front of the hallstand mirror. “But as we have removed there, Mother, why don’t you do the same?”

  “There’s a house for sale opposite Sammy’s, you’ve just got to say the word,” David put in.

  “Don’t even mention it!” Sarah said hotly. “How many times I must I tell you all, I like my own house? I get on with my neighbours, the tradespeople also. I’ve got a nice garden. Strangeways with the dirt and the jail Cheetham Hill isn’t. So what’s to move for, except people should think I’m highty-tighty, which I’m not.”

  “Who can argue with a woman like her?” Abraham shrugged. “Let’s eat already, or the knedlach will get hard as cannon balls and she’ll end up throwing them at us.”

  Sarah popped her head into the kitchen and instructed Lizzie and Bridie, who were attired in their best, to show their respect for the Jewish New Year, to drain the water from the knedl pan.

  “I tried one, Bobbie, an’ it was soft as butter,” Lizzie said.

  “And our Lizzie’s an expert on knedlach,” David soothed his mother as they went into the dining room.

  “She’s an expert on everything Jewish, and Bridie also,” Sarah declared approvingly. “Rebecca told me she got home five minutes late for Shabbos last week and Bridie had already lit the candles,” she smiled admiring her Yom Tov table to which a long beam of autumn sunlight had added a mellow glow.

  The hors d’oeuvre awaited them on little white and gold plates David had bought for her when the family began to outnumber her stock of china. Lace-edged napkins matched the cloth and Bridie had arranged them like tulips in the water glasses, the way Rebecca had shown her. The silver-plated cutlery was a ruby-wedding gift from all the family and the three-tier fruit stand in the centre, laden with russet apples and pears, had been lovingly carved by Sammy.

  Nathan, whose dining table always resembled a miniature banquet, was conscious of a lump having risen in his throat. There was something to be said for living simply all the rest of the time and only bringing out your best things on these occasions. The special ambience of Yom Tov in his mother’s house was all around him and the warm feeling that went with it, too, that reminded him of his childhood. Even in hard times there had been this atmosphere and he sometimes thought it was one hi
s wife, for whom every day had been like Yom Tov, had not encountered before she became a Sandberg.

  Marianne and Shirley were imbibing the atmosphere, too, and exchanged a smile. Rosh Hashanah in their grandparents’ home was an institution and, despite their differences, the memories it conjured up for them would always be something they shared.

  “If the boys were here, everything would be perfect,” Miriam said looking at the chair near the foot of the table which Martin had always occupied.

  “God willing, they’ll soon be back with us,” Sarah said, breaking the moment of silence Miriam’s words had evoked.

  Carl got up from the window seat where he had been seated reading when the others came into the room. “We haven’t even started the invasion yet,” he pointed out joining them at the table.

  “You’re getting worse than your father with your doom and gloom!” Sarah exclaimed. “But today I forbid you to talk about the war. Let’s all be cheerful for the sake of the children.”

  “I won’t be cheerful if I have to sit beside Henry,” Leona piped up from her seat between the twins.

  Henry tweaked one of her ginger plaits mischievously.

  “There, what did I tell you?” she shrieked.

  Frank got up and changed places with her.

  “Good,” Henry said in the bright, authoritative manner made him seem precocious. “Now I’ll be more cheerful, too.”

  “Can you believe these little ones are seven already?” Sigmund sighed. “It seems like yesterday that the ones who now think they’re grown-up were sitting at the foot of the table wearing short socks,” he added smiling at Marianne and Shirley.

  “Oy,” Abraham said in eloquent agreement. But his elder granddaughters were grown-up, he thought, surveying them. His wife had already been a mother at their age.

  “Eat your chopped liver,” Sarah said, noticing that he had put down his fork.

  Abraham seemed not to hear her. “When you feel as old as I do, you know that time has not stood still,” he told Sigmund.

  Something in his voice made Sarah stop eating, too. “I’m not getting any younger myself,” she declared, fingering her brooch, “In two years it will be our golden wedding.”