by Ruth Rosen
Unfortunately, a pale, shaken little boy emerged from the theater, wide-eyed with horror. As he told the story seven decades later: “When that witch, with her big ugly face that filled the screen leered at poor Snow White, offering her that poisoned apple—it terrified me!”
Moishe may not have had a truckload of happy memories of moments spent with his father, but he certainly learned a great deal from him. He was decisive in pointing out the major influences: “I learned two important things from both my parents. First, I learned that you have to live by principles. It wasn’t enough to do what was right; you had to understand why it was right. Second, I learned curiosity.”
Ben worked hard and had a good reputation as a man to be trusted, and he transmitted these values to his sons. But at times, there seemed to be contradictions.
“There was a time when I was nine years old,” Moishe recalled,
and I was with my dad at his little secondhand store. . . . Somebody came in to buy a tool and when they named a price, my father said, “I paid that much for it myself.” I knew that he had paid less than the amount stated, and thought he must have forgotten. So I corrected my father in front of the customer. He didn’t say anything at the time, but later when we were alone, he referred back to the situation and said, “In business, you do things like that. There’s truth for the family, then there’s truth in business. And in business, sometimes you say things that aren’t true.”
He could see that I was puzzled, so he patiently put it in terms I could understand. “It’s like a game—each side says something to try to win. If you, the seller, get your price, you’ve won. And if they buy it for their price, they’ve won.”
To Ben, this was a common outlook that businesspeople understood and accepted.
Moishe accepted the explanation for a while, but within a few years, he concluded that employing such a tactic while making a sale was “not nearly as necessary as my father had indicated.” Even before Moishe came to regard truth as something to be told because of its intrinsic value, he had already rejected the notion that sacrificing a small piece of it was a reasonable requirement for striking a good deal.
Despite the liberties he sometimes took in the interest of business, Ben paid what he owed, and he loved and provided for his family in every way that he knew how. He also insisted that both sons learn how to work, and so, at nine years of age, in addition to chores at home, Moishe had occasional chores in the family business. As he grew older, those chores expanded to a part-time job on the weekend. His pay was three dollars for a day’s work, most of which he was expected to contribute to help with household expenses. At twelve, he was taking apart automobile motors at the junkyard, and by the time he was fourteen, he was swinging a sledgehammer to break cast iron. Most employees used twelve-pound sledgehammers, but Ben had Moishe using an eighteen-or twenty-pound sledgehammer to show that he was working harder than they did.
Moishe said, “It didn’t occur to me that I had any choice until one day when I complained to my father about having to use a bigger sledgehammer than the grown men. His answer was, ‘Well, if you want to get a job elsewhere, do it.’”
Ben had every reason to assume that both sons would eventually take over the business as partners. But it bothered Moishe that when he felt things should be done differently, he had no authority to make any changes. Instead, he decided that if he ever had a business to run, he would do things a certain way. So without realizing it, the “if ever” began to take him on a different path.
Moishe never could feel the way his father wanted him to feel about the family business. Added to the issues mentioned above was the simple fact that Moishe disliked being dirty.
“There was this mysterious difference between my father and me,” he recalled. “My father would take a bath and he seemed to get perfectly clean, with nothing but hot water, lava soap and a scrub brush. But no matter how much I washed and no matter how hard I scrubbed, it seemed like I could never get the grease from the junkyard off my hands, and I could never get the dirt out from under my fingernails.”
Moishe found much to admire in his father. His work ethic, determination to provide for his family, and unflagging love for his wife were all things Moishe learned to emulate. Ben had other talents and skills that Moishe appreciated, though he was unable to emulate them. But there were also areas where Moishe found that he differed from his dad, and as those areas solidified, he went his own way.
FIVE
If people around me were interested in something, it was easy for me to become interested, too. I enjoyed other people’s enthusiasm for what they were doing.
—MOISHE ROSEN
It was Saturday afternoon, and Moishe was engrossed in a comic book.
“It’s such a nice day. Why don’t you go outside and enjoy it?” his mother suggested.
He shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Maybe I’ll go see if Paul wants to do something.” He whistled a tune through his upper front teeth as he walked up the long block of Federal Boulevard to where his friend lived. The houses here were a little bigger and nicer than they were on his block. Moishe was just about to walk up to Paul’s front door when it opened and his friend came out. Paul was on his way to church, and he invited Moishe to come along.
Moishe asked, “How come you’re goin’ to church on Saturday? I thought you guys did all that church stuff on Sunday.”
“That’s for mass, but I hafta go for confession. It won’t take long.”
“What’s confession?” Moishe asked as the two boys headed toward St. Dominic’s Church.
“Every week I go and confess my sins. Then the priest pronounces forgiveness and tells me how many Hail Marys and Our Fathers I should say to show how sorry I am.”
“Hail Marys and Our Fathers?” Moishe’s nose wrinkled in confusion.
“Those are just the first few words of the prayers we say for penance,” Paul explained patiently. He recited a prayer that didn’t sound like any prayer Moishe had heard in the synagogue.
Moishe looked at his friend skeptically. “Paul,” he said, “you’re one of the nicest guys I know. I’ve never seen you sin. I don’t see how you have something to tell that priest every week.”
Paul laughed. “Maybe I don’t do the really big sins,” he said, “but everyone does stuff or says stuff that’s wrong, and if nothing else, thinks stuff that’s wrong—and every time you do that, it’s a sin.’”
Soon they were at St. Dominic’s. “It sure is fancier than our synagogue,” Moishe observed. The building’s conspicuous cross made him a little uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything.
Paul asked, “You wanna wait out here, or you wanna come in?”
“Are you sure they allow Jews inside?” Moishe asked doubtfully.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Paul looked at him curiously.
Moishe thought it best not to mention how he and his friends had gotten into fights with other Catholic kids who called them “dirty Jews” and “Christ killers.” Paul wasn’t like that. But lots of other people were.
“Maybe I’ll just wait out here,” he said.
“Sure,” Paul shrugged and quickly disappeared behind the big doors.
I wonder what it’s like in there, Moishe thought. Finally, curiosity got the better of him, and he went inside.
The first thing he noticed was how all the stone columns and arches pointed toward the eighty-foot high ceiling of the inner room, or sanctuary. Something about that ceiling—probably the sheer height of it—made it nearly impossible not to look up.
The next thing he noticed was a collection of candles flickering, each in its own little jar, on a table in the foyer. This puzzled Moishe because it reminded him slightly of the Jewish tradition of yahrzeit candles, which were lit at home to memorialize the anniversary of a loved one’s death. These church candles were smaller and didn’t look as though they would last for twenty-four hours, the customary time for a yahrzeit candle to burn. It was very quiet in the church and a bit chi
lly, though it was warm and sunny outside. Statues of people were situated all around the sanctuary, and there in the front of the sanctuary, hanging from a cross, was a larger than life-sized statue of Jesus. It must be ten feet tall, Moishe thought. Unlike the other statues, this one was illuminated. The feet were at eye level, and red paint indicated blood where the huge nail sank in, affixing both feet to the cross.
For Moishe, the strangest thing about this statue was something like a window around the chest, where people could see a heart. But it didn’t look like a real heart because it had no veins or arteries. It looked like something that belonged on a card for Valentine’s Day. But then, he thought, they think he’s supposed to be God. And if God had a heart, I guess it could be any shape he wants. These observations took less than a minute, but their overall effect on Moishe was a sense of eerie otherness. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and began to fidget with the contents, unconsciously pulling out his key ring. As he was fiddling with it, it dropped to the floor.
The clatter seemed to resound throughout the entire church. Moishe felt his cheeks burning as he bent down to retrieve it. He stood in time to see Paul emerging from a wooden closet-like structure. With great relief, Moishe headed toward the doors where he waited for his friend to join him.
Outside, the sunlight seemed to melt away all the strangeness of the experience.
They agreed to go downtown, even though Moishe had no money. Denver had several dime stores. Cap guns and comic books, boxes of crayons, and barrels full of penny candy were just a few of the items offered. They chose to go into Grant’s. They walked up and down a few aisles until they got to a rack of sunglasses. Moishe removed a pair, then quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching. He peeled off the price sticker and stuffed the sunglasses into his pocket. “Okay,” he said, grinning. “Let’s go.”
They were almost outside when a woman’s stern voice stopped them in their tracks. “Just a minute, young man. I believe you’re hiding a pair of our sunglasses,” she said, “and I can only assume that you were planning to leave without paying for them.”
“Huh?” Moishe said.
“I saw you put the merchandise in your pocket, and I’ve called the manager,” she said, even more sternly than before.
The manager was there within seconds. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.
“This boy was stealing a pair of sunglasses,” the saleswoman explained.
“If you mean these,” Moishe said, pulling the glasses from his pocket, “then you’re right that they were your merchandise. But I bought them here a couple of weeks ago.”
The manager examined them and then looked carefully at the boys’ faces. Neither showed any sign of guilt or fear. Handing the glasses back to Moishe, the manager said to the boys, “Get along you two.” Then he nodded to Moishe and added, “You, perhaps, would do well to do the rest of your, ah, shopping, elsewhere.”
Moishe shrugged. “I guess, if you say so, sir.” He and Paul left the store as casually as possible. When they were half a block away, Moishe gave a little whoop. “That was close!”
Paul shook his head sadly. “Stealing and lying,” he lamented.
“Aw, don’t worry about it,” Moishe said, though he felt a little badly about distressing his friend. “Look, I don’t do it very often. It’s just a little adventure and it’s not like it’s stealing from a real person or hurting a family business. It’s just some big company, and they’ve got way too much merchandise as it is. They expect people to take a few things here and there.”
As Paul looked at him, his silent reproach spoke far louder than words.
“Well anyway,” Moishe said, clapping his friend on the back, “thanks for not snitching.”
“You know I’m no snitch.”
“Yeah, I know,” Moishe replied, and he silently resolved not to shoplift during future outings with Paul. For all he knew, the guy considered it a sin to watch someone else stealing. He didn’t want his friend to have to say any more Our Fathers or Hail Marys on his account.
One of the paradoxes of Moishe Rosen’s personality is that while he always considered himself a solitary person, he truly enjoyed getting to know and appreciate others. It’s hard to say exactly how or when a boy finds people and things besides his parents to help shape his ideas and worldview. Everything from books to movies to friends and teachers help broaden one’s perspective. This was as true for Moishe as for anyone and, in some regards, perhaps more. His inquisitiveness and his willingness to be influenced by others may be among the reasons why so many others were influenced by him.
Radio had a powerful influence on Moishe; before he learned to read, it was not only his main source of entertainment, but it also provided the most fuel for his imagination. Moishe once said, “Looking back, I feel we [children] were somewhat understimulated. People didn’t talk to children as much in those days.” Perhaps for this reason he was quickly riveted to whatever could entertain or absorb his attention or cause him to really think. The problem with radio shows was that when they ended, one had to wait another week for the next episode. Not so with books, which was one reason why Moishe loved to read. Action, adventure, and science fiction became favorites.
Despite his love of reading, school was somewhat problematic for him. Moishe recalled, “My body went to school, but my mind went elsewhere.” In class, he sat absorbed in his own thoughts and imagination, paying just enough attention to pass. He found it difficult to listen to most teachers because, as he put it, “I just didn’t have a sense that they were talking to me.” (Years later, he wondered if he’d had attention deficit disorder.)
His lack of interest in distinguishing himself was not limited to the classroom. He had no interest in sports or other physical games.
As far as socializing, probably Moishe’s earliest influences other than his parents were members of his extended family, his cousins. Moishe’s cousin Donald was a year older, and in many ways Moishe looked up to him, often asking him about things he found perplexing. For example, there was the whole issue of Christmas. Moishe was not altogether satisfied with his mother’s explanation of why the holiday was not for Jews. Donald explained, “Goyim have their own kind of yomtov [holiday] about this magical baby. The baby was magical because he was born without a regular father and he grew up and did magical things, like made sick people well, but if he got mad at anybody, he could kill them by magic. He was also magical because he couldn’t be killed.”
By the time Moishe was in the third grade, Donald was in fourth and they were past believing in magic, but they had not outgrown their ambivalence toward the “magical baby.” Moishe’s parents were able to move into a more Jewish neighborhood where the kids made fun of Christmas because, as Moishe recalled, “making jokes about it helped us feel as though we wouldn’t have wanted to celebrate the holiday even if we could.”
Moishe’s friend Paul became Moishe’s window to Christianity when he was eleven or twelve years old. Moishe enjoyed their discussions, and his friendship with Paul helped to dissolve some of his childhood misunderstandings and prejudices. Though Paul was a committed Catholic, Moishe did not feel the main difference between them was Catholic versus Jewish, but “very religious” versus “not so religious.” The religion itself, as far as he was concerned, was predetermined. People stuck with the religion in which they’d been raised. The choice, it seemed to Moishe, was how serious one was about his or her religion. It wasn’t so much Paul’s religion itself that was interesting, but “mostly,” Moishe explained, “I could see that his religion meant a lot more to him than Judaism meant to me. It was his devotion and commitment that I found interesting.”
Most of Moishe’s friends were Jewish and, like him, not so religious. There were about six guys approximately the same age who stuck together. Moishe recalled, “We used to say, ‘The fewer people in the group, the fewer can snitch on you,’ and snitching was a very big deal.” It’s not that “the gang” got in any serious tro
uble, but certainly they knew that some of their activities would get them punished if anyone knew what they were doing. For one thing, they would often play where they had no business being. Then there was the occasional petty thievery: stealing cherries off the neighbor’s trees and occasional shoplifting.
From time to time, there would be a fight. These altercations were not over territory or drugs. Usually one guy would hit another, and then, in a semi-civilized manner the other would say, “You wanna fight? Okay, you get your guys and I’ll get my guys and we’ll meet in the empty lot on Knox Street.”
Moishe did not recall any major injuries on either side. The fights normally lasted less than five minutes and ended when one side or the other ran home. But still, the boys might have done serious damage to one another. One of Moishe’s teachers tried to persuade him to forgo these fights, but Moishe felt he’d be letting down the other guys if he didn’t participate. Yet the teacher was a voice of moderation, and Moishe made a point of telling the other guys what the teacher had said. Although the fights didn’t stop, they grew fewer and farther between. By the time junior high was over, the boys had pretty much outgrown them.
Around the same time that Moishe discovered science fiction, he began reading books that stimulated his intellect as well as his imagination. One book assigned in junior high school was by John Dewey, about which Moishe said, “It was definitely over my head and there was much that I didn’t comprehend, but I understood enough to become very interested in thoughts—how people think, how people see things.” The world of ideas presented a new kind of adventure that Moishe found captivating throughout his life.
Eventually Moishe drew conclusions diametrically opposed to Dewey’s, particularly regarding metaphysics and the belief in God. Yet he recognized Dewey as a major influence in his early thinking; the book helped him to question thoughts and evaluate ideas critically.