I was expected to become a starting guard in my senior year, but I was disqualified from playing on academic grounds. My grade average was below the 75 required to qualify for a varsity sport.
All of the teams we played against in our league were Jewish high schools, but some were more Orthodox than we were. We did not wear yarmulkes when we played, but some of our opponents did. They believed that it was improper to walk more than four steps without wearing a yarmulke. In one game, an opponent stole the ball and had an open lane to the basket. I grabbed the yarmulke off the top of his head and threw it on the floor and yelled, “You can’t go more than four steps.” He stopped, shot the ball, and missed. I got a technical foul, which was well deserved.
Basketball was not our only passion. We all loved baseball, especially since Ebbets Field was located just a short walk from our high school. The morning recess generally coincided with the time when several of the players walked past our school to the stadium. These players were working stiffs being paid low salaries and generally taking public transportation to and from the games. We would wait for them to pass school and walk with them to Ebbets Field. I got to know several, including Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, Gene Hermanski, Gil Hodges, and Ralph Branca (whose mother, it now turns out, was Jewish!).18 Jackie Robinson, who was our hero, generally was driven to the stadium for safety reasons.
I will never forget Jackie Robinson’s first game with the Dodgers. We persuaded our European-born rabbi to make a blessing for him, without his knowing whom he was blessing, since he never would have approved blessing a baseball player. We made up a Hebrew name for Jackie Robinson, calling him Yakov (Jacob) Gnov (Rob) buh (in) Ben (son). When he got his first hit, we were convinced the blessing had worked. I had a spiral notebook in which I had collected autographs of every single Brooklyn Dodger who played during my high school years. As soon as I moved out of the house, my mother tossed it in the garbage pail, along with my signed baseball cards and my comic book collection.
One of the autographs I didn’t get—until years later—was Sandy Koufax’s, who moved into our neighborhood shortly before he signed with the Dodgers. His father, Irving, had a small law practice out of his house down the block from where we lived. Sandy was the closest thing to a real celebrity in Boro Park. Many years later, my wife, Carolyn, arranged for Koufax’s, now long retired, to come to our house in Cambridge as a surprise birthday gift for me. I reminisced with him about his days in Boro Park, but he didn’t remember several of the classic stories we had been recounting for years about his youthful exploits. Memories seem to improve with time and retelling.
It’s not surprising that my high school memories are long on sports and short on academics, because my academic performance was abysmal. In my senior semester my first half grades were as follows (I still have the report card): English, 80; Math, 60 (F); Hebrew, 65; History, 65; Physics, 60 (F). With two failing grades, I couldn’t graduate, and so by the end of the last semester, I had raised my Physics grade to the minimum passing number of 65 (by scoring an 89 on the Regents exam); my Math grade to 75; and my History grade to 70 (the others remained the same).
Yet despite my poor grades, I still remember much of what the teachers taught, however poorly they taught it. Half a century after finishing my religious education, I wrote a book entitled The Genesis of Justice,19 in which I analyzed the first book of the Bible from a secular lawyer’s perspective. When I showed the galley proofs to my uncle Zacky, an Orthodox rabbi, he said he admired the book’s intellectual content but not its heretical views. He pleaded with me to “change just one word.” I asked him, “Which word?” He responded, “The word ‘Dershowitz’ on the cover.”
In my family, directness was more of a virtue than politeness, and interrupting someone was a sign of respect. It meant, “I get it, so you don’t have to finish your thought.” The interrupter fully expected to be interrupted in turn, and so on. Nobody ever got to finish what he was saying.20
My mother regarded people who were “too polite” with suspicion: “You never know what Muriel is really thinking,” she would say about my extremely polite aunt (by marriage, of course) Muriel, who lived upstairs from us and was married to my somewhat rude (in the best sense of that word, at least to my family) uncle Hedgie, who never left any doubt about what he was thinking.
When I began teaching, some of my more “proper” students objected to my constant interruptions, until I persuaded them that being interrupted was a compliment, signifying that their point had been made and understood. Some television viewers have also written to me about my penchant for interrupting opposing “talking heads.” It’s simply a matter of style, not rudeness, though some mistake the former for the latter.
Another blessing of my early religious training relates to memory and my use of it in my professional life. My mother was blessed with a near perfect memory. (Probably more nature than nurture.) She could recall virtually everything from her youth. When she was in her eighties, she would spot someone on the train and go over to her and ask, “Aren’t you Mildred Cohen and weren’t you in my sixth grade class?” She was invariably right. She remembered, word for word, what she had been taught in the third or fourth grade. She remembered every melody she had ever learned, even though she never went to concerts and didn’t listen to recordings as an adult. She could recite from memory long poems she learned in elementary school. Most surprising of all, she had committed to memory an entire Latin Mass, which a Catholic public school teacher, in an effort to Americanize the children of immigrants, had made them memorize. My mother had no idea what it meant, but it was one of her favorite parlor tricks to repeat its Latin words, accompanied by the church melody she had learned. She never forgot anything she had heard, read, or smelled. Growing up with a mother who never forgot was a curse for me, because I did a good many things I wished she could forget.
Beyond her great memory, my mother was brilliant in other ways. Her insights into people were remarkable. Had she lived a generation or two later, she might have been a superb lawyer or businesswoman. Instead, her brilliance, coupled with her lack of opportunity, left her frustrated. It also led her to live her life vicariously through her children, who had the opportunities she was denied.
Does Colin Powell Speak Yiddish?
My mother accompanied me to a ceremony at which then general Colin Powell and I were being honored. She approached the general and said, “There is a rumor that you speak Yiddish.” Powell responded quite formally, “No ma’am, I’m sorry to say, I do not speak Yiddish.” Then he put his arm around my mother and whispered in her ear, “Epis a bissle,” which in Yiddish means, “maybe a little.” He then explained that he worked in a Jewish-owned furniture store in Harlem and his boss taught him a few words of Yiddish so that he could converse with the Yiddish-speaking clientele. My mother was thrilled and declared him to be “a real mensch.”
Despite my mother’s lack of opportunities, she—like many Jewish mothers of her time—was the dominant figure in our family. The old borscht belt joke has a son telling his Jewish mother that he got a part in the school drama, playing a Jewish father. The disappointed mother says: “Too bad they didn’t give you a speaking role.” The women in my neighborhood were more outspoken and self-confident, and often better educated, than their struggling male counterparts. In my family, my mother was also smarter, although my father had a more positive disposition. My mother’s photographic and phonographic memory was legendary.
Although I knew I had a good memory, I discovered that I had inherited my mother’s extraordinary gift while participating in intercollegiate debates. The debate tournaments always took place on Saturday. I pleaded with my parents to let me go, promising that I would say my prayers. My parents agreed on the condition that I not write during the Sabbath. (“Meturnished.”) My mother told me it wasn’t necessary for me to write because I could remember things that others had to write down. (“Our family has good memories.”) I was doubtful, but it proved to
be true. I became a champion debater, and my teammates marveled at the fact that I didn’t bring a pencil or pad but could recite word for word what my opponent had said before responding to it. I then realized what a blessing this memory was. I went through the rest of college and law school without taking notes. This enabled me to listen to what was being taught and to have a better understanding of it than the student “stenographers” who were busy taking down every word the teacher said, as if putting it in writing was a substitute for understanding it. To this day, I rarely take notes, even in court, though my memory for new information is not nearly as good as it used to be.
Memory
Recently, after watching the film Invictus, my wife asked me if I had any idea who wrote the poem by that name. She thought it must be a well-known poet, such as Byron or Shelley. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Henley.” She replied, “Who the hell is Henley?” I said, “I don’t have the slightest idea, but I think ‘Invictus’ was written by some English poet named Henley.” She checked Google and sure enough the poem was written by a relatively obscure Victorian poet named William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). His name popped into my head as a sixty-year-old memory association from a high school English class in which we had to memorize the authors of works that we read and memorized.
A few years earlier, I impressed my children at Steve’s ice cream shop in Cambridge, which offered free ice cream to anyone who could answer obscure Trivial Pursuit questions. The question that no one had answered was “What was the Lone Ranger’s family name?” I immediately blurted out, “Reed.” I added that Reed was also the Green Hornet’s family name, because, according to the “origin story” in a comic book that I had read more than half a century earlier, they were cousins.
During my junior year in high school, my memory for obscure facts and the “parlor tricks” I played with it got me an interview with the producers of a television game show called The $64,000 Question, but I failed the personality part of the test and was rejected. That was fortunate, since the show was rigged.21 My “mother’s memory” has served me well as a lawyer, teacher—and joke teller. (The downside of remembering every joke I ever heard is that I rarely get to hear a “new” joke.) I also remember nearly every case I ever read, nearly every fact in the records of cases, and nearly every principle of law I ever learned. I try to teach my students to develop and rely on their memories rather than on their stenographic skills, urging them to learn how to listen and remember, because this ability will be very important in court and other professional settings.
My good memory went mostly to waste in my early years, because there was so little worth remembering. We would be given a quarter to memorize passages from holy texts and a dollar if we could recite “by heart” (what does that mean?) an entire chapter from the Bible. Only once did my memory serve me well during my adolescence, and that was at my Bar Mitzvah. Prior to “becoming a man,” I had never really excelled at anything. I was good, but not great, at athletics; good, but not great, with my social life; and god-awful in academics and behavior. But my Bar Mitzvah performance was perfect. I had read the Torah portion—“Judges and Magistrates”22—flawlessly, because I was able to memorize the entire reading, melody and all. My performance was the talk of the neighborhood. But a month later, my friend Jerry (now a prominent rabbi) read his Torah portion in the same synagogue. He was awful, making mistake after mistake, and singing off-key. The rabbi then got up to give the sermon. He recognized that Jerry had not done well, and in order to console him, he referred to “another Bar Mitzvah boy” who had done a better job reading from the Torah but who wasn’t nearly as good a student or person as Jerry. “We judge boys not by the quality of their voices or their ability to memorize, but by their understanding of what they were reciting and by the lives they lead based on their understanding.” It was a direct put-down of me, and so understood by the congregation. It stung me and led me to conclude that I could do nothing right in the eyes of the religious authority figures. Even when I did something perfectly, they would find some way to turn my success against me.
A few years later, I had a similar experience in high school. The one subject that interested me was History, and the teacher was young and dynamic. I studied hard—a rarity—for a statewide exam and got an 88. When the teacher, who knew my reputation as a mediocre student, told me my score, he said: “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re a 75 student. You’ve always been a 75 student and you’ll always be a 75 student.” (He gave me a 70 despite my 88 grade on the Regents exam.) It became a self-fulfilling prophecy for two reasons. First, all my teachers believed it. Second, I believed it and stopped studying, because I could get 70s without much work, and if that’s who I was anyway, why take time away from activities I enjoyed, such as sports, jokes, girls, and messing around?
I also enjoyed debating and public speaking. In my junior year I entered the Journal American Tournament of Orators, a citywide public speaking contest. My topic was Abraham Lincoln, whose life I researched in the public library. I wrote and memorized a ten-minute oration. My mother took me to a neighbor who was a paraplegic from war injuries and who made his living running a small recording studio. He recorded my oration as a 78-rpm record, which I recently found among my mother’s things. When I played it, I realized that despite the heavy Brooklyn accent, it came across as relatively thoughtful and well researched for a fifteen-year-old high school junior. Some excerpts:
As we gaze in retrospect through the annals of American history, we find many men who helped us achieve democratic rule and world power. But overshadowing even the greatest of them was a soft-spoken gentleman, who gave us, and upheld, the very principles which today mark the creed of the free world, and which today are the obstacles to world Communist domination. It was Abraham Lincoln who displayed to the world that the life of no man should be controlled by the whim of another, regardless of race, color, or creed.
Lincoln’s love for his fellow man … was displayed at best on his trip to Gettysburg. Carl Sandburg relates how, while engaged in political business with a high-ranking officer, Lincoln was politely approached by an elderly man who informed the President that he had recently lost his only son at Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln then excused himself from the officer and spent many minutes endeavoring to convince this skeptical father that his son’s great sacrifice was not a vain one. He told this common man of the lives yet to be sacrificed and the homes yet to be made desolate before the termination of this horrible internal struggle. And Abraham Lincoln put his head in his hand and wept, wept for the lives of his beloved fellow men and wept for the sacrifice of this elderly man and his son. Abraham Lincoln, President of the U. S. and the most influential political figure of his day, wept in bitter sorrow over the death of a common soldier whom he had never met.
… Finally, his laborious task was achieved. The Confederacy had crumbled. But then, seven days later, and he was no more.… Yes, Abraham Lincoln was gone, but in the hearts of his people for whom he had preserved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.
Not a single teacher ever complimented me on this talk, even when I finished second among the students in Jewish high schools in New York City. To them I was still “a 75 student” with a big mouth.
It was in the summer of my junior year in high school when an authority figure—the camp dramatics counselor, Yitz Greenberg (now a prominent rabbi)—finally told me that I wasn’t “a 75 student.” He had cast me in the difficult role of Cyrano de Bergerac in the camp play. I memorized the lines and did a good job (my prominent nose helped). After the performance, Yitz put his arm around me and said, “You know, you’re very smart.” I replied, “No, I just have a good memory.” He insisted that my smarts went beyond memorization. He told me I could be a good lawyer. I respected and believed him. It was an important moment in my life, for which I will be forever grateful. My parents loved me but never told me I was smart, because they believed my teachers and saw my report cards.
My eighth-grade teacher, Mr. Kien, had told me I was smart, but he had also been my father’s teacher thirty years earlier, and I didn’t quite believe he was being straight with me. I needed to hear it from an authority figure with no connection to my family, and Yitz was that figure. He encouraged me to read on my own and to broaden my interests, which I began to do in my senior year.
Despite my inglorious high school career, Yitz’s faith in me led me to consider college. My father thought I should go to work and take some classes at night, but my mother wanted me to graduate from college—as she couldn’t do. She wanted me to attend Yeshiva University, as most of my high school classmates were planning to do, but I was denied admission because of my poor grades and bad attitude. My mother filled out my application to Brooklyn College, though she later regretted allowing me to go to a secular school, which she believed was the beginning of the end of my remaining a strictly observant Jew. I wanted to go to City College in Manhattan, because my best friend, Norman Sohn, was going there, but my parents wouldn’t let me go to an “out-of-town college.”
Brooklyn College was part of the New York City College system, which had an excellent academic program, but little by way of any social or athletic life. It was free to any New York City resident, and anyone who had a sufficiently high grade average in high school was automatically admitted. Remarkably, the required grade score was different for boys and girls. Boys needed an 82 or 83 average (depending on the year) while girls needed an 86 or 87. Imagine the lawsuit today! The reason for this differential was that the school wanted “gender balance,” and if the same score were required, the college would be predominantly female.23
Taking the Stand Page 6