One American Dream

by Bernard Beck

  The only social activities that I could easily join revolved around Borough Park’s two synagogues: the large and impressively domed Temple Beth-El, and the smaller and more intimate Congregation Shomrei Emunah. Although both synagogues were equidistant from our home, I gravitated toward the warmer Shomrei Emunah where services were less formal. Since it was an Orthodox synagogue, there was separate seating for men and women. I chose a seat on the left side of the Synagogue, and Rose, when she came, sat upstairs in the women’s balcony on the right side. We were able to see one another, and we communicated by hand signals.

  At first, I felt uncomfortable in the synagogue because I had very limited synagogue skills. I had grown up without a father and with only a little Hebrew school training, and I read the Hebrew prayers with difficulty. Although I attended synagogue every Shabbos, I lived in dread of being singled out to perform one of the ritual “honors.” Fortunately, the sexton of the synagogue was sensitive to my fears and worked with me quietly to improve my prayer skills and help me feel more comfortable during the synagogue service. As my confidence grew, my enjoyment of the synagogue increased. I made some friends, and because I had the time, and also because of my relationship with the sexton, I started attending Friday evening services and Saturday night services in addition to the main Saturday morning service. The Rabbi and the regular members of the congregation made me feel welcome, and within a few months, I also began attending the daily morning and evening services. As my confidence grew, I became an increasingly active participant in the service.

  While I was intent on being accepted in the synagogue, my father-in-law, Ben-Zion, who had been steeped in Jewish tradition from birth, led a small iconoclastic early morning service, and taught a daily class on the Talmud in the study hall of the synagogue. He and I avoided each other as much as possible.

  I loved attending synagogue. I became a member of an inner coterie of worshipers who, along with the Rabbi and sexton, took responsibility for the day-to-day operation and management of the synagogue. For the first time in my life I felt that I was valued for myself.

  Although I had developed the necessary synagogue skills, I was embarrassed about my lack of a religious education, and I was constantly worried that my ignorance would be discovered. I was afraid to hire a teacher within the community, and I would be damned if I would ask Ben-Zion for help, so I decided to study on my own. I created a home office in the house’s library, and I outfitted it with an enormous roll-top desk, leather chairs, and an impressive bookcase. To my mind, having an office with a roll-top desk and bookcases was a concrete indicator that I had “arrived.” The room also had oak pocket doors which I always kept closed.

  That office became my sanctuary. No one was permitted to cross the threshold without permission. I entered my office every weekday morning as soon as I returned from the synagogue, came out for lunch at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon and again for a cup of tea at three o’clock. And then, I stayed in my study until it was either time for dinner or time for me to return to the synagogue for evening services. Whenever I emerged from my office, I securely closed and locked the doors behind me. My daily routine was accepted and respected by everyone in the house.

  Mostly, I wanted to learn how to perform proper Jewish rituals, and I was especially interested in their effect on family dynamics. More than the actual rules, I wanted to learn the rationale of the behavior that was required for a traditional Jewish lifestyle. Remember, I had no father to teach me, and my mother was far from being a scholar. Although I had attended a Jewish after school program until my bar mitzvah, I had learned very little. And because I had no father, I had had minimal personal connection with Jewish tradition. My mother, whose family had not been particularly religious in Poland, was more concerned with survival than with Jewish tradition. Now I was trying to catch up.

  During the hours that I secluded myself in my office, I managed our properties and investments for an hour or two in the morning, and then I studied Jewish subjects for the rest of the day. This study was not easy for me because I had no background to measure it against, so I was literally starting from square one. Unfortunately, most of the books at square one were written on a juvenile level, so I was forced to go directly to the sources. This was, to put it mildly, torture. But it was also, in the final analysis, rewarding, because the material had not been filtered through an author. I labored over an English translation of the Torah, then I read an English translation of the Mishnah, and then some sections of the Talmud. Finally, I read an English translation of excerpts from the writings of Maimonides. The English was often oblique and obscure, and I struggled to make progress, rereading some passages over and over until their meaning became clear to me. I felt confident, though, that once I had acquired even some minimal knowledge, I would be able to participate more intelligently in discussions in the synagogue.

  Because I wasn’t always familiar with the authors or their sources, I also read whatever background information and commentaries that I could find on all of the books that I had been studying. I didn’t understand everything, but I reassured myself that after I had achieved a deep enough general background I could go back to the books and reread them.

  I was especially interested in learning about Jewish traditions and ritual, of which I had very limited knowledge. My mother had selectively followed as much of the Jewish ritual as she could remember from her youth in Europe, but she had never explained its meaning except to provide a never-ending list of things that I was not permitted to do. Now I had an opportunity to learn the rationale and history of Jewish ritual, as well as the proper ways of observing it. As my knowledge increased, I insisted on the incorporation of traditional ritual into our family’s daily life, and pretty soon we became a thoroughly observant Jewish family.

  My studies took two distinct routes. On one hand, I was learning basic information about Jewish history and ritual—the sort of information that most of my contemporaries in the synagogue knew from their childhood schooling and upbringing. And on the other hand, I was learning about Judaism’s place in history and especially its influence on, and response to, modern mores. This interested me enormously. I was impressed by the idea of Jews having been selected by God as the “chosen people,” even though this “chosenness” had resulted in their frequent persecution. This separation and persecution, I believed, had brought about Jewish compassion for the sufferings of others, along with Jewish philanthropy, chastity, and faith. The more I read, the prouder I became of Judaism in general, and of Jewish Orthodoxy in particular.

  I now felt confident enough to express my own opinions on a variety of religious subjects, and I eagerly sought opportunities to demonstrate my newly-acquired knowledge in order to shore up my credentials as an educated member of the congregation and the community.

  My knowledge and my dedication to the physical well-being of the synagogue, not to mention my financial openhandedness, helped me to quickly move up the Jewish social ladder, and, in a relatively short time, I was made a vice-president of the synagogue. This position carried with it substantial prestige both within the synagogue and within the larger Jewish community. In Borough Park, in those years, the presidents and vice-presidents of the various synagogues wore a top hat and morning coat at Sabbath morning services. I loved to slowly walk the streets of Borough Park every Saturday morning in my high hat and tails, greeting my neighbors on my way to services.

  I assumed an imperious attitude in the house as well, which set me somewhat apart from the rest of the family. At dinner, I sat at the head of the table and insisted that no conversation be held until I said the blessing over the bread. This superior attitude, I felt, enabled me to counter Ben-Zion’s growing influence over Ruthie.

  Unfortunately, although Ben-Zion always accepted my decisions on family matters, this deference only added to my insecurity, and the tension between us was palpable. When we had first moved to Borough Park, Ben-Zi
on had been invited to apply for a full-time teaching job in the local yeshiva. But teaching in the yeshiva required certification, and Ben-Zion believed that he had sufficient knowledge to teach in the yeshiva, but resented what he perceived as an implied slight by the requirement for certification. He chose, instead, to teach a free, daily adult Talmud class in the synagogue. Since he didn’t have to worry about his financial security, he spent most of his time studying in the synagogue or at home by himself.

  I have to admit that Ben-Zion had two sterling qualities: he was a brilliant Jewish scholar, and he was, for the most part, a positive influence in Ruthie’s upbringing. But he was also an intentionally troublesome presence in our household, and this disruptiveness had begun the moment that Rose and I were married.

  In the beginning, it was just the usual competition between a father and a husband for the love of a daughter or wife. After all, Rose was Ben-Zion’s only child and his only connection to his late wife. His resentment and jealousy of my relationship with Rose, although it was immature, was understandable. It is also easy to understand our competition for the love of Ruthie, the only child in the family. What is more difficult to understand, was our vitriolic and, as it turned out, nearly fatal personal animosity.

  From the start, we were in a highly volatile situation: Ben-Zion was a meddling, non-contributing permanent guest in our home, and I resented his presence enormously. I seized every opportunity to make him feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in the hope that he would voluntarily move out. But he had almost no domestic skills and no viable source of income. And so, as Rose often pointed out, we had a responsibility to shelter him because he could never afford to live on his own. Plus, he was a recognized scholar in our Jewish community, and his presence was welcomed with pride. It was therefore socially unacceptable for me to force him out or to even confront him in public.

  The fact is that Ben-Zion really was a misplaced scholar. Had he remained in Poland, he would have been highly respected locally and perhaps even nationally for his monumental knowledge. But in Brooklyn, in our house, he was just the father-in-law of someone he considered to be an ignoramus.

  So, in order to punish me for the way I treated him, he struck at what he assumed was my greatest vulnerability: my refusal to speak Yiddish. From the minute I moved in with them, he only spoke Yiddish, hoping to force me, who had sworn to only speak American, to speak Yiddish with him. He also filled Ruthie with traditional European Jewish folk tales, which, in my mind, were “Old World bubbe-meises” and were definitely not American.

  I was sure that over the years that he had lived in the United States he must have, out of necessity, learned to speak English. But all the while in our house, he continued to choose to speak only Yiddish and to pretend not to understand us when we spoke English. This artificial obstinacy created perpetual tension. It was as if a wall had been erected through the house with Ben-Zion on one side, and me on the other—with Rose and Ruth who were, of necessity, bilingual, shuttling back and forth across the border.

  To the outside world, our household was a model of peaceful generational transition. Inside, it was as if the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg was being fought every day.

  Chapter 6

  For me, the move to Borough Park was transformational. It meant a break with my past and an unclear idea of the future without any sort of a support system. In Williamsburg, where I was born, the streets were familiar, and the noise of the trolley car was familiar, and my friends were familiar, and I walked to school every day. Now, I would be attending New Utrecht High School along with more than 3,600 other teenagers, and I would have to travel on the elevated train to get there.

  In Williamsburg, although my parents were not always around, the store was located directly across the street from where we lived—I felt reassured that my parents were nearby, but I also enjoyed the feeling of being alone when I wanted to be. Now, even though my parents were present all the time, they seemed much less accessible because of their social engagements. Of course, as teenagers often do, I rejected my parents’ new social values, and I considered myself a rebellious bohemian.

  My mother, however, had a different image of how the daughter of a socially prominent Jewish family should look and behave. She carefully supervised my wardrobe; unless my skirts were more than two inches below my knees, they were strictly prohibited. My mother carefully inspected me every morning on my way out the door, and her rulings were absolute—no negotiations were tolerated.

  But the rebelliousness of teenage girls cannot be denied, and, if suppressed in one direction, it often breaks through in another, usually unexpected, direction. In my case, I made my defiant stand at the local library.

  The Borough Park Public Library was located in two adjacent store fronts on Thirteenth Avenue, the main shopping street. The store on the left contained the adult section, and the store on the right contained the children’s and teens’ sections. The librarians’ desk was in the center, between the two store fronts. Adults were issued white library cards, teens, green cards, and children, yellow cards. The age limitations were: children, seven to eleven years of age, teens, twelve to seventeen, and adults, eighteen and older. Under certain circumstances, a child might be permitted to take out a book from the teen section, but a teen was never permitted to take out an adult book. These restrictions were aggressively enforced by the librarians. There was also a gated area in the corner of the adult section for books like Candide, The Canterbury Tales, and Fanny Hill, which were especially restricted. This section required a special key that had to be obtained from the librarian.

  I was a voracious reader and by the time my family and I moved to Borough Park, I had read all of the books that were in the children’s section, and nearly all of the books in the teen section. So I asked the librarian for permission to take books out of the adult section. This permission was instantly and firmly denied.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Ruthie Rubin.”

  “How old are you?” she continued.

  “Thirteen,” I replied.

  “I’m sorry young lady,” she said with a snooty look, “the adult section is restricted to people over eighteen. You are very far from that age. I’m sure you can find a nice book in the teen section.”

  “But I’ve read all the books in the teen section.” I said quietly.

  “I’m sure that is an exaggeration,” she said, obviously annoyed. “I would be glad to help you find a book that you haven’t read.”

  I sensed that even though the words were polite, the librarian’s tone was hostile, but I dutifully went along with her and told her what each of the books that she pulled from the shelf were about.

  “Have you read the books in the boy’s section?” the librarian asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied, “at least the ones that weren’t about sports. I’m not really interested in sports.”

  “Then I think you should go back and reread some of the books you liked the most,” she said, walking back to her desk.

  “But that would be a waste of time since I already read them,” I said right behind her. “Can’t I just go into the adult section and read one book at a time?”

  The librarian spun around and looked sternly at me. “Absolutely not,” she said with finality, and she went back to her place behind the desk.

  This, to my teenager’s mind, was a declaration of war, and I was ready for battle.

  I followed her and stood at the desk waiting for her to look up so I could continue to press my case, but she didn’t, so I went into the adult section.

  I looked around for a minute or two, and then I took a book down from the shelf. But before I had a chance to open it, I felt a strong hand on my arm. This time, it was a policeman.

  “I’m sorry miss,” the policeman said, “but I have to ask you to leave the library.”

  And with that, he fo
rcefully pulled and dragged me out onto the street.

  “Rules are rules,” the policeman said when we were outside. “And you people have got to obey them just like everyone else.”

  __________

  The following day, and every day for the next three days, I went directly into the adult section of the library, only to be evicted by the same policeman. I never mentioned this confrontation to my parents. This, I felt, was my private battle, and I intended to win it.

  On the fourth day, I walked into the adult section, quickly selected a book and sat down on the floor to read it. When the policeman arrived he asked me to stand up and I refused. The policeman stood over me menacingly, but I continued to sit on the floor reading my book.

  Soon, two other policemen arrived. They stood in a circle looking down at me while I kept my nose in the book as if I were totally engrossed. I did not look up when they spoke to me and eventually, after an animated discussion, the three policemen left. I remained seated on the floor, reading my book for the next hour, after which I stood up, put the book back on the shelf, smoothed my skirt, and left. I repeated this disobedience every day until the head librarian came over and sat down on the floor next to me.

  “You’re an obstinate young woman,” she said, “and you’re getting to be a real pain in my neck, but I admire your courage. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I will make a list of books from the adult section that I think would be appropriate for you, and you can select one book at a time to take home and read. When you finish that book, I’ll give you another. When you finish all the books on the list, I’ll make a new list. But I do not want you coming into the adult section—it sets a bad example. You will come directly to me at the desk, and I’ll give you the books. Will you agree to that?”