by Bernard Beck
In the spring of 1933, during his first inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the newly elected president, told the nation that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. But Roosevelt’s well chosen words, though eloquent, did not capture the true terror of the time. Even among the people who had jobs, salaries had tumbled and many were earning far less than they had before the crash. Among the self-employed—people who had kept their businesses alive—profits had dwindled to a small percentage of what they had been taking home only a few years earlier. Even Jack’s houses, which had always been fully rented, now had vacancies.
Although fear and panic gripped the nation, we, I’m embarrassed to say, were pretty well off. Jack had invested cautiously and wisely during the roaring twenties, and his real estate holdings were now both secure and profitable. Because of our natural caution, he and I were more financially secure than we had ever been in our lives. Jack enjoyed the quiet and solitude of our home, and the management of his properties gave him a feeling of upper class nobility. He attended community board meetings, hob-nobbed with local politicians, and he even became a member of the Real Estate Board of New York.
Jack and I had now achieved a new status in life. He was a highly respected member of both the business community and the religious community, and I was involved on the national level in the development of the Mizrachi Women’s Organization. I now spent a great deal of time out of the house attending and organizing meetings, and supervising publications and mailings. I traveled on the train down to Washington DC to meet with congressmen and other politicians on a nearly regular basis.
Ruthie was well on her way to becoming successful both as an editor and short story writer, and Bentzy would soon be starting nursery school.
We were, for all intents and purposes, living the American Dream, but surprisingly, now that we had achieved this level of success, Jack was intensely unhappy. He suffered from periods of depression and unpredictable emotional outbursts. He no longer slept through the night, and he had taken to having a glass or two of wine at dinner and a brandy or two before bed.
I understood what the problem was—we had discussed it many times. Jack had always expected that once he reached a certain age of maturity, once he attained a certain level of affluence, once he achieved a certain level of knowledge, he would finally be an authentic American. He had accomplished all of this, but, still, in his mind, he wasn’t authentic.
He had been successful in nearly all of his business endeavors, as I often told him, and he was accepted on every social level. And yet, he felt, somewhere deep inside, that he was a pretender, and that he really didn’t fit in. I was aware that he resented my social ease. Whenever we went to public events, he felt that I was the person everyone greeted, while he was merely my companion. He occasionally referred to himself sarcastically as Mr. Rose Rubin.
Because I was often away at meetings, and Ruthie was fully occupied with Bentzy and her job, Jack now had too much time to think about his dreams and his failures. His dream had been so simple: to be an authentic American. But now that he had reached middle age, and now that there was nowhere for him to advance to—no dragons to slay—he felt unfulfilled and frustrated. He told me that he knew, without any doubt, that he was still not a real American. This discontent, which had languished so long in his unconscious, now dominated his thoughts.
He had been financially successful—more than he could ever have anticipated—he had learned Talmud and Torah, and he was one of the most charitable, if not the most charitable man in the community. And yet, he believed that he wasn’t yet an American—not an authentic American. He believed that he was merely an actor, going through the motions, playing the part, and reciting the lines.
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So now I am going to tell you about the Americanization of Jacob Rubinowitz.
It began, as most momentous events do, very slowly, without fanfare, and completely unnoticed. On a Sunday evening in November of 1933, Jack and I were sitting in our car stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge on our way home from visiting Ruthie and Bentzy in Manhattan. As we had done every time we traveled home from Ruthie’s apartment, we had passed the Hooverville on the far west side of Manhattan, just a few blocks from Ruthie’s apartment. There had been a thunderstorm earlier in the day, and the conditions at the Hooverville seemed worse than anything that we had read in the newspaper. Both Jack and I had been depressed by it. Although some of the more resourceful men in the Hooverville had been able to build structurally sound houses, most people had resorted to building their residences out of wood from crates, cardboard, scraps of metal, or whatever materials were available to them. Their huts usually had a small stove, some bedding, and a couple of simple cooking tools, most of which were outside their sleeping hut. They slept under “Hoover blankets”—old newspaper used as blanketing, walked on “Hoover leather,”—cardboard used to line their shoes when the sole wore through, and, in the depths of winter, they lined their coats with “Hoover liners,”—old newspapers which they tied to their bodies with rope.
“We should find a charity to send money to help them,” I said.
“We already do,” Jack said with some bitterness. “That’s always our solution, ‘send money and let the other guy do it.’ I’m getting tired of sending money to some organization and then hoping that something good comes of it. All they do with the money is hire secretaries and administrators to help them raise more money so that they can hire more secretaries and administrators. There’s got to be a way that we can help directly.”
“I guess you could give some of them jobs, or maybe help them find jobs,” I offered.
“What do I know about finding a job? I haven’t worked for anyone in years, and I have very few employees.”
“Well, what do they need most?” I asked.
“Everything, I guess,” he said glumly.
We sat quietly, inching along in the traffic. “The way I see it,” Jack said after a while, “giving them a loan would be better than charity, because it helps a person to help himself. Maybe we should give them a loan so that they can start something and get their dignity back.”
“That sounds like a really great idea,” I said encouragingly, “but where would they get the money to pay it back?”
“They could start some sort of service business, like sewing or tailoring. The money might help them buy supplies,” Jack said optimistically.
“But it would take some time before they could start making enough money to pay the loan back.”
“Suppose they didn’t have to pay it back until they had enough money?”
I turned to face Jack. “I think you’re on to something,” I said. “A loan would let them keep some of their pride, and if they didn’t have to pay it back until they were on their feet again, it wouldn’t make them feel so bad.”
“We could have them sign IOUs just like a real loan so that they wouldn’t feel like they were on the take,” Jack said, brightening. “We’d have to put together a fund of some sort so that there would be enough money to make a difference.”
Jack’s idea of a Borough Park Free Loan Society was met with instant enthusiasm, and many donors came forward immediately to contribute to the fund. One of the members of the community who was a retired banker—one of the few Jewish bankers in a typically anti-Semitic field—offered to manage the fund, and two retired accountants and a lawyer stepped in to make sure that it was legal and fair.
And so, without much more planning, the Borough Park Free Loan Society was launched. They decided to offer a maximum of five hundred dollars per loan, per family, with no pre-conditions. The loans were to be paid back at the rate of five dollars per month with no interest. Jack, who had been the source of the program, had declined to participate in its management, and was given the job of researching any relevant Jewish Laws.
He was both relieved and disappointed to be relegat
ed to this seemingly secondary responsibility, but he was proud that his work in Talmudic Studies was being recognized, and he was grateful for the opportunity to do some specifically directed research. He worked diligently on the research, and, after only two weeks, he produced a paper entitled “The Talmudic Laws of Lending Money.”
Here, briefly, are his conclusions:
There is a Positive Commandment (mitzvah) in the Torah to lend money to anyone who needs it.
The mitzvah to lend money is even greater than the mitzvah to give charity, because a person is much less embarrassed to receive a loan than to receive charity.
The lender has a right to demand proper collateral for his loan to guarantee that it will be paid back in a timely manner.
If two people approach you for a loan, and you are only able to lend to one of them, you should give precedence to the poorer person.
If you have been approached by a number of people for loans, and one needed a very large amount, to the extent that if you would lend him what he is requesting you would be unable to lend the others at all, it is preferable to provide a few loans of smaller amounts than to give it all to one person.
If you told someone that you decided to participate in a free loan fund, it is considered as if you had taken a vow to this effect, and it is forbidden to change your mind.
The members of the Borough Park Free Loan Society thanked Jack for his careful and informative research, and they quickly began the important work of distributing their funds as judiciously as possible. Although he remained an advisor, by his own choice, Jack’s involvement with the fund, other than his original idea and his financial contribution, had essentially ended. He was secretly proud to have been the originator of the Free Loan Society, but, with his usual reticence, he was uncomfortable about being publicly credited for its existence.
The night after the official launch of the Borough Park Free Loan Society, Jack and I went to our favorite restaurant, a kosher delicatessen called Gold’s, on Thirteenth Avenue in Borough Park, where we considered ourselves “regulars.” Jack had been depressed all day since the launch, and I knew that only a good pastrami sandwich could cheer him up.
We liked the rough atmosphere in the delicatessen because it reminded us of both our origins on the Lower East Side and how far we had come. Hymie Gold, the enormous, barrel-chested owner, delivered our sandwiches himself without waiting for us to order.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked as he sat down without waiting for a reply.
“So,” he asked in his gruff, Brooklyn accent, “what’s goin’ on? I heard about the Free Loan Society, not a bad idea. I could use a free loan,” he laughed. “But all kidding aside, it sounds like a good idea. Do you think it will help?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack said slowly.
“Whadaya mean?”
“Well, the money will help them get some food and supplies, but the whole idea is for them to be able to invest it in something, but I don’t think there’s much out there to invest in.”
“You don’t sound all that enthusiastic,” Hymie said with a half smile.
Rather than answer, Jack took a big bite of his pastrami sandwich and looked at me.
“You’ve got to excuse him tonight,” I said with a smile. “He’s just depressed. The poverty, the things we saw, I can’t explain.”
Hymie waved to the waiter who brought over a knish. “Here,” Hymie said, pushing the plate in front of Jack, “maybe this will cheer you up.”
“It’s not that I’m depressed,” Jack said between mouthfuls. “It’s just that I think that there has got to be something more that we can do.”
“Like what?” Hymie challenged.
“Like here I am eating this pastrami sandwich, and there they are standing on line for a bowl of soup.”
“You want they should eat Pastrami?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying,” Jack mumbled glumly.
“OK, then maybe I got an idea,” Hymie said. “Every night, when we close, we throw out a lot of food, and on Friday night, because we close for Shabbos, we throw out even more. What do you say we send our leftovers to one of the Hoovervilles?”
Jack brightened. “There must be a half dozen restaurants right in this neighborhood that do the same thing. What if I get a truck and pick up the food from each of them and deliver it to the Hooverville?”
“It’s a nice idea,” Hymie said, “but there wouldn’t be enough food to make a trip during the week. It only would make sense before Shabbos, and you couldn’t get there and get back before the Sabbath begins. Besides, where would you get a truck?”
“You can leave that up to me. Just have the food ready this Friday.”
“That’s a good idea,” Hymie laughed. “You and I will both get a mitzvah for it. I’ll tell you what, I’ll get the other delis to deliver their stuff here too so then you’ll have enough leftovers to make it worth doing, and you’ll be able to get it done before the Sabbath.”
__________
I arranged to borrow a panel truck from one of the companies that serviced my buildings, and just after lunch on that Friday afternoon, I showed up at Gold’s delicatessen. Hymie was waiting for me with a huge amount of partially sliced meat, sliced bread, and nearly a full barrel of salad. He also had similar leftovers from the other delis. They filled the entire truck, and I merrily drove off to the Hooverville near Ruthie in New York.
I was euphoric. For once, I told myself, I was doing something direct—and it was physical, just like it used to be. But unfortunately, I soon ran into forces that were beyond my control. The moment I reached the Flatbush Avenue approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, I knew that I was in trouble. Traffic had come to a complete standstill. At first, I was concerned that the food in the truck might spoil, so I opened all the windows to keep it as cool as possible. But then I came to another realization: I would not be able to deliver the food and return home in time for the Sabbath.
I thought that I had allowed enough time to make the delivery and return home, but I had been inching along in traffic for over an hour, and I was stuck at just about the midpoint of the trip. I could turn back, but I would arrive at home after sundown, or I could continue to the Hooverville and deliver the food. I decided to keep going, so I pulled the truck over to the side of the road, got out, and began to recite the psalms welcoming the Sabbath. “At least I can say the prayers,” I said to myself, but then, in the middle of the prayers, I stopped.
“This is nonsense,” I said aloud, “it doesn’t feel like the Sabbath when I’m standing on the side of the road saying prayers welcoming the Sabbath because then I’m going to have to get back into the truck and drive on the Sabbath. At least I’ll be doing a good deed while I’m breaking the Sabbath.”
Back in the truck, I laughed at my efforts at rationalization. “God probably doesn’t care if I’m breaking the Sabbath or not; it’s just my problem. And God probably doesn’t care if I’m doing a good deed either. He’s certainly got much more important things to worry about. This is just between me and them.”
Saying this aloud made me feel better, and, as traffic started to move, I turned my thoughts to the coming presentation of food that I would make at the Hooverville. I smiled to myself with satisfaction as I visualized the residents gathering around the truck. But then I realized that I had not thought the process through very well. I had a truck full of deli meats, fish, breads, and vegetables, but I had no way to slice them or serve them. I had not even thought to bring a table, nor had I brought any serving utensils. In a panic, I decided to stop at Ruthie’s apartment and borrow serving utensils from her and from some of her neighbors.
It was pitch dark when I arrived at the Hooverville on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There were candles flickering in some of the shacks, but there was no one there to help me, or to take advantage of my generosity.
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sp; I was now very disappointed, and I parked the truck near the Hooverville and spent the next half hour walking around in the field trying to find someone—anyone. I had expected my generosity to be received with open arms and overwhelming gratitude, but night had fallen and the residents were in their tar paper huts with their families. I was now not only disappointed, I was angry. I knew that my anger was unreasonable, but I had felt so good in anticipation of this mitzvah that my let-down was steep.
I walked through the Hooverville, through the winding lanes between the huts, shouting, “Haloo, I have free food.” Eventually people started to come out and gather at the truck, but they seemed excessively cautious, and some even seemed to resent my generosity, as they picked very carefully and suspiciously at the food that I had brought.
When most of the food was gone, I repacked the truck and returned, dispirited, to Ruthie’s apartment. It was after ten, Bentzy was asleep, and Ruthie was in her bathrobe, in the kitchen, reading.
“What did you expect?” she asked when I had told her of my disappointment. We were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea from the kettle on the stove that had been simmering for the Sabbath.
“They didn’t know you were coming,” she said gently. “And they didn’t know what you were bringing, and they don’t know you well enough to trust you. There are all kinds of conmen out there, you know, trying to take advantage of them.”
“But I was only trying to help, and they treated me like some sort of thief. What should I do?” I whined.
“First,” Ruthie said, like the mature mother that she now was, “you should take a hot bath and sleep here. Second, you should come for a walk with me tomorrow, up to the Hooverville, and talk to them.”