Yiddishlands: A Memoir

26. The Sale of Joseph

When they once asked I. B. Singer why he didn’t write for the theater, he is reputed to have said: “Because every Yiddish play is essentially the same. It starts with a heartfelt Kaddish and ends with a raucous wedding.” Well, it’s almost time for the wedding. In the end, Abby would never do for the role of Havurah spouse. She drove a sports car and spent much too much time making up her eyes. Could you see her wrapped up for hours in radical self-confrontation? And other than her one word, kókhlefl—dipper, busybody—which she changed from a term of opprobrium to a term of endearment, Abby didn’t speak Yiddish. Not that Miri spoke Yiddish either, but that didn’t stop her from organizing the Brandeis Yiddish Theater, and when I, now a popular Yiddish teacher on campus, failed to audition, she offered me a walk-on role that required no memorization and was sure to steal the show. How could I refuse? The scene, a lively collage based on Uriel Weinreich’s Yiddish-English EnglishYiddish Dictionary, would have brought a grudging smile even to Singer’s lips. After the cast party I learned that Miri was housesitting for a retired rabbi and when he returned home she had nowhere to go, and staying the 173 26 The Sale of Joseph night seemed a natural thing to do, and I was sick of communal living anyway because for $120/month Mrs. Fiorello would rent me a five-room splitlevelapartment ,plentyofroomtosharewithMiri,allofwhoseworldlypossessions easily fit into her used VW. So Miri unpacked her wardrobe of peasant blouses and long skirts, her books by Abraham Maslow, her Reform prayer book, and her extra copy of Weinreich. We resolved to speak Yiddish and to keep a kosher home. With her long braid, small hips, and modest breasts, Miri fit right in to Somerville. She didn’t much like being called Pocahontas, on account of her blouses being from Mexico and her skirts from Taos, but neither did the h . averim appreciate her calling them by their Yiddish names. Art became Reb Avrom, Kathy—Kreyndl, Mike—Reb Mordkhe, and Joel—Reb Yoyl. Otherwise, everyone acknowledged that this was a match made in heaven, all except for Abby, who wondered why, despite her best efforts, I had succumbed to my prefabricated fantasies; and Ben, who was disappointed with his kid brother for not marrying the girl who made him walk on air; andMother.Mother,Iwasthelastofmysiblingstolearn,considerednoone good enough to marry any of her children. A dutiful son until then—could anyone prove that I had read my girlfriend ’s letters before I read my mother’s?—I was forced to take a stand whenMothersoutterlyrejectedmychoiceofbride.MiriandImovedupthe wedding date from September to early June. It was to be a do-it-yourself wedding, at the farthest remove from my sister Eva’s affair in Montreal at the Tifereth Jerusalem synagogue with hundreds of guests and a half-dozen rabbis. The Havurah had arranged to celebrate the joyous festival of Shavuos at a Lebanese Catholic monastery in Methuen,Massachusetts,nottoofarfromtheDannonYogurtfactory.Since Shavuos marked the marriage of Israel to the Torah, throwing in a wedding was only natural. An hour before the guests arrived, the h . averim remembered to remove the crucifixes from the prefectory where the reception was to be held over lox and Crown Royal whiskey brought down from Montreal. Whoever could come, would come. Of my three siblings, only Ruth and her family, and grudgingly, the parents. From Miri’s side—no one. The Havurah ethos was everywhere in evidence. The ceremony was held out-of-doors, Hasidic style. With the help of the married women, the bride had fashioned a beautiful tallis adorned with Navaho embroidery to be used chapter twenty-six 174 forahuppah,andthegroom’sbestfriend,Joel,stayedupthewholenightdoing the ketubah in a carefree Hebrew script in several colors of ink, modeled both on the one that Reb Zalman had made for Ruthie and Michael, and on Ben Shahn’s Alphabet of Creation. Charles on the flute and George on the guitar accompanied the processional with the slow and haunting Modzitzer melody to “Shrine of the King” from the Friday Night Service, and finally, two rabbis officiated: Art on behalf of the Havurah, and Manny Goldsmith on behalf of Yiddish. After the breaking of the glass, one of the last remaining crystals that Mother had salvaged...