Yiddishlands: A Memoir

29. New York Jew

All right. So you dropped out of Havurat Shalom. So you gave up on your dream—andyourbrother’sandyoursister’s—oflivinginIsrael.Isn’tteaching at a seminary the next best thing? Here it is 1985 and you’re already an Associate Professor. And what’s wrong, may I ask, with being a New York Jew? Ruth would give her right arm to live in Manhattan. Instead, your sister ’s stuck in Montreal, a big fish in a small pond. “Be a tail to lions rather than a head to jackals,” according to Sayings of Our Sages, 4:15. Come off it. You’re here anyway. Make the best of it. You said yourself there’s a cultural revival going on. When did I say that? In chapter 9. Not exactly. What I wrote was “a few refugees from the old Havurah . . . had formed their own congregation on the Upper West Side.” I would hardly call that a renaissance. What about the YIVO? The Atran House? The Forward Building? Ratner ’s? Gus’s Pickles? If Yiddish lives anywhere, it lives in the Big Apple. Whatlieswillyoutellmenext,whatfalsehoods?ThatMauriceSchwartz is playing Hershele Dubrovner at the Yiddish Art Theater? That Jacob Glatstein is waiting for me at the Café Royale? 189 29 New York Jew Look, Roskies, every other year you organize a pilgrimage to the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, charter a bus to visit the graves of Sholem Aleichem and Moyshe-Leyb Halpern. You still love Sholem Aleichem , don’t you? Leave me alone! Wait, wait. I have a better idea. How about the widows? I’ve just come from Irving Howe. Now there’s a New York Jew for you! D’you know what he’s up to? Writing a whole megillah, he is, about Yiddish widows and all the hoops they’ve made him jump through. Why not beat him to it and check out a few widows? You they’ll love. They’ll ply you with tea and stories. Say, who are you? Why are you bothering me? Can’t you see I’m busy? Busy beating your breast. Busy cupping a corpse. Show me your feet! What? I’ll believe you if you show me your feet! And with that, he disappeared, for as everyone knows, from the smallest imp right up to the infamous Ketev Meriri of talmudic fame, devils have gendzn-fislekh, the claws of geese, which also means “quotation marks.” The Devil’s banter gave me no peace. Not so much the business of becoming a New York Jew as the mention of widows, which reminded me of Evelyn. Undemanding Evelyn, who had been waiting many months now for me to call. Where exactly did she fit in the roster of Yiddish widows? For sure not among the combative types, like Esther Markish, or the custodial widows, like Esther Rochman. Since Leybl’s untimely death at the age of sixty, Esther was trying to maintain the open house. So far, I was told, people were still coming over for tea, compote, and homemade nut cake, despite the empty seat at the head of the table. One thing was certain: Evelyn was not on Howe’s list or anyone else’s. Were it not for a conversation with Benjamin Hrushovski, my Vilnaborn professor, who considered Mikhl Licht a great undiscovered talent; were it not for my lecture on “Three Yiddish Modernists: Glatstein, Leyeles, and Licht” at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal; and were it not for Mikhl’s old friend Shiye Tanenbaum, whose job it was to monitor the Yiddish press for any mention of the name Licht, I would not have met her either . chapter twenty-nine 190 ThenoteIreceived,forwardedtomefromMontreal,washandwrittenin a flowing English script, and enclosed was an ad for my lecture with the name licht circled in blue ink. The note was from Evelyn, who invited me to pay her a visit, should I ever be in New York. The return address was 80 La Salle St., well known to me as the Morningside Gardens apartment complex ,foritwaslocatedjustoneblockupfromtheSeminary.“Aperson’sjoy,” Mother had always taught me, “lies at the very threshold.” Evelyn was everything that Mother was not. Petite, for one thing. She greeted me at the door looking much like the young woman in the archival photos that I had found, except a little plumper, her hair no longer in a pageboy . She spoke in a high-pitched voice and with...