A Faded Family History

Bedroom (Van Gogh)

“All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Tolstoy, from Anna Karenina, 1877)

My zeide, bubbe, father, and two sisters, Golda and Basya came to America in 1922 from a small shtetl somewhere between Stolin and Dovid-Horodok. My zeide worked as a barrel maker back in the old country and began working as a rough carpenter, building new homes in both New York and Detroit, where our families seemed to have split their time. My zeide was a quiet man, and due to incompatibility issues, lived apart from his family for long periods of time. I did not know him well, he died when I was small, but I remember him sitting out on the porch, quietly reading the newspaper, learning mishnayos, and smoking that same pipe every morning, except Shabbos of course. My zeide contracted pneumonia and severe bronchitis as a child, and due to the scarring in his lungs, his breathing became belabored in the hot summer months in New York, and he would leave to work in Detroit, where we had mishpocho available to care for him if he became sicker. There were relatives and friends from Pinsk and Dovid-Horodok already settled in New York and Detroit. My zeide died while convalescing in Tuscon from a severe lung infection, and is buried there. I can imagine my zeide hoping for a hot Gehinnom to save his joints from hurting and there always being a fire handy to light his pipe. I hope they buried it with him.

My bubbe Chanah was never a happy woman. Not back in the shtetl and not here in America. My father was her only consolation in life, and I am told that she doted on her little ‘Yeshiya’ a bit longer than he was comfortable with. I remember my aunt Golda o’h, who my daughter Goldie is named for, telling me how jealous the girls were over the inordinate amount of attention that their baby brother was getting. Basya, the younger of the sisters and the middle child, held that resentment her whole life and I know that her relationship with the rest of the family remained distant and strained for some time. She eventually married an American-born furrier and moved to Scranton, where she mothered several cousins for me, only two of whom I have ever met. I don’t even know if she is still alive. It’s time to pick up a phone maybe.

Bubbe Chana was the stern matriarch who made it seem as if my zeide had married too high above his own lowly status. I know absolutely nothing about her family life before coming to America, except that her father was a merchant and talmid chochom from Pinsk. There was one sister that left Europe and settled in Montreal. I met her once, and I think her daughters were not religious at all. In either case, Bubbe Chana was feared by everyone, and if she spoke, you jumped. She refused to speak English, Hebrew, or Russian, reserving what sparse words she did speak for the Mama Loshen and the harsh critique of the grandson who reminded her too much of her late husband, in habits and demeanor. Looking back, I think my father may have shielded me from her for that reason. Bubbe Chana died in 1973.

Golda, on the other hand was the soft and gentle touch of the entire family, and no one could resist her warmth and loving presence for long. Aunt Golda married late, but she married well, and in spite her being a Russian and he a Hungarian, the marriage seemed happy, even though they unfortunately never had any children. I spent a great deal of my childhood in their home, and along with the cherished memories of my step-mother, the recollections of baking cookies and sneaking the fresh ones past my uncle Mendele still sends warm ripples up my spine. Mendele had a study in the back of his house and, in the evenings, he’d sit in a big tattered armchair that his mother had brought to America from Cluj, and he’d light one of those cigars, and open a sefer. I remember taking an old sidur off the shelf to daven from and the smell of stale tobacco pouring out from inside it.

Aunt Golda was not only a yiras shamayim and a ba’alas chased, but she was educated, too. Her Yiddish was very precise and very ‘Litvak’, unlike my father, who wasn’t much concerned for Dikduk in die Mama Loshen, and spoke however he grew up speaking, Golda thought it a matter of honor to master any language she was required to speak, this being in line with her elegant style and poise. There was a downside, however. At home, my Uncle and Aunt spoke English to each other because early on, when they first met, my Uncle spoke to her in the typical sing-song all-the-words-garbled-together Hingarishe Yiddish, and she began laughing uncontrollably at the sound of it. Uncle Mendel was a promising violinist, but when his mother died, he never played again. I think he was a momma’s boy, and treated my Aunt with the same deference and respect one might give a mother rather than a wife. He showed me the violin once, but refused to either play for me or teach me how to play. Something painful came with that instrument, and I will never know what that was. Uncle Mendel said that he had a sister somewhere in America and another still in Europe, but there must have been little or no contact between them. Uncle Mendel passed on in 1983, and Golda soon thereafter.

There were a lot of secrets in my family and too much shielding the younger generations from hearing bad things about the mishpocho. My mother’s family is much the same way. Is this a good thing? Or am I just nosy? One would think I had a right to know, but then again, I don’t share every gory detail of my life with them either.

I don’t even know why I am thinking of these things right now. Maybe I was thinking about how much I’d like to share these few tidbits of meaningless history with my own children. Who knows? These things are so far back in the past. My family is not one for photographs and heirlooms, and what few I did have are now lost or destroyed by my ex-wife when we divorced. I left some of my father’s seforim to a cousin of mine for safekeeping when I left the derech, and I’m sure those are in good hands. Thinking back, I probably should have rented a place for all those little memories. I look around me and think that I might the be beginning and the end of something, with no past and no future to speak of. It feels weird.