Monthly Archives: May 2017

Above: Sidney’s family, ready for the walk to the Shul, 1954

Sidney Gross (1941–2016)

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

My cousin Lenny was the oldest of us six boys, the first to get Bar Mitzvahed, the first to get married, the first to go into the Army, the first to complete college. In many ways, Lenny was a guinea pig for the rest of us, the first to experience all the social trials and tribulations. His confirmation was no exception. My aunt Essie, Lenny’s mother, had been widowed when she was in her early thirties and left with two boys. There’s no doubt that Essie suffered financial hardship in those days of non-existent pensions and inadequate life insurance. But, of course, Lenny had to have a party as good as that of any of his friends. There was more than a little rivalry in this regard!

To save money, the grandmothers, aunts, and aunts-in-law decided to get together and do the cooking themselves. It didn’t matter that none of them had had any catering experience. If you could cook for four, you could cook for a hundred. Right? As a boy of nine I remember very little about Lenny’s Bar Mitzvah. It occurred in August, one of the muggiest times of the year in New York. I have vague recollections of six or seven women crowded into my aunt’s small kitchen and foyer trying to produce cocktail knishes on an assembly line basis. There was shouting and nobody was too happy. The rugelach ran out at the party. Whatever else went on, the upshot was that all subsequent affairs were catered.  Cousin Lenny had made life easier for the rest of us.

Part of the joy of being Bar Mitzvahed was that you got everything new for the occasion—not only the traditional hair cut but a whole new outfit. My Bar Mitzvah was the only time in my life when I bought a coordinated set of clothing in one swoop. The suit was the first I had ever owned and in itself represented an induction into adulthood. My parents, being ever sensible, selected a gray wool which would be serviceable the year through, even though the confirmation was in June. My shirt was white on white, then the height of fashion. It had small diamonds on a field of white broadcloth. The tie, which I was allowed to pick out, was also white, with an immense stylized crown. The shoes I will never forget.  They had smooth leather uppers in the oxblood color then fashionable, with yellowish crepe soles which squeaked when I walked on linoleum. A new handkerchief, a gold key chain, and a fresh crew cut. What a sight, and fortunately preserved forever in the pictures which were taken by a photographer retained by my parents.

As if there wasn’t enough excitement on that Saturday morning, we had to deal with what at the time seemed like the eccentricities of the photographer. Every shot was posed and reposed: knotting the tie, brushing the hair, standing in ramrod attention with my equally stiff looking family.  Now, of course, the pictures are priceless.

It was just after eight in the morning when we left our apartment for the walk to the Shul.  Naturally, there had to be a picture of the family exiting. I was going off to the siege and would return “a man.” At this moment there occurred one of the few events that I remember with crystal clarity from that day.  Just as the photographer was about to snap us, the building superintendent, Ralph Graham appeared in a huff. The photographer could not take a picture of us with newspapers strewn on the sidewalk!  In a flash, he gathered up the debris and then gave the photographer his blessing. Mr. Graham was, of course, right in what he did. I still have that picture and I see him (although he’s not in the photograph) every time I look at it. In retrospect, I have to give Ralph and his wife credit for being able to manage a six-story apartment building filled with prepubescent boys and girls and their doting parents. The Grahams had a son who became a Lutheran minister.  When Steven was assigned to a church in Minnesota he promptly bought himself a bright red Volkswagen beetle. Every time Steven wrote home to his parents, he enclosed a picture of the car. One day we heard that he had totaled the car when he hit a deer on the highway. What kind of wilderness was Minnesota, I wondered, from the vantage point of Brooklyn.*

For a recipe for rugelach, turn to page 2

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

*all names in this section have been changed

Pages: 1 2

Above: Sidney’s Bar Mitzvah Album, 1954
(by 2017 time worn,  held together with duct tape)

Sidney Gross (1941–2016)

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

From Sidney: When a Jewish girl is born, the talk immediately turns to her wedding. With a boy, it’s the Bar Mitzvah, the formal entrance into manhood at the ripe age of thirteen. My mother had a sister and a brother, and each of them had two sons, so there was plenty of Bar Mitzvah talk in our family. The Bar Mitzvah is not one of those events which occur at a single moment like a snapshot. It is an occasion which is anticipated years in advance.

Almost from infancy on, I can remember my parents prefacing all remarks about my future with “when you get Bar Mitzvahed…” The ceremony was to be a gateway—to what I’m uncertain. All I knew was that even if the world were to end in a great ball of fire (those were the days of A-bomb tests and air raid drills at the elementary school) everything would be all right just as long as I got Bar Mitzvahed before it all happened. My Bar Mitzvah was my first philosophical experience with the concept of time. There was the big event looming years in the future; then months and days. Finally it happened, and now I am ruminating about it almost three decades later.

From Sue:  At this point I feel obligated to interject a comment of my own into Sidney’s narrative. My late beloved Sidney was generally progressive in his views on the equality of the sexes.  But, as happens with all of us, there are corners of our souls and psyches that cling to traditions that run counter to modern thinking. When you read this essay, it will be clear that Sidney believed being “mitzvahed” was only for boys. He would never admit that Bat Mitzvahs for girls were the “genuine article!”  His family paid a photographer to record his Bar Mitzvah in a lavish picture album, the kind that one generally thinks of for weddings.

Sidney again: The Bar Mitzvah ceremony was usually held on a Saturday morning. I say “usually” because there were always some sinners whose parents didn’t send them to Hebrew school but insisted on a Bar Mitzvah nevertheless. In those instances the confirmation took place ignominiously on a Thursday evening in the beth h’midrash or study room in the basement of the synagogue–kind of like a pauper’s funeral.  Naturally everyone in my family was “good,” and we were all Bar Mitzvahed upstairs on a Saturday. Traditionally a large party followed.

Since Shabbos went from sundown to sundown, if the party was scheduled for Saturday night it could include not only food and drink but music and dancing as well. If the party was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, there could be no music since it was still the Sabbath. Our family always held the party in the afternoon. Traditionally the festivities took place in a large banquet hall right in the synagogue building. In those days, I took things as they came and the immediate transition from the house of prayer to the house of mirth was natural. Now, being older and more skeptical, I am puzzled by the fact that an orthodox synagogue countenanced the “work” of putting on a party in its midst on the Sabbath itself, even without the music.  Oh, I realize that all of the workers supplied by the caterer were goyim, in theory exempt from our strictures, but there seems to be a fundamental inconsistency lurking in the heart of the matter, like the snake in Eden…

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

A recipe for kishke.

From Sue: I thought quite a while about what recipe might accompany this section of Sidney’s Bar Mitzvah essay and I finally decided on kishke.  Making kishke, as you will see, is an “elemental experience.” Raw chicken fat and beef intestines . . . with those for ingredients, I have a feeling you’ll spend the time it takes to make kishke meditating on the origins and meanings of things…

For the recipe, turn to page 2

Pages: 1 2

Above: Happy Parents (from the look on their faces, Sidney must have chanted his H’af Torah well!)

Sidney Gross (1941–2016)

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Saturday morning services under normal circumstances were a great tribulation to any young boy, the more so on the day of his Bar Mitzvah.  Our synagogue was Orthodox, which meant that the services, which lasted a good three hours, were conducted entirely in Hebrew.  In summer the un-airconditioned shul was hot and in winter it was worse, due to the eccentricities of the steam heat.  The walls, though peeling, had once been painted in pastel colors, predominantly blue and peach.  I used to amuse myself during the services by spinning fantasies about the symbols for the tribes of Israel, which were painted on the walls above the pews, and about the eagle (or hawk) which spread his magnificent wings across the breadth of the ceiling.  At the very front of the synagogue in a raised alcove next to the Ark sat the president of the congregation and the rabbi.  How I used to envy these men because they had padded seats with arms—my first lesson in the perquisites of high office.  Eight or nine rows from the front was a huge creamy marble reading platform to which the Torah would be carried during the service.  Behind the platform were twenty or more pews, and at the end of the room was a large board to which were attached bronze plaques with the names of deceased congregants.  Running around three sides of the room was the balcony where the women sat.  This balcony was usually empty except when there was a Bar Mitzvah.

The high point of any Saturday service for me was the moment that the Torah was taken from the Ark to the reading platform.  A special prayer was said as the scrolls were removed.  The person holding the Torah would face the congregation and raise the scrolls straight up over his head, probably in ritualistic imitation of Moses.  To my youthful eyes, the Torah looked immense and each week I waited in dread anticipation for the day that some poor soul would drop it.  I knew that if this happened it would mean bad luck.  In my mind, I anticipated all the special prayers and supplications that the rabbi no doubt held ready for the occasion.  How would the man who dropped it feel when he got home from prayer?  What could he possibly say to his wife and children?  Fortunately, it never happened.

When the Torah was carried out on June 19, 1954, it was a special time for me.  I had to remain especially alert for the words “Y’a mod ha bocher ha’bar mitzvah… and step up to the reading stand.  I had seen too many of my friends before me become laughing stocks when, unaware that they had been called, they were shoved violently from their seats or summoned by the reader with a “psst!” This wasn’t going to happen to me.

Getting to the reading stand and up the three or four steps was like walking the last mile.  I was shaking to beat the band and hoping that nobody would notice since my suit was so generously cut.  Again, an event occurred which I remember vividly.  The reader grasped a long brass pointer, shaped like a human fist with the index finger protruding, and tapped a specific world in a sea of illegible black scrawl on a sea of parchment.  Here was where I was to begin.

I didn’t read directly from the Torah.  My Ha’f Torah was printed in a slim paper bound volume which I carried with me.  Beneath each word in the reading was a set of diacritical marks which stood for specific vocal intonations.  I had spent the past six months taking Bar Mitzvah lessons just to learn my Ha’f Torah.  Three days a week, in the dead of a Brooklyn winter, I would stay behind with the other “Bar Mitzvah boys” after Hebrew class ended at 6:30 p.m.  After a month or two, I had chanted the Ha’f Torah with such frequency that I knew it by heart.  Va yish lach Jehoshua b’nun… I remember how I used to envy the other boys chanting their Bar Mitzvah lessons a year or so before my own, thinking that soon I too would be doing the same thing.  From the second floor of the Hebrew school, the sounds would carry for half a block down Twentieth Avenue.  My anticipation reached great heights.  Nothing but death itself could stop me.  And what if I died?  What does G..d do about un-Bar Mitzvahed boys?  And, now, at the reading stand was the culmination of it all.  Today I remember nothing about the ceremony itself.  My last clear vision is the pointer tapping the opening word in the Torah.  And then the party—the reward of the just!

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)