Pelham Parkway, a
tree-lined boulevard in the Bronx, was the growing
edge of the city back in the 1930s. New apartments
were rising out of empty lots. Across the Parkway
were yet private homes and even farms. Max and Musha
Cohen moved into the neighbourhood with their two
children. They were moving almost every year because
in those days landlords were trying to fill
apartments and would attract tenants by offering the
first month rent free. In the year of this story, the
Cohens were living in a one bedroom apartment at 2136
Wallace Avenue which had a shallow fountain in the
courtyard that glowed with coloured lights at night.
On the particular day of this story it was autumn, a
day in the month of Tishri, which is the first month
of the Jewish calendar. Young Esther, the second of
the two children born to Max and Musha, and not yet
my mother, had permission not to go to school, P.S.
38. Sukkos (a Jewish festival [Leviticus 23:41-43]
celebrating the harvest and having many different
spellings, all of them right) was approaching. Esther
had received an invitation from cousin Tamar, whom
everyone called aunt Tamar, to come and see their
sukkah (a temporary booth of sorts, built to remind
Jews of their forty years spent wandering the
chapters of Exodus).
Esther shared her parents' bedroom, sleeping on a cot
with an old featherbed that had accompanied her
mother from Europe. That morning her mother called
for her to wake and come eat breakfast before getting
dressed. She joined her parents, who were already
dressed, at the small wooden table in the kitchen and
was served oatmeal, bread, and hot cocoa. "Eat,
eat," her mother insisted. Esther was not to
arrive to Aunt Tamar's doorstep seemingly hungry.
Tamer shouldn't think her cousin Esther's parents
can't afford to feed their children. "You should
only eat a cookie," Esther's mother said.
As they ate breakfast, they all read the newspapers.
Her father read the Jewish Morning Journal,
a conservative paper printed in Yiddish. Her mother
read The New York Times. The Jewish
neighbours were reading The Forward
and Der Tag, which were the
"union" papers, the "socialist"
papers. As parts of the paper were being swapped back
and forth, Esther would catch what pieces of the
Times no one else was reading. Her older brother,
Jesse, was not at the table, having already left for
school.
She was made ready for her visit. Her mother brushed
her daughter's long, wavy, auburn hair and braided it
into tzeplach - Russian for pigtails. Then she
instructed her daughter to "Put on your
Shabbusdiker clothes." Esther wore her green,
shirtwaist dress. Of all the clothes her mother made
for her, this was her favourite. On this special day
she got to wear her mother's silk stockings, held up
with round garters. She was thrilled to be wearing
her best shoes, brown kiltie shoes. And off she went,
wearing her beige wool coat and a bouclé Juliet cap
against the cool autumn day, a beautiful day, an
auspicious day, and for the first time, she was being
allowed to ride the train into Manhattan
unaccompanied. She marched proudly along the few
blocks to the el, each block with its own baker,
grocer, Kosher butcher, tailor, barber, and shoe
repair. She walked past her favourite candy store,
where every tooth in the merchant's mouth was gold.
He delighted in smiling and showing them off whenever
she came in for her two-cents plain (chocolate syrup
in seltzer - if she could have afforded more, they
would have added milk and called it an egg cream).
She made her way up the staircase into the thick web
of over-engineered girders that held the tracks
aloft. Pelham Parkway Station. She put her nickel
into the turnstile and climbed a further story to the
platform, there to await her train, by herself,
adult-like, the only child not in school.
The rumbling train ride lasted over an hour. She sat,
maturely, watching the panorama of the Bronx. The
train crossed the narrow Harlem River and soon
burrowed into New York City's subway system. At 77th
Street she disembarked, and climbed out of the
underground network of tracks. The easy part of her
journey was over.
Making her way across Central Park from east to west
was fraught with danger. The journey across Central
Park was wrought with fairytale challenges. The
forested park was beautiful, inviting, the coloured
leaves rustling in the wind and everywhere raining
down, but the park also concealed statues. Esther had
a fear of statuary, afraid they would come to life.
As she made her way among the scenery, she also had
to avoid being surprised by them. When she saw a
bronze figure lurking around a hillock or in a cove
of trees, she would have to give it wide berth. By
circuitous route she avoided first, the Pilgrim, then
the Falconer, and while trying to avoid where Daniel
Webster laid in wait, she was caught unawares by the
Civil War Soldier representing the 107th Regiment.
However she made it safe and sound to Central Park
West and 70th Street. Across the street was her
destination, a majestic building with tall Romanesque
windows, stained glass from the Louis Tiffany
Studios, and Corinthian columns. It was the Spanish
and Portuguese Synagogue, home of the Shearith Israel
Congregation, consecrated 1897. Later, in 1942,
Esther would be married to my father in that
synagogue.
The congregation is much older than the building. It
was founded in 1654, the first Jewish congregation in
North America. Until 1825, it was the only Jewish
congregation in New York. Their ancestry, however,
could be traced back to 1492 in Spain, and 1497 in
Portugal, when Judaism became outlawed. Some of the
exiled Jews escaped to Holland where Jews were
tolerated. From there they joined the colony
established by the Dutch West India Company in
Pernambuco, South America. But even here the
Inquisition caught up with them when Pernambuco was
surrendered to the Portuguese and became Brazil. At
that time, 150 families fled Recife only to be driven
ashore in Jamaica by Spanish ships. It was just
twenty-three members from this community, joined by
Dutch Calvinists, who reached New Amsterdam (later
named New York). Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch colonial
administrator in the Americas and the last governor
of New Netherlands, didn't want these Jews, but the
Dutch West India Company refused his petition to
deport them. After all, many of the company's
stockholders were Jewish.
Esther wasn't going to the synagogue. Instead she was
visiting the Rabbi's home attached to the synagogue
and facing Central Park West. Her Aunt Tamar, née
Hirshenson, was married to the very famous and
influential Rabbi David de Sola Pool, an Englishman
who earn his Ph.D. at Heidelberg. Tamar de Sola Pool
(Hunter, the Sorbonne), born in Palestine the
daughter of a rabbi, was famous in her own right. She
was a passionate Zionist. Unfortunately, Esther in
her youth was not aware of any of this; Tamar was
just her cousin.
Esther climbed the steps to the heavy wooden door and
rang the doorbell. The door was answered by a maid in
uniform. She stared down at the plump, red-haired
child standing on the stoop and frowned. In a little
voice, Esther explained, "I've come to see
Tamar."
"Well, I'm sorry," said the maid with a
heavy accent, "but she has a guest right now and
cannot see anyone." This alarmed Esther. Wasn't
she expected? Had there been a mistake? Her parents
didn't have a telephone, so plans must have been made
days in advance.
Lacking courage, Esther replied, "But Tamar said
- Mrs. de Sola Pool - she expects me. I'm her cousin
Esther."
The maid did not conceal her indignation at this
child's impertinence. "I'll go see," she
said, and closed the door leaving Esther to stand
outside. This was terrible. How could it be resolved?
Maybe her parents made a mistake! But it was Tamar in
a tailored black dress who next opened the front
door, her round, familiar face, tender and always
loving, immediately put Esther at ease. Of course
Esther was expected and was not to be left outside.
The maid was admonished and Tamar personally led
Esther into the house. Esther was filled with pride.
"I have a guest I want you to meet," said
Tamar. They walked down the hall past the rabbi's
study filled with books and arrived at the drawing
room. Esther immediately recognized Tamar's guest
from pictures in the newspapers. "Esther, I want
you to meet my very dear friend, Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt. Eleanor, allow me to introduce you to my
cousin Esther from the Bronx."
Esther was in awe and too shy to speak. This day she
would always remember. The three of them retired to
the yard of the synagogue, where the sukkah had been
set up and decorated. They sat inside the sukkah and
the maid brought them tea. Years later she remembers
little of the conversation, although she thinks the
First Lady asked her about school. However, my mother
has a remarkable memory for clothes. She cannot
forget what the First Lady wore. It was a brown dress
with buttons down the front, a little white collar,
and on her feet she wore Oxford shoes. My mother
remembers wondering why wasn't the First Lady wearing
pumps?
How I wish I could enter into a machine that would
deliver me back in time to that memorable moment in
my mother's childhood. I would not interfere or make
myself known. I would just want to be sitting across
the street from the de Sola Pool residence that fine
autumn day. There are park benches along Central Park
West, against the stone wall that encloses Central
Park. I just want to sit there, smoke a cigar, and
wait for the little girl with red pigtails and beige
coat to arrive at de Sola Pool's front door. Just to
see the sneering maid and knowing what would happen
next, how wonderful it would be to just have a
glimpse. If Mrs. Roosevelt's diaries are kept in
archives, I wonder if a search under the proper date
would find an entry mentioning a meeting with an
adorable girl whose red hair was in braids?
With my mother I strolled Pelham Parkway, arm in arm,
as she tried to help me see her past - different
apartments at different ages; where she lived when
her older brother gave her the money to have her hair
cut; the route she walked when schoolmate Mercer
Ellington, the bandleader's son, carried her books
because he had a crush on her, and she on him,
although she could never let her family know; the
romantic interludes with other boys in front of the
Blind Home at night, confident there could be no
witnesses. She and her friends stopped traffic by
dancing the Big Apple on Pelham Parkway. She showed
me Evander Childs High School, where she remembered
the antics of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. She showed
me where she first met my father. She pointed out the
window of her mother's last bed room. Behind that
window, her mother died in bed of cancer. And she
pointed to the adjacent window at which her father
later died, suffering a heart attacked while trying
to open that window.
February 8th is my mother's birthday, and none of
your business how old she'll be.
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