CHAPTER FIVE
PROGENITORS
2. Maternal Side (part two)
The
oldest progenitor of the maternal side of our family who is still remembered by
my brother DAVID, sisters HELEN and ROSE, and myself was Bobbe HAIE, the mother
of our other grandfather AVROM MEISHE WINOGRAD. In my childhood she was a
stooped, almost hunchbacked old woman, always dressed in dark clothing, who
occupied a tiny room in the house of her daughter-in-law, my maternal
grandmother PESHE. She was my personal enemy, because she always defended her
two granddaughters by another son, who lived across the yard and whose long
braids I could not resist pulling whenever an opportunity presented itself.
The girls would howl, and Bobbe HAIE would come after me, shaking a bony finger
and calling out in her quaking old voice: "Kum aher yingele un ikh veil
dir geben a patch!" (Come here little boy and I will give you a slap!),
while I stood at a safe distance grinning or making faces at her. I also used
to annoy her by banging on her door, then hide and listen to her imprecations
when she came out looking for me. Of course I was reprimanded and punished many
times by grandmother and my mother, but the feud went on until I started going
to cheder and discovered more interesting things to do than torturing the poor
old woman. But I never really liked her. My sisters tell me that she was kind
and nice to them, and no doubt would have been so to me also had I not behaved
so atrociously. She certainly had reason enough not to dote upon this
great-grandson of hers, and I hope that she has forgiven my transgressions
against her.
Bobbe
HAIE performed her last act on this earth, whether she knew it or not, after
her death. My sister HELEN, then about five years old, developed a boil on her
face which did not heal despite all the standard remedies. So superior powers
and healers were resorted to. The child was taken to the old woman's bier and
was put through the ordeal of having Bobbe HAIE's dead hand placed over the
boil to the accompaniment of certain incantations. This was an age-old remedy
for afflictions which did not yield to ordinary methods of cure. Did it work?
All I know is that the boil disappeared--eventually.
Zaide
MEISHE, my maternal grandfather, was also born in about 1860, and he was
married to PESHE LEAH HONDELSALTZ at the age of twenty. For some years he also
worked as a shingle maker, like my other grandfather, and they travelled together
to the
Unlike my
other grandfather, who had three sons and one daughter, still in her teens,
Zeide MAISHE had four daughters and one son. The latter was quite pampered not
only because he was an only son, but also due to his delicate health--he was thought
to have had a touch of tuberculosis, the "white plague," in his
youth. The three younger girls, my mother's sisters, were still unmarried, and
when a match was proposed for the oldest of them grandpa came home from
I have a
rather vague recollection of grandpa MEISHE in Shershev, the most vivid event
being a trip he made all the way to Warsaw, apparently to undergo an operation
for prostate trouble, because I remember overhearing whispers about his having
difficulty in passing water. He was accompanied by grandma PESHE for whom this
seems to have been the first trip to a large city. It was also her first
encounter with indoor plumbing, to which she reacted quite critically. They
stayed at the apartment of her nephew, YISROEL ELIE HANDELSALTZ, which had an
indoor toilet. Grandma expressed her indignation about the indecency of it in
no uncertain terms: "It is a shame and a disgrace! Here you sit in the kitchen
and eat, and right next to it, behind the door, they sit down and . . . .
"You can even hear the noises from there! Feh, nit shein!
" (Phooye, not nice at all !)
What
grandpa MAISHE did in the
What were grandfather's earnings from this life of toil and privation? In an
affidavit sent to me in 1920 for submission to the American Consulate with my
visa application, he declared his income to be twenty dollars per week, and his
total savings as amounting to two thousand dollars. I suspect that these
figures may have been exaggerated, to impress the consulate with his ability to
support me if need be. It is doubtful if
he sent home more than five dollars per week on the average, since in those
days a family in Russian Poland could manage very well on such amount, which
was equivalent to ten rubles. Besides, grandmother and children operated a
store in the market place from which they derived some income of their own. His
personal expenses could not have been more than five dollars a week, of which
two came from his watchman's job. So even if we accept the two thousand dollars
of savings as being correct, his earnings from his "business" could
not have been more than twelve dollars per week on the average, or two dollars
per day. Yet I never heard him grumble or complain. Such were the "good
old days".
Zeide MEISHE crossed the
Grandma PESHE LEAH, Bobbe PESHE to us, also lives in my memory very vividly,
just like Bobbe LEIE. During the first few years of my parents' married life we
lived in "Bobbe PESHE's house" until additional children were born
and there were just no more nooks in the house into which all could be crammed
in. PESHE was rather tall, haggard looking, with a large angular face and
prominent cheekbones--certainly not a beauty as far as her physical appearance
is concerned. But those who got to know her were full of admiration of the
loveliness of her spirit. She was the very embodiment of the
"babushka" who is so often and so lovingly portrayed in Russian
literature. The patience she showed toward us youngsters, the warmth she
exuded, and the ability of calming and controlling the unruly brats, especially
me, were remarkable. I will never forget the sheer animal feeling of languorous
contentment I experienced as I lay cuddled up next to her on the living room
sofa, on a winter Saturday afternoon, listening to her monotonous singsong
reading of the Teitch Humesh--the vernacular translation of the five
books of the Old Testament for those, usually women, who could not understand
the original Hebrew. I felt as I think a little bird must feel under the wing
of its mother--warm, protected, and oblivious of all peril.
Equally
alive in my memory are the long winter. evenings when we ( I think there were
still only three of us then: myself, DAVID and HELEN ) crowded around her while
she was busy at the stove preparing supper; or trailed after her wherever she
moved, all the while rapt in wonder at the fascinating stories she told us. The
heroes were kings and queens, princes and princesses, merchants on the road,
brides and grooms, orphans and other poor people; who were imperilled by
witches, werewolves, real wolves, bears, robbers, stepmothers, snowstorms,
shipwrecks, and what not; and who were saved by wise old men, simple shepherds,
poor but brave gallants, magic rings and incantations, and miracles performed
by Lamed Vovniks. The latter, so named from the Hebrew letters
Lamed and Vov which stand for the number thirty-six, are the righteous men of
that number who, according to mystic belief, always go about the world
disguised as beggars or itinerant workmen and constantly strive against
injustice with the help of their supernatural powers. And whenever grandma
paused to catch her breath, or more likely to recollect or invent further
details of the adventures of the heroes, we would in our eagerness to hear
more tug at her long skirts and call out in chorus: "Nu, Bobbe, nu,
nu?"
In addition to the stories Bobbe PESHE also had games requiring no toys but
body movements to the accompaniment of singsong verses. Some of the stories
were also in verse and were sung to a simple melody repeated with each stanza.
Of these one in particular is still fresh in my mind. It was an interminable
saga about the miserable life of the Jewish
storekeeper, beginning with: "Far a kremershen leben / Volt ikh
kein 'groshen nit geben," (For a storekeeper's
life to live / Not even a cent would I give) and continuing with an account of
what such life was for the female storekeeper, the kremerke, who
often did the trading to supplement the meager earnings of her husband. The
song related how she had to get up at dawn to feed the children; send the older
ones off to cheder; leave the little ones with a neighbour or the maid; rush to
open the store; stand in the freezing weather waiting for a customer; try to
entice each passing peasant into the store; and watch that nothing should be
stolen once he is inside. Then the story described the haggling over the price
and the abuse received, and how right in the midst of it someone would come on
the run to announce that one of the kids got hurt, or that a pig got into the
house and created havoc (pigs used to roam about freely in the streets); and
more, and more, until she had to rush home at dusk to prepare supper, not even
having earned enough to pay for it. How true all this was to real life I found
out when I became older and started helping out in our own store. It left me
with a lasting abhorrence for this kind of business.
To this day I am amazed at the gift of this semi-literate woman, who
probably never read a book in her life except the Teitch Humesh, in
inventing and embroidering all these stories and songs. It was no doubt the
memory of those enchanting recitals that inspired me years later to invent and
tell stories to my own children and grandchildren; and as I watched their eyes
filled with wonderment I could see myself at their age enthralled by Bobbe
PESHE's picturesque narrations.
When I describe grandma as semi-literate I mean this in the modern
sense. In those days she was held in great esteem because of her ability to
read and follow the prayers of the men in
the synagogue, where the women were segregated in the balcony. She was always
surrounded there by other women who could not read and who intoned after her
every word, giving out with a loud "Amen" whenever grandma uttered
it.
This was a common practice
which sometimes brought unexpected results. There was current a story of one such “teamed" woman whose husband
undertook to lead in the prayers in the unscheduled absence of the hazzon.
After he stumbled a few times in the unaccustomed task and lost the correct
melody, his wife in the gallery, anxious to put him back on the right track,
sang out loud and clear, in the proper liturgical tune which he had missed:
"Stile--e--miel, oz--du--u kenst nit, un du--u voist nit, vooss nemst
du--u zikh u--unter?!" (Simpleton, if you can not, and know not, why do
you volunteer?!) This of course was repeated in chorus by the other women
around her, to the guffaws of the entire male congregation.
Grandma PESHE outlived my three other grandparents. She died in Shershev in 1939, before the World War II hostilities began, and was mercifully spared the anguish of seeing her son and the two younger daughters with their spouses and children murdered by the satanic spawn that proclaimed itself to be the master race.