Tag Archives: childhood

February 22, 2010 · 8:59 am

Growing Up in Zharnov

by Harry Lazarus (Tenafly, NJ)
(interviewed by Bruce Black)

When I was growing up, I used to love listening to my grandfather, Harry Lazarus, z”l, retell  stories about his childhood in Zharnov, a small village near Lodz and not far from Warsaw, and how he made his way to America. He was a baker with bright blue eyes above a thick nose, a warm smile, and broad shoulders, and he spoke with the thick Eastern European Yiddish accent of his youth. Before his death a number of years ago, I recorded one of our story-telling sessions in his apartment in Tenafly, NJ. In this segment he describes his early years.

BB: So, Grandpa, tell me about growing up in Zharnov.

HL: Well, when I was seven years old, I was a very lively boy. I used to run around in winter without skates–just with my boots–on the ice. I ran up and down the river and everything, and I used to go outside and I used to stay by the fire, and then I used to come home.

And my mother used to work in the bakery. She worked very hard, and I used to help her as much as I could. I used to run to buy everything, to help whatever I could. In the morning before I went to the Hebrew school, I used to carry out the rolls, the orders, to restaurants, and then I used to go to Hebrew school half-a-day, and then I used to go half-a-day in the Russian school, the Russian-Polish school.

And everything was going all right but I was never satisfied with what we had in the house. I always liked to take something more. In the summer the druggist man had a whole wall with grapes, and I went in there and took bunches of grapes. And I had another boy, a partner, and we went out and we had grapes for a whole day. We had grapes!

And it was the same thing with everything. I went in the teacher’s garden and I went over to pick up some cucumbers. I needed cucumbers? But I went there to pick them and I spoiled so much stuff by going in, and that boy was supposed to watch so that we could get away. But the teacher caught me, and he gave me a slap in the face, and took me in to my father and complained.

My father saw that he made me a red cheek and said, “Why did you hit him so much?” And he hollered at the teacher.

But, anyhow, that’s what I used to do in Zharnov.

BB: Anything else you want to say about your childhood?

HL: Then girls and boys weren’t allowed to walk together. Girls used to walk separate and boys used to walk separate. It was a very religious town.

So, I used to take down these stickers from the trees and I used to throw them on the girls. The more wild I was, the more girls I had that loved me.

I went in Hebrew school–there weren’t many students, I wouldn’t say much, about twenty-five boys in the school–and the rabbi’s daughter fell in love with me.

One time we had to give him our papers, and after that we had to write the whole thing over and over. I didn’t like his writing, so I didn’t want to give him the paper. Then he took me and he hit me with his strap. He gave me some slap! Not just me, you know, a few other boys–they didn’t like his writing either, so they didn’t give him the papers. But he knew that I am the leader, so he strapped me.  He hit me very much. And when I came back home, my brother, Izzy, went to the rabbi and told him, “If you’re going to hit him, I’m going to hit your head off, if you’re going to hit him so. You made him black and blue marks from the strap.”

BB: Why didn’t his daughter try to save you from the beatings?

HL: Oh, she was crying. She called her mother over, and they pulled me away. Her father wanted to kill me, you know, he was so mad because I didn’t give him the paper.

And that was my life. I was growing up. When I was twelve years old, I knew how to read Russian and Polish and Jewish, and an uncle of mine came from a big city.

BB: Which city did he come from?

HL: He came from Lodz. He made a theater, and he put together a show in Zharnov. He took one of the finest buildings and he made a show and he put me in the show. And everything was nice, everything was good.

But when I was about thirteen years old, my mother passed away. She was sick, and my brother Izzy wanted to be a doctor. He was in a hospital, an intern, in a big city, and we sent him a telegram to come back. And he came home, and she died in his hands, my mother.

When she died, my brother Izzy decided to get married so he could take care of us. I was twelve or thirteen years old, my sister Yetta was about nine years old, and my sister Tilly was six years old. He figured he would get married and would take care of us.

He was full of life. He made himself a little room where we had three mills and where we made oil for the farmers before Easter. He made there a room for himself to live there, a very poor room.

My father didn’t like that life. He liked to have another wife again, and he started to have arguments with my brother Izzy.

My brother Izzy said, “Nu, I’ve had enough.” He wrote away a letter to Meyer, our step-brother in New York, and Meyer sent him a boat card. At that time, a boat card was about twenty-five dollars to go with the boat to come here. I don’t remember if he sent him the money or if he sent him a card, a boat card, but Izzy went away to America.

He came to America, and, well, he couldn’t be a doctor in America. So, he went and learned how to be a dress operator. And at the same time he used to go in a place to help out in a barbershop–he knew how to give a haircut and a shave and he used to make a little money, you know?

Then, when he had enough money, he sent for his wife, Lutzie. She was pregnant when he left her, and she had the baby, Morris, in Europe. She had the baby there and then he took over his wife, and he took over Yetta, and he took over Tilly. He brought them over here. And he tried to keep them alive with the money that he made.

BB: Why didn’t he bring you and Manny over?

HL: Me and Manny? He didn’t take us over. We remained there, but he took over Tilly and Yetta.

BB: How did Izzy meet Lutzie?

HL: She was in my mother’s family, and he was in Lodz and got acquainted with her in Lodz. And he went around with her and everything, and then he married her because of my mother passing away. He married her, and then she got pregnant, and he thought he’s going to lead the business and everything and that’s what’s going to be, but my father didn’t like it.

So, he went away to America, and he brought over Lutzie with Morris, Tilly, and Yetta, and he had a poor life here.

And I was in Zharnov with Manny, and he worked with a tailor and he got a few cents and we used to share together, you know?

BB: And your father? Did he remarry?

HL: My father was in love, and he married again, a nice woman. He married, and he put her right away in the bakery, and I knew already how to work in the bakery, too. Everything was going fine, but a year later he passed away, and he left me an order that we shouldn’t leave my uncle in, but my uncle didn’t care. He came and he threw everyone out.

He threw out Lutzie… she was in Zharnov, too, you know? I was thirteen years old, I used to bring her a piece of candy and a little soda or something because I knew that she was pregnant. She never forgot this, what I used to do as a young boy.

When he came, Lutzie had to go back to her town, and she had the baby, and then Izzy took them over to America.

I remained there in Zharnov, and I had to make a living for myself.

For Pesach I went in another bakery and I worked by the matzahs. They made matzahs for Pesach. So I worked by the oven to shovel in the matzahs and bring them out, and I had to be very careful. When you put in the matzah, the raw matzah mustn’t touch the baked matzah. The rabbi would come, you know, and he’d look if I worked the right way. And I worked the right way. Whatever I made–two dollars or three dollars a week–I made a little living. That wasn’t so bad.

BB: And then what happened?

HL: Then the war broke out…

Next: The Austrian army chases the Russian army out of Zharnov and conscripts the village youth to dig trenches.

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February 16, 2009 · 7:31 am

The Sabbath

by Sandra Yoffee (Sarasota, FL)

My visits with my grandparents were always treasured times, especially when it included the Sabbath.

This was a day joyfully observed each week since my Grandmother, Bubbe, and Grandfather, Zedeh, were devout Orthodox Jews.

On Friday evening before sunset, Zedeh would change from his shabby work clothes into his steel-grey wool suit and snowy white shirt accented with a muted maroon tie.  In his weathered black shoes, he then walked to the nearby synagogue to welcome the Sabbath with prayers.

Bubbe, who remained at home, would light the Sabbath candles and put the finishing touches on her day-long task of preparing the Sabbath meal.

“Come here, my child, and watch as I welcome the Sabbath by lighting the candles,” she said.

I watched as she circled her wrinkled hands around the flames of the candles. With her hands placed over her closed eyes, she sang the blessings for lighting the candles. The beautiful candelabra, etched in silver, resembled a small tree with branches that held six candles. When all the candles were lit, the room was bathed in the glow of their flames.

When Zedeh returned from shul, we sat down at the dining room table to enjoy a delicious Sabbath meal.

After the blessing over the wine and challah, we would feast on steaming chicken soup with feathery light kneidlach, succulent roast chicken, and luscious kugel.

After dinner Bubbe and I sat in the darkened living room on the brown mohair sofa with only the shimmering light of the Sabbath candles.

She told me stories from the old country, and, while the Yiddish flowed, I listened until my eyelids grew heavy and I fell asleep.

On Sabbath morning, we dressed in our finest clothes and walked to their synagogue, B’nai Moshe, on Fifth Street in South Philadelphia.

The synagogue was a beautiful building with many stained glass windows that, through their pictures, told the history of our Jewish heritage.

Bubbe took me upstairs to the balcony where we sat with all the women.  She introduced me to her friends and told them I was her “shaynah aynecal,” her beautiful granddaughter.

With the sound of the women’s whispered prayers in my ears, I leaned over the railing and watched my Zedeh pray in the sanctuary below.

The men, covered with prayer-shawls, swayed front to back as they prayed.

The melodies of their prayers still linger in my memory.

Whenever I go to synagogue today–if I listen quietly–I can hear echoes of those prayers.

The simplicity of their lives, intertwined with their religious practices, forever remains a beautiful part of my memory of them.

Thus my grandparents instilled in me my pride and joy of being Jewish.

Sandra Yoffee was born in Philadelphia, PA, and moved with her husband, A.G., in 2002 to Sarasota, FL, where she is a member of “The Six Pearls,” a writing group dedicated to memoir-writing.

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January 26, 2009 · 8:37 am

The Gray Hairpin

by Linda Albert (Longboat Key, FL)

Granny, who was my mother’s mother, stayed with us every year when the High Holidays rolled around because we lived within walking distance of a synagogue, and, as a traditional Jew, she would not drive on the holiest days of the year. Each time she came to visit, I had to share my bedroom with her.

Her name was Rose Bennett. Born in Russia, she had come to Detroit, Michigan when she was eighteen to marry Louis Solovich, the brother of her sister’s husband. The two families lived next door to each other. Her sister had ten children; Granny had six. Along with Granny’s other sisters and brothers and their progeny, I used to think I was related to the entire city.

As a young girl I pretended to be asleep while Granny prepared for bed and would peek as she undressed, releasing her pendulous breasts from the confines of her corset and undoing the pins from the bun in her snow white hair. As interesting as these observations were, however, they didn’t make up for the loss of privacy I felt forced to endure. And the stray gray hairpins that remained scattered on my dresser after she left were an irritating reminder of that sacrifice.

Whenever Granny was with us, she took it upon herself to try to get the snarls out of my hair, which was blond and a feature my strong-minded mother called my “crowning glory.” Despite my complaints, I was not allowed a haircut from the ages of three to twelve. Instead, I wore my hair, which otherwise would have hung down to my waist, in fat, ugly, and unfashionable braids. Not only did I hate those braids, but I despised the unpleasant pinches on the cheek that they prompted and the comparisons to “pretty little Dutch girls.”

In an attempt to distract me from the pain of the hairbrush working through my knotted hair, Granny tried to tell me stories about the Old Country. But I whined and carried on so much she was never able to get to an ending. How was I to know until years later that Granny had collected rain water to wash her own hair? In her own gentle way, she had tried to teach me to take pride in myself and value my gifts.

When I turned twelve, my oldest cousin Ginny convinced my mother to allow me to have my hair cut short. Without my braids and those awful snarls, Granny’s reason for story-telling stopped. It never occurred to me to ask her to finish her stories. I simply assumed she would be around forever and I could hear them later.

My mother used to say that while Granny kept kosher, at least she wasn’t “crazy kosher,” and didn’t inflict her ways on her children, all of whom became Reform or liberal in the practice of religion. When she was with us, Granny performed her rituals in quiet corners, lighting Sabbath and holiday candles while we went about our worldly ways unaware of the richness we might be missing. And every year I continued to share my room with her, finding forgotten gray hairpins on my dresser as reassuringly annoying souvenirs of her visits.

These visits came to a jolting halt for me when I was a sixteen years old. Though she had looked like an old lady from an early age with her white hair and flowered dresses, her corsets and matronly bosom, and her old-lady tie-shoes with the thick black heels, Granny suffered from nothing more than hypertension and arthritis, and otherwise had the energy of a girl. Yet one night, in her seventy-second year, she announced to my aunt and uncle, with whom she lived, that she didn’t feel well, lay down on her bed, closed her eyes, and quietly died.

I was devastated. The minute I heard Granny was gone, I knew I had thrown away a priceless opportunity to understand my grandmother and to know more about my heritage. What was it like for Granny to have come to America when she was only eighteen to marry a stranger? How did she manage when she was left a widow with six children? (My mother, the youngest of six, was only eight month’s old.) How far did Uncle Max, the only boy in a fatherless household, actually get when he ran away from his home in Detroit to find his grandfather in Russia? Was he punished or hugged when he was finally found? Why didn’t anyone talk about Grandpa Louis, the handsome man in the picture and the hinted at “brains of the family”? And why did she stick to her traditional ways? Nobody but Granny could really answer those questions, and now it was too late for me to ask them.

The minute it was too late, I knew how much love and patience Granny had bestowed upon me, despite my lack of deservedness. I knew then with painful clarity that Granny would always be one of my greatest teachers, not only by her example as a woman who had taken the challenges of life with grace, but by the lesson of her death. I promised myself that I would never again take anyone or any situation quite so for granted. I would ever after be instructed by the inevitability of endings in life.

For years I regretted my failings in relation to Granny. I found my heart warmed by anyone who pronounced my name with a foreign lilt. I gravitated to other people’s stories. And then in a writing class twenty years after her death, I wrote about Granny in a character sketch, starting and ending with the memory of those gray hair pins, how real they remained to me, how much I still loved my very special grandmother, and how much I would have liked to thank her.

I read the piece later to a group of other writers. Just as I got to the last line in which I said I hadn’t seen a gray hairpin in twenty years, the woman sitting next to me spied something on the floor and leaned down to pick it up. Incredibly, it was a gray hairpin.

Ever since then I like to think that I have redeemed myself in Granny eyes and have been forgiven.

Linda Albert’s essays, articles, creative non-fiction, and poems have appeared in many publications, including McCall’s Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Sacred Journey, Today’s Caregiver Magazine, Itineraries, and the Borderline and SNReview Literary Journals. She lives on Longboat Key, Florida with her husband. You can visit her on-line at http://snreview.org/ (autumn 2008, poetry section) or at her website http://www.lindaalbert.net/

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November 23, 2008 · 3:51 am

Finding A Place for Myself

by Charlotte Herman (Lincolnwood, IL)

Our apartment on Chicago’s West Side (also known as the “Great Vest Side”) in the 1940’s was where the relatives congregated.

The men sat in the front room smoking cigarettes, and the women drank tea in the dining room. The older ones drank from glasses and sipped the tea through sugar cubes held between their teeth. The younger, more “modern” ones drank from teacups and used spoons to stir in sugar from the sugar bowl.

All the relatives spoke Yiddish, or English with Yiddish accents. I would go from room to room trying to find a place for myself. A place where I belonged.

I sat with the women, watching and listening. My grandmother and older aunts always wore flowered housedresses, thick black shoes, and elastic stockings to cover up their varicose veins. I listened to their conversations and studied the way they dressed.

And I worried.

When I grow old will I suddenly start speaking with a Yiddish accent? Will I have to wear flowered housedresses and elastic stockings and thick black shoes?

I couldn’t bear the thought. So off I’d go into the smoke-filled front room where I watched and listened some more.

The men spoke about business, the war, and President Roosevelt and whether or not he was “good for the Jews.” And while they were trying to settle the problems of the world, they took turns pinching my cheeks. I’d rub my cheeks and go back to sit with the women. And worry.

During Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the relatives went to Anshe Kanesses Israel Congregation (aka the “Russische shul”) on Douglas Boulevard. The men sat downstairs, and the women were up in the balcony. Here, too, I tried to find a place where I belonged.

Up and down the stairs I’d go, from one section to the other.

I sat with my mother in the ladies’ section, fascinated by their hats, with feathers and flowers and G-d knows what growing out of them.

Then I’d go down to sit with my father who’d wrap his tallis around me and I’d braid the fringes. When I grew tired of sitting with the men, it was time to climb up the stairs again to be with the women.

On Passover the relatives crowded together in the dining room for the Seder. My mother always presented a beautiful table, and my grandmother would exclaim her approval with “Hoo ha.”

Gefilte fish. “Hoo ha.”

Chicken soup and knaidlach.. “Hoo ha.”

Chopped liver. “Hoo ha.”

Being the youngest, I sang the Four Questions, using the latest melody I’d learned at Hebrew school. And I was the one who would open the door to invite Elijah the Prophet to come in and drink from his special cup of wine.

How excited I was when I ran back to the table and looked inside the cup. Elijah had taken a sip!

One night I discovered why I was given the honor of opening the door. Standing there at the doorway, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my father pouring some wine out of the special cup. It was my father who was Elijah. I never told anyone that I caught on. And when my children were growing up, we played that same game, with my husband becoming Elijah.

Many years have passed since those days in the old neighborhood. My mother and father and most of the relatives are gone. But I can still see them. Still hear their voices.

I don’t speak with a Yiddish accent or wear flowered housedresses or elastic stockings or thick black shoes.

But when one of my daughters sets a lovely table, or a grandchild paints a pretty picture, I have been known to let out an occasional “Hoo ha.”

Charlotte Herman’s most recent children’s novel, My Chocolate Year, takes place in Chicago in the 1940’s — the setting of many of her books. You can visit her website at: www.charlotteherman.com

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