Sol

Our oldest uncle, Sol, short for Solomon, Schloime, in Yiddish, was born in the city of Bialystok in Poland. He arrived on Ellis Island with his mother, our grandmother, at about the age of four.  And although he attended the best public high school in New York City, Townsend Harris, the one you had to take a test to get into, though his English was perfect, there nevertheless remained about him a touch of the immigrant’s singled-mindedness of purpose. He wanted to succeed and he did.

Yet his shape always spoke of the old country: a broad-shouldered rectangle, not fat but giving a wide appearance, like our grandmother. The other uncles, his younger brothers, were built like Americans – above average in height with rangy, restless, modern bodies; they seemed always on the move. Sol was stolid and slow moving, but deliberate like a forceful peasant leader.  When the younger uncles quarreled and our grandparents didn’t know how to make it better, they would have lunch with Sol and talk about the family troubles, as if he were a peer, rather than their first-born son.

As a young man, Uncle Sol opened a kosher restaurant and delicatessen on Rivington Street, directly across from the butcher store. Being so close he could both share in and profit from his father’s public esteem. And, in case you didn’t know that he was the son of Schmulka, a winking neon sign ten feet long advertised BERNSTEIN’S on the side of his building.

The restaurant was long and narrow, paneled in dark wood with deep yellow lighting.     Entering you met on one side a long counter protected by glass.  Dense vines of long, plump and short, dried salamis dangled from hooks near the ceiling.  Of course they were the family brand, every one a Schmulka Bernstein from the smokehouse across the street.  The countermen wore white jackets and white paper garrison caps that were modeled on the dress hats of enlisted men, this made them seem like uniformed soldiers, alert, vigorous, awaiting orders in a landscape of brined meats.

Sol and his wife, our aunt Ruth, remained living on the Lower East Side all their lives. They remained Orthodox in their Jewish observance and synagogue attendance. This set them apart from the rest of our parents who fled as quickly as they could to homes in the outer boroughs and more easy-going Conservative congregations. Being Orthodox, Sol and Aunt Ruth did not travel on the Sabbath, so they did not attend the lavish Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of their many nieces and nephews; we were 15 in all.  Saturday night after sundown, when they might have joined us for further celebration, Uncle Sol’s restaurant was at its busiest, so he had to be there.  A restaurant, like an ocean liner, needs its captain.

In 1959, the delicatessen moved around the corner and was re-born as Bernstein-on-Essex serving kosher Chinese food.  It was the first moment of what we would now call fusion cuisine and it quickly became a destination eatery for Orthodox Jews from all over the world.  Like Schmulka, our grandfather, our oldest uncle became a man of note, an innovator, in the small circle of Jewish observance and then, later, in the somewhat wider circle of those who look with longing toward the Lower East Side as the Plymouth Rock of American Jewish life. 

Bernstein-on-Essex hummed with action and satisfaction. The main room consisted of three rows of formica tables with a large mirror to the left.  The New York Times food critic, John Canaday, who was a fan, described it as “totally unglamorous – a clean, efficiently arranged, brightly lit eating place.”  He described it as “a triumph of culinary ingenuity over dietary laws.”  Chinese waiters tended the tables. They wore black skullcaps with gold tassels that made them look simultaneously like observant Jews, and outtakes from the Mikado.  You could choose from either the Chinese or the delicatessen menu, you could mix and match. In the first: chop suey, moo goo gai pan, egg rolls, wonton soup, sweet and sour veal. In the other, large sandwiches of pastrami, corned beef, salami hard or soft, bologna, with a half-sour pickle and slaw on the side.

At the table tucked behind the cash register, Uncle Sol held court. Those in-the-kosher-know or those who wanted to be, would make sure to say hello or stop to chat. He took care with his clothes. His hats were the finest, white fedoras in spring, jaunty straw boaters in summer. Beneath the white delicatessen jacket, his shirts were immaculate. He always wore a tie.

It was the jacket that Aunt Ruth used to joke about. “I thought I was getting a doctor, but at least I got the white coat.”  

Sometimes she would say, “I wanted an M.D.”

And he would reply, “I am one. A Meat Dealer.” And they would both laugh.

Nowadays, on the Bernstein Cousin’s Club Facebook page a flurry of posts appear whenever something delicatessen makes the news – a new book or movie, the closing of the iconic Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue.   The quintessential Jewish food we rarely eat (too much salt, too much fat) has become a touchstone of family togetherness, even for those younger cousins who never actually visited downtown. If you search on the world-wide-web for Bernstein-on-Essex, you will discover it was commonly known as Schmulka Bernstein’s. If you google Schmulka Bernstein, you will find stories of Bernstein-on-Essex. Father and first son are fused in the public imagination. And there, in the Cloud, perhaps for eternity, hangs one thread of our family story. 

Uncle Murray and the Family Gauntlet

A dog-eared business card lies on my desk. It reads Mr. Murray Bernstein, 3701 West McNab Road, Pompano Beach, Florida, then a zip code, a telephone and a fax number. But Mr. Murray Bernstein had not been in any business for at least a decade by the time he created these cards.   An ornate script tells more: The Preserve At Palm-Aire.  And finally, in faint, tiny print as if the letters themselves were embarrassed to admit the truth: Assisted Living Facility #7693.

           

The Preserve was where my Uncle Murray spent the final years of his life, in a suite for one. For one because his wife of five decades, my Aunt Natalie, needed full-time care and so was in another part of the facility.  She could still converse, she was still herself, but she could no longer stand or dress or toilet herself .

The word facility has a slithering reptilian sound, but then the word preserve, however ornately inscribed, is no better. Like a pickle jar? Like a salted herring?  Maybe there are no suitable euphemisms for an institution that is so obviously the last stop

In any case, Uncle Murray did the best he could. Though he and Aunt Natalie had bickered continually in their later years, each day at noon he made a pilgrimage on foot down one flight of stairs, across the parking lot to an adjacent building, up another staircase, to where she sat in a wheelchair in a day room among many others in wheelchairs.  Side by side the couple ate lunch and afterward looked out the window, spoke of the grandchildren. They did not squabble.

           

This was notable because Mr. Murray Bernstein had been, for most of his life, a man who was quick to find fault.  He, and Aunt Natalie too, were enforcers of hemlines and haircuts, if the former was too short or the latter too long.  Even toddlers were not immune to his gravelly asides like  “thin hair,” or “already overweight.”

 Once, as an adult, I sat directly in front to him at a Saturday morning Torah service and overheard him mutter to no one in particular a stream of half-sentence disparagements about the clothes, weight or haircuts of those around us.   It was at that point that I understood two things. First, that he could not stop, his synapses sent out negative chatter no matter where he was. Second, that I do the same, only I know to shut up about it.   If I’m in a new situation or if I get uncomfortable or sometimes just for the heck of it, my dendrites and axons blither on in just the same way. The difference is, I know not to believe myself.

How do I know to do this?  Well – ha ha - I have two advanced degrees, four decades of practicing psychotherapy and several years of studying Buddhist concepts of mind.   It took all that together for me to achieve distance on my own mental grumbling. So it’s not surprising that Mr. Murray Bernstein, former kosher butcher and retired real estate agent, never could.   

Nor was he the only one. For we lived in a texture of “brittleness and nagging ill-temper,” the historian of this generation Ruth Gay, calls it. “A certain vehemence of expression,” a chronic irritability with things or other people.  

The quintessential unpleasant relative, the one who was a distillation of this was a distant cousin, a childless widow, who appeared exactly once a year at our first night Passover seder on Long Island.  She had, I was told, nowhere else to go. Inevitably, as soon as I entered the room, proud of my new-for-the-holidays clothes, she would say in a loud voice, “Michele, can’t you get those things removed?”

           

By which she was referring to the two dark moles on my left cheek.  These moles were my most detested body part.   I spent long moments looking in my bathroom mirror and imagining how beautiful I would be if only they would disappear.   Occasionally I wept to my mother about my face.  She would try to soothe me by declaring, “You’re a beautiful girl.” Or, defensively, “They’re beauty marks. Not moles. They’re called beauty marks.” Which only made me feel worse because this was so obviously a lie.  The old lady at Passover spoke truth.

As far as I know none of the adults at the seder table ever took her aside to admonish her.   But really, what was there to say?  The damage had been done, They probably all agreed with her about the moles.

***

The last time Uncle Murray and I were together, at The Preserve, something had changed.  Kindness had come to him. When I tell this story to friends, they ask if he had had a stroke. So, in anticipation of this query, gentle reader, I can answer no, he hadn’t.  His health was good.

We sat on either side of the couch in the narrow apartment. As I recall, it was just the two of us, which, I am sure, had never happened before.  He was curious about my life, about what my children were doing. And as I reported on us all he kept nodding and saying, “Yes, yes.  Sure.” Indicating that of course we were successful in our endeavors, of course my children shone. “Sure, sure, yes.”  He was warm, he paid attention, he was interested.

Chesed and rachamim, loving-kindness and compassion; late in life, those two blessings from the daily liturgy had drawn nigh to him. And, I hope, self-compassion as well.

That must have been the day I took one of my uncle’s useless business cards, or perhaps he handed it to me. Now on my desk, it nestles among some multi-colored paper clips, right where I can see it.  Something about the Mr. at the front of his name – old-fashioned, courtly, in search of dignity – fills me with warmth and tenderness.  It reminds me, that after all those years, we finally met.

The View From The Cash Register

Let’s say it’s a Sunday afternoon in 1957 and I get the chance to be the cashier at Schmulka Bernstein’s Kosher Meats & Provisions.  The regular cashier, a distant, elderly cousin, has gone out for a late lunch.  I am eleven years old. 

The cash register stands in its own oval, shielded by a glass partition. To reach it I take one step up, becoming immediately taller than I was before and this makes me feel important, almost regal, the mistress of all I survey.  My red tile kingdom with its fine covering of clean sawdust lies before me, its borderland the delicatessen counter on my left with its hanging salamis above and the slabs of brisket turned into pastrami and corned beef pressing against the glass on the counters.  Before me the counters display rows of fresh lamb chops. 

Behind me, sloping down to darkness is the hallway that links to the smokehouse factory. Why the hall is dark, I can’t tell you. Perhaps an error in the design no one bothered to correct.   Where I stand, in the center of the store, all is bathed in a bright fluorescence, without shadows.

No customers appear though I am eager to do the retail rituals of reading receipts, taking in cash and making change.  Then my uncle Harry emerges out of the darkness of the back hall.  He is cradling a stack of individually wrapped rib steaks in the crook of one arm and moves toward the giant meat locker at the back of the store. At almost the same moment a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit pushes open the front door, loosening his tie as he enters.

“You here again?!”  Says my Uncle Harry and turns to open, one after another, the three steel handles on the locker. Enters, the door slams behind him. He's gone but his hoarse baritone hangs in the air. It could indicate an amused hello because the guy comes in often or it could mean go away don’t bother me.  There's a silence, broken only by an undercurrent of electric hum from the light bulbs. 

Maybe Harry intends to be funny the way on television Groucho Marx is supposed to be funny when he insults people, or maybe Harry is really happy to see the guy. I can’t tell. The guy looks uncertain too.  

My uncle comes out of the meat locker. Again the door slams shut.  

“Good to see you too, Harry,” the customer replies with a dryness in his voice which could be sarcastic or merely hello.  For all I know they’ve been doing this back and forth for years.  After all, an ambiguous greeting from Groucho makes his audience hoot with laughter. Why insults are funny is one of the mysteries of adult life.

Another mystery is the absence of shoppers.  The man with the rumpled suit is the only consumer I get to take care of during the hour that I stand by my station. Later, driving home I overhear my mother and father talking about things not going well.  Those who once lined up two and three deep at the counters have moved to the other boroughs.  The uncles want to close the retail store and focus on the smokehouse products – salamis and bolognas.  But this would mean laying people off and Zayde won’t hear of it.  They quarrel with their father, with each other and, finally, with whoever comes near. 

My uncle Harry never meant to make his career in kosher meat. After graduating City College with a degree in physics he worked in Washington D.C. in the National Bureau of Standards. There he tested light bulbs, searchlights and other electrical devices.  

This was during World War II. In 2005, when we spoke,  he told me he would have stayed there but he had  “the wrong attitude. When you go to work for the federal government you have to look to go elsewhere all the time. I was happy to stay where I was which was not good. You have to make friends, which I didn’t make too many friends.  They all knew each other. It was an exclusive club so to speak.”  I am thinking he was too Jewish, too New York to make it into the club. But he doesn’t say this.  

Meanwhile, on Rivington Street there was a mother and father who missed him and could offer a job in the family business at much higher than a government salary.  In this way he was drawn back into what his wife, my aunt Edith called “the gravitational pull of the Bernstein family.”  She did not mean it as a compliment. She did not want his science training wasted among beef carcasses.  To resolve their disappointment Uncle Harry and Aunt Edith planned for their older son, Herb, to become a physicist. And he did!  Quite lauded and published as well.  A miracle in itself, that what two parents longed for the child, as an adult, accomplished.  

Harry Bernstein in his mid-fifties. 

When the retail operation and the smokehouse finally closed of its own weight in 1966, Uncle Harry was a vigorous fifty.  He eventually settled into the New York State bureaucracy where he worked as an arbiter of unemployment compensation disputes.  On vacations, he and Aunt Edith traveled. They studied modern Hebrew and volunteered in immigrant settlement centers in Israel.  Toward the end of his working life, this former physicist and former kosher butcher, was studying Spanish so that he could speak directly, without an interpreter, to the petitioners who came looking for justice at the modest desk that was his courtroom.

DOES IT MATTER HOW YOU SLICE IT?

"Watch your fingers!” Uncle Ben says to me, almost neutral, slightly hurried, as if it’s his obligation as a relative and an adult, but not as if he’s really worried. So I continue pushing the steel blade of the slicing machine back and forth while thin, perfect rounds of liverwurst stack up on the matte side of the wax paper.  This interchange is happening on a Sunday afternoon at the delicatessen counter of Schmulka Bernstein Kosher Meats and Provisions, circa 1957, I’m twelve years old and have achieved my full height of just-tall-enough, five foot three. My uncle Ben is in his forties, sports a handsome moustache, he is my grandparents’ third child, the first to be born in the United States.   At this moment he is on his way somewhere else, maybe to the back hall that leads to the smokehouse he now manages because he “has had enough of the customers,” in retail.

           

I love to slice the cold cuts thin, my favorite setting on the blade is number one. Number one slices are elegant, shapely. They take a little more time to produce but, on the positive side, they make you feel you’re getting more for your money. Salami, bologna and liverwurst slice easily. Each one has a perfectly circular, clear edge and is plump and glossy to the touch when you push tight against the blade.

The counter man has gone out for a smoke and I have permission. That’s the wonder of it, looking back to this time. Zeide gave me permission. In this era adults do not spend excess time worrying about liability and safety. Children ride bicycles with the breeze moving past their hair because safety helmets are only associated with dire calamities like war. Even Uncle Ben doesn’t insist I stop what am I doing. 

           

“Butchers have lost fingers that way,” he calls over his shoulder as he moves down the dark hallway at the back of the store. But his fingers, all the uncles’ fingers, are intact. So I’m not worried. Besides, I’m very good at it.

           

My Uncle Ben speaks with a New York accent. Well, we all do. He has a strong warm, baritone with a hint of rasp and a touch of the nasal.  Nothing I would have ever noticed one way or the other except that it was this voice that kept him from becoming a high school English teacher which was what he aspired to after he graduated City College into the Great Depression.

Whenever my mother told the story she would begin in a sorrowful tone,  “He always had that voice.”  Then, “In those days it was very hard to get a teaching job.” Then, with disgust, “Now they’re begging for teachers.”

           
Only in graduate school do I read a history of Jewish teachers in the New York City school system and learn that it wasn’t personal to my uncle. The oral exam was designed to keep Jewish candidates from teaching. “An applicant’s voice had to be ‘audible, pleasant, well modulated, without being nasal, high-pitched, strident or noisy.’ Dropping the ‘g’ at the end of gerunds was considered a serious cultural defect. And though this could have applied to candidates from a variety of ethnicities, the criteria were perceived as being applied particularly to Jews.”

Did Ben know that it wasn’t personal to him? Did he know he was a victim of a seasoning of antisemitism? And would that knowledge have made it easier to bear? My own historical air became a little clearer after I studied the wider circumstance, as if I had satisfactorily pushed a missing piece of the family jigsaw puzzle into place. But maybe, if it’s your heart’s desire, it doesn't matter that it wasn’t a personal flaw.

           

My uncle Ben remained a kosher butcher all his life, working first in the family business and then, when the business closed, he worked as a kosher butcher for others. Sometimes this made him terribly, tearfully unhappy. 

           

He solaced himself for a disappointing work life by being a good family man and an educated person. He read a lot. He and my Aunt Anne attended opera and ballet. He collected antique figurines from the Mediterranean basin. And then, when he was sixty-five and happily retired with a sturdy pension from the New York Kosher Butchers Association, he became the librarian of his quite large West Palm Beach condo association.  Woman, particularly women, asked him for suggestions as to what they should read.

           

“They all love him,” Aunt Anne said. She was somewhat gleeful about it. Perhaps because he was hers, perhaps because she liked seeing him blossom into the mentor he had always wanted to be. “He loves to talk about culture and literature, so they love him.”

           

More than a quarter century of fruitful retirement awaited him.  In a time when most of the adult males of his generation were incapable in the kitchen, Uncle Ben was also a superlative entrée chef and an expert appreciator of the best cuts of beef. A man who could bake an outstanding brisket and serve it sliced, against the grain, elegantly thin.