Zayde's Communal Moment

Our grandfather, the man who rarely traveled more than fifteen city blocks from home, once considered starting an intentional rural community.  Yes, really. This was the most surprising fact I learned from Uncle Harry when I interviewed him in 2005.  Schmulka Bernstein, an heir to the oh-so- American idyllic vision of Bronson Alcott or Robert Owen?   Who could imagine such a thing?  But maybe his openhanded wallet, his moniker, the Robin Hood of Rivington Street indicated a secret spirit of daring. After all, he did create and market a wholly original food product -  fry beef. 

Here is that moment, for it was only a moment, as Uncle Harry relayed it to me. “It was probably brought to his attention by a rabbi, no one else. So we come to this place in Somers,New York. It was about an hour from the city. I had a car by then. Me, and my brother Benny went.  Maybe Murray went. It was set up with different buildings, a main building like a clubhouse. It was like a condominium set up. Big buildings, some smaller buildings. My father wasn’t fazed by the amount of money. It was not cheap.  From his point of view, we would all live there, be religious, keep kosher.”

Notice the phrasing “From his point of view…” This didn’t indicate what Harry might have wanted and I wasn’t a savvy enough interviewer to ask him what now seems to me some obvious questions about his own point of view. When I play back the tape I can hear the exasperation rising in the back of his throat.

           

“He was going to bring his own rabbi up there – the Ostrower. Did you ever meet him? A little old grey haired man, white beard. We would go to him for advice. About kosher.”

           

And then the exasperation grows clearer. “About anything! You’d go to the old man. And the old man had sons. Lots of sons! And then my father took one of the sons in to be a mashgiach, and then he took another one in.  He was paying them all a lot of money.”

           

For this is what Zayde did. Although Harry, Ben and Murray were now ostensibly the managers of the business, Schmulka made all sorts of financial decisions without consultation. If someone needed a job and that someone was a religious man or the son of a rabbi, our grandfather would find him something to do. Or put him on the payroll with nothing much to do. It was the way to run a fiefdom, not a modern, profit-generating organization.

The brothers didn’t want to live under the rule of a rabbi. But this is not what they told their father.  In their own new married homes in Brooklyn and Queens they could leave father and mother and orthodoxy behind, join a synagogue with a moderated point of view, even go out on a Saturday night to try Chinese food. But they could not tell their father this outright. Instead they argued logistics.

“We were against it. When we got home we pointed out some of the flaws. His plan was not practical. You were going to live up there – all of us – and have the business on the East Side and travel up and back each day. For a change, he listened to us, maybe because my mother didn’t like the idea either.

           

“My mother had a best friend, Mrs. Sanchek. She lived upstairs on Rivington. She was a midwife. She delivered all of us. Anyway, Mrs. Sanchek was like our mother’s rebbe. They were together every day. Whatever Mrs. Sanchek said was the truth. And Mrs. Sanchek had to earn a living, as midwife. She wasn’t going to move upstate.”

           

What was Zayde looking for? Not the typical immigrant reward where the children do better than the parents. More like the idealist’s dream of the perfect shtetl where daily life is like a Marc Chagall painting, harmonious and charged with mystery.  Our Zayde was, after all, orphaned at a young age.  Maybe he wanted to keep all his children as close as possible. Maybe he wanted to take the memory of that poverty-stricken hamlet in which he had spent his childhood and recreate it as it should have been - safe, clean, prosperous.

           

It wouldn’t have worked out of course. I know because I’m a member of a rural intentional community and have been for twenty-five years.  Just like being part of a family business, living cooperatively is as annoying and difficult as it is satisfying. Success is rare because it requires enormous flexibility. So even though Zayde’s community wouldn’t have worked, I love that he had the idea.