The Years 1938-1946
I was around ten years old when my mother married Ben Zion Strickman. He had three children, the eldest child, a daughter, Lee was already married, the second daughter, Ida, was of marriageable age and did marry soon after, and one son, Willie who was around six months younger than me. There was nobody to take care of Willie so he had been put into a youth home. But when his father remarried he came to live at home. We got along reasonably well.
My mother and I moved to the apartment that Ben Zion had in the Crotona Park section of the Bronx. I was enrolled in a Yeshiva; I believe it was called The Salanter Yeshiva, probably named after Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar movement. It was a difficult adjustment for me. I was away from my grandmother with whom my mother and I had been living for the last seven years since even before my father left. I was now in a new yeshiva. And I now had a new brother with whom I shared a bed. Crotona Park was very nice and I enjoyed playing there. But I did not adjust to my new life. And after sometime, I don’t remember how long, I moved back to live with my grandmother.
My mother convinced Ben Zion that it would be better for the family if they moved to Brooklyn. She was pregnant and it would be easier if she was near her mother. And over the next few years we moved a number of times to different apartments all located in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. I’m not sure why we kept moving. I’ve heard that when you moved into a new apartment the landlord painted the apartment. And I wonder if there were some inducements like free rent for the first month. And maybe you didn’t pay the last months rent at the place that you vacated.
In any event my brother Chaim was born March 9, 1940 when I was eleven years old and my sister, Yospha, was born on February 28, 1941. At the time we were living on Prospect Place between Hopkinson and Saratoga avenues. And the family was still living there when I got married in 1950.
I assume that my memory is similar to the way everyone’s memory works. It’s not like a movie where the action moves from scene to scene in a logical sequence. It is more like the preview of a movie that jumps from scene to scene in a seemingly disjointed sequence.
I do remember that in the early years that I was in the yeshiva it was a very long school day, from nine in the morning until 6:30 at night. The Hebrew class was from 9:00am until 12 noon. We then had one hour for lunch and Hebrew resumed until 3:00pm. After a half hour recess the English classes ran from 3:30pm until 6:30pm. English studies started at 3:30pm so that the teachers who taught in the public schools could come to the yeshiva to be our teachers. After some years the schedule was changed and lunch time was reduced, the English classes started earlier and the school day ended around 5:00pm.
Whenever I put my mind to it I was a good student. Many times my teachers would say to me, “Moshe, why don’t you pay attention, you have a good mind”. At times I was praised for my scholarship but most times I didn’t care what was going on in class. I remember one incident when my Rebbi called on me to read from the Chumash. As I was reciting I felt a loose piece of wood under my seat. I began to make clicking sounds with the piece of wood. The Rebbi stopped me and called out, “Who is making that noise?” No one responded and the Rebbi told me to continue. I resumed reciting and clicking with the piece of wood. He stopped me again and the scene was repeated again. I finally stopped playing with the piece of wood. It was inconceivable to the Rebbi that I was the source of the noise. What was I thinking to initiate and continue this prank?
Another situation that got me a bad reputation that wasn’t completely deserved occurred when I was playing with a tiny pocketknife under my desk. The Rebbi, a different one, noticed that I was playing with something. He came over and asked me to give him what I was playing with. I refused and we struggled as he tried to take it from me. I don’t recall the outcome but the rumor in the Yeshivah was that I had pulled a knife on the Rebbi.
Every once in a while I would surprise my teachers with some insight into what we were studying. The Rebbi would praise me to the class for translating Rashi and using a Yiddish word that had eluded him but clarified the meaning of the text. Or when my English teacher praised me for knowing that the position of the sun could be useful if one was lost in the forest.
As I approached thirteen years of age my mother arranged for my 7th grade Rebbi, to teach me the Haftorah. It was the class procedure that on Friday, about 10 minutes before the noon dismissal, the Rebbi led the whole class in chanting the Haftorah blessings. So that part was already known to me. The Rebbi took advantage of the situation and just started the Haftorah lesson a little earlier. He would have me recite the name and chant the cantillation marks (trop) associated with a phrase of the Haftorah. And then repeat the chant reading the actual words of the phrase. And in a few weeks I was able to chant the whole Haftorah. But it was unnecessary. We davened in the Polishe Shtebal where the davening was nusach sfard. So when I finished the first blessing everyone, as customary, began to read the Haftorah out loud and nobody could hear me. Oh, well I know I did a good job.
I was born November 27, 1928 which was ט"ו כסלו and the Torah reading that week was פרשת וישלח. But in 1941 the reading for the week of the 28th was פרשת ויצא and my mother arranged for my Bar Mitzvah for the week of the 28th. So I received my Aliyah a week early. Technically I wasn’t a Bar Mitzvah when I received my Aliyah. With hindsight it was no problem since Halacha permits a minor to receive the Aliyah of Mafter.
My aunt Leicka and her children arranged a party for my Bar Mitzvah celebration in their basement on East 98th Street in Brooklyn where they had a four family house. I don’t remember the food or the refreshments but the whole family was there, even those who didn’t talk to each other. I gave a short speech in Yiddish and I don’t know who wrote it for me, maybe my 7th grade Rebbi. Simcha Maslow, whom I’ve mentioned earlier, gave a d’var Torah. He was a well respected member of the family and many considered him to be a Talmud Chachum.
I remember being in the yeshiva on a Sunday morning, December 7th, 1941, yes we had school on Sunday, and hearing that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. The war was of course a terrible situation but I don’t remember that any member of the family or even close friends being drafted into the army. A couple of boys from frum families in the neighborhood were drafted.
I remember:
· Ration books that had stamps that we had to tear out and give to the grocer or butcher for certain foods.
· Air raid drills. Anyone outside had to find shelter and get off the street.
· During blackout drills we had shut all electrical lights that could be seen in the street. We lit a candle so it wouldn’t be totally dark.
· Listening to my grandfather and his friends discussing the war. Many of the sites listed in the newspaper reports were names they were familiar with.
· Watching them drink tea with a small sugar cube held between their teeth.
· Buying war bonds. You could buy individual stamps to paste into a book. When the book was full it could be exchanged for a bond. I don’t remember the denominations but it had to be inexpensive, maybe even dimes and quarters, since many people were poor.
· Extension of Daylight Savings Time into the winter so that when I went to school at eight in the morning it was still dark.
· Cigarette packs and other things, like chewing gum, had an inner wrapper of aluminum foil, perhaps to retain freshness. Collecting the foil and making large balls that could be turned in for cash.
I graduated from the Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in June of 1942. I don’t remember my mother or grandmother trying to persuade me that I should continue at the Mesivta. It may be that they realized I wasn’t a good student and that I would be better off learning a trade. Or perhaps my mother was just overwhelmed taking care of two small children, a husband and an apartment that she didn’t have time to worry about her “BIG” son. So I entered a public high school, The Brooklyn High School for Specialty Trades. It certainly was different than a yeshiva but I adjusted well to the shorter day and did well in my studies. I had a thirty or forty minute commute each way via a trolley car and the fare was three cents. The curriculum included six month tours in different trades. In the two years that I attended the school I had very basic courses in electrical wiring, sheet metal work, automobile repair and watch repair. And after two years I decided that I had enough of schooling and I quit.
At that time I was living full time with my grandmother. Her husband, Jacob Bieder had passed away and the family gossip was that he was over 100 years old. I have no idea if that is true. A truant officer came to the house and said that I had to go to school at least until I was sixteen years old. So my grandmother and I went to the Mesivta Chaim Berlin. I was given a Bechina by the well known Rabbi Hutner ( זצ"ל) and accepted into the Mesivta. I don’t think that I fooled him one iota about my capability in Talmud but I guess he wasn’t about to turn away a Jewish boy whose grandmother was his advocate. I had many friends in the school and enjoyed playing basketball with them. I was not overly concerned with learning or with the English studies. And sometime after my sixteenth birthday I dropped out.
I had many jobs but they were for short periods of time. I worked for the Pilgrim Watch Company located on Canal Street in Manhattan, for the Bulova Watch Company located in Queens, for a store on Hester Street in Manhattan repairing clocks, for the Shomer Shabbos grocery on Prospect Place in Brooklyn making deliveries before Pesach. In the summer I was a counselor at Camp HES located in the Bear Mountains of New York State. I did this for a number of years and enjoyed camping very much. I frequently had the opportunity to use a canoe and learned how to right and climb into a canoe that had turned over. I also received my Red Cross life saving certificate.
When I wasn’t working at the various jobs that I had from time to time I kept busy with different activities with my secular Jewish friends from the neighborhood and my frum friends at The Young Israel of Brownsville which met at the Hebrew Educational Society (HES) located in Brownsville on Hopkinson Avenue corner of Sutter Avenue. When the weather was nice I played ball in Lincoln Terrace Park.
Friday nights some of my friends from the Young Israel, boys and girls, would frequently meet on the pedestrian mall on Eastern Parkway. Literally many hundreds, perhaps thousands, would congregate and just walk back and forth greeting and stopping to talk with anyone they knew. When the weather was cold we usually met in someone’s house and sat around and talked and planned some activity.
On Saturday afternoon I took part in the youth groups that the Young Israel ran. There were different clubs for boys and girls. The leader told us stories and we learned some Hebrew songs. Saturday night the boys played basketball in the gym while the girls watched. Afterwards we would occasionally go to the neighborhood candy store and have an ice cream sundae. In those days it was called a Frappe, no doubt some fancy French name.
We would all go out together as a group. Sometimes we would go to the Eastern Parkway Skating Rink where we would rent roller skates and dance to recorded organ music. Other times we would all go bowling. At this time Rose was just one of the girls but as time went on I began to walk her home after our group activities. At her apartment we would sit around and talk. We enjoyed being with each other and by the time Rose was sixteen we were dating each other exclusively.
Her parents weren’t happy with her choice of a boy friend. Yes, when I visited for Shabbos, I spoke to them in Yiddish. I had a nice voice and sang zemeros. And on Shabbos morning I went to Shull. But I didn’t have a high school degree and I didn’t have a steady job. They were sure that their daughter could do better. I enjoyed being with this young lady but at that time I didn’t realize that something very significant was happening to me. Something that would change my life forever.
Click here for page 6, The Years 1946-1948