Yiddishkeit: watching vanishing culture

David Sherman

Walking past the grocery. I stopped. There’s a guy in a cap, white beard, looks to be my age. Catches my eye, tells me how beautiful are the strawberries he has in a bag in his fist. He’s happy. His eyes sparkle. Laugh lines in the corners. Far from home, I’m all ears.

His wife’s younger than him. I guess 65. Gray hair worn long, fashionable. She’s talking with Reisa on the sidewalk, home to an array of plums, berries and heritage tomatoes. People walk around us. We’re in our own world.

His wife’s from Montreal. He’s from Philly. They met in Paris where he’d been living since the 80s. They couldn’t see themselves getting old in France. Especially not Paris. Weren’t in love with Parisians, he says. The U.S? Not even on the radar.

They love Portugal. They love the Portuguese. They live in a lux studio apartment in Lisbon, in a neighbourhood that’s the beachhead of the newcomer invasion – retired Americans, tired Americans, apologetic Americans. Canadians looking for kinder climes and computer jockeys looking for cheap wifi. Their apartment is being renovated so they’re renting. Two thousand euros a month, pool and parking behind a beaten facade from the 1800s.

It’s the same neighbourhood as the converted convent/hotel we’re staying in. Nuns were safe cloistered here. The stairs climbing up to them would’ve killed any priest with anything but the sacred on his mind.

My new acquaintance introduces himself as David Schwartz. I stick out my hand, give him my name, and say, “Two old Jews. We’re brothers.” He’s 71. 

Once again, I have an instant kinship with a guy simply because he’s Jewish of the same age. That invariably means he’s grown up around Yiddish. I’ve made lasting friends this way. As one often says, “We rode the same bus.”

Jewish men of my generation, growing up on the Yiddish bus. Our parents mostly gone, figuratively and literally. They were fresh outta the war. We Jewish boomers weaned on suspicion of white sliced bread and non-Jews. The former is sacrilegious, the latter will stuff you in a boxcar.

Your friends were Jewish, even if you didn’t like them. Least they weren’t anti-Semites. You felt you didn’t belong. Because you didn’t. You were Canadian. But what would that mean? History had been cruel. You were swinging on a branch of a sturdy maple, but climate change was a cultural reality. Parents convinced there would always be another hurricane.

Studied for the mandatory bar mitzvah so you could worry for a couple of years you’d make a fool of yourself. Forgot Hebrew the instant the congregation, wrapped in prayer shawls, said, “Allmein.”

Went to a dozen other bar mitzvahs. Two hours of incomprehensible prayers in the morning, sometimes a cantor who could raise the roof, then an evening dinner, main course choice of overcooked chicken or overcooked chicken. Vegans as rare as Martians. A sweet table the size of a bowling alley, waiting in line behind a 300-lb aunt who had to taste everything.

Too many shivas, trying to maintain solemnity with a bunch of giggling cousins who were like brothers for a tradition you didn’t understand for a person you barely knew. Flowers by the carload decorated the deaths of others. Here, mirrors were covered, black ties slashed and family sat in hard chairs with legs cut short. Closer to the ground. Okay.

Instead of gardens of flowers, we had tables of food -- palliative care -- a selection of pot luck -- and catered platters of salami, smoked meat, bologna, tongue, coleslaw, potato salad, chopped liver. No one went hungry mourning.

Watching Jewish comics: Jack Benny, aka Benjamin Kubelsky, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Jackie Mason, Don Rickles. Too many to remember. Read Jewish authors. Roth, Richler, Malamud, Kosinski, born Josef Lewinkopf, etc. Could relate. Most of our parents or grandparents had names changed by whim of an immigration agent.

Our generation ate the same foods. Bagels and lox, kimmel, pumpernickel and rye, gefilte fish, Friday roast chicken, chicken soup, cabbage rolls. Cooked-to-disintegration meat.

We heard, maybe spoke, Yiddish. Fathers, uncles were in schematas or small business or, maybe, plumbing. In Montreal, we revered the same institutions: McGill Unversity, Paperman’s funeral home, the Jewish General Hospital, Seagram’s and Crown Royal, sold in prized blue cotton bags you kept for marbles or chess pieces. Synagogue. The Saturday morning men’s breakfast club -- your father and other men ate bagels, drank coffee, smoked and talked hockey and cars around a long table under a white tablecloth. Absorbing menschkeit – how to be a man.

YMHA -- closed Friday nights and Saturday; “It’s the weekend, why is the Y closed?”-- B’nai Brith, the Brown Derby in Montreal: men had brunch, networked the tables. Delis like Ben Ash, where the meat was smoked with smoke. Sandwiches two inches thick. Rye fresh. Crust crisp. My new friend, Mr. Schwartz, probably ate pastrami in Philadelphia. 

Common refrain, “They thought Jews had horns.” In the background, “Maudit juifs, damn Jews, joined a chorus of “Damn wops” and “Damn hunkies.” Weaned on epitaphs for each wave of immigration.

Christmas, Sundays, most restaurants closed, you ate Canadian Chinese. Was there any other kind? Sweet, dry ribs, sweet fried balls of breaded chicken and pork, crunchy egg rolls, mushy chopped suey. Lots of brown and red sauce. Shrimp and pork were legal if ordered off a menu.

The coterie I grew up with are now … I have no idea. Some spent their lives in similar cloistered communities with friends from school. Adopted their father’s business. Or their father-in-law’s business. Or their own. I guess a few are doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs. Odds are many are gone. Others blew away to the four corners.

And when I cross paths with strangers who walked the same paths, there’s a whole lot that doesn’t need to be said. I’ve known them all my life. And I don’t know them at all.

We're having dinner with Schwartz and his wife. We’ll fill in the blanks. Rekindle memories of a time and culture that is fading and fragile like old newsprint. We’re the last of an era of Yiddishkeit, going the way of the Jewish bakery, the deli, the language, the humour, the memories of a migrant people. It’ll soon be gone. All but the sequestered fear of the next hurricane.