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Authors: Avery Corman
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Holidays, but it was all right on the other Jewish holidays since we didnât celebrate them and my mother and my uncle went to work on those days and I figured my mother probably didnât know what they were either.
Although we didnât go to services, my mother sometimes slipped in for a memorial service on Yom Kippur. We did stroll along the Grand Concourse with the other Jews on the High Holidays. And we usually had a holiday meal to begin the important holidays. For Passover, we had matzo on the table and appropriate Jewish dishes, but it wasnât a seder, we didnât have a Haggadah. I had to dress ânice,â for the High Holidays. By the second day of Rosh Hashanah, still excused from school, I was playing ball while dressed ânice.â
For the Jewish children of my generation, our parents might have been able to speak Yiddish, and more likely their parents, but by our time, the language did not reach us, Yiddish overwhelmed by assimilation. The Yiddish language Daily Forward was sold at the candy store downstairs, tucked in a rack with other foreign language papers. Only a few copies of The Forward were ordered by the candy store each day. None of my neighborhood friends who were Jewish spoke or understood Yiddish and I did not. My aunt and uncle did not know Yiddish and never signed a Yiddish word. My mother, whose parents were Yiddish-speaking, said that she might have been able to follow a conversation in Yiddish and perhaps speak a little. She would not have had a reason to do so.
A teacher in 4th grade asked us if a second language was spoken in the house and barely any hands went up. In a sense, with sign language we spoke a second language in my house. I did not volunteer that information.
For Jewish children, Catholicism was mysterious. With what little we knew of the Catholic faith, and we knew very little â our guides were Catholic children our age, hardly divinity experts â we could not track the ideas and the miracles behind the religion, lacking the belief or the knowledge.
This passed for a theological discussion on a street corner: A Catholic boy says that Catholics have a real religion and the Jews donât because the Messiah came to the Catholics and the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah. We have no rejoinder, not knowing how to answer. What is a Messiah and are we still waiting? The Catholic children were given the answers, we didnât have any.
âI have to go to Hebrew,â were the words we spoke as we withdrew from a street game or left our friends hanging around. You had to go. It was decreed as part of your upbringing. A few days a week from when we were about ten years old until our bar mitzvahs at thirteen, with occasional Sunday School sessions, we went to âHebrew.â
My Hebrew School was part of the Concourse Center of Israel synagogue, a half block from the apartment. Bronx synagogues ranged from small buildings, which were converted private houses, to larger, more elegant synagogues built from the ground up, like Temple Adath Israel on the Grand Concourse where the Metropolitan Opera tenor Richard Tucker once had been the cantor.
The Concourse Center of Israel was one of the larger Bronx synagogues with substantial seating and a balcony. Identifying itself as a Conservative synagogue in the 1940s, the synagogue took a position that would have been considered Orthodox in later years â women and men were required to sit separately. I wouldnât have been aware of it. I never went into the synagogue. It wasnât a requirement for Hebrew school students to attend services and so I didnât go.
In Hebrew School we were not taught Hebrew as a language as we were to be taught French or Spanish in regular school. We were only taught to say Hebrew words. Pronunciation of the words was drilled into us. We read aloud. We wrote Hebrew letters and words in notebooks. That passed for Hebrew instruction because the
Although we didnât go to services, my mother sometimes slipped in for a memorial service on Yom Kippur. We did stroll along the Grand Concourse with the other Jews on the High Holidays. And we usually had a holiday meal to begin the important holidays. For Passover, we had matzo on the table and appropriate Jewish dishes, but it wasnât a seder, we didnât have a Haggadah. I had to dress ânice,â for the High Holidays. By the second day of Rosh Hashanah, still excused from school, I was playing ball while dressed ânice.â
For the Jewish children of my generation, our parents might have been able to speak Yiddish, and more likely their parents, but by our time, the language did not reach us, Yiddish overwhelmed by assimilation. The Yiddish language Daily Forward was sold at the candy store downstairs, tucked in a rack with other foreign language papers. Only a few copies of The Forward were ordered by the candy store each day. None of my neighborhood friends who were Jewish spoke or understood Yiddish and I did not. My aunt and uncle did not know Yiddish and never signed a Yiddish word. My mother, whose parents were Yiddish-speaking, said that she might have been able to follow a conversation in Yiddish and perhaps speak a little. She would not have had a reason to do so.
A teacher in 4th grade asked us if a second language was spoken in the house and barely any hands went up. In a sense, with sign language we spoke a second language in my house. I did not volunteer that information.
For Jewish children, Catholicism was mysterious. With what little we knew of the Catholic faith, and we knew very little â our guides were Catholic children our age, hardly divinity experts â we could not track the ideas and the miracles behind the religion, lacking the belief or the knowledge.
This passed for a theological discussion on a street corner: A Catholic boy says that Catholics have a real religion and the Jews donât because the Messiah came to the Catholics and the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah. We have no rejoinder, not knowing how to answer. What is a Messiah and are we still waiting? The Catholic children were given the answers, we didnât have any.
âI have to go to Hebrew,â were the words we spoke as we withdrew from a street game or left our friends hanging around. You had to go. It was decreed as part of your upbringing. A few days a week from when we were about ten years old until our bar mitzvahs at thirteen, with occasional Sunday School sessions, we went to âHebrew.â
My Hebrew School was part of the Concourse Center of Israel synagogue, a half block from the apartment. Bronx synagogues ranged from small buildings, which were converted private houses, to larger, more elegant synagogues built from the ground up, like Temple Adath Israel on the Grand Concourse where the Metropolitan Opera tenor Richard Tucker once had been the cantor.
The Concourse Center of Israel was one of the larger Bronx synagogues with substantial seating and a balcony. Identifying itself as a Conservative synagogue in the 1940s, the synagogue took a position that would have been considered Orthodox in later years â women and men were required to sit separately. I wouldnât have been aware of it. I never went into the synagogue. It wasnât a requirement for Hebrew school students to attend services and so I didnât go.
In Hebrew School we were not taught Hebrew as a language as we were to be taught French or Spanish in regular school. We were only taught to say Hebrew words. Pronunciation of the words was drilled into us. We read aloud. We wrote Hebrew letters and words in notebooks. That passed for Hebrew instruction because the
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