The Shabbes Goy

Reading davidseth  and TiaRachel ‘s lovely essays yesterday sent me on a search to find a little tale my Dad wrote & had published on-line last December. The link from his e-mail no longer worked, so I tried the google. Imagine my surprise to find how it had spread…page after page of sites with his story. I already had permission from Dad to do anything I wanted with it, so I thought this would be the perfect time to share it here, with you.

My Dad is a Great Guy, his experiences varied and many… in a ‘Big Fish’ kind of way. He served in WWII and later became the fencing coach of Columbia University in the 1940’s-50s and was an early advocate of civil rights in sports, eventually retiring to California. Not long ago Columbia University honoured him with a lovely (ceremony-dinner-function-thingey)  More about this can be found at Columbia’s web site, I think.

also in orange

Enjoy!

The Shabbes Goy by Joe Velarde — a pleasant read in a troubled world

Snow came early in the winter of 1933 when our extended Cuban family moved

into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. I was ten years old. We were the

first Spanish speakers to arrive, yet we fit more or less easily into that

crowded, multicultural neighborhood. Soon we began learning a little

Italian, a few Greek and Polish words, lots of Yiddish and some heavily

accented English.

I first heard the expression Shabbes is falling when Mr. Rosenthal refused

to open the door of his dry goods store on Bedford Avenue. My mother had

sent me with a dime to buy a pair of black socks for my father. In those

days, men wore mostly black and Navy blue. Brown and gray were somehow

special and cost more. Mr. Rosenthal stood inside the locked door, arms

folded, glaring at me through the thick glass while a heavy snow and

darkness began to fall on a Friday evening. “We’re closed, already”, Mr.

Rosenthal had said, shaking his head, “can’t you see that Shabbes is

falling? Don’t be a nudnik! Go home.” I could feel the cold wetness covering my head and thought that Shabbes was the Jewish word for snow.

My misperception of Shabbes didn’t last long, however, as the area’s

dominant culture soon became apparent; Gentiles were the minority. From then

on, as Shabbes fell with its immutable regularity and Jewish lore took over

the life of the neighborhood, I came to realize that so many human

activities, ordinarily mundane at any other time, ceased, and a palpable

silence, a pleasant tranquillity, fell over all of us. It was then that a

family with an urgent need would dispatch a youngster to “get the Spanish

boy, and hurry.”

That was me. In time, I stopped being nameless and became Yussel, sometimes

Yuss or Yusseleh. And so began my life as a Shabbes Goy, voluntarily doing

chores for my neighbors on Friday nights and Saturdays: lighting stoves,running errands, getting a prescription for an old tante, stoking coal

furnaces, putting lights on or out, clearing snow and ice from slippery

sidewalks and stoops. Doing just about anything that was forbidden to the

devout by their religious code.

Friday afternoons were special. I’d walk home from school assailed by the

rich aroma emanating from Jewish kitchens preparing that evening’s special

menu. By now, I had developed a list of steady “clients,” Jewish families

who depended on me. Furnaces, in particular, demanded frequent tending

during Brooklyn’s many freezing winters. I shudder remembering brutally cold

winds blowing off the East River. Anticipation ran high as I thought of the

warm home-baked treats I’d bring home that night after my Shabbes rounds

were over. Thanks to me, my entire family had become Jewish pastry junkies.

Moi? I’m still addicted to checkerboard cake, halvah and Egg Creams (made

only with Fox’s Ubet chocolate syrup).

I remember as if it were yesterday how I discovered that Jews were the

smartest people in the world. You see, in our Cuban household we all loved

the ends of bread loaves and, to keep peace, my father always decided who

would get them. One harsh winter night I was rewarded for my Shabbes

ministrations with a loaf of warm challah (we pronounced it “holly”) and I

knew I was witnessing genius! Who else could have invented a bread that had

wonderfully crusted ends all over it — enough for everyone in a large

family?

There was an “International” aspect to my teen years in Williamsburg. The

Sternberg family had two sons who had fought with the Abraham Lincoln

Brigade in Spain. Whenever we kids could get their attention, they’d

spellbind us with tales of hazardous adventures in the Spanish Civil War.

These twenty-something war veterans also introduced us to a novel way of

thinking, one that embraced such humane ideas as ‘From each according to his

means and to each according to his needs’. In retrospect, this innocent

exposure to a different philosophy was the starting point of a journey that

would also incorporate the concept of Tzedakah in my personal guide to the

world.

In what historians would later call The Great Depression, a nickel was a lot

of mazuma and its economic power could buy a brand new Spaldeen, our local name for the pink-colored rubber ball then produced by the Spalding Company. The famous Spaldeen was central to our endless street games: stickball and punchball or the simpler stoopball. On balmy summer evenings our youthful fantasies converted South Tenth Street into Ebbets Field with the Dodgers’ Dolph Camilli swinging a broom handle at a viciously curving Spaldeen thrown by the Giants’ great lefty, Carl Hubbell. We really thought it curved, I

swear.

Our neighbors, magically transformed into spectators kibitzing from their

brownstone stoops and windows, were treated to a unique version of major

league baseball. My tenure as the resident Shabbes Goy came to an abrupt end

after Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. I withdrew from Brooklyn College

the following day and joined the U.S. Army. In June of 1944, the Army Air

Corps shipped me home after flying sixty combat missions over Italy and the

Balkans. I was overwhelmed to find that several of my Jewish friends and

neighbors had set a place for me at their supper tables every Shabbes

throughout my absence, including me in their prayers. What mitzvoth! My

homecoming was highlighted by wonderful invitations to dinner. Can you

imagine the effect after twenty-two months of Army field rations?

As my post-World War II life developed, the nature of the association I’d

had with Jewish families during my formative years became clearer. I had

learned the meaning of friendship, of loyalty, and of honor and respect. I

discovered obedience without subservience. And caring about all living

things had become as natural as breathing. The worth of a strong work ethic

and of purposeful dedication was manifest. Love of learning blossomed and I

began to set higher standards for my developing skills, and loftier goals

for future activities and dreams. Mind, none of this was the result of any

sort of formal instruction; my yeshiva had been the neighborhood. I learned

these things, absorbed them actually says it better, by association and role

modeling, by pursuing curious inquiry, and by what educators called

“incidental learning” in the crucible that was pre-World War II

Williamsburg. It seems many of life’s most elemental lessons are learned

this way.

While my parents’ Cuban home sheltered me with warm, intimate affection and

provided for my well-being and self esteem, the group of Jewish families I

came to know and help in the Williamsburg of the 1930s was a surrogate tribe

that abetted my teenage rite of passage to adulthood. One might even say we

had experienced a special kind of Bar Mitzvah. I couldn’t explain then the

concept of tikkun olam, but I realized as I matured how well I had been

oriented by the Jewish experience to live it and to apply it. What a truly

uplifting outlook on life it is to be genuinely motivated “to repair the

world.”

In these twilight years when my good wife is occasionally told, “Your

husband is a funny man,” I’m aware that my humor has its roots in the

shticks of Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, entertainers at Catskill summer

resorts, and their many imitators. And, when I argue issues of human or

civil rights and am cautioned about showing too much zeal, I recall how

chutzpah first flourished on Williamsburg sidewalks, competing for filberts

(hazelnuts) with tough kids wearing payess and yarmulkes. Along the way I played chess and one-wall handball, learned to fence, listened to

Rimsky-Korsakov, ate roasted chestnuts, read Maimonides and studied Saul

Alinsky.

I am ever grateful for having had the opportunity to be a Shabbes Goy.