Jew go way (What they told my grandpa)
I have not read Everything Is Illuminated. I will check it out. I did however see “A Serious Man” after having it recommended by you and many friends as a cultural touchstone not to be missed. I can see why many Jewish boys would identify, which I partially did. However I was a Red Diaper baby and my father did not agree with the local custom of being forced to attend Hebrew school( which was universally despised by all of my friends) or the ostentatious Bar Mitzvah. Frankly I felt left out of Sunday Hebrew because I too wanted to despise Hebrew school and the various Rabbi’s my friends would revile on Mondays. They all belonged to separate congregations. My father asked me if I wanted to be Bar Mitzvahed, I said “no”, so he said I think you ought to go to Yiddish school so you can speak with your grandparents( my paternal grandparents spoke little English). I ended up at the I.L. Peretz Workman’s Circle Yiddish School. It was over a store in a small dingy room on Rockaway Avenue in Valley Stream. None of the cool kids were there, however the weird misfit kid was. All of the other kids were unknown to me and remained that way. I acquired the name Mutl, which I gave up in favor of Meir at my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. I never learned much that stuck with me and the fluent conversations my father envisioned occurring never happened. My memories of Yiddish amount to being dragged up the steps of an apartment over a store by my grandmother who would grasp my cheeks and intone “, totaleh mamelah scheine keppelah”. My grandfather would look out our car window as we drove from Brooklyn to Long Island through Springfield Gardens Queens and exclaim “Schwartzes” in a tone that functioned on many different levels. Not racist but full of a wisdom born from world weariness. But not not racist either, mostly full of incomprehension. I used to ask him “Grandpa what did you do during the revolution?”. He would tell me he was told “Jew go away”. I once asked him what Primack meant. He said “Ven de boy goes to de goil’s house to eat, den he is a Primack”. Turns out he was right.
