Remember Us

by Vic Shayne

  L’Chaim—To My Father

  To me, my father was always a sweet, kind, and honorable man. He played the violin and the banjo and loved to sing. We used to get together with ten to twenty friends to sing and dance. These occasions would start off inside somebody’s house then spill outside when there wasn’t enough room for all the people who kept joining in the fun.

  In shul, Papa was sometimes the cantor; he was like a rabbi, though not formally trained as a rabbi, but he could lead the worship services as well as anyone. He used to read the Torah with great attention to each phrase as if he were reading the passage for the first time, waiting to find out what would happen next.

  Papa was a strong and capable man and people knew they could rely on him for help. He was never afraid of hard work. When looking at my old photographs, it is easy to see that I resemble him, with blond-brown, close-cut hair and an on-again, off-again mustache. His name was Shlomo, but when he was a young man, in his early twenties, he became very sick—so sick that our entire family thought he was going to die. Somehow, with an amazing willpower, he managed to fight his way back to health. When he was fully recovered, he was given a new name—Chaim, which means “life.”

  Life was precious to my father, so his new name was fitting. He cherished life and the people around him. Nothing was more important in life than his family.

  Papa enjoyed every celebration, from birthdays to Jewish holidays. He looked forward to any occasion that gave cause for singing, dancing, laughing, and kvelling. And in our shtetl we made a big deal out of celebrations. Papa taught me that a hard life has to be balanced with joy and lightheartedness.

  Shabbos, of course, was the most special time for the Jews of Maitchet, but Purim was also important in our town. Purim was a huge event that spilled out way beyond the shul and home. It was a community-wide extravaganza, turning the entirety of Maitchet into a theater. My father loved to participate in every Purim festival. He and scores of others, including my mother and grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, dressed up in homemade costumes to replay one of the most memorable events in Jewish history. Each year everybody celebrated the rescue of the Jewish people from the wicked Haman, an advisor to the king, by Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai. Purim is a springtime celebration on the fourteenth day of Adar, in early March. It’s one of the most joyous holidays on the Jewish calendar, so in Maitchet and hundreds of other shtetls in Eastern Europe, half the town came out to participate in food, theater, and parades.

  The story of Purim has all the elements of a drama, with intrigue, deception, miscommunication, drunken parties, attempted assassinations, a foolish king, villains, and a beautiful heroine. We put on a play outdoors that involved a hundred people, each as an important character. Even the Gentiles would come to watch the show. There was nothing like the Purim celebration, with people gathered outdoors, dressed in bright colors, draped with costume jewelry, and singing and drinking to their hearts’ content.

  My father was sold on the idea of tradition, but he was a modern man by most standards. He was clean-shaven, open to new ideas, and loved to tinker with appliances. But when it came time to celebrate Jewish values, he devoted all of his attention to detail. He made me realize that a strong, powerful man can be sentimental, loving, caring, and committed to ideals. He made life worth remembering. He taught me with love. He taught me that actions speak louder than words.

  For my father, my sisters and I were the center of his life. And the relationship between my father and mother was more than special—the two of them were lovebirds, inseparable. I grew up in a family where everyone respected and loved one another.

  Papa, like Zayde, also strongly believed in caring for those who were not so fortunate. He was an active member of several organizations, including the Gehmilot Chesed, a group whose purpose was to help people in our community. We all gave a little money every month to this group and the money was pooled. If you were without means but had a son who was a bar mitzvah, the organization would give you the money for whatever you needed, including a little celebration afterward. The money was also used for weddings as well as for the poor who couldn’t afford bread. If a woman lost her husband, Gehmilot Chesed paid to get her on her feet. My father took these kinds of charity groups very seriously and was proud to help his neighbors through hard times. “You can’t turn your back on people,” he used to say. “If you can help, then you help.”

  My father liked people and people liked him. For this reason, people in Maitchet made a tradition out of sealing deals in my father’s house. When market day came around, people would make all sorts of bargains—Jews and Gentiles alike. But no deal of any consequence was made without commemorating the occasion with a drink. The choice was always vodka, and the place was the guest quarters in our house. I was appointed to fill the glasses with vodka and my father was there to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.

  There was one time when things turned a little ugly. The incident took place when I was already a young adult. This big guy named Pietrik Soshinsky, a local Pole who was much bigger than my father—maybe a head taller—got out of hand from drinking. Because of his size and weight, and the fact that he liked to carry a pistol tucked into his waistband for everyone to see, he wasn’t used to being told what to do. But this was my father’s house and Pietrik had become too boisterous. Pietrik was no stranger. Everybody in town was familiar with his whole family, including his two brothers. They liked to push their weight around ever since they were kids. Now, as big, strong men, Pietrik and his brothers had grown into first-class bullies. Pietrik drank almost an entire bottle of vodka in one sitting. He was speaking louder and louder, kicking chairs out of his way and feeling for the pistol in his waistband. When Papa told Pietrik he’d have to leave, Pietrik at first laughed at him and demanded another shot of vodka. Papa refused and Pietrik became irate. He got up out of his chair, almost knocking his glass onto the floor. My father, instead of backing away, took a step closer.

  “I said pour me another drink!” Pietrik said to my father.

  Papa said, “You’ve had enough. Why don’t you go walk it off?”

  “If I pay you for a drink, you pour me one. Now bring the bottle here.” Pietrik moved close to my father, practically a foot away. He towered over Papa and put his hands on his hips. “Well?” said Pietrik. He was about to take another step and his right hand was clenched into a fist when my father picked him up and threw the big man into the wall. Drunk and with a face red with anger, Pietrik Soshinsky screamed at my father while he scrambled to his feet. My father shoved Pietrik out the front door.

  “That’s enough,” Papa said. “You’re drunk. Go home.”

  Pietrik was shifting back and forth on his feet. His eyes were half closed and bloodshot. Standing on our veranda, he pointed his finger at Papa and said, “Shlomo, I could kill you right now.” Then he pulled out his gun and pointed it at my father with a grin on his face.

  My father said, “Go ahead.” Pietrik just smiled, put the gun away, said to my father, “I’m going to kill you one day,” and left. My father thought nothing more of it, but this was an incident Pietrik would never let rest.

  Technology was always changing. New gadgets were continually being invented, but my father always had a way of fixing them. My father used to make radios and I used to listen to Tzayginer music on them on special occasions. He understood mechanics. Still, like all the rest of us, Papa continued to be taken by surprise now and then as the newest technology came to Maitchet. I was born before electricity, running water, or automobiles were common, so naturally, when the very first car drove into Maitchet in the mid-1920s, we were afraid to touch it. Even Papa was cautious. Nobody wanted to get too close. The driver was a mystery, too. We didn’t know what the car was or how it moved. It was noisy and smelly and its strangeness was a bit scary. How could a wagon move by itself? What was pulling it? With enough time, I bet my father would have figured out the engine down to the smallest parts.
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br />   I remember another time when I was in shul and all of a sudden we heard a big noise, rolling thunder on a clear blue morning. About ten or fifteen of us ran outside and looked in every direction. One of us squinted against the sun and breathlessly began pointing to the horizon where the sky met the tree line. We all shielded our foreheads using our hands as visors and strained to see. Then it appeared, growing bigger by the second—there was an airplane flying toward us. With all kinds of excitement we tried to figure out what we were looking at. We argued and shouted and pointed. We stood on our toes to get a better look, which of course did us no good at all. Eyebrows were raised in confusion. Shoulders were shrugged. What started out to be smaller than a tiny bird in seconds flew right overhead with a deafening sound. Mouths dropped to the ground. We held onto our hats. What was keeping this object in the sky? We were afraid it would come down. So, like a fire brigade going in reverse, we all ran back into the shul, shut the door, and hid. We hid for at least an hour. It was quiet, but we were afraid it might come back. It wasn’t until a week or two later that we had houseguests from one of the bigger cities who knew what airplanes were. They had to explain what they were used for and how they stayed in flight. When we learned more about airplanes, they became a curiosity and from then on we made a practice of searching the skies for them. Papa would point one out to us and we’d all bravely stop in the street with our hands on our hips to stare at it until it eventually disappeared from view.

  Times were changing in Maitchet. There was a new dimension to our lives; people were living in the sky as well as on the ground. But none of us could have guessed that, in a few years, bombs would be dropped out of these airplanes, destroying everything in their path, razing shtetls to the ground, and turning magnificent cities, like Warsaw, into rubble.

  The Meaning of Tzedakah

  It was Zayde’s natural sense of generosity that made him refuse to lease out portions of his property in exchange for payment. Zayde owned a sizable amount of land, including a large forested area and some of the richest farmland in Maitchet. He allowed several of the local Christians to use a portion of his land for growing food, but instead of taking money for rent or a share of the yield, Zayde asked merely that the tenants donate a small portion of their harvest to the town’s more needy residents. More than this, he set apart a corner of his land to be farmed by the poorest of our poor. Zayde taught me the truest meaning of tzedakah.

  Zayde taught me that God is the owner of all things and that a person with a field is only a temporary manager. He said the Torah teaches “all that springs forth from one’s land is a gift from God, and it is required that this gift be shared with those in need.” But just as importantly the needy must be able to take what they need in dignity. Tzedakah, Zayde said, is something all Jews are obligated to offer, regardless of one’s finances; and to give a family a piece of your land to work was not just a short-term gift but a means of offering others a way to find dignity.

  My friends and I were always curious to know who these people were who would be Zayde’s newest tenants, but he wouldn’t tell us. He didn’t want them to be embarrassed about their poverty, and he didn’t want to make a public display of his generosity. All he would say to me was, “No one should go hungry.”

  Zayde made a friend wherever he went. When people met him, they instantly liked him because he cared about people. As soon as he met someone, he wanted to know how he was and what his problems were. He wanted to know about his family and dreams. I learned from Zayde that the Torah teaches us to help other people, but Zayde took these teachings to new heights. He lived for other people; his greatest pleasure came from giving things to others.

  It was no wonder that my grandfather became the mayor of our shtetl way back when Maitchet was a Russian border town. Zayde was popular, well educated, learned in Talmudic law, and knew how to make people happy. He was a pillar of our community and a diplomat. He was an articulate man who spoke a half dozen languages and was looked up to as a wise decision-maker. Jews and Gentiles alike would come to him to settle arguments over many matters of dispute. He arbitrated over property disputes, a fair price for a cow, fair payment for labor, and family squabbles.

  My grandfather would sit in his home office with shelves lined with books in Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew, lean back in his chair, run his rugged hands through his beard, and come up with a solution. Like the wise King Solomon, Zayde understood logic and the law and was thus imbued with a great sense of justice and patience. He instinctively understood how to get to the center of a problem and resolve it in a way that made sense to all involved. But more than this, Zayde was a humanist. It was a mitzvah to help one’s friend, family, and neighbor. He couldn’t understand how anyone could look the other way when somebody was in need of help.

  Today, people think a mitzvah is just a good deed, even a favor. But Zayde, my father, and the other respected men of our shtetl understood a mitzvah to be a commandment. Jewish law commands that one must be generous toward other human beings. It’s a duty. “If you’re a person,” Zayde told me once, “then it’s your obligation. Otherwise, you’d have needless suffering.” Zayde was a bank full of mitzvahs. He also had a bank full of documents.

  As mayor of Maitchet, Zayde’s little home office was filled with legal papers, deeds, contracts, and permits. His desk drawers were piled high with official stamps, postage stamps, legal documents, maps, surveys, charts, ink wells, accounting ledgers, and pens with well-worn tips.

  Zayde’s reputation was widespread for more than just official duties. A network of people throughout Eastern Europe came to know his name and where to find him and he often opened up his home to strangers. And like his father before him, my own father would carry on the tradition of hosting visitors in his own home.

  In their home, on any given day of the week, my grandparents hosted businessmen, tourists, weary travelers, political refugees, and anyone else who needed a place to stay. Among these guests were some colorful characters. I remember Bubbie telling me how one time a visitor came to Maitchet bragging that he was the strongest man in his village. My father was a young man at the time and was still living at home with his parents.

  The houseguest boasted that he was stronger than anyone he ever met. “If I was in the Bible, I would be Samson,” he said. “That’s the reason people fear me. I’m a good man, but people need to be shown who’s boss.”

  The man looked stocky and sturdy and had thick hands and a square jaw. A few old scars on his face showed that he had been in a few fights in his time. He looked the part of the strongman or a boxer, and he was full of confidence. Although my father was a quiet man with a relatively even temper, the visitor’s constant bragging eventually got on his nerves. Waiting for my father to come back from his chores, the visitor sat in Bubbie’s kitchen playing with a chain. When Papa walked through the door, the man rattled the chain so that my father was sure to notice. Then the visitor started to struggle with it, trying to pull apart one of the links. He wanted to show off. He pulled at the chain with all his might until his face turned red and his hands turned white at the knuckles. A large vein was bulging from his neck and his mouth twisted to expose two rows of madly clenched teeth. It looked like the man was about to burst. The chains pressed well into his fleshy fingers until at last his strength gave way and he slumped in his chair only to notice my father standing over him with his hand out. My father asked the man to surrender the chain. Then, with all his power, Papa pulled the chain and one of the links stretched like putty until it separated and broke—all this without saying a word. Papa tossed the broken chain at the man’s feet and walked out of the house to continue with his chores. I don’t know how he did this, but it made the man very mad. What made him even angrier was that people around town began to talk about my father and how he was stronger than the braggart.

  Unable to leave things alone, the visitor spent a sleepless night at Bubbie’s house, bothered that he was bested at his own trick. Th
e next day, after breakfast, while my father was heading out the door, he challenged him to a contest in front of the house.

  “I have other things to do,” my father told him. “Maybe later.” But the man was insistent and blocked his way. “Wait here,” he said to my father.

  People started to gather around as the man brought two chairs outside. My father didn’t know what the man was up to, but by this time he was very tired of him and was ready for the guest to leave town. Making sure he had an audience, the man put his foot up on one of the chairs and smiled as he said to my father, “Hit me as hard as you can on my leg.” Obviously, the man had done this before—his thick thighs proving to be no match for even the strongest punch.

  My father thought for a second then put his own foot onto the other chair and told the stranger, “You hit me first.” The man made a fist then looked around to make sure everyone was glued to the action. He came down on my father’s leg as hard as he could. My father didn’t even wince. He didn’t want to give the man the pleasure. Next it was my father who smiled.

  “Now it’s my turn,” Papa said.

  When my father smashed his fist onto the man’s leg, it broke with a crack. The man was undone. Despite his pain and embarrassment, he shook my father’s hand then sat down. When all the spectators walked away, the man slowly shuffled with great effort back into the house. He packed up his things and left town that same day. He came to Maitchet bouncing on his toes but left with a limp.