I arrived just on time at the rabbi’s home, an apartment on the second floor of a three-story brick building. Attached to the building was a one-story annex that looked like it once might have been used as a dentist’s office, but it now had a sign in Hebrew lettering that I couldn’t read. But the bottom line was in English: STRZYZOVER SYNAGOGUE. I was in the right place. I was about to have an audience with a Hasidic rabbi, the Strzyzover Rebbe no less, who would, without a doubt, be a tzaddik, a holy man, the repository of the wisdom of the sages and, specifically, of all things Strzyzov. In the Hasidic tradition, the mantle of Rebbe is passed down from father to son (sometimes to son-in-law), from generation to generation. My expectation was that the Strzyzover Rebbe possessed the folklore and oral history of the Jews of Strzyzov, which he would have inherited from his father, who in turn would have inherited it from his father, et cetera, et cetera, going back who knows how many generations. And he would have The Book, the Seyfer Strzyzov. Perhaps he, or the book, would speak of the Russ family, my family, and their life in the Old Country. It was the Holy Grail I had been looking for. And here I was at the temple.
The rebbetzin greeted me at the door. Knowing that a Hasidic woman wouldn’t shake hands with a man, I nodded my greeting. She led me into the kitchen and the rabbi immediately entered the room. He was a short man with a scraggly gray-white beard and peyes (sidelocks) tucked behind his ears. He wore black pants and laced-up shoes, white socks, a shirt buttoned to the neck (but no necktie), and a black brocade dressing gown. On his head was a large, round, wide-brimmed black felt hat. I was in the presence of a genuine Chasidishe Rebbe.
When I handed him the bottle of wine, the rabbi and his wife looked at the bottle briefly, then at each other, and then at me. You know how sometimes you bring someone a gift and they say “You shouldn’t have” but they really mean “Thank you”? Well, it was pretty obvious to me that both the rabbi and the rebbetzin had a “You shouldn’t have” look that really meant “You shouldn’t have.” No words were necessary, but it was clear that there was something wrong with bringing this bottle of wine into this house. Most likely its kashrut was certified by a rabbi whose authority was not recognized in the Hasidic world, but I did also have the slightly paranoid feeling that the very act of me, a nonreligious Jew, bringing the wine into this Hasidic home caused it somehow to transubstantiate, to go from kosher to non-kosher.
The rabbi escorted me into the dining room. As I took off my coat, he looked at my head and spoke his first words to me:
“Vhat, no hat?”
My apology was swift and sincere, and perhaps a bit stupid. “Rabbi, I’m terribly sorry. I mean no disrespect. I was running late when I remembered that I forgot a kippa. I don’t usually wear a hat [that was the stupid part]. But if you have an extra kippa, I would be glad to put it on.”
The rabbi didn’t say anything, he just gave me a look. This look was easy to interpret: Schmuck, it’s too late to put on a hat now. The damage is done.
He sat down at the head of the large dining table and motioned for me to sit next to him. Twelve people could sit comfortably around this table without adding any leaves to it. No doubt this is where the rabbi, when not in his shul, held court for visiting dignitaries or everyday suppliants. But it was doubtful that many apikorsim (Jews who are not traditional believers) like me would have spent time at this table.
At the other end of the room there was a wall unit containing three shelves of books and a desk. The books were all similarly bound, in two-toned black and yellowish-brown leather, with faded writing on the spines. These were Bibles, books of Jewish law, and other religious tracts. They all had the well-worn look of books that were in constant use. I was pretty sure that no murder mysteries, romance novels, or self-help books had ever been placed on these shelves.
I began by asking the rabbi questions about his background before moving on to the issue of The Book. He spoke of the family line of rabbis that preceded him. Apparently, in Strzyzov there were two feuding factions of Jews who were followers of two different but equally important rabbis; sometimes the feuds became violent. He was related to both sides of the feud, although I wasn’t able to follow as he discussed all the branches on his family tree.
He was raised in Romania and survived World War II because the Jews in his area were not subjected to mass deportation and extermination by the Nazis. In 1944 the Soviet Army liberated Romania, but the Jews were not overly joyous because they had been taught to fear and hate the Russians. After the war, his family immigrated to Vienna, and from there went to the United States. Their first stop was Brownsville, Brooklyn, and then they moved to Borough Park.
I asked the rabbi if he had seen the documentary film called The Jews of New York. Perhaps knowing that the Russes were considered to be an important New York Jewish family by public television might put me in a favorable light. But the rabbi said he didn’t have a television.
“You never watch television?” I asked.
“Vell, sometimes at de club,” he said.
“What club?”
“De diamond dealers club.”
I didn’t get this at all. “You belong to a diamond dealers club?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Forty-seventh Street.”
“Are you a diamond dealer?”
“Yes.”
This was confusing news. “When were you a diamond dealer? Was it before you became a rabbi?”
“During de veek I sell diamonds; on de veekend I’m de rabbi.” Talk about compartmentalizing.
As I mulled over this concept of dual careers, the rabbi walked over to the bookshelves, removed a very large black-brown tome, and brought it to the table. He opened it immediately, so I never got a chance to look at the cover. The pages appeared to be a parchment-type paper on which text that was either Hebrew or Yiddish was printed in double columns.
“Seyfer Strzyzov!” the rabbi declared, and with that he began reading. But he wasn’t reading to me. He was reading to himself and swaying the way religious Jews do when praying—back and forth, with an occasional change in direction from side to side. He slowly leafed through the book, wetting his index finger as he turned the pages. He read with a great deal of focus, as if he had never studied this book before. He would interrupt his reading with the occasional “Aha!,” which indicated recognition of something.
“What does it say, Rabbi?”
“It’s all in here.”
“What’s in there?”
“Evryting. Evryting about Strzyzov. How de people lived. About de pogroms. About de rabbis. It’s all here.” There seemed to be something gloating in this response. He was teaching me a lesson: why it’s necessary for a Jew, even in America, to read and speak Yiddish and Hebrew and, at the same time, why such a Jew should wear a skullcap and be careful about his choice of wines.
“Maybe I could have this book translated, Rabbi?” Here I tried my own version of a declaration phrased as a question. It didn’t work.
“Too expensive.”
“Maybe I could get someone to translate it for free.”
He looked at me incredulously.
“Maybe YIVO will do it. Do you know about YIVO, Rabbi?” (YIVO is a New York–based institution focused on preserving the culture, history, and language of Eastern European Jews.)
“I hoid of dem.”
“So maybe I can borrow the book and get it translated?”
“Foist find who’ll do it. Den call me. Den we’ll see.” He wasn’t letting this book out of his possession so fast.
About an hour and a half into this visit, I realized that I had gotten all I was going to get from the rabbi. It was time to go, but the rabbi seemed content to continue to read to himself. I would have to initiate the departure. Pushing away from the table, I rose three-quarters from my chair.
“Rabbi, I want to thank you for your time. I know you are a busy man, and you have been very generous to grant me this visit. I will not tak
e up any more of your time.”
He looked up from the book: “Vhere you going? Vhat’s de rush? Siddown.”
What would you do in the home of the Strzyzover Rebbe? I sat back down. He continued to read to himself.
Fifteen minutes passed, and then I heard the phone ring. The rebbetzin answered it and called to the rabbi in Yiddish.
“I haf a call from Israel,” he said, by way of explanation. This was my opportunity to leave. It was obvious that I would be leaving without the book and without any more information from the rabbi. I had seen the Holy Grail, but its secrets were out of reach, encoded in Hebrew and Yiddish. The one who could decode it, the Strzyzover Rebbe, would not do so for me.
“Rabbi, you must take the call and I must get home. You have been overly generous with your time. I am grateful.”
“Tank you fer a nice wisit.”
The Lord works in mysterious ways. Or, at least, He works in ironical ways. Not more than two days after I visited the home of the Strzyzover Rebbe, I received an e-mail from a customer who is on the board of directors of the Jewish Genealogical Society. She had located a copy of Seyfer Strzyzov that had been translated into English at UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library. It was available only to students, faculty, and visiting scholars. Alas, I didn’t fit into any of these categories. But my son the doctor was an assistant professor at UCLA Children’s Hospital. Hoo-ha. On my next visit to him, I used his affiliation to borrow the English edition of the Seyfer Strzyzov.
Seyfer Strzyzov was assembled by Jews who once lived in Strzyzov and who avoided the Holocaust because they had the foresight to emigrate to Palestine or to the United States before the deportations began. The Strzyzover Rebbe was right when he told me that the book had “evryting. Evryting about Strzyzov.” Chapter titles included “About the Rabbis in Strzyzov,” “Strzyzov and Its Inhabitants,” “About Daily Life and Trivial Events in Strzyzov,” and “Personalities and Events.” The subheadings—some sweetly comic, some heartbreakingly tragic—neatly summed up the stories that followed, about both ordinary life in a poor shtetl and the unimaginable horrors experienced by those who did and did not survive the war: “How Rabbi Chaim Halberstam from Sandz gave a thrashing to Reb Shlomo from Zyznow.” “How Reb Yosl the sexton had suddenly gone deaf.” “Every rabbi specializes in a different sickness.” “Father said: ‘Do not remain here!’ ” “Martydom and the sanctity of life.”
Seyfer Strzyzow did contain references to “Russes” who lived in the town: Aryeh Leibush Russ; his wife, Rachel; and their three daughters, Sarah, Freda, and Roni (Ruth). Roni, a Zionist, immigrated to Palestine before the war and over the objection of her parents. She writes the following:
My father, Reb Aryeh Leibush Russ, and my mother, Rachel Yidis, were typical of the previous generation. They opposed my aliyah to Eretz Israel and I did it without their blessing. My dream to make aliyah materialized, but my happiness was mixed with sadness because I had to leave my parents when they had not yet recovered from the loss of their only son, Abraham. My brother, Abraham, died when he was only twenty-three years old. My sister Sarah with her husband, Moshe Blau, was planning to follow me. My brother-in-law was supposed to immigrate [to Palestine] as a rabbi, but the British Mandatory Government had cancelled the rabbinical privileges for aliyah and they, with their three children, remained in the foreign land. They were all annihilated by the Nazis, and I never merited to see them again. May G-d avenge their blood.
I have never been able to determine whether we were related to these Russes. According to my mother and Aunt Hattie, Grandpa Russ had never mentioned any relatives in the Old Country; nor, come to think of it, did he ever even speak of the Holocaust. It was all part of the world he had left behind and was glad to forget. But how many Russes could there have been in the tiny shtetl of Strzyzov?
Although I’ve never been able to trace my family’s roots in Strzyzov, the search did give me a wealth of information about our ancestral home, brought me to the home of the Strzyzover Rebbe in Borough Park, and to the Seyfer Strzyzow at UCLA. This itself was a unique experience that would now be passed down as part of the Russ family story.
Coming to America
With the help of Gail Adler, an amateur genealogist who offered to trade her investigative skills for smoked-sable sandwiches, I was able to piece together some historical facts: Grandpa Russ departed Hamburg, Germany, on January 8, 1907, and arrived at Ellis Island eleven days later. The ship was the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria. He traveled in Zwischendeck (steerage) and his occupation is given as Bäckergeselle (journeyman baker).
Joel Russ came to America at the age of twenty-one, when his eldest sister, Channah, sent for him. She lived with her husband, Isaac Ebbin, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, which was then one of the most densely populated places on earth. Grandpa Russ came, like every other immigrant, thinking he would find the Goldeneh Medina, the Golden Land. Although the streets weren’t paved with gold, they were at least free from plundering, murderous Cossacks on horseback. And coming to America meant no longer having to worry about being conscripted into the Czar’s army for twenty-five years, during which time, if you weren’t killed in some war, all traces of your Jewish identity would be obliterated. Channah’s sponsoring her brother Joel’s immigration to America was a business decision as well as a display of family loyalty. Isaac Ebbin had established a herring business—or, more precisely, a herring stand—between two buildings on Hester Street. Herrings were fished out of large wooden barrels, wrapped in day-old newspapers, and sold to passersby on the street. Channah and Isaac had eight children. One day, Isaac decided to become a Talmudic scholar. The rigors of interpreting the word of God left Isaac no time for either selling herring or providing for his children. Channah was left to manage both.
Joel Russ and his sister
Channah Ebbin
The cost of sponsoring an immigrant in those days was twenty-five dollars. The price of a herring was a nickel. It took a lot of herring for Channah to bring Joel to the United States. Business was brisk for brother and sister, as herring was an inexpensive source of protein. A poor immigrant would take home and unwrap the herring, put it in a cast-iron skillet with some sliced potatoes and onions, and then cook the dish in a coal-fired stove. With thick slices of black bread or rye or leftover Sabbath challah, this was a meal for an entire family. Those who lived in even more dire circumstances than the average poverty-stricken immigrant could make a single schmaltz herring last for two meals. For the first meal, the herring was rubbed on a piece of bread, leaving behind a layer of fat; the fish itself was saved for another meal.
Isaac and Channah Ebbin
Channah expanded her business by procuring a pushcart for Joel, which was set up not far from the Hester Street stall. She kept her brother’s pushcart supplied with herring, and she kept an eye on the business as well.
By 1909, Joel had earned enough to pay back to his sister the twenty-five-dollar immigrant sponsorship fee. With his remaining profits he struck out on his own, starting with a visit to a matchmaker. He and Bella Spier, a simple peasant woman from the Galician shtetl of Skole, were married shortly thereafter. Their first child was a son, Morris, who died when he was a year and a half old, during the 1910 typhoid epidemic. Then came the three girls: Hattie in 1913, Ida in 1915, and my mother, Anne, in 1921. My grandparents’ marriage lasted for almost fifty years. There must have been some sort of bond between them, but there were never any outward signs of love, or even tenderness. Until she died in 1959, Bella called her husband only by his last name, Russ, which she pronounced “Roos” in her heavy Eastern European accent. Joel called his wife Zug, which loosely translates from the Yiddish as “Hey, you.”
Joel’s first business was a candy store on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, where he probably sold penny candies, cigarettes, Yiddish newspapers, and other sundries. A small candy store was one step up from a pushcart, even though this candy store was actually in a basement, below street level. Cand
y shops proliferated in poor neighborhoods because the initial capital investment was modest. Grandpa Russ sold it after four years and used the proceeds to open his first appetizing store, Russ’s Cut Rate Appetizing, at 187 Orchard Street. It was back to the Lower East Side.
Grandma and Grandpa Russ with Aunt Hattie (left)
and Aunt Ida, around 1920
So, What’s an Appetizing Store?
Push open the door at Russ & Daughters and the first thing to hit you is the store’s unique aroma. It’s a combination of smokiness from whitefish, salmon, sturgeon, and sable; the brininess of herrings and pickles; the yeastiness of freshly baked bagels and bialys; and the sweetness of rugelach, babka, chocolates, and halvah. How I wish I could bottle that singular scent—smoky, briny, yeasty, and sweet.
It’s important, for historical reasons, to say what an appetizing store is not. It is not a deli. Appetizing stores came into being as the anti-deli. The laws of kashrut prohibit cooking and eating dairy and meat products together. To make sure that these laws are observed, kosher delis prepare and sell cured, smoked, and pickled meat—pastrami, salami, bologna, tongue, frankfurters, and corned beef—under the supervision of a mashgiach, a rabbi trained in the intricacies of these dietary laws. Because smoked fish is traditionally eaten with butter or cream cheese on bagels or bread, and because herring is often covered with cream sauce, these products needed a store of their own if they were to have rabbinical supervision. Thus was born the appetizing store. Added to the mix is the American phenomenon of “kosher style,” which describes delis without rabbinical supervision that also sell dairy products, such as cheese blintzes, and appetizing stores without rabbinical supervision that sell both kosher and non-kosher fish, such as sturgeon. Russ & Daughters has always been a kosher-style appetizing store. Grandpa Russ left his orthodoxy in the Old Country.
Russ & Daughters Page 3
