A Calendar of Northern Fables

By John T. Syrtash

A Calendar of Northern Fables is a nostalgic collection of short stories about Jewish immigrants who settled in North America after the War. It’s also about their children and grandchildren. Based in Toronto, Canada the stories follow many of the Jewish Holidays and poke gentle fun at the lifestyle, rituals and mythologies brought over from the old country. Meet Mendel, the much loved Pharmacist and find out why he feels compelled to sin right before Yom Kippur, the holiday of atonement. The book gives you a rare glimpse inside the homes and synagogues of observant Jews and explains some of the customs followed by this close knit community. What is the reason for the knotted strings dangling from the hips of religious men? How do observant young people date without ever touching each other?
A Calendar of Northern Fables is a charming and humorous look at Jewish immigrants in the 1950s and the lives of their descendants today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John T. Syrtash
• Release date: Jun 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772420388

John T. Syrtash

John T. Syrtash was born in Budapest, Hungary, the child of Jewish Holocaust survivors, who immigrated with his parents to Toronto Canada in 1957. He was a student of English literature with Northrop Frye at the University of Toronto from 1972-76. He has published innumerable legal articles after becoming a family law lawyer in 1981 for several publications over the past 35 years, including the Canadian Jewish News, the National Post, and Sun Media and has often appeared on TV and radio as a legal commentator. In 1992 he published Religion and Culture in Canadian Family Law (Butterworths) and has been the editor of a weekly digest of Canadian family law cases called the Syrtash Family Law Netletter for LexisNexis for over 20 years.He is currently counsel to the law firm of Garfin Zeidenberg LLP, Toronto, Canada, practicing as one of Canada’s most senior family law trial lawyers and is also a mediator and arbitrator.Mr. Syrtash is President of Canada’s "Spousal Support Database", a company he co-founded. In 1989 Mr. Syrtash was awarded the B’nai Brith Community Award for having been instrumental in reforming Canada’s family laws. His legislation helps Jewish and Shiite women to obtain a religious divorce from their husbands when such men refuse to grant their consent without imposing onerous conditions. He has three children, a grandchild and is devoted to the woman he loves.A Calendar of Northern Fables is his first work of fiction

Book preview

A Calendar of

Northern Fables

John T. Syrtash

Copyright John T. Syrtash, 2016

Carrick Publishing

Smashwords Edition ISBN: 13: 978-1-77242-038-8

Cover Image Copyright: Estate of Michel Lambeth, Photographer

Cover Design by Sara Carrick

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This e-book is intended for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you did not purchase this e-book, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. While some places and street names will be known to the reader, all characters and situations included in these stories are products of the author’s imagination and are not intended to represent any actual person, living or deceased, or any actual event.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Man Who Couldn’t Sin

The Mystery of the Expensive Lemon

Chanukah Gelt

Esther’s Feast

Passover at the Alters

Hungarian Crepes and The Festival of Roses

The Rabbi’s Choice

About the Author

John Syrtash’s first venture into fiction and humour is a most delightful success. It brings to light a bygone era and makes one nostalgic for yesteryear.

~ Frank Dimant, Professor Modern Israel Studies, former Executive Vice-President, B’nai Brith Canada.

"John Syrtash’s new book, A Calendar of Northern Fables, is a joy to read. Although a lawyer by profession, Mr. Syrtash has a penchant for creating vivid images of the modern Jewish shtetl. He weaves his personalities and communal structures from his experiences living in the Jewish community of Toronto.

"His love for his fellow Jew – despite the often quirky nature of our brothers and sisters – is quite evident in each story he lovingly details and in the warmth and kindness that he imbues into his characters.

"With his stories revolving around the Jewish calendar, you’ll find yourself reliving those special holy days with family and friends, since John’s characters hearken back to so many of our loved ones. You’ll find yourself asking the age-old Talmudic question, ‘O God, who is like Your nation, Israel – such a unique nation in all the world!’

"Enjoy A Calendar of Northern Fables on a quiet Shabbos evening or any other time you’d like to catch up with old friends."

~ Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, Beth Avraham Yosef Tannenbaum Synagogue of Toronto

"A Calendar of Northern Fables is a delight to read! Reminiscent of the style of Sholem Aleichem, John Syrtash recreates for the reader a world circumscribed by Toronto’s Jewish community – a world of observant Jewry with its beliefs, its traditions and its foibles.

"Told with empathy and gentle humour, Syrtash’s stories introduce the reader to Yiddish expressions, Jewish history, wise Rabbis and adoring but not always wise parents, and the need to celebrate each day.

The collection is rightly titled Fables as each of the stories imparts an important lesson about life and living, not just for Jews but for people of all faiths.

~ Joan O’Callaghan, Sessional Instructor OISE/University of Toronto, in English Curriculum and Instruction

"Having grown up in Forest Hill (a prominent Jewish community in Toronto) John Syrtash’s Northern Fables book struck many chords that are still resonating after reading it several days ago. He captures beautifully the hysteria of growing up in a Jewish household, the madness of the Passover Seders and the absolute truth and absurdity of the Mason Dixon line when one crosses Bathurst and Steeles.

"As someone who tells stories on stage for a living, I was thrilled to see the detail John creates with each of his characters. I laughed out loud several times and felt the pain of several characters who I identified with perhaps a little too closely.

A fabulous read!

~ Sam Rosenthal, Artistic Director/Founder of the Hogtown Experience. Actor based in Toronto

Dedicated to my parents,

Imre and Judith Rabinek (Syrtash)

of Blessed Memory

and to my English teacher,

William H. Martyn.

The Man Who Couldn’t Sin

Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the Universe, Who gave the heart understanding to distinguish between day and night.

Every year, like clockwork, the rosy fingertips of sunset spread over Bathurst and its side streets. It’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in this city of maples. Jewish families, dressed in their finest and kissed by the sun’s rays, saunter to and from worship or join friends and relatives for festive meals. During the High Holidays, with God’s blessing, it never rains on Toronto.

Mendel is a pious, gentle member of Toronto’s Jewish community. I first noticed him decked out in phylacteries facing mizrach (east towards Jerusalem), lost deep in prayer. My four-year-old Joey had just tripped over Mendel’s prayer shawl and fell as he ran to catch candies thrown at the bar mitzvah boy by celebrants in the shul (synagogue). Mendel picked him up and asked sweetly if Joey was alright. What a beautiful ponim (cute face). Here, have these candies, he said, reaching deep into his breast pocket. But remember to brush.

This was typical of my experience with Mendel: always a kind word, a tender smile with the grandfatherly warmth at any perceived adversity.

The holy days were upon us again. As Mendel locked up his pharmacy on the way to evening prayers, he realized that maybe God had rewarded Toronto with rays of gold every New Year for a reason. So, why this place? So far north, so distant from Jerusalem, Mendel thought to himself. Well, if you look it up, Talmudic tradition tells us that Moses, yes Moses — stuttered. In fact, he stuttered so badly that he pleaded with God not to appoint him as His Prophet. But God told him not to worry so much, that He will put the right words in his mouth and Moses should humble himself to his task. So, after the people of Israel escaped from Egypt, Moses tried to tell them that the Promised Land was in Canaan and that was where he was destined to lead them. But, despite listening carefully, all the Jews could make out was Moses stammering Cana…, Cana..., Cana…

So, naturally, they came to Canada.

You know that, throughout history, God’s chosen people have been ostracized and discriminated against. Well, despite what you might think, Canada was no different.

After the Great Depression, anti-Semitic sentiments were pervasive. So it was easy for a certain Frederick Charles Blair, the senior official in charge of upholding immigration restrictions, to entrench his prejudices in government policy. Toronto Colleges had strict Jew quotas. Mrs. Cohn, Miller, Spiegel and Adler, may their names be blessed, raised funds to open Mt. Sinai between 1913 and 1922 because no Toronto Hospital would allow Jewish doctors to practice on their premises. However, by the 1950s, Canada had opened its doors wider to Jews and many gravitated to Toronto, the city of maples, rivers and ravines, which indigenous people called the meeting place. It turned out to be a hospitable meeting place for a goodly number of Europe’s dispersed Jewry.

For Mendel, Toronto had become a goldenah medina (city of gold), a moment in time for the Jewish people to cherish. For his parents and his siblings, this was a city that granted the richness of peace, relative tolerance, even respect and, yes, prosperity. A renaissance of education and culture blossomed as Jewish refugees from everywhere thronged to this historically Victorian metropolis, more British than the British, more polite and orderly than a Jane Austen novel. Imagine, the mantle of Old City Hall emblazoned with a Star of David! And, on the corner of Bloor and Avenue Road, the image of a dove rises from yet another Magen David in a playful stained-glass Church window. Religious life sizzled, kosher restaurants rose and fell. Everybody chose to eat at each other’s synagogues, whatever their affiliation -- no small miracle. Judaica was ‘cool’ and even the unaffiliated somehow felt at home. So inclusive was Toronto that, less than a decade after the Holocaust, its people had elected the first of three Jewish mayors.

Yes, life had been good to Mendel, his family and his community. And the Jewish New Year was a time for them all to rejoice. But Rosh Hashanah also means the Ten Days of Penitence, leading up to Yom Kippur. And every Yom Kippur, Mendel had a problem.

Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the day when all Jews must atone before God by fasting and prayer for a full day, by admitting the sins they’ve committed in the previous year and asking Him for forgiveness. What kind of sin, you ask? Well, for some, it might be thievery, cheating, lying, or coveting. But not for Mendel.

Mendel was racked with guilt, mortal guilt. The guilt would not be assuaged, no matter how hard he thought about it — and, believe me, as Yom Kippur drew nearer, he could not stop thinking about it. He was a man possessed, distracted, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights. What could this kind, gentle, generous soul possibly have done to live in such turmoil?

So maybe he had neglected to pray at precisely the right times each day? Maybe he had not kept every single law of what to eat, what not to eat? It’s true, his eyes should not have wandered when that oh so pretty 21-year-old Isabella from Portugal pranced into his pharmacy on the hottest day of the year, sporting a tank top and short shorts. But it was no more than a brief glance, nothing lascivious, not Mendel. And oh, he had fallen asleep, just for a second or two, on shabbat (Sabbath) morning, when Rabbi Klopotnick gave the longest, most tedious sermon of his tenure on the second hottest day of the year. But this had only happened once and poor Mendel had yet to forgive himself. Ten per cent of his annual income went to charity and, forty years after his bar mitzvah, barely a day had passed without Mendel learning some blessed page from the Talmud, caring for someone else’s welfare and davening (praying) three times a day to his God, as prescribed by the Holy Book.

Still, under Jewish law, poor Mendel had