The Place You Live In: A Multigenerational Immigrant Story

By Deanna Klein Shapiro

Deanna Shapiro looks back at the Jewish immigrant family that shaped her with honesty, understanding, forgiveness, and admiration. Moving with ease and grace between poetry and prose, she addresses familiar themes of immigrant life, such as uprooting, sacrifice, loyalty and the pull and push of assimilation, through a uniquely personal and gendered lens.
Gail Reimer
Executive Director
Jewish Womens Archive

Deanna Shapiros latest book, The Place You Live In: A Multigenerational Immigrant Story, is the perfect blend between prose narrative and poetry. Shapiros stunning skill for poetry complements the story of her grandparents journey from Galicia to the Lower East Side of New York City. The book also tells the tale of the familys life in the Bronx and the Catskill Mountains in the 1940s and 1950s. As a descendant of immigrants, readers can easily identify with both the pathos and humor of Shapiros familys story. Its a book to be read and savored slowly, like a tasty home cooked meal.
Sandra Stillman Gartner
Co-author of To Life! A Celebration of Vermont Jewish Women

In this lovingly written memoir, Deanna Shapiro, recalls the perspective of a quiet child in a large, outspoken family, navigating America in the mid-20th century from Tar Beach in the Bronx to False Porch in the Catskills. The complexities of immigration, ambition, and tradition are played out in prose and poetry, the family portrayed with personality and imagery, revealed by Shapiro within a culture of small comforts.
Judith Chalmer
Author of Out of Historys Junk Jar

Deanna Shapiro did the family research many of us only talk about doing. Sharing her very personal memories and reflections of family members and family dynamics in a wonderful balance of narrative and poetry, Deanna takes us into the world of her immigrant family. It is a story which echoes the experience of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish families who left Eastern Europe for the United States at the turn of the 20th Century. It is the story of family, memory, the desire to fit in and assimilate, stories of personal successes and failures. In her quiet, unassuming voice, Deanna touches on the profound changes to family, religion and personal identity that have occurred over the past century. It is a window on from where we have come. Better or worse than where we are? A question for each of us to consider.
Rabbi Ira J. Schiffer
Associate Chaplain
Charles P. Scott Center for Spiritual & Religious Life
Middlebury College

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468543193

Deanna Klein Shapiro

Deanna Shapiro is a poet and a painter whose poems have appeared in Poetica, The Aurorean, The League of Vermont Writers' Anthology: Vermont Voices Jubilee, The Jewish Literary Women's Annual, Tapestries, Burlington Poetry Journal, Penwood Review and The Mountain Troubadour. She is the winner of the Arthur Wallace Pead Memorial Award for 2009 from the Poetry Society of Vermont of which she is a member. She is also a member of the League of Vermont Writers and the Otter Creek Poetry Workshop. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Deanna's first book, "Conversations at the Nursing Home: A Mother, A Daughter and Alzheimer's" was published in 2006. (PRA Publishing). Shapiro has a degree in English Literature from Hunter College and holds graduate degrees in education and psychology from City College. She taught kindergarten and served as a school psychologist in both New York City and Westchester County school systems. She is an ordained interfaith minister. Deanna lives in the Champlain Valley of Vermont with her husband, Charlie.

Book preview

© 2012 Deanna Klein Shapiro. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First Published by AuthorHouse 7/3/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4319-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4320-9 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012900916

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover Art by Deanna Klein Shapiro

www.deannashapiro.net

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following publications in which poems in this volume were first published, sometimes in a modified form. Jewish Women’s Literary Annual: Welcome, Eyes Opened, Penwood Review: The Answer, Poetica: Grandma’s Blessings, I Know Podhayze, The Aurorean: Warm Ice Cream, The Mountain Troubadour: On Viewing the Statue of Liberty, The Cigar Smoking Uncles. The Little House, Intentions, Blessings, Smile, Smile, Smile, The Wail, and Tough Times originally appeared in Conversations at the Nursing Home: A Mother, A Daughter and Alzheimer’s (PRA Publishing, 2006).

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Family Tree

A Very Close Family

Immigrants Arrive

How We Got There

Shtetl Life

Life Under Franz Joseph

Country Arrival

Tenement Living

A Social Contract

Faith

Grandpa Samuel

Pulling Together

How Curry Developed

The Depression Years

Family Discord

Sleeping Arrangements

Climbing The Ladder

Polishing Our Place

Middle Ground

More Leisure Time

The Matriarch

Touching the Sky

Country Help

Market Day

The Menu

The Oldest Cousin

Validation

Our Uncle From Romania

Comings And Goings

Deep Impressions

Homegrown Fun

Visitors

More Visitors

We Do The Visiting

Maternal Grandparents

Summer Crafts

Back To The City

City Living

Family Ties

Double Features

The Family On Anderson Avenue

Loyalty

Passover Seders

Synagogue

Esta Bina Family Circle

Our Family

Mothers

Ruth

Mother’s Menus

Mother Reads

My Father

Patriarchy

Family Secrets

My Little Brother

Television Arrives

Bronx Playmates

City Fun

City Greenery

Shopping, City Style

City Transportation

Subways and Trains

Public School Education

Growing Up

Junior High School And Sex

Social Dancing

Music & Art

Changes

The Dating Field

Facing Life

Off to College

College Transfer

Foreign Tour

Philosophy Of Education

Charlie

We Have Arrived

Epilogue

Glossary

Bibliography

For my grandparents Goldie and Samuel Klein and their five children,

Essie, Lou, Joe, Birch, and my father, Al, with gratitude.

We are all immigrants

from the country

of our childhood.

Graham Greene

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my mother and father, Ruth and Al Klein, not only for who they were, but for extensively sharing their family stories with me on numerous occasions. I also want to thank my cousins Gloria Klein Orin, Joseph Bernard Stier, and Stanley Stier for filling me in on family happenings earlier than my experience allowed. Stanley also read the manuscript.

Gratitude goes to Dr. Louis Schor, the last president of the First United Podhayzer Congregation, a burial society for people from Podhayze which is now part of the Ukraine. Due to his generosity I received a translated copy of the by-laws of this organization and found to my delight, the name of my grandfather, Samuel Klein, as one of its organizers and religious leaders. He also provided me with a copy of a chart designating the burial plots at Mt. Zion Cemetery in Queens, New York, where our grandparents and other relatives are buried.

Stanley Diamond, Merle Kastner, and Eiran Harris of The Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal generously helped me on the road to genealogical research.

A visit to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of New York allowed me to visualize the very grim conditions under which immigrants like my grandparents lived. I gratefully acknowledge those who maintain this important historic sight.

Thank you to Maxine & Norton Davis for providing photographs of modern day Podhayze on their trip to the region.

Many thanks go to David Weinstock, the founder of the Otter Creek Poetry Workshop, who read and critiqued this manuscript, as well as my friends in the Workshop who have gently helped me on my path as a poet for the past fourteen years. Particular thanks go to Elizabeth Stabler, Ray Hudson, Alice Christian, Julian Waller, Kathleen McKinley Harris, and Susanne London for reading and commenting on the manuscript, as did Peggy Hinds and Linda Strommen.

I want to thank my daughters, Holly Shapiro Herfter and Emily Shapiro Belth, for their love and cogent suggestions, and Alex Belth for his love and writing wisdom. Special thanks go to my husband, Charlie, who not only gave me feedback on many poems, but was a champion of love and support during the time of writing and revisions.

Preface

I sit on top of an old table on the closed-in porch of our country house. I hug my knees to my chest. I am nine years old. My older boy cousins sit opposite me around the piano—five of them. They joke, laugh, and howl. I watch. I say nothing, although more than anything, I want to be part of their fun. But I am afraid they will tease me.

I have a quiet nature like my mother. I was not inclined to share feelings, often not acknowledging them even to myself. From early childhood I was predisposed toward an internal life and a spiritual-mindedness. I also developed what Alice Miller calls a false self, that is, a persona designed to please others.

I came from a family that did not express their feelings very much either. They were not inclined to be storytellers. But I was sensitive to the feelings of others early on. I came to know things that were never verbalized. I picked up such impressions through tone of voice, mood, innuendo, and the body language of others. I was an observer, keenly aware of things going on around me.

This is the story of three generations of this family and the places we lived—Podhayze in the Carpathian Mountains of what is today the Ukraine, New York City, and the Catskill Mountains of New York State. It is the story about the changes that took place in one family from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century.

My paternal grandparents were from Podhayze in the province of Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the former Kingdom of Poland. They emigrated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City just before the turn of the twentieth century along with a big wave of other Eastern European Jews escaping from appalling conditions. And that is where my parents were born. I was born in the Bronx, New York, on the eve of World War II.

Today I am grateful for the experiences and opportunities my family provided that have made me who I am and have allowed me to live a privileged life in America, unlike many Jews who lived in other times and other places.

Deanna Klein Shapiro

Shellhouse Mountain Farm

September, 2012

Family Tree

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A Very Close Family

We were first and second generation Americans. We were privileged to be traveling to the Catskill Mountains, to be leaving the hot city for the summer, to be leaving our comfortable, middle-class apartments in New York City. We were the families of five siblings and all of us shared a country house for ten weeks each summer. That is what made us so unusual.

These five siblings were very close. In New York City we all lived near each other and saw each other often. The five siblings spoke to each other on the phone, sometimes daily. They bought our summer property so we could all be together in the summer. Their closeness and the family decisions that were born out of that, were what made us unique.

You could say that these siblings were a unit of one, supporting each other through life. They bought the country house because their mother said, Take care of each other, because they often reminded each other, Remember what Mama said. Living together every summer in our country home was one way we honored Grandma’s wish.

These were the five families:

Esther (Essie) Klein married Irving Stier in 1924.

They had three sons: Walter, Joseph, and Stanley.

Louis (Lou) Klein married Ruth Goldberg in 1925.

They had one son: Arthur.

Joseph (Joe) Klein married Mae Gershman in 1926.

They had one daughter and one son: Gloria and Irwin (Buddy).

Benjamin (Birch) Klein married Esther Gurewitz in 1936.

They adopted one daughter: Arlene.

Abraham (Al) Klein married Ruth Tornberg in 1937.

They had one daughter and one son: Deanna and Gerald (Gerry).

Each summer we traveled from the city to our country place in Aunt Essie’s maroon Buick. I was excited, anticipating the change from city life to country life, as we packed our clothing and toys. The trunk of the car bulged with our suitcases and cartons. From the time I was eight I thought I could do as good a job as my elders packing the trunk with our belongings. I could estimate sizes and see how things fit, but of course, it was always a grown-up’s job. I watched as the men positioned and re-positioned these bulky items, weaving rope around them, securing our precious cargo using slip-knots and square knots, tying down the trunk lid, always ajar. Like the immigrants we were, our possessions were tied in with our tears.

We were going from the city to greenery and fresh air, to the rushing brooks and undulating hills that nourished me. Our journey was completely the reverse of our grandparents who came from the greenery and fresh air of the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe, mountains covered with evergreen forests and streams that flowed around rolling hills. Their travels ended in the squalid crush of tenement apartments in New York City. They came, but we were the ones who really thrived.

Grandma Goldie, though small in stature, was the defining power in this family. My mother, upon meeting her, commented: I was surprised at how small she was. But Grandma was a regal woman, neat and clean, hair upswept, though dowdy in her shapeless dress. Pop always said, Grandma was a very lovely woman. She never learned English. It was too hard; there was no time. She could not even talk with her grandchildren because they were never taught Yiddish. She wanted them to assimilate although she, herself, was old world. She brought her religion and rituals from the old country and they never strayed far from her. She died in 1940 when I was eleven months old. So I never knew her, and yet, her presence has always loomed large in my life because of the way her children revered her. Her weaknesses were never revealed by this loyal family. What remains for me to behold is her strength, her optimism, her sense of fairness, and of course, her emunah, her faith.

Grandma’s Blessing

Grandma, you sat at your window on Sabbath morning

reading the Scriptures, homilies from the Tsenerene,

the women’s Bible, written in Yiddish for the less educated woman

not schooled in Hebrew. Or were you saying tekhines,

those Yiddish prayers written mostly by men,

some medieval women, recited by females alone in their homes,

not in the synagogue like a community of men?

Did your mother say them before you,

these prayers of domestic life, and her mother before her,

and our ancient matriarchs too—

petitioning the Shekhinah, the female divine presence,

for sustenance and livelihood and recovery from illness,

for the success of your children and the light after darkness?

Or did you have your own prayers like I do today?

My Sabbath is stolen moments—daily walks or meditations,

or driving alone in the car. I say my tekhines at night in bed—

prayers of gratitude, prayers for peace and health and healing,

prayers for enlightenment for family and friends and all like souls.

And did you talk to God like I do?

Request His presence for daily concerns?

Ask for help when there are no more answers?

Express anger when life deals its blows?

Grandma, we blossomed in spirit, two underground streams—

sheltered by angels, Uriel in front and Raphael behind,

Michael to the right and Gabriel on the left—

two underground streams—yes, finally we meet.

Immigrants Arrive

We were going to our country house in the Catskill Mountains. It was Uncle Irving’s idea to buy it. The Catskills had become a place for New York City Jews to vacation. Farms were sold to Jews in the early 1900s and farmhouses became the first summer boarding houses. The advent of cars and buses really opened up the Catskills. Hotels and bungalow colonies began to spring up, giving the area the name, The Borscht Belt. A brother and sister of Uncle Irving’s had each bought summer homes there. And he was familiar with the Bart compound down the road from our house because Uncle Lou worked with Mike Bart at American Safety Razor.

The Bart’s place was different from ours. While we had one central house where we all lived, their family members lived in separate quarters. Rose and Mike Bart lived in the main house with their children. Each of Mike’s siblings lived in their own cottages adjacent to the main house and did their own cooking. Unlike our sunny lawn, their property was dark, enclosed by pine trees. I loved the soft, silky, brown pine needles covering the ground in the center of their compound.

No doubt, my father and his siblings were enchanted with