To Climb the Mountain

By Irwin H. Benjamin

Bravo. There are many people writing, but you are truly an artist!!! Very much enjoyed the story, the style and the artistic expression. Havent seen this kind of writing in our circles. Thanks. S.S. (London, England)

Whenever I see your name, Im there. It is the first article I read in the Hamodia. The depth, style and writing truly mesmerizes me. A.B. (Bnei Brak, Israel)

Just a note to let you now how much I have been enjoying your articles in the Hamodia. They are humorous, thought provoking and always leave me with some mussar haskel. It is a pleasure to read articles with such depth and toichen. E.F. (Monsey)

Hi, Im a huge fan of your stories. Its the first thing I check out when I buy the Hamodia. You are a huge inspiration to me, both in Judaism and in your outlook on life. I love the nostalgia and your prolific writing. Im a Chasidic boy. Yiddishkait has a huge influence on me. I would like to know if there is any other place where I could enjoy your writings. S.M. (Brooklyn, NY)

Words cannot express the great appreciation I have for the beautiful story you wrote in Hamodia. Being married to a Ben Torah for ten years, the story really gave me a new rejuvenated feeling, how many of us take it for granted and do not realize the true value of Torah learning. I dont know how I can thank you enough. R.B. (Lakewood, NJ)

I look forward to your articles in the Hamodia. I wish that they would appear more often. In addition to the good subjects, I love your writing. The stories are impossible to put down once begun. S.T. (New York)

We are avid readers of your articles. We find them captivating, witty and extremely well written. M.A. (Brooklyn, NY)

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468523768

Irwin H. Benjamin

Irwin Benjamin was born in Brooklyn, NY. He attended Yeshiva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After serving two years in the military during the Korean War, he became a court reporter. In 1973 Irwin formed his own court reporting firm, where he worked until he retired. He has since been teaching Talmud, and writing for various publications. He lives with his wife on Long Island and Manhattan.

Book preview

Contents

INTRODUCTION

DEDICATIONS

PREFACE

PART 1 –

THE EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

PART 2 –

FAMILY STORIES

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PART 3 –

LOWER EAST SIDE STORIES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

PART 4 – FICTION

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

PART 5 –

TRUE STORIES

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

PART 6 –

OPINIONS

CHAPTER SIXTY

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

POSTSCRIPT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GLOSSARY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Who may ascend the mountain of Hashem? (Psalms 34)

INTRODUCTION

On February 14, 2000, I stopped. I stopped covering assignments. I stopped taking business calls. I stopped going to my office. I stopped opening my business mail. I stopped competing. And I stopped the pursuit of making a living. After working most of my adult life, at the age of 64, I retired.

It was not a quick decision. I thought about it for a long time, but I knew it was the right decision. I had no second thoughts. Chazal tell us that a man’s life is 70 years. I still had a lot to do and I was running out of time. I took an approximate survey of my financial wherewithal and decided that this was the time. My wife and I are not extravagant, and although nothing in life is certain, we approximated what our financial requirements should be for the next decade or so. We projected that if we were careful and prudent we would have enough money to live a relatively comfortable life – no bells and whistles – but pretty much the same lifestyle as we had heretofore been accustomed to living.

No, I had no big desire to now go on cruises every month, or sit on the beach and read novel after novel. I had other things on my mind. These decisions, however, did not evolve immediately. The first couple of years were difficult. There were hours and days and months of agonizing soul-searching. It was not easy. But when I sorted things through, and as the various concepts crystallized and took shape, I realized that those were my goals all along.

Please don’t think me sanctimonious or self-righteous as I relate what those goals were. That’s certainly not my intention.

My first desire was to increase my Torah learning. Learning Torah had actually become my life. Perhaps because I had no opportunity to do so in my early years, and now that I had, I was determined to not let go. It came about as follows.

After I married I was fortunate to develop a strong relationship with a tremendous talmid chacham, HaRav Eliyahu Rominek, shlita, who literally turned my life around. I dare say there are very few in the world like Rav Rominek. Up to that point in my life I never met anyone like him. He is perhaps the most brutally honest person you will ever come across, but he was exactly what I needed at that time in my life. He is also totally uncompromising and inflexible when it comes to Torah law. I think of him as virtually the embodiment of Torah itself.

Rabbi Rominek at that time was the Rav of the Young Israel of Laurelton. In the later years I became its president, further strengthening our close relationship. When we moved to Lawrence and Rabbi Rominek started Yeshiva Ohavei Torah, I became that institution’s president as well, deepening our relationship even more so.

Being so close to someone of that stature for over 50 years has naturally had an enormous impact on me.

In addition, when we bought our apartment on the Lower East Side, I was again fortunate in meeting another amazing person, HaRav Shmuel Fishelis, shlita. He is the son-in-law of the gaon, HaRav Dovid Feinstein, shlita. Rabbi Fishelis is not only a renowned talmid chacham, an incredible masmid who is never without a sefer, but is a true tzaddik as well. Being able to forge an immutable and inseparable friendship with someone of his stature is something I thank the Ribono Shel Olam for each and every day.

As a result of their influence, my love and quest for Torah became the one paramount aspect of my life.

The second love I had was helping people. I enjoyed it. A small thing such as holding a door open for someone makes me feel good. I like helping people with their heavy bags. It is an innate character trait not brought on so much by my desire to do chesed – which of course is a wonderful mitzvah - but probably because of my upbringing. When I see a smile on a person’s face because of something I helped him with, or having someone thank me for helping them, it makes my day. That was the first desire that I knew I would have to pursue: To increase the tremendous pleasure I receive helping people.

My third love was writing. I had never written a story or a book previously, but had always enjoyed the written word. That, together with my fertile imagination, made me certain that I could come up with some interesting stories. I had it in me. I just needed the time to get it out. Also, because of my difficult and unusual background growing up, I wanted in some way to document my life story – not only for posterity-sake - but perhaps to encourage others who may find themselves similarly challenged; that they are not alone, that others went through hard times as well, and that no matter how dire the circumstances, there is always a way out.

And so I began Phase Two of my life.

I went about it as follows: The first thing I did was acquire several additional chavrusas. I also began teaching gemara to Bucharian students and young college students.

Secondly, I had davened in a nursing home for close to 40 years, all the while helping patients with various chores like putting on their talleisim and tefillin. In addition to that, I now became a volunteer at NYU Medical Center’s Emergency Room. An emergency room in a hospital can be a frightening place given all that is going on at the same time. As frivolous or as insignificant as it may sound, bringing a patient a warm blanket, or a sandwich, or water, and then having them thank me to the sky for it, or having a patient tell me that I was the first person in six hours to smile at him, gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure. I lower or raise their beds, talk to them, make jokes, and generally attempt to make them feel comfortable and at ease. Though minor in comparison to what the doctors and nurses do for patients, I feel I make a significant contribution and receive an enormous amount of satisfaction in the process.

As far as writing goes: I wrote my first story, showed it to a publisher, and it was immediately published. That continues up until today. As far as writing my life story, I hope that the writing of this book will serve as the beginning of that long-awaited goal.

oOo

DEDICATIONS

I WANT TO EXPRESS MY DEEP GRATITUDE TO THE ALMIGHTY FOR GRANTING ME THE HEALTH AND ABILITY TO WRITE THIS BOOK.

TO RABBI ELIYAHU P. ROMINEK, shlita AND TO RABBI SHMUEL FISHELIS, shlita, WHO INSTILLED IN ME THE LOVE OF LEARNING TORAH AND WHOSE KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER TRAITS CONTINUE TO INSPIRE ME.

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, FIRST AND FOREMOST, TO MY PARTNER IN LIFE, MY DEAR WIFE BARBARA.

I ALSO DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY PRECIOUS CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN AND GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN.

MAY HASHEM PLEASE WATCH OVER ALL OF THEM.

PREFACE

It is difficult writing the story of one’s life. So much time has passed and so much has happened. No matter how hard one tries recounting actual facts and circumstances, the finished product winds up being merely the way one remembers it, and, at best, an approximation of what really took place.

Despite that, I did want to set down in writing what little glimpses and snippets I recalled of my early years growing up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. I hope that I will someday, b’ezras Hashem, write another book that will continue into my working and married years. Instead of doing that now, however, I have continued the book with storytelling. In a sense, though, the stories are a continuation of my life story. Subsumed in each of my stories is a reflection of who and what I am - in some stories it is quite obvious, while in others it is not so readily apparent, but it’s there nonetheless.

In narrating the true stories I have taken great care to do so without distorting the actual facts. At the same time, however, I did take the liberty of dramatizing some of those facts in an effort of engaging the reader and making the stories more interesting.

I have devoted a chapter to each of my parents. We are all, in a sense, byproducts or offshoots of our parents, and my story would not be complete without the reader knowing who my father and mother were.

My stories contain many Hebrew and Yiddish words and phrases. Many of them can be understood intuitively, but for the reader’s convenience I’ve included an extensive glossary at the back of the book.

The stories were written between the years 2001 and 2011, so references to time, like recently or six months ago, may not literally be accurate vis-à-vis the referenced time.

As I move from one story to another, I may, from time to time, refer back to earlier time periods that had already been covered in previous chapters. Given this somewhat unconventional format, redundancy, in some instances, could not be avoided, and the chronology, of course, could not be precise.

With those explanations out of the way, my story can now begin. I hope that you enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoyed writing them, and that you enjoy reading about my life as much as I enjoyed living it.

oOo

PART 1 –

THE EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER ONE

DADDY AND HIS FAMILY

LONDON, ENGLAND (1891)

It was a hard but good life. Israel Benjamin (Yisrael Reuven) enjoyed his job as cap maker in the bustling East End of London. He was proud of his fine family of four boys and two girls. And above all, he loved his wife, Rachel. Good Rachel, so beautiful, so devoted to him and to the family. Even in her final month of pregnancy, she was standing over the washbasin washing the children’s dirty clothing, carefully trying to scrub them clean without tearing them any more than they already were. They had to last until summer. As it turned out, she was worrying about a summer that was not to be hers. She died on June 4, 1891 at home while giving birth. Just as Rachel of the Torah died at childbirth giving birth to Benjamin, the new infant was likewise given the name Benjamin. Forty-five years later Benjamin Benjamin was to become my father.

Although his heart was broken, Israel Benjamin had no time to grieve. He had to be strong. His children needed attending to. Jobs were scarce. Many people waited in line hoping to get his job at the slightest sign of a problem. His job at the cap factory had to be kept if his large family were to eat and survive. Eleven hours a day bent over the sewing machine rendered him exhausted at the end of the day. The older children tried taking care of the younger, but they were hardly old enough to take care of themselves. Something had to be done.

On September 15, 1891, a mere three months after the death of his precious Rachel, a marriage was arranged with Sophie Silverstein, a widow of two years with four daughters of her own. Although still grieving his wife and heavy with sadness, the arrangement had to be made were he and the children to survive as a family.

Of course, Sophie was nothing like Rachel, but she was strong, and anxious to have another husband who could support her and her family. Sophie immediately took charge of the household, allowing Israel to work, bring home the money, go to sleep, and return to work the next day.

Sophie was a tough disciplinarian who lived by the rule an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. However, that maxim seemed only to apply to the Benjamin children, not the Silverstein’s. The Benjamin children were put to work as soon as they returned from school. If the work they did was not done quickly enough or was not done to her liking, they felt the end of Sophie’s broomstick across their backs. Her wrath was constant and plentiful, while the food was meager and sparse. With twelve people to feed, there was little food to go around. Sleeping was a nightly battle, each child trying to position themselves for a corner or an edge. The Silverstein children naturally received the most favorable spots. Benny (my father-to-be) usually wound up sleeping on the second shelf of the milchige kitchen cabinet.

Although Sophie’s harassment and torment of the Benjamin children was equally distributed, little Benny felt it the most. Many times he felt he could not take it much longer. His sole source of comfort was his nightly dream of running away from home and making a new life of his own. His clothing was always torn, his belly was always empty and his back was always red from his stepmother’s constant beatings. He received no compassion from his father, as his father was forced to side with his wife in order to maintain peace in the rather large and divergent household. As a result, Benny felt very much alone.

With the rapidly approaching turn of the century and the world hurtling toward the start of the new millennium, one could see the astonishing scientific advances everywhere: Electric lighting, petroleum-driven vehicles replacing horse-drawn carriages, and even magic lantern moving pictures.

When January 1, 1900 finally arrived, the excitement was palpable. There was electricity in the air. Never before in its history had London experienced such excitement. People from all over, from every economic sphere congregated in squares and parks and in the streets themselves. Horses and carriages with brightly colored ribbons loudly proclaimed and announced the year 1900. Clowns of all shapes and sizes walked up and down the streets with the year 1900 emblazoned on their hats, handing out sweets to all the children. The frenzy was high-pitched with the children screaming and singing unashamedly in the streets. The pubs were packed. It seemed the carnival atmosphere would never end.

Benny was caught up in the mood as well. While he and his brother Harry ran up and down the streets getting as much of the free goodies as possible, Benny was thinking. Even though he was only nine years old, he felt he had to do something about his life. He couldn’t continue the way things were going.

Being an island, England’s main industry was shipping. It was natural that its main source of commerce and industry were things particularly relevant to the seas. Whether it was longshore work, cargo, or dry-docking, most everyone worked in one capacity or another in areas related to ships and the maritime industry. Passenger vessels going to the Islands, Canada and America were, as well, a bustling business.

Little Benny tried to get in the happy mood of the times, but he couldn’t. He hurt too much. The only thing that gave him pleasure was dreaming of leaving home and starting a new life elsewhere. As he wound his way aimlessly through the docks and wharfs surrounding London’s east harbor, he noticed a huge white cargo ship with the name printed in big black letters BLUEBEARD MARU. The mate who was charged with watching the gangplank to keep away unauthorized people had stepped away. The mate, too, was caught up in the high-pitched frenzy. He left his post for a few moments to speak to a young lady accompanying a tall clown, who was headed for yet another parade in the Piccadilly Circus section of London.

This was crazy, thought Benny. Can I get away with it? Impossible. But maybe this is my only chance, he thought; strike while the iron is hot was his motto. What do I have to lose? Only my head, he said, with a slight chuckle. The horrible fate that awaited stowaways was common knowledge. Throwing all caution to the wind, and without giving it another thought, Benny took a deep breath, looked to make sure the mate was still engaged with the young lady, and sprinted as fast as he could up the gangplank. He was still walking up when the mate turned back, but because Benny was already on the high, upper rungs, the mate did not see him. Benny gingerly walked onto the empty deck. He quietly lifted a square hatch cover on the starboard side of the ship and climbed down. He then replaced the hatch cover over him. It was dark and stuffy, but Benny endured. This is my chance, he said. Miraculously, he survived the 15 day-trip.

For the next ten years my father-to-be made his home in Montreal, Canada, living by my wits, as he was fond of saying. Many years later, during one of his many story-telling sessions, we would discover what he meant by that.

And then in 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, at the age of 23, he returned to England to join the Royal Air Force. He served for one year until he contracted tuberculosis and was forced to accept a medical discharge. The three friends who joined with him were all killed.

The Great War waged on until 1918. Londoners celebrated Armistice Day with all the meager strength they had left from the punishing, exhausting, debilitating and disastrous war. And then, when everyone thought all the grief and death was behind them, the great Spanish flu epidemic struck with a fury, killing hundreds of thousands more. My father would always refer to the back-to-back catastrophes, the Great War and the Spanish Flu epidemic, as the darkest days in Great Britain’s history.

oOo

CHAPTER TWO

MAMA AND HER FAMILY

RIGA, (WHITE RUSSIA), LATVIA

In 1848, bloody revolutions rocked the foundations of royalty across Europe. Smoke and flame, gunpowder and steel scarred nobles and peasants alike. In the Latvian town of Riga, however, it seemed as if the Russian empire would last forever. While murderers and bandits ruled Riga, honest citizens tried to coax a living from the stingy land. Farmers trudged into the fields before the sun rose into the bleak sky and returned to their huts after the sun itself dropped from exhaustion.

As if it were taunting them, the land rewarded them with little: a bit of potatoes, beets, wheat and sour grass. And life went on.

The winters were brutal, the work hard, and the wages almost non-existent, but it was the only life they knew - backbreaking physical labor. It was an agrarian society: working the hard, stubborn land, cutting down trees, working as blacksmiths or hunting animals for pelts. Lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers and financial consultants were practically non-existent.

After developing one layer of blisters over another, an almost inhuman hard shell formed on the palms of most men. Those rough, thick hands became a symbol of the times they were living in.

However, there was talk of one person living in Riga who did not have the common callused hands of most men. When people visited Riga they always made a point of visiting Reb Yosef Rabinowitz, the man with soft, smooth hands. The reason for the soft hands was simple. Yosef Rabinowitz did not work the land like the others. He devoted himself completely to learning the holy Torah. From morning to night he toiled not in the fields or woods or with an axe in his hand but in the vineyard of Hashem, never seeking monetary gain or material pleasure. Yosef Rabinowitz was my maternal great-grandfather. Some 120 years later, when we were looking for a name for my youngest son, my mother told me this story and we decided to name my son Yosef.

Yosef Rabinowitz married and had a large family. His seventh daughter, Eta Raiza, born in the spring of 1870, was my Bubby. Yosef Rabinowitz taught Eta Raiza to read and write Russian and Hebrew, skills usually reserved for men. Although the entire town disapprovingly viewed Eta’s education as an assault upon tradition, Yosef continued to instruct his daughter.

Eta Raiza shared her knowledge with other women in town. One woman embraced my grandmother and cried because she now could read the ancient prayers and pray in synagogue. My grandmother later became Riga’s first "zoger." This meant she repeated the prayers to the women in the women’s section.

At eighteen, Eta Raiza married Yitzchak Hillel Friedman, (my namesake), the son of Boruch Ben Zion Friedman. Yitzchak Hillel and Eta Raiza had seven daughters. My mother, Frieda Friedman, born in 1895, was the oldest of her sisters, followed by Jenny, Molly, Frances, Dotty, Pauline and Louise.

As the oldest daughter, Mama not only had privileges but responsibilities as well. Once a month my mother accompanied her mother (Bubby) to the mikvah, venturing into the woods to find a private section of the river. Even on the freezing Russian winter’s harshest days, they needed flowing water. Mama, still a young girl herself, climbed up a tall tree, grabbed a large branch, breathed deeply, summoning all her strength and snapped off the branch.

Back on the ground, Mama swung the branch at the icy river bed, shattering the top layer of ice so that Bubby could immerse herself in the water. (Many years later, when people would tell Mama what exceptionally good children she had, she always referred back to this time and said it was in that zechus that she had such good children.)

Yitzchak Hillel Friedman (my grandfather) was a talmid chacham, who sold fur pelts to the neighboring villages. It was Riga, White Russia, and the date was January of 1903, one of the harshest winters this town ever remembered. It was a time of pogroms, a time when cruel Russians freely roamed the Jewish streets with impunity. They entered small Jewish homes with big horses, trampling and trashing whatever meager belongings and furniture were in it. My mother’s baby sister, Pauline, only three years old, was trampled to death by one of the horses.

When my grandfather, Yitzchak Hillel Friedman, did not appear at the Mincha minyan, everyone worried. Reb Yitzchak had never missed davening b’tzibur since his bar mitzvah. The normally sleepy town on the outskirts of Riga suddenly came alive with frantic activity. Patrols and search parties formed, candles distributed, as the elders of the town argued about which strategy was the best to pursue in order to find him.

After three hours of painstaking and methodical searching, Yitzchak Hillel was found. His head had been battered by some blunt instrument, the fur pelts he had been selling were gone. He was lying dead, face down in a puddle of his own blood.

After the shiva period, Eta Raiza Friedman, my grandmother, gathered her six remaining daughters together.

"Kinderlach, she said, and then began to sob, When your father was alive we spoke many times about leaving Russia to get away from the cruelty of the Russians, but at least your father was here and would stand at the door, so the hoodlums thought twice about crashing into our house. But now that he is gone, there is no more "hittel in hoise, there is no more man in the house to protect us, and once it becomes known that there are no men here, we will have no rest. And so we must leave. We have no other choice. I have a cousin in America, and he will sponsor us if I ask him.

But Mama, America is so far. How can we go, we only speak Yiddish and Russian? asked Frieda, my mother-to-be and the eldest daughter.

"Mein teiyera kind, what can I tell you? I was blessed with seven daughters, but these are bad times in Riga. There’s hardly any food. The pogroms keep coming; one stops and another begins. They come and go where they want. No one is here to stop them. And now without a man in our house, we will be tormented every day. We have no choice. We have to leave, and we have to leave at once."

But we don’t know anyone there, cried little Jenny, the youngest, her big brown eyes wide open in despair. Where would we live? she asked, hugging the flowered cotton apron of her mother.

We’ll find a place; don’t worry your pretty little head. It’ll be exciting, said Bubby, trying to soften the terror she saw in her children’s eyes, "Look at it as an adventure. America! A new country, a new start, a new beginning! You’ll see, allas vet zayn gut" (everything will be fine.)

And that’s what happened. My mother’s family, the Friedmans, came to America. After going through Ellis Island, they boarded another ship and settled where the ship landed, Augusta, Georgia. After several years of difficulty adjusting to their new country, and a new language, they slowly settled in. They worked hard, eventually accumulating enough money to open a bed and breakfast style rooming house.

In the summer of 1915, when she was twenty, Mama married her first husband, Benjamin (Binyamin Beinish) Golubofsky, son of Rabbi Zalman Tuvia Golubofsky. Binyamin Beinish was a part-time bookkeeper and custom peddler. He shortened his surname to Golub. His father, Rabbi Zalman Tuvia Golubofsky, had left Russia, but had settled in Manchester, England where Binyamin Beinish was born and raised.

Fear of military service drove the Golubofskys out of Russia. Young men were always eligible for the draft and a tour of duty up to 25 years. After getting out of service – if they ever did – their Jewish identities were usually lost forever. Young men were known to maim and cripple themselves to avoid this terrible draft.

When a young man reached draft age, his frantic family tried to spirit him out of the country any way they knew.

The government responded with strict emigration laws. Only one son per family was allowed to emigrate. To get around the government’s edict, brothers in the same family took on different surnames.

New York’s first chief Rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Aaron Yudelovich, was actually Rabbi Zalman Tuvia Golubofsky’s brother.

After the marriage of my mother to Binyamin Beinish, a rare feeling of confidence, security and tranquility once again reigned. There was now "Ah hittel in hoise."

But that changed. In the winter of 1918, the Spanish Flu hit America. It was one of the most devastating plagues ever to hit the United States. People who were perfectly well left their homes, went to work, and never returned. One bright April day, my mother’s husband patted his three little daughters on the head, kissed each of them goodbye and never returned home. He collapsed on the street and died, along with hundreds of thousands of people who died that year, the year of the plague of 1918.

Every day, for weeks, my mother’s three daughters, the oldest five years old, stood on the wooden porch staring longingly out onto the street waiting for their father to come home, and calling out Papa, Papa.

My mother and her three daughters moved into the rooming house with Bubby. After they moved, she sat down with her mother, looked at her while her eyes welled with tears. "Nach ah mahl, it happened again. There is no more hittel in hoise." Her mother clasped her hands, looked heavenward and cried along with her newly widowed daughter.

Ten years later, as the family was getting ready to prepare for Shabbos, there was a knock at the door. My mother answered and immediately her heart told her that things would never be the same again.

oOo

CHAPTER THREE

MAMA AND DADDY MEET

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA (1928)

My name is Benny Benjamin, said the sharp-looking, dapper man standing with his white straw hat, tilted hard to the side, and wearing a big, wide grin. In a charming British accent he continued, "I hear you have the best kosher food in all of Augusta. I’d very much appreciate renting a room, and staying for Shabbos."

After regaining her composure, my mother said she would have to ask her mother. Although they were almost full, my mother begged her mother to allow that handsome Englishman to stay. Her mother agreed, and my father-to-be stayed not only for that Shabbos, but for an entire month.

He was truly a man of the world, certainly compared to the cloistered life of my mother and the rest of the Friedman family. He enthralled the family by telling wild and interesting stories and the interesting situations he had been involved with, and how each time he almost "struck it really big." Every evening, after dinner, they all sat spellbound listening to the different jobs he had had. The stories about when he worked for Scotland Yard, and worked as a private investigator were particularly intriguing. He also told them about his incredible and fabulous business ventures that he had been involved with. Benny and Frieda became very good friends during that time.

One day, during one of their many walks, my mother noticed that my father was down, sad; he wasn’t his old, bubbly, cheery self. My father confessed that there was, indeed, something on his mind, but he was not at liberty to tell her. After much prodding, however, he told her, with clipped precision, as was his style, that he had another very big opportunity – this time in Canada - which involved textiles, but needed $250 (about ten times the buying power it has today), and he did not have it. If I only had that money, he said, I’m telling you, Frieda, this time I could strike it rich, no question about it.

Against the advice of her mother, her sisters and friends, she lent my father the $250. They all looked at him as a drifter, someone who floated from job to job and they felt that once he got his hands on the money she would never see him or the money again.

The following morning Benny cleared his room and packed his suitcase. Besides my mother, no one else was there to say goodbye to him.

Many months passed by without hearing from him, as everyone repeated that she had been forewarned; that she was very foolish for lending him money.

Several months after my father left, a torrential rain gripped Augusta. All the women in the Friedman/Golubofsky household were frantically trying to plug up the holes where rainwater relentlessly poured through. Faygie, the youngest in the family, yelled out, Someone’s knocking on the door. Who could it be in this terrible rain?

My mother opened the door. Standing with his white straw hat dripping with water, his suit soaked to the bone, and holding a drenched, white, long, narrow box with a red ribbon tied around it, was my father.

My name is Benny Benjamin, he said with a smile, and I hear you have the best kosher food in all of Augusta.

Benny! my mother screamed, while the rest of the house abandoned their posts where they were plugging up the holes, and ran to greet my father. He was invited in, took some buckets and helped bail out the water that had accumulated on the floor.

When the rain stopped, and the house became relatively dry, things settled down. My father took the rain-drenched box with the red ribbon and proudly, in public-speech fashion, presented it to my mother. For you, he said, to someone who deserves only the best! As she began opening it, the rest of the family came running in to see what it was. Besides an envelope containing $250 in cash, there was a beautiful purple silk scarf that had the name Bancroft on it, a well-known upper-class women’s store. The glowing admiration and pride on my mother’s face said it all, while the rest of the family stood flabbergasted. My mother had been vindicated.

Two months later they were married. And once again happiness reigned.

In 1930, one year after the crash on Wall Street and the Great Depression, my father took his new family: my mother, my three sisters, and my grandmother up north. I assume they chose the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn because my father’s brother Harry and my mother’s sister Frances lived there. My mother’s remaining sisters married, and remained down south. My older sisters always spoke of my father’s kindness, and the terrific man he was; how he treated them and took care of them like they were his own daughters.

My sister Sandra was born two years later in 1932, and I followed three years after that. I was born September 13, 1935.

CHAPTER FOUR

GROWING UP WITH HISTORY

Only in hindsight is it possible to see what mission Hakadosh Baruch Hu had in mind for us. Even Yaakov Avinu and Yosef HaTzaddik were not able to comprehend how their initial trials and tribulations were necessary prerequisites for establishing Klal Yisrael. Would their missions in life have been fulfilled had they not suffered those difficult beginnings? I don’t know. Similarly, looking back at my own life, and where I am today, I too struggle with these same universal questions.

My Rebbe, HaRav Eliyahu Pesach Rominek, shlita, is fond of telling the Chazal that contrary to the popular custom of making bon voyage parties when a ship leaves port, the celebration should be reversed; it should be made when returning home. When a ship leaves laden with goods for sale to a foreign port, the owner has no idea whether his merchandise will be sold, or whether the journey will result in a profit or a loss. There is also no way of determining whether the rough seas and stormy weather might sink the ship or ruin the merchandise and put the whole venture into peril. Only after the ship returns safely, with its goods successfully sold, and the ship back safe in harbor, should there be cause for celebration.

My personal ship set sail towards life’s stormy waters – at least my first remembrance of it – was when I was about five years old. I was in my father’s little candy store on Lee Avenue, his pride and joy, which he started not too long before with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. Now, the only lights were those emanating from the open front door and one small window which looked out into the alley. I was on my mother’s lap and she was crying. She sat on a green high stool near the counter. My father had gone bankrupt and the creditors, like vultures, were ripping out the fixtures and tearing his little store apart trying to salvage whatever value they could find.

Later that night, as we all sat huddled in the corner of the living room, my father, in his inimitable upbeat fashion, came in smiling from ear to ear. In his two hands he carried a heavy, large, round item covered with a white tablecloth.

Frieda, you’re not going to believe this, he said to my mother, smiling. Then, like a magician, with a quick pull, he removed the white tablecloth yelling out Voila! He then placed the can on the floor. It was a brightly red colored can of long salted pretzels. We eat, he said triumphantly.

He explained to my mother how he had the foresight to put away the pretzel can before the creditors came in. My mother laughed, clapped her hands, and, as usual, was so very proud of him. My mother idolized my father. For the next several weeks we ate pretzels for breakfast, lunch and supper.

DADDY’S JOBS AND DREAMS

ScanPic0007.jpg

Daddy and his taxicab

Before his first heart attack, my father drove a cab. It was a silver and black Buick. Our whole family had a great time cleaning and polishing the cab. It was the cleanest and shiniest car in the neighborhood. Since I was the youngest, I was relegated to cleaning the running board of the cab.

Daddy tried many different jobs and professions. Each new venture was begun with tremendous eagerness and enthusiasm. This is going to The One, he would tell us. This is going to be the one that will put us on Easy Street!

Even after he took ill and had to stop working, he still talked about striking it rich and buying everyone houses, cars, and putting my mother into a mansion where she truly belonged.

Unfortunately, despite his enthusiasm nothing really ever panned out. There was always some extraordinary event that just happened that caused the venture not to work out. But I was that close to the Big One, he would say, holding up his thumb and forefinger displaying a little space between them. But he never gave up.

I never heard my parents argue. My mother adored my father and was completely devoted to him. When my aunts and uncles would try to pity my mother because she had a husband who could not earn a living, she would say to them in Yiddish, "How dare you say anything about my dear Benny. Besides being ah hittel in hoise, he married me with three children and took away from me the awful name of almanah. How dare you!"

On Motzei Shabbos, my mother got dressed up, put rouge and lipstick on and sat in her special chair. My sisters and I sat on the floor around my mother. My father, with much fanfare, stood in front of us, wearing a high hat and holding a cane, and began to entertain my mother. He always started out his performances by holding up his cane and proclaiming "Ah shtekken hut tsvei ekken," (a stick has two ends). I never understood, even to today, the significance of that statement, but that was always his opening line. He had a whole repertoire. He sang Yiddish songs from Molly Picon and English songs from Eddy Cantor and Al Jolson. Everything was acted out. Every once in a while he’d blow my mother a kiss when he thought the children were not watching, but we always caught him, causing us to explode into uproarious laughter.

Daddy was a heavy chain-smoker, and eventually suffered several heart attacks. But despite his illness, he never lost his charm or charisma.

In the spring, when everyone was happy to escape their dingy apartments, and summer when everyone sat around their stoops in the hot evenings sipping sodas and lemonades, Daddy was the main attraction. He sat on an old beach chair, put me on his lap, and in his crisp English accent and fertile imagination, told the most thrilling and outrageous stories. As soon as the people on the block saw Daddy get settled in his chair, they quickly scrambled for position, getting as close to him as possible. But by sitting on my father’s lap, I was closer to him than anybody else. And to this day, seventy years later, I cannot think of many prouder moments in my life than sitting on my father’s lap, while half the block gathered around waiting for the magic that my father’s storytelling promised to deliver.

It wasn’t merely what he said, which was always quite amazing, but it was how he said it and the exaggerated melodrama, which always preceded his storytelling.

From his inside jacket pocket he slowly withdrew the black and white cardboard pack of Regent’s cigarettes. His audience watched in hushed silence. Studying the double row of tightly packed cigarettes, as if each one was somehow different, he chose one, and slowly picked it out of the box. He put the unlit cigarette into his mouth and proceeded to carefully close the box of Regents, first rewrapping the tinfoil around the cigarettes and then closing the cardboard box. All of this was done with a wrinkled brow as if thinking hard how to begin his story. When he replaced the box of Regents back into his inside jacket pocket, he removed a small box of wooden matches. His eager audience watched and waited in raptured silence. He removed the cigarette from between his lips, tapped it twice on the wooden arm of his beach chair - all in deliberate slow motion – took out a wooden match from a small sliding box, lifted up the bottom of his shoe, bent down and struck the match against the sole of his shoe.

Once he lit his prized cigarette, he inhaled deeply, kept it for a few seconds, and then slowly exhaled gray-black rings of smoke, as he finally commenced telling his fabulous stories. Throughout the storytelling, the smoke somehow hung suspended, hovering over our group like the same velvet curtain found in the famed Shubert Theatre.

PEARL HARBOR

On December 7, 1941, when I was six, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The surprise and suddenness of the bombing caught the Americans completely off guard. As my country was plunged into a war it had tried desperately to avoid, fear and terror permeated the air and people in my home town of Williamsburg speculated and debated at the chances of beating the mighty and frightening German war machine.

POVERTY AND MY RELATIVES

When I was seven, my father suffered his first heart attack. He stopped working, causing a different kind of terror in our family - the terror of poverty, and the fear and shame of having to rely on welfare. The shame was enormous and the fear terrifying. Because my father was no longer able to climb the five-floor walkup at 598 Bedford Avenue, we moved to a ground floor apartment in 193 Rodney Street.

My father’s brother, Harry Bellair – he changed his name because he thought Benjamin sounded too Jewish – lived on Wilson Street, between Bedford and Lee, one block from Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. He lived there with his wife, Lena, and her daughter, Clarice, from a previous marriage, and their son, Arnold, who was my age. His wife Lena was obsessed with cleanliness. On the occasions when I visited them from yeshiva and inadvertently put my hand on her white wall, she screamed at the top of her lungs, quickly ran to get a damp cloth to clean the spot, and then yelled at me to leave at once.

I remember once walking with Aunt Lena on Lee Avenue with Arnold. Arnold looked away for a minute and walked right into a lamppost. We watched in horror as the bump on his forehead grew larger and larger. My Aunt Lena – instead of getting some water, or doing something for the swelling on his head - took out a comb and combed his hair, putting his hair back in place while she continued walking as if nothing happened. Although they were obviously Jewish they always had a tree for Christmas. Every year Arnold invited me up to watch his Lionell trains run around the tree.

When my father passed away, Lena no longer allowed Uncle Harry or Arnold to come over, or for that matter, to have anything to do with us. My guess was that she was afraid, that since we were now totally destitute we would inevitably be asking them for money. She never realized that despite our situation, our family had tremendous pride and never asked anyone for anything. Eventually we lost contact with them and the last information I had about Arnold was that he married, moved to Tarzana, California, had three children, and was involved in a terrible car accident. I never saw or heard from them since.

AUNT FRANCIS AND UNCLE IRVING

One block over, on Ross Street, near the corner of Bedford Avenue, was where my mother’s sister and brother-in-law, Irving and Francis Burton lived. She had no children. This greatly pained my mother, causing her to go overboard with her kindness towards them. My mother made me go to their house almost every day from yeshiva to see if they needed anything to help them with. Though my mother was very kind to them and they were invited to our house almost every Shabbos, she constantly talked about how sloppy my mother was and how dirty our house was. My mother let it pass, continuing to be good to her. Aunt Francis and Uncle Irving always argued among themselves about the stock market. She telling him, I told you to buy it when it was 12, and now it’s 22. Him saying, Didn’t I tell you we should buy 2,000 not 1,000? No matter whether other people were around or not, that type of conversation persisted between them for as long as I knew them. I rarely ever heard them speak of anything else. After I got married, Aunt Francis died, and then we did not hear from Uncle Irving for a long time until we finally heard that he died as well. He wound up leaving all their money to a son he had from a previous marriage – a son we never knew about until he died.

AUNT DOTTIE AND UNCLE LOUIE

My mother had another sister, Dottie, who lived in Jacksonville, Florida with my Uncle Louie Luria. They also were not blessed with any children. My mother, as the oldest daughter, communicated with all her sisters by writing letters (in Yiddish). One day she received a letter from Aunt Dottie, telling her that her Louie lost his job as a men’s clothing salesman and they were destitute. Of course, my mother, as always, came to the rescue. She immediately wrote back that they should quickly come to New York and stay at our house. Within a week they arrived.

That began one of the most traumatic experiences of my young life. My Uncle Louie was a terrible alcoholic. He was very tall and had an extremely distended belly. His eye glasses were so thick you could not see his eyes. Besides his frightening appearance, he was almost always drunk. He had a southern drawl, as did my Aunt Dotty. Uncle Louie never stopped talking about what a great salesman he was. No salesman in the south knows what a ‘portly’ is, he would brag, except me. And I would call them into the stores, ‘Come on in, Uncle, I got some nice new striped suits for you.’

Aunt Dotty was very quiet, kind and unassuming. She either was in denial about Uncle Louie’s condition, or merely tolerated it because she felt there was nothing she could do about it anyhow. Coming home from yeshiva, she would say to me, Irvin, - her southern drawl caused her to say Irvin instead of Irwin.- Irvin, honichil’, please go find your nice Uncle Louie and tell him to come home. We have a delicious supper waiting for him.

That began the tortuous trek of going up to Marcy Avenue and Broadway. I was about eight years old. I went from one bar to another asking if they saw my Uncle Louie. Every night it would be the same. Finding him, I’d tell him: Uncle Louie, Aunt Dottie said you should come right home for supper.

Tell her I’ll be coming along shortly, he’d always say.

And then I would say, No, Uncle Louie, Aunt Dottie wants you home NOW, and with that I would pull his long arm with my little hands, trying to pull him off his bar stool. Predictably he argued with me for a while until finally the bartender came to the rescue. Louie, you had enough. Go with the kid.

Then came the hard part. Walking him home was a nightmare. Uncle Louie was usually so drunk he couldn’t walk straight, so I had to make sure he did not wander into the street and get killed. This happened almost nightly.

My father was tremendously upset with the turmoil Uncle Louie was causing in the family, finally telling my mother that he was going to ask them to leave. Uncle Louie had a rich brother in Atlanta, my father said, and he should go back down south and stay with him. For days my father and mother argued about it. Incidentally, that was the only time I ever remember my mother and father arguing. When they left, my mother cried a whole week feeling sorry for them. But for me it was like a ton of bricks being lifted off my little chest.

DADDY DIES

While the whole world celebrated the end of the war in 1945, my childhood, as it were, also ended; my personal world shattered. As I sat on the concrete staircase of Eastern District High School speaking to my friend, Chaim Kessler, my sister came running to find me. With tears running down her pretty face, she told me the bad news. At the age of 54, the man who I worshipped more than anyone else in the world, my wonderful and incredible father, died. My mother wanted me home, because we were all going to go to Cumberland hospital. My mother was crying hysterically. We went into my father’s ward where he had been for the past week. The scene that greeted us was so tragic and terrifying I will never forget it. The ward was all dark, except for one bare bulb that hung over my father’s bed. A white curtain was draped all around his bed, but it was not fully closed. I was able to see my father’s blue-white face looking straight up at the ceiling. There were also large bricks of ice underneath his bed. It was ghastly. My mother screamed. I held my mother with both my hands, but she was inconsolable.

My mother took my father’s death very badly, even worse than my sisters and I. She tried to keep things together, but couldn’t. She eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and soon thereafter became physically ill as well. My three older sisters were married by that time, and although my sister Sandra was three years older than me, I assumed the leadership and responsibility of the family.

I got my first job when I was ten, working as a delivery boy for Cameo Markets on Lee Avenue. I remember my mother’s face beaming with pride as I emptied my pockets of all the change I had made from tips on my deliveries. My mother was so proud of me.

In 1947, when I was 12, my mother underwent an operation that would be the first in a long series. I stayed home in order to help care for my mother, attending school barely two days a week. I also worked part time jobs in order to help our financial situation. Besides the delivery job, I dismantled old watches for Ralph Mintz, who lived down the block on Rodney Street. Those were the days when you had to wind your watch every day for it to keep time. The mainspring was what you wound up, and it was considered the most valuable part of the watch. At 10 cents for every mainspring I salvaged from the old watches, on a good night, if I worked hard, I could find as many as 30 mainsprings.

WILLIAMSBURG

The most important years of my young life were spent in Williamsburg. They were the formative years, the years I recall most vividly and the times I look back on with great affection and significance.

At first I did not know we were so poor. There was always food on the table, and though I know now I was living in abject poverty, as a child I thought our food the finest.

Growing up in Williamsburg was like living in a small