LEONARD KRIEGEL
103
He had no idea of how it worked or for whom it worked , but my father
loved this country more fervently than anyone else I have ever known . Maybe
because there was so little else on which he could count. The union? Better
than nothing , but not enough . " In 1937 , I'm making $16 for a seventy-five
hour week. Comes the union , $23 for sixty-two . They're also crooks. But on
my side. " His sons? We loved him. He knew that. But he must have also
known that we had already learned enough to feel ashamed of his inability to
master this America. On Saturdays, he still worked from eight in the morning
until midnight. The furriers and garment workers no longer worked on
Saturday . They leaned against the railing overlooking the backyard lot and
watched us play baseball and smoked their cigarettes . For them , America was
becoming home .
There were few ways in which my father could define himself. He was
neither revolutionary nor gambler ; he knew nothing about baseball; he
rarely went to the movies because he had no time and he did not understand
the value of what Hollywood had'placed before him ; he was not particularly
suited to being an American . Man, husband , father, worker ,Jew-in his own
words , "a horse ." That was what history had bequeathed him. There was
little for him to do but accept what had been meted out. Better here than what
had already happened
to
the two brothers he had left behind in Poland.
Better this than Hitler .
It
was no more than the length ofa football field between the backyard of
Niles Gardens and 315 East 206th Street. A few weeks before we moved, my
father went down and registered me at the Mosholu Jewish Center Talmud
Torah. "You'll go to
chaida.
You 've got
to
learn ." Tuition was $80 a year.
My father shook his head ; he could not afford it. " You're a real Jew, Mr.
Kriegel ," the rabbi said . " We 'll take him for nothing ." My father shook his
head again ; he could not afford that either. ' 'I'll pay $40, " he said . "Take for
nothing ," the rabbi said . "No more , no less," my father insisted . " He 's my
son . He has to learn."
I would have preferred going
to
the Yiddish
volkschule
near Reservoir
Oval. Hebrew was distant and mystical , and I already felt a very unAmerican
affection for Yiddish, a language which I associated with my grandmother,
with socialism, with a rough-and-tumble immediacy of flesh rubbing against
flesh. My father was determined . I was to be absorbed into the faith of my
father and of his father before him and of his father 's father before him down
to
generations out of memory but not out of history .
The MosholuJewish Center stood on Hull Avenue , between the Parkway
and Bainbridge . I went there every afternoon at 3: 30. Either I walked down
