Up From Orchard Street by Eleanor Widmer Read Free Book Online

whispered the names of the needy, those sick, without a mate or with ailing children. Clayton carried the food. I opened the apartment doors, sought the nearest clear surface and deposited the holiday meal. We left no calling cards. Almost every recipient knew the bounty came from Manya.
    For days our motley little band—a white-haired woman in a brown cardigan, a small girl in an ill-fitting spotted skirt and too-small sweater, and a black boy dressed in castoffs who carried oilcloth bags full of clanking jars wrapped in newspaper—trudged from street to street. We quit only when Bubby couldn’t advance another step, or Clayton had run back two or three times to replenish our stack of jars until we had given all our food away. The following morning we began again.
    Bubby considered these meals sparse, and they did not compare to our own Rosh Hashanah repast: chopped liver, gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, roast chicken, brisket of beef, stuffed cabbage, sweet potato and prune tsimmis, two kinds of kugel—noodle and potato—as well as knishes and kasha varniskas. She also baked rugulach and mandelbrot.
    Neither Bubby nor my parents were much for formal ritual. My parents attended Rosh Hashanah services as briefly as they could. The synagogue was poorly ventilated and men and women were separated, so Jack and Lil could not sit together in their splendid outfits. They always aroused curiosity, as if they had wandered in by mistake.
    In this congregation, it was the custom for the Orthodox men to stand in place and to sway their bodies from right to left while beating on their chests with their right fists. Although the rabbi with his long beard and sidelocks led the prayers, almost everyone knew them by heart.
    Then came the moment when the scrolls—the Torah—were removed from the ark. We had read that in uptown shuls built for the wealthy the Torah scrolls were lifted up for all to see, and then returned to the ark in pristine condition. Not so here. Selected elders carried them up and down every row of seats, while some congregants leaned over and kissed the sacred writing and others put their fingers to their lips and then to the Torah.
    The moment after Jack touched the Torah, he pushed his way to the exit with Willy. This was the signal for the women in our family— Bubby, Lil, me—to press into the aisle to be the first females to reach the Torah, allowing us to escape quickly, too. Bubby attended services for the sake of continuity with her past, for a nod to her origins. She especially wanted to hear mention of the Book of Life, in which she hoped our names would be written for the coming year.
    Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, ten days later was another matter. It demanded sacrifice. Bubby and Lil fasted the full twenty-four hours, not even brushing their teeth or taking water to their lips. Children were not required to fast but I did so from the age of five, finding the prospect uplifting.
    At noon, just as we started to grow ravenous, our family left the shul, and rather than be tempted by food or the possibility of a nap at home, we walked across bridges during the afternoon. Our favorites were the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg, where we met thousands of other worshipers doing the same thing. The Orthodox always cast bread upon the water for the new year. Our family’s version was to walk one bridge or another to cast off our transgressions. Our clothes new and stiff, our hunger palpable, we took pride in our pale faces and visibly parched lips.
    Toward dusk we walked back to shul to hear the blowing of the ram’s horn, the shofar, that marked the exact moment Yom Kippur services ended. Calling out “L’ shana tova” and “Gut yontif,” we hastened home to eat at last.
    For breaking the fast we ate cold dishes. Bubby’s specialty was pickled herring, which involved weeks of preparation. She personally selected the fresh herring from large barrels at Saperstein’s and we carried them home