I first learned about the great American metropolis through my maternal grandfather, Sam Rafel. In his late teens he emigrated from Lithuania to New York with his older brother, Phillip, and thousands of others seeking refuge from poverty and persecution. Shmuel and Falke (as they were called in Yiddish) went to work for their uncle on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in his sweatshop on Houston Street. My Zeide (grandfather) was trained by his father to be a tailor. I remember him telling me how hard he worked. He joined the Garment Workers Union and became a Bundist, the Jewish equivalent of a card-carrying communist. Zeide’s New York sojourn came to an abrupt end. His job entailed the tailoring of men’s suits, coats and trousers which he then had to deliver to customers in different parts of the city. One day he had to deliver a package to a customer who lived in one of Manhattan’s early skyscrapers. After having delivered the item, Zeide took the elevator on the 23rd floor. Soon after he entered the jam packed car, the cable snapped and the elevator fell 23 floors with several people in it, including my grandfather. He suffered internal injuries and was given six months to live by the doctors. They told him:
“You’ll never survive the New York winter. It would be better for you to join your other siblings in South Africa.” They were basically telling him to go and die in South Africa. Zeide took their advice and bought himself a passage to Cape Town via Southampton. He sailed on the Tintagel Castle to Cape Town and from there, took a train to Johannesburg where he joined his brothers and sisters. He lived until he was 84 years old, defying the doctors’ predictions.
In 1964, my late mom took her parents on an overseas trip. The purpose was for Zeide to be reunited with his three siblings in New York, Minnesota and California. Sam last saw his brother in 1907. Fifty-seven years had past since he left the Lower East Side. The travel agent booked them into the Belmont Plaza Hotel on East 49th street and Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. My grandfather, still traumatized by his elevator experience, insisted on being moved from the 20th floor to the third floor. This was not a good idea. My grandparents were in their late 70s and the traveling proved to be too much for them.
A combination of the noise, air-conditioning, jetlag, and air pollution took its toll. Instead of lasting the intended three weeks, the trip lasted five days. Despite the brevity of their quest, they came back with stories and photographs that made a huge impact on me. The family in New York hosted them royally. They were wined and dined and treated to Broadway shows, including Fiddler On The Roof. They also visited The World’s Fair in Queens. My mom’s account of their visit included her perceptions of how “Jewish” New York was. At that time there were almost 3 million Jews living in the greater New York area as opposed to the 1.6 million today. My Mom could not get over how saturated New York was with all things Jewish including men wearing yarmulkes, Hassidic Jews, the music of George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Barbra Streisand, the Lower East Side, bagels and lox, deli eateries, the garment district, 47th street and the Yiddish that she heard spoken in the street.
“It was second only to Tel Aviv,” she told us, having just visited there on the first leg of the journey.
I was imbibed with wanderlust and an incredible desire to experience New York in all its Jewishness. It took me until 1976 to make my first visit to the big city. At that time The Big Apple had become a rotten apple, riddled with crime and violence. In the space of just four days I witnessed two sidewalk muggings and a police car chase on the West Side Highway. I was staying in Washington Heights with a friend. The spacious old fashioned apartment had no air conditioning. It was June and I remember a series of sweltering sleepless nights. Despite the wide open windows, the sounds of ambulances, police cars and fire engines destroyed any attempts to get a decent night’s sleep. I could not wait to get out of the city.
Two years later I returned to Manhattan with my first wife. On that occasion we splashed out a little and stayed at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South. It was an entirely different experience. We were shielded from the less salubrious neighborhoods and enjoyed the sophistication of mid-town Manhattan, Fifth Avenue and the vast choice of kosher restaurants, pizza stores and supermarkets with masses of kosher products. We also traveled to the Catskills, to Grossingers for the eye-popping all Jewish vacation experience. We were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the place and the gargantuan kosher spread of food in the main dining room where guests unashamedly ordered four or five hors d’ouvres, entrées and as many desserts. We booked ourselves into the Jenny G Wing, and enjoyed a weekend of sumptuous luxury and overeating.
A YEAR after that I was divorced and licking my failed marriage wounds. Eighteen months later in the summer, I was back in New York, persuaded by my single friend Louis to try the New York Jewish dating scene followed by a singles weekend at the eponymous Catskills kosher resort of Grossingers. I grudgingly agreed to go and to keep the costs down, we booked a twin-bedded room. After a grueling week of dating women on the Upper West Side, I vowed never to marry a girl from New York. This rather radical resolution came after a series of disastrous blind dates. On one occasion my date was an attractive professional woman who was both a lawyer and an accountant. I invited her to dine at the then celebrated Moishe Peking Restaurant on West 37th Street. After calling for her at her apartment on West 72nd Street, I hailed a cab. The taxi drew up and I opened the door for my date.
“I don’t need anyone to open doors for me!” the woman snapped with a barracuda like grin. Needless to say, despite her stunning looks and beautiful clothes, there was to be no second date. Grossingers wasn’t much of a success either. After arriving there on a blistering humid Friday afternoon, Louis and I checked in at the crowded reception desk. We were surrounded by dozens of loud boisterous New Yorkers, quite a few of whom were morbidly obese, wearing Bermuda shorts. This time we were to be accommodated in a room with two queen size beds in the Harry G Wing.
No sooner had we checked in when I fell into a deep depression, remembering that not that long ago, I had been there in a totally different guise with my ex-wife. We made our way to our room in the somewhat tatty, down-graded Harry G Wing. We switched on the Airconditioning and Louis pulled off his jeans and flopped onto the bed in his string vest and Marks and Spencer underpants. After the long car journey we both looked sweaty and unkempt. I began to unpack, hanging up my Shabbat suit and white shirts in the closet. Just then there was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it.”
I grunted, wondering whether we might have left something at reception. I opened the door only to be confronted by a bellhop carrying a large bouquet of flowers and a plate of fruit and fancy chocolates covered in cellophane. “There must be some mistake.” I muttered as I opened the envelope and removed an embossed card which read:
“Welcome back to Grossingers, Mr. and Mrs. Hersowitz.”
By now the bellhop was staring incredulously at Louis, who lay on his bed in his gutkes (underpants). “No mistake,” he yelled. “You can take back the flowers, just leave the fruit and chocolates.”
Four years later, I broke my vow after I met the love of my life, a Brooklyn born New Yorker. We met in London and survived a 10 month trans-Atlantic courtship before getting married in November 1988 on Thanksgiving at the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn. I was totally smitten by Annie’s New York expressivity. Her effervescent sense of humor complete with Yiddishims and outrageous one liners kept me laughing. Seeing New York and getting to know the city through her eyes, completely changed my perception of the place. I got to know the many diverse features of the city and its five boroughs from the chic elegance of Midtown to the loud outspokenness of Flatbush where outrageous eccentricity competes with strict Orthodox Jewish dress codes on Coney Island Avenue.
New York was and always has been a city of Jews who support Israel as is attested by the annual Israel Day Parade which attracts thousands of people who march down Fifth Avenue in support of Israel each year. On such a day, one could easily get the impression that New York is a Jewish city. One snowy winter during a stay with my in-laws, my wife dropped me off at the Subway station on Avenue M. I was on my way to Manhattan to look for electronic bargains at the Hassidic-owned electronics store, 47th Street Photo. It was freezing as I entered the almost empty subway carriage,
I noticed an ultra-Orthodox looking woman in her 40s sitting a few feet away from me. She was wearing a long winter coat which covered her ankles. She wore a hat and what looked like a sheitel (wig) underneath. I nodded politely and uncharacteristically she looked away from her reading material and smiled back. The train trundled on. Still treating New York as a wondrous touristic adventure, I kept looking out the window at the above ground scenery which soon morphed into a huge cemetery with hundreds of Jewish headstones. I was flabbergasted by the enormity of the place that seemed to stretch out for miles.
“Is this an Orthodox Jewish cemetery?” I blurted out.
“I believe it is,” the woman answered,
unfazed by my question. “It’s very old and full and I don’t think the community buries it’s dead there any longer. Are you visiting?”
“Yes,” I answered eagerly. “I’m here for my wife’s nephew’s bar mitzvah.”
“Mazeltov!” she chirped in her Brooklyn accent. “I love your British accent. Where are you from?”
“London. We just came in for a few days.”
“Nice,” she answered. “As a matter of fact my husband’s family are from Europe and they’ve just been visiting with us.”
“Where are they from?” I asked nosily.
“Antwerp,” she replied.
“That’s interesting. I spend a lot of time in Belgium and know quite a few people in Antwerp.”
“So it’s my husband’s brother,” she interrupted.
“What’s his name? Perhaps I know the family.”
“Christian Smits,” she responded. There was dead silence.
“Gosh,” I stammered. “For some reason, I thought you were Jewish.” She laughed. “That’s what it’s like here in New York and especially in Brooklyn. I’m Italian and I grew up in Brooklyn. Most of our neighbors are Orthodox Jews. We all get on extremely well.”
She pointed to her clothing. “Dressed this way, you probably thought I was an Orthodox Jewish lady?”
I nodded and we both laughed.
In 2014, my wife and I made aliyah from London and settled in Jerusalem. For almost 28 years, my New York wife had lived away from her NYC roots. Rather bravely she moved to the colder climes of London where she had to reinvent herself. It was far from easy for her. She had left behind a vibrant New York Jewish life, close family and friends and the city “that never sleeps.” All this changed when we moved to Jerusalem. We live in a neighborhood where we are surrounded by Americans, most of whom come from the New York area. New York Jews have contributed massively to Jewish life in Jerusalem. They have set up synagogues, yeshivot, educational institutions and charities. They volunteer and help in Jerusalem’s hospitals and clinics. New Yorkers are also part of Jerusalem’s rich cultural scene. Many New York rabbis and scholars, men and women living here are involved in teaching and lecturing at numerous conferences and events especially recently during the pandemic where they gave of their time to be on Zoom, providing an essential service for those of us stuck at home during lockdown.
Friends of ours recently returned from New York after visiting their children following a long separation during Covid. They brought back worrying reports of how unsafe they felt.
“I could not wear my kippa in the street. I had to wear a baseball cap and keep a low profil,.” our friend told me. Rising antisemitism and anti-Israel activism has begun to surface with alarming incidents of violence perpetrated against innocent Jewish citizens in Manhattan and elsewhere. Hopefully, these incidents are just tiny blotches of dark paint on the broader canvas of the colorful, exciting city with its amazing Jewish heritage. To quote the illustrious Dorothy Parker: “London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful.”