Hi,
First, from Zelda White Nichols: Happy Chanukah. Here's a link to a piece about four engineering students who built a Robe Goldberg machine that lights a menorah with a robot. (Please remove the spaces)
cbsnews . com / 8301-504784_162-57556874-10391705 / awesome-rube-goldberg-machine-makes-robot-light-hanukkah-menorah/?
Similarly, if less technological, from Barbara Blitfield Pech: May your lights shine bright. May your latkes be light. May you all enjoy eight wonderful nights.
Partly about a different holiday, a series of notes from Steve Zuckerman: Funny that you mentioned it last week, because I've been considering installing a hammock inside my front porch. People here use them on their porches and in their garages entrances. In the hot summer months when you drive through the communities -- or urbanizations as they're called here -- you can see people relaxing in their hammocks with family members gathered all around.
During the holidays, many folks invite both neighbors and family to the house for what they call parandas or parties. Everyone brings food to contribute to the fiesta, usually rice and beans -- gandules -- and someone in the area cooks a whole pig, which is called lechon. You can smell its aroma for miles around, and usually there's enough to feed the whole neighborhood. This is the holiday tradition in the island.
Another part of the tradition is to set off fireworks like crazy, especially on New Year's Eve. In the States, they use fireworks on the Fourth of July, but in Puerto Rico, they are used strictly at the year's end. The government sets up trailers filled with fireworks to sell, and that supplies another source of revenue for the government piggy bank. It keeps the population happy with illegal contraband. Recently though, it seemed that shooting off fireworks wasn't enough because some overzealous souls would fire off their hand guns and more deadly weapons into the nighttime skies all thru the holiday season. The police were forced to crack down as best they could after many accidental shootings and deaths. Now they ride through the neighborhoods checking for weapons being fired off and for illegal homemade rum, which is more then a hundred proof. Many people have now had enough trouble, and they point the cops the way to the culprits.
And here's another footnote to history, though not an especially worthy one: on December 2, 1942, the first atomic chain reaction was successfully demonstrated in Chicago, Illinois. This marked the beginning of mankind's preoccupation with a deadly force in the universe. Madam Curie and her husband -- who may both have died from overexposure to the radium which they discovered jointly -- introduced the world to the benefits and stark realities of the atom and its byproducts.
A follow-up from Steve: I stand corrected: Madam Marie Curie actually did most of the research into finding the element radium. It was her life's passion. And she sustained severe lesions on her hands from handling the radium. The lesions eventually healed, but she had the radium in her system for the rest of her life. Her husband was run over accidentally by a horse drawn carriage while he was crossing the street. He died instantly, but I read that he was also suffering from the effects of long periods of exposure to the radioactive radium used in their experiments.
Last from Steve: I heard the sad news today of the passing of jazz giant Dave Brubeck. What a loss to jazz devotees like myself. He was a real innovator, and I was lucky enough to hear him perform his two biggest hits, "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo," live from the Newport Jazz Festival about two years back. On my Sirius jazz station, that was a treat. His music will live on through his talented sons, who are very good jazz artists in their own right. I believe he was voted numero uno in the Playboy Jazz poll in the 1950s.
Finally, also forwarded by Zelda: "I Was the Shabbes Goy of Sterling Place and Utica Avenue" by Joe Velarde.
Snow came early in the winter of 1933 when our extended Cuban family moved into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn . I was ten years old. We were the first Spanish speakers to arrive, yet we fit more or less easily into that crowded, multicultural neighborhood. Soon we began learning a little Italian, a few Greek and Polish words, lots of Yiddish and some heavily accented English.
I first heard the expression 'Shabbes is falling' when Mr. Rosenthal refused to open the door of his dry goods store on Bedford Avenue . My mother had sent me with a dime to buy a pair of black socks for my father. In those days, men wore mostly black and Navy blue. Brown and gray were somehow special and cost more. Mr. Rosenthal stood inside the locked door, arms folded, glaring at me through the thick glass while a heavy snow and darkness began to fall on a Friday evening. "We're closed, already", Mr. Rosenthal
had said, shaking his head, "can't you see that Shabbes is falling? Don't be a nudnik! Go home." I could feel the cold wetness covering my head and thought that Shabbes was the Jewish word for snow.
My misperception of Shabbes didn't last long, however, as the area's dominant culture soon became apparent; Gentiles were the minority. From thenon, as Shabbes fell with its immutable regularity and Jewish lore took over the life of the neighborhood, I came to realize that so many human activities, ordinarily mundane at any other time, ceased, and a palpable silence, a pleasant tranquility, fell over all of us. It was then that a family with an urgent need would dispatch a youngster to "get the Spanish boy, and hurry."
That was me. In time, I stopped being nameless and became Yussel, sometimes Yuss or Yusseleh. And so began my life as a Shabbes Goy, voluntarily doing chores for my neighbors on Friday nights and Saturdays: lighting stoves, running errands, getting a prescription for an old tante, stoking coal furnaces, putting lights on or out, clearing snow and ice from slippery sidewalks and stoops. Doing just about anything that was forbidden to the devout by their religious code.
Friday afternoons were special. I'd walk home from school assailed by the rich aroma emanating from
Jewish kitchens preparing that evening's special menu. By now, I had developed a list of steady "clients," Jewish families who depended on me. Furnaces, in particular, demanded frequent tending during Brooklyn 's many freezing winters. I shudder remembering brutally cold winds blowing off the East River . Anticipation ran high as I thought of the warm home-baked treats I'd bring home that night after my Shabbes rounds were over. Thanks to me, my entire family had become Jewish pastry junkies.
Moi? I'm still addicted to checkerboard cake, halvah and Egg Creams (made only with Fox's Ubet chocolate syrup).
I remember as if it were yesterday how I discovered that Jews were the smartest people in the world. You see, in our Cuban household we all loved the ends of bread loaves and, to keep peace, my father always decided who would get them. One harsh winter night I was rewarded for my Shabbes ministrations with a loaf of warm challah (we pronounced it"holly") and I knew I was witnessing genius! Who else could have invented a bread that had wonderfully crusted ends all over it -- enough for everyone in a large family?
There was an "International" aspect to my teen years in Williamsburg. The Sternberg family had two sons who had fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. Whenever we kids could get their attention, they'd spellbind us with tales also introduced us to a novel way of thinking, one that embraced such humane ideas as 'From each according to his means and to each according to his needs'. In retrospect, this innocent exposure to a different philosophy was the starting point of a journey that would also incorporate the concept of Tzedakah in my personal guide to the world.
I first heard the expression 'Shabbes is falling' when Mr. Rosenthal refused to open the door of his dry goods store on Bedford Avenue . My mother had sent me with a dime to buy a pair of black socks for my father. In those days, men wore mostly black and Navy blue. Brown and gray were somehow special and cost more. Mr. Rosenthal stood inside the locked door, arms folded, glaring at me through the thick glass while a heavy snow and darkness began to fall on a Friday evening. "We're closed, already", Mr. Rosenthal
had said, shaking his head, "can't you see that Shabbes is falling? Don't be a nudnik! Go home." I could feel the cold wetness covering my head and thought that Shabbes was the Jewish word for snow.
My misperception of Shabbes didn't last long, however, as the area's dominant culture soon became apparent; Gentiles were the minority. From thenon, as Shabbes fell with its immutable regularity and Jewish lore took over the life of the neighborhood, I came to realize that so many human activities, ordinarily mundane at any other time, ceased, and a palpable silence, a pleasant tranquility, fell over all of us. It was then that a family with an urgent need would dispatch a youngster to "get the Spanish boy, and hurry."
That was me. In time, I stopped being nameless and became Yussel, sometimes Yuss or Yusseleh. And so began my life as a Shabbes Goy, voluntarily doing chores for my neighbors on Friday nights and Saturdays: lighting stoves, running errands, getting a prescription for an old tante, stoking coal furnaces, putting lights on or out, clearing snow and ice from slippery sidewalks and stoops. Doing just about anything that was forbidden to the devout by their religious code.
Friday afternoons were special. I'd walk home from school assailed by the rich aroma emanating from
Jewish kitchens preparing that evening's special menu. By now, I had developed a list of steady "clients," Jewish families who depended on me. Furnaces, in particular, demanded frequent tending during Brooklyn 's many freezing winters. I shudder remembering brutally cold winds blowing off the East River . Anticipation ran high as I thought of the warm home-baked treats I'd bring home that night after my Shabbes rounds were over. Thanks to me, my entire family had become Jewish pastry junkies.
Moi? I'm still addicted to checkerboard cake, halvah and Egg Creams (made only with Fox's Ubet chocolate syrup).
I remember as if it were yesterday how I discovered that Jews were the smartest people in the world. You see, in our Cuban household we all loved the ends of bread loaves and, to keep peace, my father always decided who would get them. One harsh winter night I was rewarded for my Shabbes ministrations with a loaf of warm challah (we pronounced it"holly") and I knew I was witnessing genius! Who else could have invented a bread that had wonderfully crusted ends all over it -- enough for everyone in a large family?
There was an "International" aspect to my teen years in Williamsburg. The Sternberg family had two sons who had fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. Whenever we kids could get their attention, they'd spellbind us with tales also introduced us to a novel way of thinking, one that embraced such humane ideas as 'From each according to his means and to each according to his needs'. In retrospect, this innocent exposure to a different philosophy was the starting point of a journey that would also incorporate the concept of Tzedakah in my personal guide to the world.
In what historians would later call The Great Depression, a nickel was a lot of mazuma and its economic power could buy a brand new Spaldeen, our local name for the pink-colored rubber ball then produced by the Spalding Company. The famous Spaldeen was central to our endless street games: stickball and punchball or the simpler stoop ball. One balmy summer evenings our youthful fantasies converted South Tenth Street
into Ebbets Field with the Dodgers' Dolph Camilli swinging a broom handle at a viciously curving Spaldeen thrown by the Giants' great lefty, Carl Hubbell. We really thought it curved, I swear.
Our neighbors, magically transformed into spectators kibitzing from their brownstone stoops and windows, were treated to a unique version of major league baseball. My tenure as the resident Shabbes Goy came to an abrupt end after Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. I withdrew from Brooklyn College the following day and joined the U.S. Army. In June of 1944, the Army Air Corps shipped me home after flying sixty combat missions over Italy and the Balkans. I was overwhelmed to find that several of my Jewish friends and neighbors had set a place for me at their supper tables every Shabbes throughout my absence, including me
in their prayers. What mitzvoth! My homecoming was highlighted by wonderful invitations to dinner. Can you imagine the effect after twenty-two months of Army field rations?
As my post-World War II life developed, the nature of the association I'd had with Jewish families during my formative years became clearer. I had learned the meaning of friendship, of loyalty, and of honor and respect. I discovered obedience without subservience. And caring about all living things had become as natural as breathing.
The worth of a strong work ethic and of purposeful dedication was manifest. Love of learning blossomed and I began to set higher standards for my developing skills, and loftier goals for future activities and dreams. Mind, none of this was the result of any sort of formal instruction; my yeshiva had been the neighborhood. I learned these things, absorbed them actually says it better, by association and role modeling, by pursuing curious inquiry, and by what educators called "incidental learning" in the crucible that was pre-World
War II Williamsburg. It seems many of life's most elemental lessons are learned this way.
While my parents' Cuban home sheltered me with warm, intimate affection and provided for my well-being and self esteem, the group of Jewish families I came to know and help in the Williamsburg of the 1930s was a surrogate tribe that abetted my teenage rite of passage to adulthood. One might even say we had experienced a special kind of Bar Mitzvah. I couldn't explain then the concept of tikkun olam, but I realized as I matured how well I had been oriented by the Jewish experience to live it and to apply it. What a truly uplifting outlook on life it is to be genuinely motivated "to repair the world."
In these twilight years when my good wife is occasionally told, "Your husband is a funny man," I'm aware that my humor has its roots in the shticks of Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, entertainers at Catskill summer resorts, and their many imitators. And, when I argue issues of human or civil rights and am cautioned about showing too much zeal, I recall how chutzpah first flourished on Williamsburg sidewalks,
competing for filberts (hazelnuts) with tough kids wearing payess and yarmulkes. Along the way I played chess and one-wall handball, learned to fence, listened to Rimsky-Korsakov, ate roasted chestnuts, and read Maimonides.
I am ever grateful for having had the opportunity to be a Shabbes Goy. Aleichem Sholom.
into Ebbets Field with the Dodgers' Dolph Camilli swinging a broom handle at a viciously curving Spaldeen thrown by the Giants' great lefty, Carl Hubbell. We really thought it curved, I swear.
Our neighbors, magically transformed into spectators kibitzing from their brownstone stoops and windows, were treated to a unique version of major league baseball. My tenure as the resident Shabbes Goy came to an abrupt end after Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. I withdrew from Brooklyn College the following day and joined the U.S. Army. In June of 1944, the Army Air Corps shipped me home after flying sixty combat missions over Italy and the Balkans. I was overwhelmed to find that several of my Jewish friends and neighbors had set a place for me at their supper tables every Shabbes throughout my absence, including me
in their prayers. What mitzvoth! My homecoming was highlighted by wonderful invitations to dinner. Can you imagine the effect after twenty-two months of Army field rations?
As my post-World War II life developed, the nature of the association I'd had with Jewish families during my formative years became clearer. I had learned the meaning of friendship, of loyalty, and of honor and respect. I discovered obedience without subservience. And caring about all living things had become as natural as breathing.
The worth of a strong work ethic and of purposeful dedication was manifest. Love of learning blossomed and I began to set higher standards for my developing skills, and loftier goals for future activities and dreams. Mind, none of this was the result of any sort of formal instruction; my yeshiva had been the neighborhood. I learned these things, absorbed them actually says it better, by association and role modeling, by pursuing curious inquiry, and by what educators called "incidental learning" in the crucible that was pre-World
War II Williamsburg. It seems many of life's most elemental lessons are learned this way.
While my parents' Cuban home sheltered me with warm, intimate affection and provided for my well-being and self esteem, the group of Jewish families I came to know and help in the Williamsburg of the 1930s was a surrogate tribe that abetted my teenage rite of passage to adulthood. One might even say we had experienced a special kind of Bar Mitzvah. I couldn't explain then the concept of tikkun olam, but I realized as I matured how well I had been oriented by the Jewish experience to live it and to apply it. What a truly uplifting outlook on life it is to be genuinely motivated "to repair the world."
In these twilight years when my good wife is occasionally told, "Your husband is a funny man," I'm aware that my humor has its roots in the shticks of Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, entertainers at Catskill summer resorts, and their many imitators. And, when I argue issues of human or civil rights and am cautioned about showing too much zeal, I recall how chutzpah first flourished on Williamsburg sidewalks,
competing for filberts (hazelnuts) with tough kids wearing payess and yarmulkes. Along the way I played chess and one-wall handball, learned to fence, listened to Rimsky-Korsakov, ate roasted chestnuts, and read Maimonides.
I am ever grateful for having had the opportunity to be a Shabbes Goy. Aleichem Sholom.
Rich
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