The Meeting

Chicago, Illinis

May 11, 1946

“Sam, slice for me a pound salami, hard, please.”

Reaching up, the grocer lifted a wrinkled Vienna salami off a hook. “Hard enough, Ida?”

Ida Parminter nodded her head.

Peeling about four inches of the Hebraic-inscribed casing with the edge of a knife, placing the salami on the marble slab, Sam cut perfectly uniform slices.

Turning her head to the tinkling of the bell as a tall lady pushing a buggy came into the store, “Myra, hello!”

Squinting a moment as her eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight to the subdued light of the grocery store, “Ida, how nice to see you… Sam,” wheeling the buggy to the counter, “hello.”

“Oy, let’s see the boychick.” Wiping his hands on his apron, coming from around the counter, Sam bent over the buggy. “Myra, another beautiful baby; another Mitchell.” Tickling the baby’s under-chin, Lawrence giggled.

“Shayner punnum,” Ida said, putting her forefinger in the baby’s open hand. Closing his fist, the baby held her finger.

Tickling him again, Sam was rewarded with a laugh. “You and Walter, you make beautiful babies,” he commented as he returned to his place behind the counter.

Blushing, “So, Ida,” Myra asked, “how’s by you? Frank and the boys, they all okay?”

“Yes, sure, by me everything’s fine. Frank’s working hard—two jobs, you know; I hardly see him anymore.”

“Where’s your Norman? I haven’t seen him in weeks. I asked Mitchell, but he wouldn’t say. The boys didn’t have a fight, did they?”

“Norman?” Thinking a moment, “Oh! Mitchell didn’t tell you?”

“No. Tell me what.”

“Well, my Norman’s going to be twelve in June, and if we want him to be a Bar Mitzvah he’s got to go to Chader!”

“Hebrew school! That’s where he is! No wonder Mitchell never mentioned it.”

In the past, whenever Myra and Walter had spoken of Hebrew school, they both agreed that, yes, they did want their son to have a Bar Mitzvah. But with the end of the war, the baby, the studio, and the way “time just flies,” it had slipped their minds. And Mitchell, of course, not being inclined to school of any kind, would never mention that Norman was going to Hebrew school because if he did, it would remind his parents and he’d be going, too… Oh, yeah!

“Ida, I must be meshuggi! You just reminded me, Mitchell is going to be twelve in August.”

“So, you’re going to send him to Chader?”

“He’s not going to be happy about it, but, yes, on Monday, my Mitchell will be going to Chader with your Norman. Where are you and Frank sending him?”

“The old Chader, over on St. Louis.” 

May 13, 1946

The Prison…

…Was an old, one story, yellow brick building. At the south end of the building there was a chain-linked, pea-graveled playground without equipment or benches. A hand-painted sign on cracked canvas hung over the front of the building. The dark blue Hebrew lettering had faded to a transparent cameo with only the darker, outer edges of the lettering still visible. Underneath, painted in black letters, in English, were the words “MONTIFORIE HEBREW SCHOOL.”

Mitchell Lipensky knew that on that, the thirteenth day of May, 1946, as he reluctantly followed five paces behind his mother and father through the playground entrance, after all but being physically dragged the nine blocks from his home to this combination Devils Island and Alcatraz, that on that day his fifteen-month sentence was about to begin…

“Oh, shit!”

At 3:40 p.m. on any weekday there would be dozens of children milling about the playground.

Norman was there, talking to “Big” Rosalind Feigenbaum, a homely, largeboned, redheaded girl from the “block.” Looking up as the Lipenskys entered the playground, Norman waved to Mitchell, but, as though to say, “This is your fault,” Mitchell shook a clenched fist at his friend.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Lipensky, you wish to have, uh…” glancing at the application on his desk, “Mitchell,” he said, looking at the boy with obvious dislike, “ready for his Bar Mitzvah in such a short time, eh?”

Usually cognizant of people’s reactions to him, noticing the Rabbi’s dark look, Why don’t he like me, Mitchell wondered, when he don’t even know me?

Rabbi Isaac Mietzner did dislike the boy, and he also disliked the boy’s parents; the boy, because he knew by his attitude, he’ll be nothing but trouble, and the parents, because they’d put their son’s Hebrew schooling off for so long, depriving the boy of much of the education, and himself of the income.

Answering the Rabbi’s question, “Yes, Rabbi,” Walter said, “but his thirteenth birthday’s not till August… Uh, next August.”

“Fifteen months, eh?” Mietzner said sarcastically. “That does make all the difference! You speak Yiddish, or maybe Hebrew?”

“Yiddish, a little, when we don’t want him to know what we’re talking about,” Myra answered.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lipensky, you know, of course, that some boys going to Chader in preparation for their Bar Mitzvah attend, sometimes, for five years!”

Five years! Mitchell visibly shuddered at the thought.

“But, Rabbi, Norman Parminter…”

Mietzner looked at Myra over the top of his glasses. “Ah, yes!” Cutting her off, “Parminter! That’s another one!”

“Rabbi,” Myra glanced at Walter, “we know we’ve been wrong, but with the war, and we had a baby and started a business…” Stopping because she knew those were just excuses, “You’re right, Rabbi. We definitely should have brought him here sooner.”

Mietzner glared at Mitchell. “You do understand you will have to work hard to catch up!”

Sitting slouched in a straight-back chair, “Yeah.” Mitchell grudgingly muttered, squirming under the Rabbi’s skeptical stare.

“All right, then,” Mietzner looked at Walter, “leave him and we’ll start today.”

“Uh,” looking up, “I gotta? Today?”

Rising from his chair, standing directly in front of Mitchell—who immediately straightened his body—“Yes!” Poking his stiffened finger in his son’s chest for emphasis, “Today!” Poke. “And if you” poke “know what’s good for you” poke “you’ll work your tuchas off!” Poke. “Do you understand me?” Poke, poke, and poke.

“Yeah! Ouch! Yes, I understand!”

The classroom was hot and stuffy with the prevailing odors of dust and chalk. The one-piece desks were small and hard. Mitchell’s desk was in the center row, third from the front; a position he hated because he felt he was always going to be under the watchful eye of the Rabbi, which, in fact, he would be.

Rabbi Berkovitz was a small, thin man in his late sixties. His long, gray beard was streaked with dark brown nicotine stains, as were the first three fingers of his right hand. The old man smelled of tobacco, chalk dust, onions and sweat. His black, three-piece suit was old and frayed, and smudged with chalk dust from the shoulders of the jacket to the cuffs of the pants.

“Mein class,” Berkovitz said in a thick German accent, “dis goyisheh kop [Gentile brains]” pointing a nicotine-stained finger at Mitchell, “is Lipensky, und he’s joining vit our class… So, nu, Lipensky, you know, maybe, the aleph-baz?”

Slouching, trying to make less of himself visible, “Huh?”

“The aleph-baz! The Hebrew Alphabet!”

“No.”

“Oy! Hokay, mein class, from the beginning, ve start again.”