Maybe It's Brodsky

Kugelmass, Jack

MAYBE ITS BRODSKY An anthropologist becomes the tenth mentsh in the South Bronx minyan JACK KUGELMASS / never met Bwdsky, though, in a peculiar way, I have come to know him rather well....

...I gave him a key to the apartment, he was free to come and go as he pleased...
...You've got to come on time," Mrs...
...I used to try and explain to him I don't read, I just look at the page...
...Sacks's comment takes me by surprise...
...I walk with Sacks from the shul...
...I am vying for a place in the minyan, perhaps seeking my immortality there...
...So I would encourage Brodsky to join us—less to go to shul than for the company...
...I said the El Molei Rachamim and then I said a few words of condolences to his niece...
...When we got to shul, just as soon as we were inside the door, it would start to rain again...
...Kaplan clears his throat...
...Actually, we were about the same age, maybe two weeks difference...
...A relatively young member of the congregation, in his mid-60s, Mr...
...But age is measured too by how long you work after 65...
...Friends ask me when I intend to resume "normal" life, giving up my role as "honorary old person...
...So you have to give something back...
...I reach the park and descend the stairs into the subway...
...One of his canes still hangs from the door...
...That made a real impression on him, because he was never a religious man and now he was, and it was like the rain's stopping confirmed his becoming observant...
...Mr...
...What do I remember about Brodsky...
...Interested in the culture of the shtetl, and unable to do field work because of the extermination of East European Jewry, I had optedfor the only route open—library research...
...But, unwilling to abandon entirely research on the culture of Ashkenazic Jewry, I was reluctant to leave New York to spend a year or so in a remote corner of the world...
...After services, I accompany Sacks to the bakery on Hunts Point Avenue where he works...
...Sacks and I parry with each other...
...Someone comes along...
...Brodsky was never married...
...He backs up his view with hard facts: In the last three years, new congregants have appeared to join the minyan every time an old member has died or moved...
...I think there was some plans to build a hotel on it...
...So you have to remember him...
...As I leave, he locks the door behind me and watches as I turn to walk away...
...He would watch me for a while and then he would fall asleep...
...Flisser laughs, then continues: "It's no good for you, all that salty stuff...
...We only had nine men today, maybe it's Brodsky...
...Sacks turns to the congregation and announces, "Today is Chamisho Osor Bishvat...
...Passionately devoted to his craft...
...Sacks...
...Three years ago, shortly before I joined the congregation, he died...
...Moish,' he would say, 'I get tired just from watching you work...
...I take some rolls out of the refrigerator and put them in an enormous oven, still warm from Friday's baking...
...But no one can take the place of an\ other person...
...It's as if Brodsky gained immortality through you and your memories of him...
...He would take a bag of bread crumbs...
...I would put a chicken in the oven so we could have a bite after shul...
...The research for it uncovered nothing about Brodsky...
...I may have never met him, but I feel as if I did because of all that you've told me...
...Although still able to do the work of a much younger man, his body is beginning to rebel...
...I began to sense a connection between Brodsky and myself...
...The thing I remember about him is that he loved herring...
...You mean the two of you...
...Flisser, who seems more feeble with each passing month, has been a member longer than Mr...
...By then he was a regular shulgoer...
...No," Sacks replies, "there is no connection...
...Another five or ten minutes, the rain would let up, Brodsky was rested, and we continued to the bakery...
...He walks me to the door and unlocks it...
...You write things down...
...How do we know that it's a male dove and not a female dove...
...But an old person I am not...
...It belonged to a brother or a brother-in-law, I'm not sure which...
...On Saturdays, the bakery is closed...
...But I saw him just before he died...
...Sometimes, overcome by the bleakness of the Bronx or the pain of aging, I ask myself the same question...
...Rashi doesn't say anything about the dove being male or female...
...Immortality you get from peers...
...Maybe it is a Jewish fly...
...His funeral was downtown in Manhattan...
...If I stay away one weekend, I return with an excuse prepared...
...Sacks spends Shabbos afternoons in the bakery eating lunch, entertaining friends, finally dropping off to sleep with his cat curled up next to him...
...I can't bring myself to throw these things out...
...He loved salty things...
...he joins us a bit later...
...One summer Shabbos, we stand in the , rear of the shul while Malachi chants ; the Kiddush...
...That's not immortality," he insists...
...Sundays, he would come to the bakery while I worked...
...He died a poor man...
...Brodsky would sit opposite me and fall asleep...
...Mention of the word "immortality" strikes a responsive chord...
...If I Jack Kugelmass is coauthor of"From A Ruined Garden, to be published in November 1983 by Schocken Books...
...You might think I'm bragging, but I had a part in that...
...I'll tell you...
...I had completed a doctoral degree in anthropology...
...So he had no children of his own...
...And you're central to my book...
...Knowing that, Sacks asks one day how the writing is coming...
...It is the Saturday of Brodsky's yahrzeit, so it is natural for me to ask about Brodsky...
...Anyway, Brodsky could never walk all the way to shul without resting...
...I don't read everything, he claimed...
...He sets a moderate but steady pace, careful not to trip lest injury threaten the independence he cherishes...
...On Sundays I would go over the parshe, just like I do now...
...Brodsky would tell all the colored people in Mrs...
...Yeah," Sacks agrees, "I know the joke...
...We can't carry an umbrella, it's Shabbos.' So I would tell him, 'Don't worry, by the time we get outside it won't be raining any more.' And the time it took us to get from my floor to downstairs, you'd never know it had been raining...
...Abraham is an attorney in a Manhattan law firm...
...An exhibit of these photographs from his research at the Intervale Jewish Center will open on June 16 at The Jewish Museum in New York City, cosponsored by the YIVO Institute...
...I have a large four-room apartment, my wife was dead already many years, my children were grown up, so I invited him to live with me...
...Abraham, the attorney, offers his own summation: "Imagine that...
...Sacks laughs, then corrects Dave: "Don't say that...
...He was always telling jokes...
...Sacks gets up from his chair...
...But how can I? For the handful of elderly people who depend on the minyan, my not going would be like letting go of a drowning man...
...So when the opportunity presented itself to write an article on the Intervale Jewish Center it seemed like a perfect project...
...This was in 1962, just after my wife died...
...But Brodsky waited for the bus...
...If he could see what the broiler looks like today, he'd probably turn over in his grave...
...Why...
...I went to see him before he died, and he said to me, 'Moish, you'll take care of me.' He meant when he dies...
...I slip my tape recorder into my vest pocket and put my coat on...
...I'll tell you, Jack...
...Go ahead," Mr...
...Old age and the awareness it brings of approaching death motivated him to become a congregant...
...They're still there today, so I guess they've found another Brodsky...
...He never realized they wouldn't know what's a shul...
...It retains vestigial biases of its founding fathers, for whom fieldwork among the most primitive races of mankind is the quintessence of professional research...
...Along the way I would escort three women—Blanche, who used to work in the bakery as a salesgirl, and two sisters, both spinsters who lived in the area...
...One was a niece who lived in Coney Island or somewhere in Brooklyn...
...He would walk until we got to the dry goods store...
...After that he couldn't stay there...
...When he was alive...
...He was friends with all of them because during the day he was usually home...
...Meanwhile, the niece in Brooklyn wanted him to live with her...
...Halfway down I stop, climb back up and look around the park...
...The poor guy was killed by a herring...
...Damn fly, it's not Jewish, it's not supposed to be here...
...It was only two stores from the bakery, but he had to go inside and sit down in the armchair they kept by the door...
...Yeah," Sacks replies, "today is Chamisho Osor Bishvat...
...On a Sunday morning, the congregation gathers around the table at the rear of the shut and listens to Sacks recount the portion of the week...
...It was never worth anything, but he held onto it...
...Saturday mornings he would look out the window and say, 'Moish, it's raining...
...Sacks thinks for a minute...
...I tried to teach him to read without moving his lips, but he never learned...
...He gave it to me...
...But he liked to claim he was two weeks older than me and that's why he needed a cane...
...Weekdays he lived in Brooklyn, weekends he spent with me...
...When the rolls are warm, we sit down to eat...
...No matter how much she cleaned, it wasn't enough...
...Mr...
...But every year, when we come to this parshe, I'm reminded of a joke Brodsky would make...
...He used to come into the bakery with his cane, sit down and have a cup of coffee with adanish...
...They are meant as a tribute from one jokester to another...
...Once he got to shul already, he stayed...
...Whenever some organization would take us on a trip to a synagogue on Long Island or somewhere, as soon as he comes into the place he looks around to see whether they have any herring...
...after shul we ate lunch in the bakery and the three of us would fall asleep right at the table...
...It is a mitzvah to spend a weekend at home with my family...
...The joke is, how is it that we know that the dove is a boy dove and not a girl dove...
...Abraham plays straight man: "It's in Rashi...
...Sacks pauses, and the pause grows into a lengthy silence...
...Somehow she wasn't lucky enough to get him to marry her...
...Brodsky died three years ago, just before I arrived...
...Riding the subway back to Manhattan, I think about how impenetrable is the wall that separate's Sacks's world from mine...
...He would sit there and tell the owners about how the rain stopped as soon as we were out the front door...
...Dave— you know Dave—said the Kaddish and the ninth Psalm...
...The Baal Shem...
...Both, I imagine, can tell me about Brodsky, whose name I have heard before, but of whom I have until now not bothered to inquire...
...No...
...He would go to shul on the High Holy Days...
...Unaccustomed to center stage, Kaplan hesitates for a moment...
...Sometimes a tray is too hot, or it's too far inside the oven to get out, so they yell out, 'Get Brodsky's cane.' And we use it to pull the tray out of the oven...
...Before that, he lived in a deteriorating building...
...By the time I knew him, he was already a retired man...
...Her statement haunts me...
...I ask...
...Leave the fly alone...
...All right," Mr...
...We both davened at the Intervale Jewish Center, the only synagogue still in use in the South Bronx...
...When was this...
...I do not quite understand why I still spend my weekends in the South Bronx, but I am unable not to...
...He would stand there scrubbing the pot we used to boil water in after she had cleaned it, and would complain...
...The whole congregation agrees with Malachi the cantor's assessment: "Brodsky was a funny man...
...He was close, though, with his brother's children...
...I wonder sometimes who is going to give me my immortality...
...I still have them in the room I gave him...
...said that the butterfly was the neshome [the soul] of Reb soand-so, who left the grave because he knew they needed him for the minyan...
...It's already another year...
...Besides that he had his personal effects...
...That's the penalty you pay...
...Not exactly when he died...
...What are we going to do...
...In the meantime, I have work to do...
...Copyright © 1983 by Jack Kugelmass...
...Because," she replies, "you come here and ask questions...
...She must have been his girlfriend, but I don't know what happened...
...Why penalty...
...Yeah," he says, "if I live that long...
...Abraham insists...
...We spend a good part of every service trading anecdotes...
...Brodsky was an old man who used to live in the area...
...It's a funny thing," he says, "after Brodsky died, he lost his taste completely for herring...
...Abraham offers his quips with a tone of reverance...
...One day I got a call from his niece, the one in Brooklyn, that Brodsky was in the hospital...
...In Brodsky's case," I observe, "he had no children to remember him...
...He carried around a picture of himself as a young man standing on some beach somewhere with a young woman...
...Mr...
...And then we went home...
...Because," Kaplan announces, beaming, "if it was a female dove, it wouldn't have been able to keep its mouth shut long enough to bring back the olive branch...
...Is there any connection...
...The three women who are present are, fortunately, sitting at a different table, out of earshot of the offending joke...
...Who will say the El Molei Rachamim for Brodsky...
...I could stay in New York, expand my research by examining another aspect of Ashkenazic culture, and conduct fieldwork...
...On the street, though, he was embarrassed he should need a cane and I shouldn't, so he kept buying me canes...
...Sacks is sitting patiently...
...So we compromised...
...Anthropology is a young field...
...Another one, 1 have here in the bakery...
...The pigeons are still there...
...had heard his name mentioned, and I probably did, it slipped right by me...
...When they closed Temple Beth Elohim, I started going to the Intervale Jewish Center...
...Miroff's shop that we're on our way to shul...
...I think being surrounded by holiness made him feel relaxed...
...Moishe Sacks, acting rabbi to the Intervale Jewish Center, lifts the Torah and rests it firmly on his right shoulder...
...Sacks is bent on limiting my role, perhaps preparing for the likelihood that one day I will stop coming...
...And as he was telling the story, he'd look out and see that it was raining again...
...Brodsky had been a regular congregant for many years...
...But don't you insist that there is a connection between an old congregant dying and a new one arriving...
...You mention the word 'immortality' It's true that I'm older than the others...
...And for some reason he never married anyone else...
...Flisser seems bewildered by the question...
...He lived alone on Bryant Avenue, not too far from where I live...
...He lets the joke unfold, listening carefully to make sure Kaplan is telling it properly...
...A film based on the study, made last fall for the BBC, will premiere this summer at the Jewish Museum...
...He cracks a smile and recites the prayer...
...Abraham prods Kaplan to continue...
...Mind you, he wasn't a religious man, even though he died a religious man...
...Later, when it was time to go home, I liked to walk...
...He did have some property in Atlantic City...
...I'm still working, so the others are likely to die before me...
...Brodsky only wanted I should walk with a cane...
...Sacks feeds Spotty, his recently acquired kitten, hunts through another refrigerator looking for fruit salad and tuna fish...
...It is time for me to leave...
...But your immortality comes from your children...
...You never know...
...Perhaps I am making too much of a mere coincidence...
...So I didn't take Brodsky's place...
...Sacks is not satisfied by the reassurance...
...Miroff admonishes...
...So I will remember them and you might say I am their immortality...
...We can't afford not to have you here...
...With my degree in hand, and extended unemployment looming on the horizon, I was willing to make my peace with the bias of my profession...
...As we walk, he is mindful of the social landscape, stopping now and again to chat with friends and acquaintances...
...I am young, I have family obligations...
...I'm going to say the El Molei Rachamim for him...
...Children and grandchildren remember out of duty and obligation, or because of materialistic reasons...
...I completed the article more than two years ago...
...Who was he...
...If someone comes along to replace a departed congregant, then whom did I replace...
...I ask...
...It's old man Brodsky's yahrzeit...
...Three...
...Brodsky was a congregant there...
...At his age, he does what he can to acquire mitzvahs for himself and for others...
...He intercedes only when Kaplan is in danger of floundering...
...Sacks appreciates the remark...
...I sit between Flisser and Mr...
...There's a story about the Baal Shem ???, that : one of his followers died, and the next day they were missing a man for the minyan...
...He is slightly older than most of the other congregants, but it is his determined character rather than his age that casts him firmly in the role of leader...
...Brodsky loved things that are bad for you—herring, pickles...
...Kaplan interrupts the narrative...
...Maybe he recovered a little, because they were going to move him to the convalescent part of the hospital, but he died first from a heart attack...
...I turn first to Flisser...
...He had a pickle stand on 165th Street, a block or two from the shul...
...Go ahead, tell the joke...
...I used to walk from my apartment on Faille Street along Hunts Point Avenue on the way to shut...
...Later, when I expanded the study, intending to write a book on the Intervale Jewish Center, Brodsky emerged lifelike, as a member of the congregation...
...Were you there when he died...
...So whose neshome is this fly...
...He seems ready to concede, but he insists on having the last word...
...When the minyan disappears, how will they recite the memorial prayers for their departed loved ones...
...Abraham...
...I ask...
...The one I keep here even my helpers know it's Brodsky's...
...For three years I have spent weekends at the Intervale Jewish Center, and I am now, as Sacks refers to me, "an honorary old person...
...If I am late and the Torah reading is delayed, I feel guilty...
...Abraham...
...Sacks does not see it that way...
...The timetable for my leaving has a good deal to do with the progress of my book...
...I was motivated by youthful ambition...
...I went with Dave...
...It is Saturday morning in the South Bronx...
...After several failures, a dove brings back an olive branch...
...But when it came to Torah, he was my best student...
...Eventually, he went to live with her...
...Or perhaps, like old people, I have come to see the legacy of the old in the existence of the young...
...Gezunterheit...
...Abraham concedes, "I give up...
...But it wasn't at the bakery we met, it was in shut...
...Sacks is explaining Noah's attempts to locate land...
...I tell him that it is going well, and that I am writing about Brodsky...
...I think he was the only one left in the building...
...Malachi, the cantor, is surprised...
...Abraham, who no longer lives in the Bronx, has repairs to do on a run-down commercial property near Charlotte Street that he inherited from an uncle...
...When we reached the little park on the comer of Hunts Point Avenue and Southern Boulevard, all the pigeons would fly from the roof of the building facing the park as soon as they saw Brodsky...
...We used to fight over which of us was older, me or him...
...Sacks has not been feeling well lately...
...Why did he give it to you...
...He used to say he didn't like the way I davened...
...I walk slowly down Hunts Point Avenue, retracing the route Sacks and Brodsky would take to shul...
...I prod for detail: "When was this...
...So just when they were taking out the Torah, a butterfly flew into the room and hovered around the Ark...
...I don't know how much he really meant it, because when people are very sick, they talk like that...
...Not to take the place," Sacks corrects me...
...Brodsky never sat with me in shul...
...Isn't that immortality...
...Saturdays was the same thing...
...Say the El molei...
...Brodsky, me and Blackie, my cat...
...I don't know," Sacks replies...
...How can you write about-him if you never met him...
...They knew he would feed them...
...Whatever Brodsky owned that was of value I imagine he left to his niece...
...Well," I try to comfort him, "you play a central role in the exhibit and the film...
...That's probably what killed him...
...Miroff's shop talking to her or to the 'bums,' or he was upstairs supervising the girl that used to clean the apartment...
...But nothing came of it while he was alive...
...I'm sorry for interrupting you, Mr...
...Dave shoos away a fly that hovers over a piece of cake...
...Sacks is a short man, almost squat, though muscular, with a round, heavy face seasoned by nearly eight decades of life...
...One day they broke in and vandalized his apartment...
...He had a stroke...
...He was either downstairs in Mrs...
...He defers to Sacks who declines the offer and encourages Kaplan to continue...
...Anyway, his view is that God alone assures the life of the Intervale minyan...
...Weekdays he keeps up a gruelling pace, producing almost single-handedly an assortment of baked goods that feeds the merchants and workers of the Hunts Point market and related personnel, including truckers, police, fire and sanitation workers, and even the pimps and prostitutes who provide ancillary services to the market's truck drivers...
...We all laugh...
...Abraham has found the right moment to join in...
...Doesn't someone always come along just at the right time...
...Moreover, the locale had the reputation of being dangerous and forbidding, the hallmark of anthropology...
...It stayed until the end of the service, and with the last prayer, it flew out...

Vol. 8 • May 1983 • No. 5


 
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