ami issue 121 pages 76-79, rabbi mordechai kamenetzky

7/28/2019 Ami Issue 121 pages 76-79, Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

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76 A M i M A g A z i n e / / M A Y 2 9 , 2 0 1 3 / / 2 0 s i v A n 5 7 7 3

Id like to remember the scene incolor. But I cant. Its as i that wholescene was painted in black andwhite: the dirty gray o the crackedsidewalks; the coal gray o the

asphalt; and the black-and-white signsover the gray steel gates o the storeronts,some in English, some in Yiddish and, aew blocks over, some in Chinese. Eventhe colored yarmulkes in H&M Skullcapwere gray. Back in the late sixties and earlyseventies, in a world aiming to presentitsel in living color, the Lower East Sidewas presented in dying black-and-white.

I remember the streets: Grand Street,Delancey Street, Hester and Orchard,Allen and Essex, and Rivington. I remem-

ber some o the landmarks as well:Streits Matzos, Schapiros Wine and Kos-sars Bialys. O course there was H&MSkullcap and Biegeleisen Books..

I was not sure why my ather took medown there so oten. He denitely had aew stops, as he would call them, to seesome o his supporters. Most o the peoplehe visited were either aliated with TorasChaim o East New York, or perhaps theyknew him rom the old country. But asar as I can remember, even as a little kid,the Lower East Side did not have the lureo the real Manhattan just a ew milesnorthwest o the little enclave. But it hadits charm.

My ather either could not aord ahelper, or he elt that it was better i hecame himsel to the donor, and shlepped theboxes or theyeshivahs annual bazaar. Andthere was no better place in the world toget bazaar junk than the Lower East Side.Maybe my ather went himsel because hewould not settle or regular junk. He got

the best shmattes, the best toys and thebest gadgets. And indeed, there was noth-ing that was below his dignity i it meantthat it could make money or yet anotherJewish child to go toyeshivah.

Sometimes my mother and a ew o thePTA ladies would help out in a stationwagon, with one o the husbands driv-ing. They would traverse the Jewish ware-houses and actories. I rarely shlepped withmy mother. The women did not know thelay o the land like my ather did, and wereoten conused in the elevators o the largeoces/warehouses they visited, unsure owhich foor they were supposed to stopon. Whos on rst? Whats on second?and I-Dont-Know-Whos on third.Going with my mother and the PTA ladies,

I elt that I was in the middle o a comedroutine.

But not with my ather. He knew evernook and cranny o that Old Lower EasSide, rom Orchard to Essex, rom Granto Delancey. He knew how to get romWoodmere to the East Side and back i20 minutes, making every light, expertldriving down Bushwick Avenue and ontAtlantic. Hed plow through the Bushwicand Bedord-Stuyvesant areas, and whawere once the glorious neighborhoods oEast New York and Brownsville, with near at all. He was oblivious to any o thracial tensions o the 1960s. I was alwayscared that on the way home he wouljump out o the car somewhere on Bushwick Avenue and ask a bodega owner or

Cs a KssA DAsh of Color in A BlACk AnD White WorlD


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2 0 s i v A n 5 7 7 3 / / M AY 2 9 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M i M A g A z i n e 7

RAbbi MoRdeChAi KAMenetzKy

bazaar package.O course we did not always go to the

Lower East Side to shnorrthings. We alsowent there to buy things. Well, sort o. Imean, who really bought anything on theLower East Side? And my ather alwaysknew somebody anyway. So how muchdid he really pay?

I dont remember too many purchaseso clothes and the like on the Lower EastSide. Though I do remember my atherbuying me a weekday hat or my barmitzvaha black elt edora or daven-ingrom a pushcart. I think spending25 dollars on a ancy hat or my Shabbosbar mitzvah in Bencrat, on the Williams-burg side o the bridge, was way over our

budget. And so, over the bridge to the EastSide we went, to buy the weekday hat.

So he drove over the bridge and ounda pushcart that had some shmatte hat.My ather would be sold and then try toconvince me as well: The mostgevaldikerhat they make! (And or just ve dol-lars!) And we got a pair o shoes as well:Coram shoes, or seven dollars.

When we bought the shoes, I thoughtthey were black. But when we came home,I realized the truth: They were purple.They must have turned purple when we

got to Woodmere. Remember, there wasno color on the Lower East Side. Evenpurple shoes looked black on DelanceyStreet.

My mother nearly ainted when she sawthe shoes that my ather brought home.O course he was his old cool sel: Noproblem! he exclaimed, explaining thathe never intended to have me wear purpleshoes. Vos macht zi ahzah groiseh gerider?(Why are you making such a uss?) The

shoemaker will paint them black. And hedid, sort o. Black paint does not stick wellto Coram, the plastic imitation leatherinvented by DuPont in 1964 and declareddead a year ater my bar mitzvah in 1971.

O course, there were the ubiquitouselectronics stores, where my ather, like hisson, would marvel at the latest tchotchke.And then hed buy one and never knowhow to use it. But it was worth it. Hed buyone and then get a second donated toyou guessed ittheyeshivah bazaar. I will

never orget how he came home once witha giant radio receiver. We still have it. Itwas massive. It had about 190 stations andfve bands rom all over the world. And hebelieved the ellow who told him that youcould listen to Tzitivyan (the Lithuanianvillage where my grandather was rav) onit. The man sold it to him without anystereo speakers. It was a real metziah, myather said.A real bargain, all because ithas a bunch o scratches here.

My mother was upset. There was a

prominent Grundig logo on the receiverand the scratches obliterated somethingthat back in the early sixties (and or many,even today) would have clearly negatedthe sale: Made in Germany. My atherdid not know Grundig rom Finkelstein,but had he realized what the vendor hadscratched o, he surely would not havebought it.

But there was one store that was usu-ally the ocal point o any non-yeshivah

business visit to the Lower East Side: SoMoscot Opticians. Ida Wax, a good rieno my mothers and the mother o mclassmate, Stuie (or Sruli, as his parentcalled him) worked at Sol Moscot on thcorner o Delancey and Orchard. Thatwhere we got our glasses. Ida made surwe got a good buy. And even i we wernot shopping or eyeglasses we alwaymanaged to make a rest stop there, anget a bite, a danish or piece o cake. I stiremember trudging up the fight o step

each plastered with a slogan on its undeside, to catch your attention.

I had pretty good vision, but I alwaywanted to ake it, just to be able to go tIda on the Lower East Side and get a pao eyeglasses. I was a bit jealous o myounger brother, whose vision was worsHe got eyeglasses. I didnt. Looking bacat some o our olden-day pictures, I thanthe Ribono Shel Olam or my unbespectacled ate.

But always, and I mean always, ther

was a special treat. It did not make a dierence i we were going to the LoweEast Side or the bazaar or whether wwere going or eyeglasses with my littlbrother Zvi. It did not even matter i wwere going or purple shoes. We coulnot go to the Lower East Side withoustopping at one particular store on EsseStreet. And it was not a visit to GusPickles. Pickles were good. But nothingand I mean nothing, was better than a vis

My mother nearly fainted when she sawthe shoes that my father brought home.


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78 A M i M A g A z i n e / / M A Y 2 9 , 2 0 1 3 / / 2 0 s i v A n 5 7 7 3

to Leibel Bistritzkys cheese store.And no one was as colorul a gure as

Mr. Bistritzky himsel. A giant o a man,tall and broad, he epitomized the imageryo an old-time rosh hakahal. The white butstained apron and oily hands in no waydiminished the majestic presence that heso modestly exuded.

Indeed i there was any color, back onthe Lower East Side, it was Reb Leibel.And his store was a prism o color aswell. For us it was meiein olam haba. Mybrother and I did not like candy. We lovedcheese. Woodmere had a paucity o koshercheeses available (as well as a paucity okosher appetizing stores) and surely adearth ochalav Yisrael brands. And so, orus two, suerers o ructose intolerance, atrip to Bistritzkys was better than a trip tothe candy store. It was Heaven.

There were a billion brands o cheesesand then there was the lox and the sableand all these salty items that we loved.

And then there was the chevrah. I was justa kid, but the wide variety o people whosqueezed their way into the narrow shopon Essex Street was only rivaled by thewider variety o wares inside.

Minchah was held in the tiny corner inthe back, and I vaguely remember a placeto wash and eat. And thats where we ate.And that s where my ather shmoozed.Really shmoozed. I did not know how heknew Leibel so well, but ater a long andexhausting day asking or both dollars andshmattes, my ather ound solace and a

warm riend in Leibel Bistritzkys store onEssex Street. It may have been a tiny store,but to me it was huge. WEVDs Art Ray-mond used to call it a phone booth, whereso much went on and so many people tin.

My ather never told me why Reb Leibelalways greeted him with a million-dollarsmile and a bear hug that let him smell-ing like a brick o cheddar marinated inschmaltz herring. He never told us why

Mr. Bistritzky shtupped all types o cheesygoodies on me and my brother Zvi. All theother kids got candy. But he knew that wewould rather have cheese.

But secrets as such, like the smell opickle juice, are hard to contain. And oneday I ound out the storyactually, twostories.

In the late 1950s, Leibel Bistritzkywould deliver chickens and chalav Yis-rael milk rom his arm in Vineland, NewJersey, to Philadelphia. Oten he wouldend his workday very late at night. He wasexhausted and sleepy, and a ride back onthe pitch-black country roads o Pennsyl-

vania could spell misortune under succircumstances.

One night, as ate would have it, ReLeibel made his last stop at the Philade

phia Yeshiva. It was late at night, but a ewo the bachurim were still burning the midnight oil.

Reb Leibel, bone-tired and in no condtion to drive back that night, met a younman who was learning in the yeshivah, chasidisher ellow named Dovid. Doviwas not a regular student o theyeshivahHe was an older bachurwho had been senby Rav Aharon Kotler to help start thPhiladelphia Yeshiva in its inaugural year

The thugs turned around and, as if theysaw the prophet Elijah on the day of

reckoning, bolted as fast as they couldtoward Chinatown, Reb Leibel still in hot

pursuit.

Reb Leibel Bistritzky


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Dovid served as an unocial mashgiach intheyeshivah, as well as a baal teflah or theYamim Noraim. Reb Leibel met him andasked i he knew o an extra bed, wherehe could lie down or a while. Dovid toldhim that there was a boy who was awayor Shabbos and his bed would be emptyall night, and that he was certain that RebLeibel could use his bed. It was not untilthe next morning that someone told RebLeibel that Dovid had actually given himhis own bed. Indeed, while Reb Leibelslept until Shacharis, that young man, myuncle, now known as Rav Dovid Spiegel,the Ostrov-Kalushiner Rebbe in Cedar-hurst, stayed up all night.

But the story does not end there. It endsabout 25 years later and a hal a block uprom Bistritzkys cheese store on the LowerEast Side.

It was getting dark sometime in earlyall, not long beore Sukkos. Essex Streetwas no longer the bustling avenue it once

was, and the Lower East Side had lost mosto its ancient charm. But it still had a ewesrogim sellers. Thats why the old, distin-guished Yid had come by subway rom theBronxto buy an esrog. But the day wasdone and he was headed home.

The man was walking on Essex Street,somewhere between Broome and Grand,when suddenly he glanced behind him.Two Latino thugs seemed to be ollowinghim. The old man picked up his pace. Sodid the teens. The old man tried as hardas he could to run rom them. The two,

clearly up to no good, started closing in.One kid pulled out a switchblade.

The elderly Yid passed Bistritzkys. Hewas panting. The kids were close behind.From his store, then on 37 Essex, RebLeibel noticed something strange: Anelderly Yid with a long white beard anda hadrasponim was running on towardGuss Pickles. He knew there was some-thing more. Another look and he saw whatwas coming. He realized the impending

brutality and acted.Wielding a 10-inch cheese cleaver,

raised way above his six-oot rame, hestormed out o the store in hot pursuit othe would-be muggers. The thugs turnedaround and, as i they saw the prophetElijah on the day o reckoning, bolted asast as they could toward Chinatown, withReb Leibel still in hot pursuit.

A ew seconds later, Reb Leibelembraced the old Yid with the long whitebeard and invited him into the store or a

gleizel tea.The Yid, a distinguished rebbe, was over-

come with gratitude. And then Reb Leibelasked him his name: Pinchus EliyahuSpiegel.

That Yid was my zeide, zichrono livra-chah. Reb Leibel realized that this wasthe Ostrov-Kalushiner Rebbe rom theBronx. He thought or a moment andasked, Rebbe, did you have a son namedR Dovid who learned in Philadelphia

Yeshiva in 1956?My grandather, never much or words,

nodded.The smile on Reb Leibels ace could not

have been broader. All my lie I waited topay back his chesed. Baruch Hashem that Iwas zocheh!

I had always heard that the best cheesesare made in a circle. I guess the greatestchesed goes around and around as well.

Tehi zichro baruch.

Rabbi Kamenetzky thanks the Bistritzky

family for helping him with these colorfulmemories. They ask to please send any storiesand memories to [email protected]

rabbi Modecai kamenezy i erosh yeshi-

vah of Yeiva toa Caim a sou soe, a

weey coumni in Yated Neeman, and e au-

o of e Parsha Parable eie. he can ae

you oy oug e see of life, and can

be eaced a [email protected].

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ami issue 121 pages 76-79, rabbi mordechai kamenetzky

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