Only a shlemiel would judge this book by its cover

The Jews That I Knew: Voices From the Invisible Ghetto  by Ed Schwartz; Create Space © 2014, ISBN 979-1500-1507-61; 96 pages.

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – From its cover to its conclusion, too few pages later, this is a quirky yet enjoyable book.  You might get the idea looking at the cover that this is a Holocaust memoir.  The cover is dark, a Jewish star is superimposed against a brick wall; the subtitle refers to a ghetto.  But all that is misleading.

The “ghetto” that Schwartz remembers is the Catskills during its “Borscht Belt” heyday, when New Yorkers (and other East Coast residents) escaping the summer heat would be entertained by shtick-loving Jewish comics who’d regale them with schmaltzy poetry; Yiddishized Shakespeare plays; and ironic short stories—all drawing on the culture of an immigrant people who enjoy brief respites up in the mountains from the pressures of assimilation back in the city.

Here’s a riff from King Lear as the story might have been told up in the Catskills.

Lear:  My daughters, Goneril and Reagan…they’ve run off with two men.  Gentiles.
Gloucester: Gentiles?
Lear: Gentiles!  I gave them everything, Gloucester.  Money! Clothing!
Gloucester.  They ran off with Gentiles?
Lear: Two of them!
Gloucester: What can you do?  Have children… and you suffer.
Lear: We might as well be buried!  Stuck in the ground.
Gloucester: We’d be better off.
Lear: Better we weren’t born
Gloucester. “Oy Gevalt”.

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Perhaps you might enjoy this stanza from a poem told from a religious girl’s point of view.

Larry liked
to eat fresh pork
and pig’s feet cold
with his hands
(no fork).
And even go
to farmer’s houses
where food uncovered
sat for hours.
And he even took me
once to eat
with his farmer friends.
(those smelly feet!)
But I only had a glass of water
I told them I had
a stomach disorder.

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Schwartz also recalls some of the tall tales that children told each other up in the Catskills. For example:

“Mordecai Brown was a famous pitcher.  He was Jewish. But he only had three fingers.  And nobody could hit him.  He’d throw the ball real easy, but half way down the ball would stop… and then disappear.  But he missed his fingers.  So he got an operation… for two new ones.  And they were perfect.  And he took his first wind-up.  And threw his first pitch.  But everyone started to scream.  His two new fingers were stuck to the ball.”

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If you’d like a book that would make even your grandparent (olav hasholom) nostalgic, this may be the one.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  You may contact him via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com