“Yekkehs vs. Ostjuden: Part One”

  My parents believed I was entering into a mixed marriage. Yes, Suzy was Jewish, but she came from a family whose roots were in Eastern Europe. And mine? Well, mine were German, supposedly ever since the time the Children of Israel entered the Promised Land of Deutschland! But, as you will see later, therein lies the rub.

  Again, I digress.

  German Jews are known as Yekkehs. It’s a term that, for all intents and purposes, translates as “one who wears a suit jacket.” Why? Because when many German Jews came to Israel the men would wear one even in the heat. After all, Germans were very formal, German Jews perhaps even more so. On one occasion my fathers wouldn’t come into someone’s home because he wasn’t dressed appropriately, i.e. no suit and tie.

  Yekkehs are also very arrogant. We’re better than the Ostjuden, the Jews from Eastern Europe. My parents believed it. I never met a Yekkeh who didn’t believe it. The German Jews who were in this country in the middle of the nineteenth century and realized that the influx of Jews escaping Russian pogroms from the late 1880s were “nicht wie uns, not like us,” established all kinds of organizations to both “clean them up,” and “ship them to the Midwest and farm communities.” In fact, was the mission of B’nai B’rith when it was established (though they would disagree). “Keep those Easterners away from the cities,” was the battle cry of the German Jews (those early immigrants weren’t called Yekkehs). 

     German was my mother-tongue which I learned before I knew English. Not a word of Yiddish was spoken. One time I delivered a sermon and included some Yiddish phrase. I had forgotten my parents were in the pews (hmmm, I forgot??). After the service, my mother said with a stern look, “Wo hast du dass gelernt?” (Where did you learn THAT?), and I said, “Not from you.”

    The lives of most Yekkehs are tied to the clock. It is said that Jews are always late…you know, Jewish Mountain Time. But my family was habitually early. Not just early; they were E A R L Y! I’m now about to share something with you that will tell you everything, something I could not have made up….

    But I’ll leave that for Part Two which you can read tomorrow morning.

(Apropos of this, please read…     Rivka and Abe tried very hard to become members of an exclusive country club. Translated that means, no Jews allowed. Even after Abe died Rivka continued and to make it easier, she took elocution lessons, etiquette classes, has a nose job and changes her last name to Fythe-Smith. It worked! They let her join.

      At her first dinner there, a waiter spills soup on her. She was taken aback and she was wearing a beautiful new evening dress, now with soup over it. She jumped up, shouting, “OY VEY!” Then as she looks around at the other guests, she adds, “…whatever that means.”