As I was saying, Yekkehs, at least my family, are obsessively early. It was passed down to me.
So in my column about my friend Mark, I mentioned that he messed up a surprise party for me. That was nothing compared to what my parents did. They took me to a surprise party in my honor…before any of the other guests arrived! The surprise was on my friends when I opened the door. The looks on their faces were priceless, especially when I gently yelled out, “SURPRISE!”
Yekkehs didn’t eat the food made famous by the Jews who lived on the Lower East Side (not a Yekkeh among them). The first time I had a bagel was when I had brunch with Suzy’s family. You see, my parents served rye bread. I also never had lox until that time. We ate wurst, all kinds of cold cuts, some of which were nauseating just to look at (blutwurst, for example…look it up). When my parents opened their world to Suzy and her family some – not all, but some – Eastern European Jewish food was brought to our table. But when they left, so did the bagels and lox!
At our wedding it was very easy to distinguish between the bride’s family guests and the groom’s family guests. Hers danced, mine sat. That was the way it was.
Now let me tell you a story…it’s about our arrogance:
You see, I also felt a bit superior to my poor cousins. When there was testing for Tay-Sachs, an auto-immune disease of Eastern European Jewry, both of us took the test. Why me, I didn’t know. Anyway, when the results came back, I opened Suzy’s envelope first (I, of course, had nothing to worry about as I wasn’t among the population). She was not a carrier.
Then I opened my envelope. I WAS A CARRIER! Obviously, our tests had been switched. I called Dr. Rosenblum, a congregant and head of the project, to tell him that a mistake had been made. When he asked why I thought so, I told him I was a German Jew; my parents, grandparents, etc., etc. were all German Jews. There was silence. Then he responded, “Well, Rabbi, I hate to tell you this but obviously some Pollak crossed the border somewhere in your family line. There was no mistake.” I was devastated but Suzy laughs about it until this day.
The sad part of this is that the Yekkehs and their culture and the Lower East Side Jews and their culture are no more…hardly a deli exists in New York City today, and the stores where Yekkehs bought their wurst are long gone.
(Sophia and Hannah are discussing the best ways to make their young sons finish their meals. Sophia says, “As an Italian mother, I put on a fierce look and say to Primo, ‘If you don’t finish your meal, I’m going to kill you.” It works most of the time. Hannah says, “Well, as a Jewish mother, I look mine Isaac in his eyes and say, ‘If you don’t eat the meal I’ve slaved over all day, I’m going to kill myself.’” It works every time.)