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STUART ROGOFF
569-7361

High Holiday Reverie
Of Southern Childhood

Growing up in a Tennessee town was
a "synthesizing experience" for a
small Jewish boy

JOSEPH COHEN

Special to The Jewish News

T

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SAVINGS, SELECTION AND PERSONAL SERVICE

26400 W. 12 Mile Rd. (N.E. corner of Northwestern) in the Franklin Savings Center.
Mon.-Sat. 10 till 5:45. Thurs. till 8:45. MasterCard and Visa accepted

84

FRIDAY, SEPT. 18, 1987

rf

FINE JEWELRY AND GIFTS

radition tells us that
the universe was
created on Rosh
Hashanah. Tradition says
that we therefore have an ob-
ligation at the New Year to
recall that awesome begin-
ning. Now, I think obliga-
tions sanctified by so much
tradition should be honored,
and for me that poses no
problem. But the truth is
that as the years keep circl-
ing around, I am more in-
clined, when the First of Tis-
hrei hovers into view, to
think about my own origins
rather than those of the
world. No offense, 0 Master
of the Universe!
In terms of origins, human
beings are, to a marked de-
gree, fashioned into what
they become by the cyclical
recurrence of the central ex-
periences of their lives. Crea-
tion in this respect is a mat-
ter of repetition, return and
renewal; its cyclical pattern
marks us the same way the
rings of a tree mark its age.
As the rings on the tree of
my life keep increasing, my
own sense of annual renewal
takes on a deeper meaning
for me through the thought
and reveries of past celebra-
tions of certain central ex-
periences. Among them Rosh
Hashanah has its special
place in the recollections of
my childhood.
That childhood — in the
1930s — was spent in
Clarksville, Tenn. Set in rol-
ling Tennessee hill country,
it harbored ten Jewish
households among_ its ten
thousand gentile souls.
Most of these Jewish
families had stores, mainly
clothing and furniture, lo-
cated on Franklin Street,
Clarksville's main business
thoroughfare. And most of
those merchants were my
relatives. What brought all
my family so far into the
American hinterland just
around the turn of the cen-
tury and shortly thereafter is
a question no one has ever
really answered.
While my father had no
store at all, my uncle Joe
Goldberg, who had married
another of my mother's sis-
ters, owned a whole block of
them. Located at the interse-
ction of Franklin and Third
Streets, it was known then as
the "Goldberg Block," and

though it has long since
passed into other hands, it
still bears the same name to-
day. Unexpectedly in 1926,
Uncle Joe, very much in his
prime, departed this life —
he was said always to have
been impetuous, with a flair
for the dramatic — a scant
three months before I was
born, bequeathing to me his
name. He remains memora-
ble to me not so much for
that gift as for another one,
the opportunity to see as
often and as long as I liked
on Saturdays Tim McCoy,
Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard
and Rin Tin Tin. Joe

When the Akeda is
read, I am turned
into a little boy
again, silently
pondering Isaac's
fate.

Goldberg had owned the
town's two movie houses, and
one remained in the family
after his death. I got in free. I
never knew it was light out-
side on Saturdays until I had
to give up going to the show
to study for my bar mitzvah.
Down Third Street, just
over a block away from
Franklin, at Commerce
Street stood the Masonic
Temple, a three story build-
ing. The masons reserved the
third floor to themselves, re-
nting the ground-level floor
to a furniture company. The
second floor was occupied by
WJZM (the call letters of this
250 watt radio station stood
for J.Z. Miller, another
Jewish merchant, who got
the original FCC license) and
by Beth El Temple, our tiny
shul, with a liturgy and a
ritual that was one minute
Reform and the next minute
Orthodox. In that sense our
congregation was typical of
other small congregations in
the South. A number of them
shared property with the ma-
sons, and they all had to
negotiate liturgical com-
promises among their mem-
bers to accommodate the dis-
parities between traditional
Jews and their more assimi-
lated brethren. If there were
ever any disputes over ritual,
I did not know about them.
Though it was easy enough
to assemble a hundred people
for Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur, it was next to im-
possible to get enough men