We Specialize in
turnal witching hour he changed
Without saying why
back into a concerned, suffering,
down
desperate European who with his
with open lips and
rambling talk brought confusion
arms and eyes.
into the order and stability of my
Fall.
forlornness, which was walled-in
I'll ask no one,
by fear. In doing so he made no
talk to no one.
allowance for my not being a Jew;
Fools
on the contrary, he angrily con-
and flowers
fronted me, so to speak, with his
think
Jewishness and challenged me to
I'm
rain.
express my view.
t was known by many as the
ron Kleinfeld does not
"great Ghetto school," though
want to grow up.
its formal title was the Jews'
He is 11 years old and
Free School. Located on Bell
he lives in a run-down part
Lane in Spitalfields, it was for of Jerusalem. He has a good
years England's largest Jewish imagination.
school. (By 1870 it had 2,600
Aron doesn't like the signs of
pupils).
oncoming puberty. Having a
East Side/East End body, he decides, is a defect.
(Praeger), by Selma Berrol,
tells the story of the "great
Ghetto school" as part of its fo-
cus on eastern European Jews
in London and New York from
1870-1920.
Filled with maps and pho-
tographs (those turn-of-the-
century treasures where
everyone looks so, so serious),
East Side [East End offers a
unique view at a time that
seems thousands of years past.
Ms. Berrol writes, for ex-
ample, of the early New York
immigrants' passion for learn-
ing:
"A widowed Jewish mother
wrote to the Jewish Daily For-
ward saying that she needed
the help of her 15-year-old son
to make a living for her other
four children but could not David Grossman: Refuses to grow up.
bear to make him end his ed-
ucation because he was very
David Grossman's The Book
smart and 'went to school danc- of Intimate Grammar (Farrar,
ing.,
Straus, Giroux) is the story of
She also charts mobility and Aron, a lost soul so disenfran-
stability by names, noting that chised from family and friends
school records for London's east- that words "had come to be ut-
ern European Jews enrolled at terly inward, whispering a gram-
the Oldfield school showed 200 mar so intimate and tortuous
boys (37 percent of the school's they could never break forth into
population) with last names like the light."
Wineberg, Moskowitz and Gold-
Set during the Six-Day War, it
stein and forenames like Mon- often is written in a kind of 11-
tague, Aubrey, Desmond and year-old stream-of-consciousness:
Cyril.
In his heart he reckoned the
t wasn't only Isaac Bashevis days: today's menu: beans, but-
Singer who believed in the termilk, bananas; tomorrow we
power of Yiddish.
have corn and cabbage, and
Rukhl Fishman was born maybe a little chicken soup would
in America to secular parents. At be in order, too. That wasn't
19, she immigrated to Israel and enough though, probably. You
began writing in Yiddish.
need carrots for your eyes, cheese
Her poems speak of the beau- for your bones, meat for your mus-
ty of Israel and the tragedies that cles. And more, too, something to
befell her (she died at 49, after build up your willpower, other-
constant ailments and nine mis- wise how would you ever get rid
carriages). A new Wayne State of that stubborn baby tooth. From
University Press collection of his pocket Aron took a small
some of those poems, I Want to round mirror and looked for the
Fall Like This, translated by Sey- tooth. There it was, white and
mour Levitan, chronicles her sad tiny, sticking up between two per-
life.
manent teeth. Right in the mid-
Among the works is the title dle of his mouth. But he knew
piece:
how to grin without letting it
I want to fall like this:
show.
with open lips and
Mr. Grossman also is the au-
arms and eyes.
thor of The Yellow Wind and See
Down.
Under: Love. He resides in
Fall without saying why.
Jerusalem. ❑
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