Category Archives: Fiction

His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Seventeen

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 17. Enjoy!

Chapter Seventeen

IMG_1773It was late in the day by the time I got back to Brooklyn with Hannah and her class. Ronit met us at pick up and I sent them home, then ran to the subway as quickly as was humanly possible, risking looking rude toward the other mothers for not sticking around to do the usual after-school post-field-trip chat.

The Jewish Genealogical Division of the New York Public Library was located in the basement of the main branch of the library on Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. I dashed up the many steps leading to the front doors of the library, nodding in passing to the famous lions who kept guard on either side of the stone steps, avoided the New Yorkers sprawled across the steps taking advantage of the sunny day, and ran inside. The temperature was quite a few degrees colder inside the building, but the chill that ran down my spine was not due to the cold. There was a special kind of reverence that hit me every time I entered this branch of the library, the main reference branch of the whole New York Public Library system. Libraries were a kind of sacred space, and this particular library was truly worthy of reverence. Its vast spaces, hushed tones, muted color scheme, majestic murals and high vaulted ceilings created a sense of awe. Just trying to grasp the amount of knowledge and information available within the walls of this building was enough to make me giddy. Forget Central Park, the Empire State Building, or the South Street Seaport–the main reading room was one of the great wonders of New York.   A cavernous, echoing space filled with polished wooden desks, substantial wooden chairs, and green desk lamps, where an incredible spectrum of humanity read, wrote, researched, and dreamed, the main reading room was a candy store packed with endless possibilities of knowledge.

This afternoon, however, my research led me downstairs, to Room 101. It was a miniature version of the main reading room, complete with the same wooden desks, chairs, and reading lamps. Though my work rarely allowed me to indulge in it, I loved the tactile adventure of pure research, research that involved actual books, card catalogues, pens, and index cards. The Internet and other new technologies made research so much easier and faster, yet something was missing from the process. There was almost nothing I loved better than sitting at one of those wooden tables, a pile of books in front of me waiting to be opened, and my supplies at the ready. If it was possible to bottle the musty, slightly clammy smell of old books, I’d be one happy person. My work this afternoon promised to be the old-fashioned kind of book research, a good antidote to the computer searches and e-mail driven work I’d been so busy with lately. Despite the twinge of guilt I felt about not spending the afternoon with the kids, and especially Caleb, whom I had not seen all day, I was excited and in a great mood.

I walked over to talk to the librarian, a tall, thin, amiable guy, with a lopsided grin and a head of dirty-blond curls inexplicably parted in the middle.

“Hi there,” he said. “What good stuff are you coming here to find, and how can I be of service?”

I explained what I was looking for, and he helped me locate the book. According to him, I was lucky that NYPL had the book, because their collection of Yizkor books was incomplete. The best source for Yizkor books, apparently, was the YIVO Institute, except that it was impossible to find anything there.

Before I knew it, I was happily ensconced in a chair, the Halizch Yizkor book in front of me and a pile of notecards and a pen to my right. I could have turned to page 138 or 174 right away, but first I wanted to get an idea of the structure of the book. Each Yizkor book is different, but the basic elements are the same. It is a history of a certain town, one that either no longer exists today at all, or one in which there are no longer any Jews. The books generally record the renowned rabbis and dignitaries who lived in the town, along with information about the communal institutions. There can be memorials to other people who lived in the town as well.

Jews had first come to Halizch, a small shtetl about 30 kilometers from Warsaw, in 1763. There they lived for many generations, on relatively good terms with their Christian neighbors. In 1935, about sixty percent of the population was Jewish. The Jews of Halizch were mostly simple folk who worked in manual labor or owned small family businesses. There were woodcutters, milkmen, a blacksmith, tailors, watchmakers, a kosher butcher, innkeepers, and the like. There were the standard Jewish communal organizations, like the chevra kadisha, the society that prepared bodies for burial, the cheder, where boys were educated, the beis midrash, where they continued their Jewish studies, the mikveh, or ritual bath, and of course the synagogue. Like many Polish synagogues, it was a modest wooden building that purposely did not call attention to itself.   But it was what went on inside the synagogue that was a source of great pride for the residents of Halizch, for the town was the seat of the Halizch chasidic dynasty, home of the Halizcher rebbe.

Jews came from all over to meet the rebbe, study with him, and hear him speak. On Shabbat the town would be packed with visitors who made long and difficult journeys in order to be able to spend time in the presence of their rebbe. It was a great honor to get to share a meal with the rebbe, who, seated at a large table ringed by his chasidim, would take small bites of food and then pass along the rest of his meals to be divided by his followers. At these meals he would tell stories, sing niggunim, and teach Torah. During the time memorialized in the Yizkor book, the years directly preceding the war, most of the local Jews were followers of the rebbe, Yosef Yehudah, who had followed in the footsteps of his revered father, Leib Mendel. There was a great deal written in the Yizkor book about these beloved rebbes. Both were said to have incredible powers, to teach and to preach, to heal and to comfort. Both were thought to have direct lines of communication with God, their Creator. Much was written about Leib Mendel’s healing touch and comforting song, and about Yosef Yehudah’s eyes, with their ability to penetrate one’s very soul with a glance.

At the back of the book was an extensive list of those from Halizch who died during the Holocaust. I checked the lists, and saw right away that Yosef Yehudah, Yankeleh, and Leib Mendel were all listed as having died in Treblinka. As far as this book was concerned, none of them had survived.

Many of the essays focused on the impact of the Holocaust on the town and on its inhabitants. Their experiences in the war were chronicled and the memories of their suffering and deaths properly recorded. From what I could gather from flipping through the book, the Jewish citizens of Halizch suffered greatly in the war. By the time the war ended, the majority of the town’s Jewish population had been killed. Most of the Jews of Halizch had been Halizcher chasidim, and had loyally followed the teachings of their rebbe that their fate was in God’s hands. Only some, like Mrs. Freiburg and her husband, left and thus survived. The passivity of it astounded me, especially since I had been fed a rich diet of active Jewish resistance to martyrdom. The heroes of my childhood were the Jews who had fought back, the partisans and the ghetto fighters, because that was the only way I could make sense of such a situation. I was able to accept that Jews lacked the resources and numbers to effectively stand up to the Nazi war machine, but the kind of passive acceptance of fate that I saw spelled out before me in the Yizkor book made no sense. I didn’t want to incorporate this new information into my understanding of the Holocaust. I had always rejected the idea of Jews going like sheep to the slaughter, as it came dangerously close to blaming the victim. And more than that, I didn’t understand the kind of faith in God and loyalty to a human leader that would cause people to not try to save themselves.

Remembering that I didn’t have a lot of time before heading back to Brooklyn, I forced myself to stop musing and get back to work. As I continued to flip through the book, one account leapt out at me. It was written by Moishe Feldman, a survivor who, like Avrum Shapira, had been in Treblinka. Included in this account was a strange dream, identical in every way to the dream I had heard in the Achim Brothers Luncheonette except for one interesting difference. In this version of the dream, the boy rising from the mass grave was clutching a large silver Kiddush cup. The symbolism of this cup meant a great deal to the writer of this account, who, like Mr. Shapira, saw the dream as a sign of reassurance and love from the rebbe, whose cup it had been and who had used the cup on many special occasions with his chasidim. I made some notes on this version of the dream, asking myself whether this was in fact something that both men had actually dreamt, or perhaps heard from another party and had come to think of as their own. The rationalist in me had to ask also whether it had been a dream at all, or whether in their weakened, almost delirious states they had actually seen something happen that they naturally thought could only be a dream.           I continued to flip through the book, and my eye was caught by a sketch of a Kiddush cup. I turned back a page to the beginning of this entry, and saw that it was written by Avrum Shapira himself. And sure enough, the picture of the cup was on page 174, one of the page numbers he had scribbled on the piece of paper he stuffed into my bag. The essay was intended as a memorial to Mr. Shapira’s father, the local scribe, and detailed the kind of work that he did and what a good and pious man he had been. But there was also some mention about other aspects of daily life in Halizch, including the relationship between the chasidim and their rebbe.

Apparently there was a special, oversized silver Kiddush cup that played an important role in the community. It was very old, and was said to have been handed down to Yosef Yehudah from his father Leib Mendel, who had been given it by his teacher, Yoel Shlomo . A prized possession among the Halizchers, the cup was greatly sought after for use in weddings and at brisses, and was passed around to all when the rebbe shared a meal with his chasidim. It seemed to function almost as a good luck charm. It would make sense then that Moishe Feldman might have dreamed that he saw the grandson rise from the grave clutching the kiddish cup, and that he would have understood the vision as a good sign. I wasn’t sure exactly why Avrum Shapira would have pointed me to this page, unless he was trying in a round-about way to show me that there were other versions of his dream and to explain the discrepancies by letting me know how important the kiddish cup was to them. It didn’t totally make sense, but I made a note and decided to keep going. I was about to turn the page, when my eyes were pulled back to the picture. Something about that drawing looked incredibly familiar. But surely, despite its age, it was a common design. Perhaps I had seen one like it in a museum or a book of Judaica. Maybe a cup like this one had even been featured in the Jewish calendar that we got sent every year from one of the local Jewish funeral homes. Yet something bothered me in the pit of my stomach about this cup, and all I could think to do was make a note on yet another index card. This cup must play some role in my case—it must be important, or Avrum Shapira wouldn’t have sent me to look at it—but I couldn’t fathom where it fit in. I flagged the page with a post-it so that I would make sure to xerox it before I went home.

The next essay I turned to was about the conflict between the Zionists and the Halizcher chasidim. Though Zionism had not been particularly popular, there were apparently some local Jews who were attracted to the idea of a new Jewish state. Primarily young people, they saw Zionism as an antidote to the Jewish life available in Eastern Europe, a life filled with constant fear and terror, a life based on faith and not on action. Though affiliating with the Zionists meant making a break, both emotional and physically, with their families, some had chosen this path. In the early 1930’s a handful of young people left Halizch for Palestine, including Ruchel and Yitzhak Gelberman. And then in the late 1930’s and into the early 1940’s, as the situation became even more dire for the Jews, several emissaries from Palestine slipped back into Eastern Europe on a mission to try and save as many lives as possible.

The account was vague on the details of this attempt, like how they were able to enter Poland, and who funded their mission. Between the weapons and bribes necessary to carry out their task, they had to have been heavily financed. But this was a collection of memories and personal accounts of history, not a scholarly work, and so many details were left out. I would have to do more research on this issue elsewhere. However, the essay did recount the story that I had already heard, that the Zionists were primarily concerned with saving children, and well-known figures, the Halizcher rebbe Yosef Yehudah among them. But as I had already learned, he adamantly refused, citing his faith in God, his loathing of the Zionists who were forcing the hand of God by trying to establish a Jewish state before the arrival of the Messiah, and his unwillingness to abandon his followers to their fates. A strong man he must have been, to refuse a chance to be spared. The account told in detail how the chasidim went to the rebbe en masse, begging him to at least let the boy Leib Mendel go, so that the future of the Halizchers would be assured. But he stubbornly refused, even when they came to him with all the gold and jewelry they could collect, in order to pay for false papers and secure passage. The account conveyed some of the anger, disappointment, and confusion of the chasidim when the rebbe refused. And despite his immediate refusal, they had still given their hoard in to his safekeeping, in the hopes that he would change his mind. Though nothing in the essay indicated what might have happened to the valuables subsequently, there was one part that especially intrigued me. It said, “The rebbe turned his back on the Zionists and their offer of help. His followers understood his reasons, but still felt he should have saved his grandson. Though no one wanted to doubt the rebbe, some secretly wondered if his refusal had something to do with the fact that his chossen had taken his beloved daughter away from Poland and away from chasidut.” I knew enough Yiddish to know that chossen was the word for both groom and son-in-law, but I didn’t understand the reference. Was the author’s use of this word here merely a vague allusion to the fact that the rebbe had a son-in-law who had chosen Zionism over chasidism? Or was this reference more specific? Could it mean that Yitzhak Gelberman had been actively involved in trying to save the rebbe and Leib Mendel? If so, might the trail of the missing money lead in his direction? This was getting more tangled by the minute, and none of it was making sense or providing the answers I needed. Though it was a tenuous possibility at best, I diligently made a note to check out whether or not Yitzhak Gelberman had played a role in rescuing European Jews, and kept going.

There was one essay on the Halizcher dynasty that was particularly interesting. It was written by Shlomo Linsk, who had grown up in a Halizcher family. His father had been Yosef Yehudah’s shamash, his right-hand man whose glory lay not in his exemplary scholarship or in his immense riches, neither of which he possessed, but through the access and proximity to the great rebbe that he gained through his selfless devotion. He composed letters for the rebbe, functioned as an intermediary between the rebbe and his chasidim when needed, and made countless arrangements of all kinds, behind-the-scenes work that garnered him little fame but much praise from the rebbe. In his memorial essay, Shlomo Linsk traced the genealogy of both the family and the dynasty, connecting Leib Mendel back to the Baal Shem Tov himself, through a chain of disciples and disciples of disciples. Linsk’s version was almost identical to what Rabbi Springer had described to me. Leib Mendel, Yosef Yehudah’s father, was the founder of the Halizcher dynasty. Leib Mendel had been the disciple of Yoel Shlomo, who was the disciple of Yisrael Eliezer haLevi, who was the disciple of Dov Baer, who was the disciple of the Baal Shem Tov.   The line went straight back to the source. Leib Mendel had been no unknown upstart, rather he was the inheritor of a tradition and a hand-picked leader. He had yichus, the right credentials. Linsk’s account echoed what I had already heard and read elsewhere, that while Yosef Yehudah had only daughters, it was acknowledged that his grandson Leib Mendel, named of course after the original rebbe, would someday become the next leader. As a young boy he had already greatly impressed the Halizcher chasidim with his piety, scholarship, oratorial skills, and innate leadership ability.

I kept reading, looking for some new information. I turned the page, and the page number jumped up at me. Page 138. Why had Avrum Shapira directed me to this particular page? Impatient now, I quickly scanned the text. And there it was. A story, a rumor really, an unconfirmed wisp of possibility. It was believed that the original Leib Mendel had inherited not only the mantle of leadership from his teacher Yoel Shlomo , but something else as well. What Rabbi Springer had not told me when he spoke about the connection between the Halizchers and the Baal Shem Tov was that supposedly the first Leib Mendel had inherited the only original writing left by the Baal Shem Tov. Rabbi Springer had told me that the Besht had left no writings, but according to Linsk’s essay, that was not entirely the case. Supposedly, Yosef Yehudah was given a piece of parchment by his father on which the Besht had written some of his teachings. And not any teachings, but his teachings about the end of days and a prediction about coming of the Messiah. This was no small thing. The only extant writings by the Besht himself, and about such an important topic. Being in possession of such a thing must have contributed greatly to the status of the Halizchers, and to that of their leaders.

The first question I had to ask was whether this story contained any truth. Did such a document actually exist? And if it did, was it really from the Baal Shem Tov, or was it written by a later disciple? Was it a complete forgery? Linsk’s essay went on to try to prove that such a document did in fact exist, and that it had once been carefully inspected by a local scribe, Menachem Shapira, who had supported its supposed provenance. It would be logical to assume that this Shapira was the father of Avrum Shapira. This was obviously the piece of parchment of which he had spoken when we met. But Linsk continued by lamenting the fact that like so much else, the document disappeared during the war and had probably been destroyed.

All of this of course led to many more questions. Why had Avrum Shapira not told me about this directly? Why had he not spoken about the document, when he clearly wanted me to learn about it? Why had he gone so far to convince me to give up the chase when we met in person, and then provided the very clues that would help me continue? And why did he need to point me toward this information in the first place? How was it connected to my search for the Gelbermans? If this precious document had existed at one time, had it survived the war, and if so, where was it now? Was he trying to tell me that searching for the Gelbermans might be fruitless, but that a search for the Kiddush cup might turn up something of interest?

This mysterious document was undoubtedly a source of pride for the Halizcher chasidim. It was something that would have conferred legitimacy, as well as the superior sense of being the chosen of the chosen.   This piece of parchment could consequently be important to a person seeking an instant road to leadership in the Chasidic world today, or to a group seeking a bigger piece of the internal political pie of within a branch of Chasidism. But could someone really want it badly enough to act in a threatening manner, in a manner completely out of keeping with the basic ideals of chasidism, and of Judaism as a whole? Could someone want it so desperately that anyone who got in the way was in danger? Part of me found it hard to believe that Jews could cause harm to others over issues of ideology or faith. But my other, more cynical side reminded myself that ideology, faith and power were closely connected, and that there were plenty of Jewish bad guys. There were Meir Kahane and his followers, Kach and the guys from the Jewish Defense League, there was Baruch Goldstein who had coldly murdered a group of Muslims as they quietly prayed, and of course there was Yigal Amir, who shot and killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhack Rabin. What motivated all of them was exactly that potent brew of ideology, faith, and power. Despite the fact that the reading room was overheated and stuffy, I suddenly found myself chilled. I had to admit that for the first time since I had heard the name Jack Gelberman, I was truly scared. I might actually be up against something bigger than a simple genealogical search. But realizing this did not make me any less interested in this case. If anything, my resolve to get to the bottom of it was strengthened. I needed to find Sarah Gelberman, I needed to meet Jack Gelberman, and I needed to start getting some answers to my questions.

[To be continued…]
His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Sixteen

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 16. Enjoy!

Chapter Sixteen

IMG_2312The soil in the orchard was a deep, rich brown. I breathed in the loamy sweet-sour scent and exhaled. What a difference a one-hour drive north made. We were in the countryside, surrounded by apple trees and the fertility of the natural cycle of growth and harvest. These were small apple trees, not fully mature but just right for the four year old farmers currently grouped around one particularly well-endowed tree. The owner of the orchard had just finished explaining how he raised the trees, and they were discussing the relative merits of Delicious, Macintoshes, Granny Smiths, and Jonathans. Now the children were gazing up in wonder as the farmer demonstrated the proper picking technique and explained how the apples were sorted according to size and quality. A good part of it went over their heads, but they listened attentively and asked questions.

As the farmer continued to speak, I sat down on the ground behind the children, avoiding the overly ripe apples that lay on the ground in puddles of sticky, fragrant mush. The sun was unusually warm and I took off my jacket. Tilting my face up to the heat, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the stolen moment of peace. How good the sun felt on my face. It was an easy cliché that city dwellers didn’t know where their food came from, but there was truly something to it. It was so simple when buying an apple at the store, even at the coop, to forget the miraculousness of it, to forget that the apple came from a tree tended by a farmer, fed by water and sun, grown from a seed. Yes, there was photosynthesis and genetics and biology and botany and chemistry and fertilizers behind all of that, but beyond the science there remained the miracle that set it in motion. We knew enough to understand the how, but we still didn’t understand the why, and maybe that was where God came in to the equation. It was truly an incredible thing, an apple, a thing of glory and wonder. And at that moment I suddenly understood what I had read about the Chasidic idea of the miracle of the everyday. I understood the need to say thanks for the miracle of an apple, and the need to say a prayer before eating such a miracle. It wasn’t just to say thank you to God for having created the apple and providing it to us for food, but it was also a way to sanctify the moment, to stop and notice the miraculousness of God’s creation rather than taking it for granted. How better to praise God than to notice these everyday miracles and rejoice in them.

I opened my eyes and looked at my daughter. She stood between her two buddies Jonah and Zoë. As they listened to the farmer, she and Zoë held hands in the unselfconscious manner of young children. Her curls bounced as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her dark eyes bright with excitement, her upturned cheeks glowing in the sunlight. Talk about miracles. It was still amazing to me that this little creature, who had emerged from my body looking like a hairless elf now not only possessed a mass of dark curly hair and an enormous vocabulary but friends of her very own. It was fascinating to watch her interact with her peers, especially when she was too absorbed to know I was watching.

Hannah had been independent practically from the moment she was born, trying to push herself up in my arms into a sitting position at three weeks old so that she could see what was going on around her. She crawled at five months and walked at ten, always in pursuit of what to explore, always pushing the limits of how far she could go before I would call her back. When the other mothers in my mothers’ group were complaining about separation anxiety and clinginess, I would have nothing to say, wishing silently that my brave daughter would show signs of either occasionally, if for no reason other than to reassure me that our love affair was mutual. I came to realize that as the mother my job was to reassure her when she needed it, but that it was not in the nature of things for her to reassure me about anything. She showered me with kisses and hugs when she felt like it, and was happy to be hugged and kissed and cuddled when she was tired or not feeling well, but the rest of the time she was simply too busy investigating the world as fast she could to be content sitting in my arms.

At four, she was as independent and self-confident as she had been as a baby and toddler. She had emerged in the last year as a real person, with likes and dislikes and her own way of seeing the world. Now that she had left babyhood behind, Simon and I were enjoying her in a whole new way. The intensity and drive in her personality that we saw in her as a baby was still there, and was channeled into what she was learning and doing at school. She hadn’t been the kind of baby who was happy just being held, but now she couldn’t get enough of sitting with us and telling us about the differences between an apotosaurus and a T-rex, what animals lived in Australia, or how to make the color purple. It was absolutely delightful listening to her talk about her day, and analyze the various intricacies of preschool social dynamics. It had come as a shock to realize that I was going to enjoy interacting with her more and more as she got older, and that that was really what parenthood was about, not whether you started with solid foods at four months or at seven, or whether you nursed for three months or two years, or not at all. It was the ability to accept and appreciate your child as a person, to teach and guide and raise that person while all the time acknowledging that the person he or she was had already formed inside.

A jarring vibration at my side jolted me out of my reverie. Damn. I was always annoyed on field trips when other parents spent the whole time on their cell phones. What was the point of coming if you weren’t really there? But I could see that it was Shuki, and I knew he wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important. My left leg had fallen asleep, but I got up as gracefully as possible and walked a little bit away from the group in to an empty part of the orchard.

He had met with success. Once again I marveled at both Shuki’s skills and the power of cash. Holding a fifty dollar bill in his hand, he had convinced the super of Sarah Gelberman’s building on Second Street to talk to him about Sarah. It was looking likely that the young woman was for real, as the super had a copy of her credit report and driver’s license, even though he wouldn’t let Shuki see them. But the combination of cash and a promise to share any contact info he found convinced the super to give Shuki her parents’ phone number, which she had given him in case of an emergency, and her license number. The lease wasn’t up until June, and it looked like Sarah, who had moved in sixteen months ago, had cleared out in a big hurry, without any prior notice and without paying the last month’s rent. Needless to say, the super wasn’t happy and welcomed a chance to track her down and collect his money. But he did report that until she left, she had been a model tenant, on time with her rent, quiet and neat. For a little additional cash, Shuki was allowed in to the building, where he managed to speak to Sarah’s former next door neighbor, a musician who, as luck would have it, was home during the days and worked at night. He hadn’t seen Sarah move out, but he had noted that about two months ago, when he was coming up from doing his laundry, he had seen Sarah entering her apartment with two of what he called “chasids,” who he described as being in their twenties, with beards and black hats, wearing black suits with white shirts. More specific than that he couldn’t be, but he remembered being struck by how incongruous they looked here and wondering what business they had with Sarah. He had seen a similar man again, last Thursday night, around 8:00 at night. He remembered, because he was getting ready to go to work when he heard noise in the hallway. He had looked through the peephole, and saw a man pounding on Sarah’s door and yelling at her to open up.   Sarah opened her door and immediately slammed it, but the man hadn’t let up. Finally, just as the neighbor was about to intervene, she opened the door again and let the man in. The neighbor had remarked to Shuki that he thought it was unusual that a girl like Sarah would have one of those guys for a boyfriend, but that in this city anything was possible.

I thanked Shuki so profusely I think I embarrassed him. This was extremely helpful information, but probably not good news. It also made me more worried than ever about Sarah Gelberman’s well being. Where had she run to, and why? Who was this man at her door, and what did he have to do with all of this? And still, the biggest question of all, what was this case about anyway? Just a nice foray into genealogical research, as Sarah had told me, or was there something else going on here, as Mr. Shapira and Mrs. Freiburg seemed to think?

At this point, there seemed to be only one sane thing to do, and that was to pay a visit to a mysterious man living in Winter Park, Florida. I had done a lot of circling of the target. By now I was sincerely worried that Sarah was in danger. It was time to go to the source. There was too much going on that I didn’t understand. But first, I had one more visit to make in New York.

[To be continued….]
His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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Filed under Abby Marcus, Fiction

His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Fifteen

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 15. Enjoy!

Chapter Fifteen

IMG_1595In the end, Simon agreed to come home from work earlier than originally planned. Ronit had a class and none of the high school babysitters I occasionally used were available on a school night. My grandmother was not due back in New York until Passover. It was one of those times when I wished my parents were around, instead of traipsing around the globe having the time of their life. I felt bad asking Simon to leave work at the ridiculously early hour of five and make it home by six, but he was their parent too.

Brooklyn Heights was an elegant, landmarked community of meticulously renovated brownstones and ridiculously over-priced coop apartments with river views. When traversing one of the tree-lined sidewalks in the heart of Brooklyn Heights and admiring the nineteenth century architecture, it was hard to think that just a few blocks away was Court Street, the commercial strip that divided Brooklyn Heights from its neighboring downtown community of office buildings, discount stores, and low-income housing.   The area was also home to Family Court, the State Supreme Court, and Federal Court, hence the name Court Street, as well as Borough Hall and New York City’s Board of Education. The fact that there were so many people who came to the area to work every day was the only justification I could come up with for the ongoing existence of the Achim Brothers Diary Luncheonette, a sad little kosher dive that stank of cooked onions, stale coffee, and commercial disinfectant.

I looked around the restaurant, not that there was much to see. It was a tiny luncheonette, with a counter at the front and a handful of tables in the back. I figured that they must do most of their business by delivery.   The walls were unadorned, except for two cheaply framed photographs of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, and an El Al poster of Jerusalem taped up between them. Next to the counter was a small sink so that observant customers could wash their hands before eating. Above the sink were taped copies of the blessings, in Hebrew and English, to be said before and after eating. At one of the tables closest to the counter were three young kippot-clad men talking loudly and laughing. In the back corner sat a small but plump man with a long gray beard.

“Mrs. Marcus?” he called, waving.

I walked over to his table. “Call me Abby,” I replied, putting out my hand to shake his but pulling back quickly as I remembered that being observant, he would not touch someone of the opposite sex who was not related to him.

“Sit, sit,” he said, motioning with his arm.   He didn’t get up, but if he had, I didn’t think he would be any taller than I. The little bit of hair left on his head was covered with a dark kippah. Behind his black-framed glasses, his deep-set eyes gleamed warmly as he smiled at me. “Such a pleasure. Sit, nu, sit.”

I took off my jacket and sat down across from him.

“A glassel tea, maybe I can order for you?” Mr. Shapira asked me.

“No thank you,” I answered.

“It will be good, take the chill off this evening,” he said, and nodded to the woman behind the counter. “Two teas please here. Thank you.”

What could I do? Apparently for the duration of this job I was condemned to drink tea. It killed me to think that down the block there was a Starbucks, where other people were enjoying cups of strong, dark coffee.

“Let us begin, yes?” he asked me, and I nodded. He settled himself in his seat and continued to speak as the woman brought over two glasses of tea. “Thank you. Drink. L’chaim. Now, I am a simple man, and I have lived a simple life. I am a scribe, and thanks God, I manage to have food to eat and a bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. Every day I take another breath, I say thanks God for keeping me alive, though I don’t know why God chose me for this honor, for helping me to see another morning and another evening. Every day I say thanks God for bringing me out of the hell-holes where I spent three years of my life. I lost my parents, my wife, my brother, may their memories be for a blessing, but thanks God my sister lived and we have each other. Every day I say thank you for what I have and don’t spend a lot of time on what I don’t have, because what can you do? That kind of thinking gets you nowhere except mad and ungrateful. With God’s help I lived through a terrible time and managed to see another sunrise. Why me and not my brother, not my father or mother, I don’t know. But still I must give thanks to God. You understand?”

I wasn’t sure I did, but nodded anyway.

He took a deep gulp of the hot tea. “So when Mrs. Freiburg called and asked me to speak to you, of course I agreed. How else to respond to a friend? A link to the world that used to be? We are landsmen, I went to cheder with her brother, zikaron livracha. Sometimes I am a guest in her house for Shabbos, especially since my wife, my second wife, zikrona livracha, passed away. You understand?”

What I was beginning to understand, rightly or wrongly, and despite the friendliness evident in his eyes, was that he didn’t particularly want to speak to me, but was doing so at the behest of Mrs. Freiburg. However, it didn’t seem like malevolence on his part, simply an unwillingness to get involved in something difficult or complicated.

“Over the years, we help each other. She and her family needs a claf, a scroll for a mezuzah, they come to me. Ketubot, marriage contracts, they come to me. My father was a scribe, my grandfather was a scribe, and so on. They know if they need something written, they come to me and it will be beautiful, kosher, just right. If I need help, I go to them. My sister had some troubles, I didn’t know what to do, I go to my friend, her son recommends a doctor. So, we will speak, you and I. But what I must tell you more important than all, what my old friend wanted to tell you, and couldn’t, is this–be careful. Mrs. Freiburg, she doesn’t think you have been asked to do this research as a nice birthday present for an old man. She thinks maybe there is some other reason. Something to do with her grandson, Arieh. You see, Arieh, he is not a bad boy. Maybe he overdoes it sometimes, but he is a good boy. But he belongs to a group of young men, all good boys but too quick to jump, too safe to think careful. They are real Americans, these boys, and they don’t think about being careful. They just think about being right.”

“And what are they trying to be right about?” I asked, trying not to show my impatience as Mr. Shapira stopped to take a breath and gulp some more tea.

“Yes, yes. They want to control the future by controlling the past. The past is like their coloring book. They think that if they can reach back into the past, if they can get what they believe is theirs, then they can get what they want in the future.”

“But what do they want?” None of this was making sense, and I wanted him to get to the point.

“Ah, that is the question. What they want is the future, I believe, the power to shape the future. None of them will ever lead their community, none of them will ever be the rebbe, but they want to be close to the rebbe. They want to help make decisions. They want a big and bright future. They are, none of them, scholars. Smart, but not brilliant. Rather, they are politicians, wheelers and dealers. They are good boys, but also angry young men who never had to prove themselves and test their courage. They have been raised on the best of what America has to offer them. They have never known hunger, never known cold, never known pain. And this makes them feel bad. Like they are not worthy because they haven’t suffered. It also makes them feel angry, that they can’t fight against the evil that their parents and grandparents knew. Because they believe that even though life has been good to them so far, that history in the end is against them, and the world is against them, and therefore it is their right to grab what they believe is theirs. Things may be good now, but there is no guarantee that things will be good tomorrow, unless they make sure it will be so by their acts of bravery and heroism. They are looking for a cause, something to fight for.”

He stopped speaking and looked at me, waiting for me to react, but I was having trouble following him. “Where do I come into this?” I asked. “What does this have to do with the Gelbermans?”

“Yes, yes. That is the question,” he replied. “What do you think? You must know about these things in your line of work. What do you think this might have to do with?”

One thing I learned long ago was that when it came to trusting people, you had to go with your gut. There wasn’t usually time to gather quantitative analysis on someone’s trustworthiness. My intuition was telling me that while Mr. Shapira might have been hesitant to talk, not wanting to dredge up difficult memories with a total stranger, he was a friend, not a foe. I didn’t think I had anything to lose by being honest with him.   “I admit to feeling somewhat out of my depth here, Mr. Shapira. The only thing I can think of that could be motivating someone to get involved with this whole thing is the money that Yosef Yehudah is supposed to have been given by his Chasidim to get his grandson out of Poland. Now granted, there’s a lot I don’t understand about the family, about the Holocaust, and about the Halizchers in general. But honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine that the money is simply sitting somewhere waiting to be re-claimed. If in fact the whole family died, it had to have either disappeared or been used during the war.” Of course, what I didn’t say was that if someone had lived, someone like the other grandson Yankeleh, then maybe in fact the money was still in Gelberman hands. And then it hit me — that had to be why people were looking for Jack Gelberman. That had to be why Sarah Gelberman’s story did not check out. Maybe she truly was not who she said she was, and she had hired me to find him so that someone, herself or some other person yet unknown, could try to reclaim the money from Jack Gelberman. And if that was the case, whomever she was, either she or Jack Gelberman, or both, could be in a lot of danger. Trying to stay calm, I took a deep breath and spoke. “Is that what Arieh is after, this theoretical stash of money that might have belonged to his ancestors?”

Mr. Shapira unexpectedly smiled. “You are sharp, I see. But I think you are wrong. Maybe not entirely wrong, because if there are other people who think that there is a Gelberman alive, they may only know about the money and may want to find it. But I would be surprised if that is the case. You are right in assuming that the money would be long gone. I don’t know myself, but I would also think it would be long gone. No, no, what Arieh Freiburg and his friends are after is not the money. It is something else, something entirely more valuable. So you see, my friend Mrs. Freiburg is not worried about Arieh harming you, but she is worried he may not be the only one. She wants you to be careful.”

“But about what? From whom? What is it that they are looking for? Can you tell me more?” I asked, hoping that he might give me some information to relieve the anxiety I was now experiencing over the fates of Jack and Sarah Gelberman.

He looked past me, his eyes staring straight ahead. He sighed deeply and pulled on his beard. “As I said, I am a scribe, a simple man. What do I know from these things? There are rumors, crazy stories. We Chasidim love stories. There was a once a rumor that I heard as a young boy about a special piece of parchment that was in the possession of our rebbe, Yosef Yehudah, the Halizcher rebbe. It was said that this document was given to him by his father, the rebbe before him, Leib Mendel, who was given the parchment by his teacher, who got it from his teacher, who got it from his teacher. It is said to be a precious piece of parchment. But that is all I know. Rumors.”

“That’s it?” I asked, unwilling to believe this was the whole story. This couldn’t be all there was.

“Mmm,” he nodded, still looking at me. “The problem is that no one really knows what this piece of parchment is, and so everyone thinks he knows. That is worse than knowing itself, to think you know, because then you have to try to prove what you know. And some people have themselves convinced that this little scrap of parchment contains something very important, and if they think you have it or can find it, their goal is to get this back from you. I am a scribe and so one thing I do know is the importance of authenticity. If a scrap of parchment is real, the owner has credibility, he has power. And it doesn’t even have to be real if he can convince others that it is. So it is dangerous, and you would do best to drop this. I want you to know there is no way either Gelberman boy lived. You are chasing ghosts.”

I had to ask the question that was stuck in my throat. “Why is everyone so sure that neither Yankeleh nor Leib could have lived?” Mr. Shapira looked at me, and nodded his head. He took his time answering, getting up to stretch, adjusting his glasses and twirling the ends of his beard. Finally he took a deep breath and sat down again. “Now I will tell you a story. There is much in this world that I do not know. But of one thing I am certain – there is no chance that either Gelberman boy survived. In 1941 all of the Jews from Halizch were rounded up and deported to the ghetto. What it was like, you cannot imagine. The crowding, the hunger, the filth. But somehow we managed to crowd in, somehow room was made for another group of people, and another, and still another. We lived there, crowded in among the earlier arrivals, and it was terrible, but not as terrible as what was still to come. The rebbe continued to hold court, his Chasidim came to him and they studied and prayed, like always, but not like always. We had a cheder, we had a beis meidrash, we had a soup kitchen. Life was difficult, but we kept on the best we could, even as conditions got worse and worse. After some time, the rebbetzin died of typhus, and so did her daughter Sura. We didn’t understand why the rebbe hadn’t agreed to save the grandson when he could have, why he hadn’t agreed to save himself when he could have, but he was our rebbe, you see. Who were we to doubt? He believed, until the very end, that the Jews would not be destroyed, that the Nazis would be defeated. He didn’t seem to care about whether or not he lived to see it, that wasn’t important. He said he couldn’t worry about his own fate when the fate of his Chasidim was hanging in the balance. Who was he to place more importance on himself, to save himself when his people were suffering. What was important was not to give up faith, not to stop believing and praying and studying and giving thanks. A true tzaddik he was. Until the day he died he was there to give us hope, to give us comfort. Even in the camp, in that place of hopelessness and despair, he led prayers, he taught, he looked us in the eye with those deep blue pools of his and didn’t let us give up. And in the end, though he was no longer there to see it, he was right.   The Jews were not destroyed and the Nazis were defeated. Life kept on going.

“Thanks God, he died before the boys. He was so weak and thin, so sick by that time, all you could see was his beard and his big blue eyes like deep, shining pools. It was a miracle he made it to Treblinka at all. The men his age, they usually didn’t even waste their time with, usually they were killed right away. But through some miracle, he was placed in the line going to the right, only a few people ahead of me, with all the young men. And Nossen, his son-in-law, Nossen who was already skinny and not strong, Nossen was sent to the left. Again, why, I don’t know. We never saw Nossen again. We knew what happened to those who were sent to the left.   The rebbe didn’t live a long time in the camp, but while he was there, even so sick, he continued to teach, to pray, to comfort, to keep us from becoming animals like the Nazis wanted. He helped us remember our humanity, who we were. Even so shrunken and so sick, the light of Torah still shone from his eyes. We did our best to help him and protect him, but one morning that was it. He collapsed and was shot right there, like a rabid dog. Ay, why am I blessed with such a memory, to live with that picture in my head always, I don’t know. But he managed to die with dignity, a look of peace on his face, God’s name on his lips.

“One day not too long after that, they rounded us up and sent us to work. It was March 28, 1942. I know that because it was two days before Pesach. Our work detail that day—to cover bodies in a ditch. I do not want to give you nightmares, Mrs. Marcus, I have plenty to share but why should you have that burden, so I will spare you details. And don’t tell me you want to know, because you don’t. We hear shots, many shots. Then they open the door of the truck and tell us to get out and start working. In front of us is a ditch. In the ditch are bodies, hundreds of bodies. Many are people we know. You see, the Nazis are not stupid in their cruelty. They know just how to make us suffer as much as possible. These bodies, they are those who came with us from Warsaw, and some even from Halizch. They are our neighbors, our friends, our family. And there in the ditch I see the two boys, Leib and Yankeleh. There they are, holding hands still, Leib under Yankeleh. Always, he was the younger, but the stronger, the leader, always supporting his brother, even in death.” He turned from the window to face me. “So you see, Mrs. Marcus, there is no way this Jack Gelberman you are chasing is Yankeleh the rebbe’s grandson. I took a good look at the boy, I saw those sad dark eyes of his staring at nothing, and believe me, I can assure you he was not alive.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” I asked quietly.

“Yes, absolutely. He could not have lived after what they did to him. I managed to reach over and close his eyes while the guard wasn’t looking, and he was cold to the touch already.”

“And then what did you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“With heavy hearts, we began to cover them with dirt. It was a terrible job, but it was also a mitzvah, the most we could do to properly care for the dead. Silently, to ourselves, many of us said Kaddish. A guard came out of the truck and spoke to the one guarding over us as we worked. I couldn’t hear him, but he must have told him to make us hurry, because he tried to get us to work faster. But it was bitter cold, and starting to snow, and we were so weak and sick ourselves that we couldn’t work faster. Finally, when we had covered them with just a thin layer of dirt, they rushed us back into the truck and took us back. Then a strange thing happened. I never slept well all the time I was there, but at that moment I must have dozed off, and I had a strange dream. I dreamt that I was looking behind me as we drove away in the lorry, and I saw the rebbe’s hands reached down from heaven and lift Yankeleh out of the pit. But then Yankeleh turned in to Leib, like they melded into one whole, I could see his bright blue eyes like the color of the sky, and he was being lifted by the rebbe, and the rebbe before him, and the rebbe before him, and so on back to Adam. By the merits of the forefathers the boy was lifted out of the pit and floated along the ground, and into the forest. It was a beautiful dream, because I woke up again to the nightmare that was life, but I had in my heart the knowledge that both boys had been carried safely to the next world where they would know no pain and no horror like what they had already seen in their young lives. It was a message, a message of hope from the rebbe that he was able to send to me even from the grave. That dream gave me hope, even on the darkest days, and helped me to not fear my own death. I knew how much the rebbe cared about his chasidim, and I knew that just as he chose not to value his grandsons’ lives above the lives of his chasidism, he would surely do no less for me in death than he would do for his grandsons.”

One part of me was full of skepticism, doubting Mr. Shapira and trying to come up with logical explanations for what he reported to have seen. But I had to admit that a small part of me that felt like I was there with him on that horrible, cold day, seeing the vision in his dream and drawing some small measure of comfort from it. In the end, the researcher in me won out. “Did you tell anyone about this dream?” I asked tentatively.

“That was also a wonderful thing, you see,” he answered. “I was not the only one to have this dream. Many of us who were there that day had such a dream. The details were different from man to man, but the dreams were similar. Even some who were not Chasidim, even them the rebbe reached with his rachmanes, his compassion, you see? Many people had that dream, and the story of the dream spread, giving comfort to countless.”

I nodded encouragingly. “That’s amazing.”

“Yes, yes, it was. It truly was. A miracle. As I said, I will never understand why God chose me to survive, and not someone else. But I know that that dream helped me. It gave me strength in the darkness. That was what the rebbe did, and that’s what Leib himself would have done if he had lived. There are just people like that, people who have an extra spark in their soul. And you are so lucky when they share some of the light of that spark with you. Even after death, they are able to spread some of that light.”

By now my mind was racing faster than my mouth could speak. “Mr. Shapira, I hope I don’t seem rude, so forgive me, but I must ask you this question. It seems to me very possible, though maybe not logical, that Yankeleh survived. Is there any, any chance that you did not see what you think you saw, that your memory is playing tricks on you?”

Mr. Shapira gasped and inhaled sharply. “No, no, it is impossible. As I told you, I got a good look at Yankeleh. There is no way he could have lived after what they did to him. No, it cannot be. Believe me, I know how a body feels when the spirit has departed.”

Alarmed that I had offended him, I spoke quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“No, no,” he said, smiling sadly now and shaking his head. “I’m sorry myself, don’t apologize. It is just that such an idea, that we would have done such a thing to the boy, no, never. It cannot be. What a thought. Mrs. Marcus, how happy I would be if that was the case that he got up and walked away, but no, for him to have lived would have been a miracle.”

“But why not? Why not a miracle? You said that the dream itself was a miracle, didn’t you? Doesn’t your belief system allow for the miraculous? Isn’t that what Chasidism teaches? So why not this miracle?” I countered, surprising even myself with my audacity.

A range of responses played across Mr. Shapira’s features, surprise, humor, even a slight flicker of anger. “Mrs. Marcus, it is not every day that someone I just met tells me what I belief. Yes, you are right, my ‘belief system’ as you call it allows for miracles. But there are miracles, and there are miracles. I don’t believe that what I saw in the dream literally happened. I believe with all my heart that it was a miracle, but the miracle was that the rebbe was able to deliver this message of comfort and hope from beyond the grave. The miracle was that even the Nazis were not able to stop the rebbe from coming to the aid of his chasidism in their time of trouble. That was the miracle, Mrs. Marcus. Even the rebbe, even from the grave, could not literally bring someone back to life from the dead. That will happen only when the Messiah comes, and I do not believe that the Messiah was there that day in Treblinka. Believe me, Mrs. Marcus, neither of those boys lived. The world would have been a different place if Leib had lived. Such a boy was destined for great things, great things for the Jews and for the whole human race. A tragedy, a tragedy it was, Mrs. Marcus.”

As he spoke the last words, I heard a door shutting inside him. It was clear our time was over. He had delivered the message he had been asked to deliver, and I had asked all the questions I was going to be allowed to ask. I would have to be satisfied with what I had gotten.

He asked for the check, and would not let me pay for the two glasses of tea. As Mr. Shapira reached for his wallet, the sleeve of his jacket brushed against his spoon and it clattered to the floor, landing near my bag. I reached down to retrieve it, but despite his age, Mr. Shapira’s reflexes were faster than mine and he got to the spoon first. He fumbled for it, picked it up, and set it back on the table. As he set it carefully down on the table next to his glass of tea, I looked at this man who had been through so much in his life. It was a wonder to me that someone could have witnessed the things that he saw, and suffered what he must have suffered, and still seem to be a caring, thoughtful person. There was so much more that I would have liked to ask him, but the questions I had weren’t related to my current research, and it didn’t seem as though he wanted to speak more than necessary about those years of his life. I knew that some Holocaust survivors saw it as their personal responsibility to speak about their experiences in order to teach subsequent generations, as well as to ensure that sure a thing would never happen again. But Mr. Shapira did not seem like such a person. For this reason, the little bit that he had shared with me seemed all the more precious, and I was grateful for it. He had had his reasons for speaking to me today, and though I wasn’t sure if I fully knew yet what those reasons were, I did know that whatever the impact of our discussion would be on the outcome of this particular job, his words and the emotions they conjured within me would remain for many years.

I stood up and got ready to leave. “Thank you so much,” I said. He nodded, lost in his own thoughts. I turned and began to walk out towards the subway when his voice made me turn back around.

“You be careful, Mrs. Marcus,” he called to me from his table in the back of the restaurant. “There are a lot of mishugenas out there. You be careful.”

The brief subway ride from Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope was not exactly a trip through the danger zone, especially not at this hour when the trains were still full of commuters on their way home. But since I assumed he meant well, I waved by way of thanks, and hurried towards the station. If I rushed, I might just be able to help Simon tuck the kids into bed. After listening to Mr. Shapira, there was nothing I wanted to do more than see my kids’ faces and kiss them goodnight.

When I reached into my bag for my metrocard, I felt a piece of paper sticking up. It was an edge torn from a paper placemat with a note written in shaky handwriting. On the note were the words: Halizch Yizkor Book, page 138; page 174. I leaned against the turnstile, trying to catch my breath, oblivious to the passengers exiting and entering around me. I was sure this piece of paper hadn’t been in my bag earlier. Mr. Shapira must have put this note in my bag when he “dropped” the spoon. The note confirmed my impression that while Mr. Shapira was essentially a friend and not a foe, there was something holding him back from what the Court Street lawyers would have called “full disclosure.” Could he have been acting out of fear? If so, what was going on that was making this man afraid? Although I couldn’t yet fathom the answers to these questions, one thing that I did know was that I was going to have to find that Halizch Yizkor book.

[To be continued….]
His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Fourteen

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 14. Enjoy!

Chapter Fourteen
IMG_1578A trip to the local coffee bar and two double espressos later, I was back at my desk, hand on my mouse, ready for action.

My first stop was Reunite.com. This was a genealogy website devoted to helping Holocaust survivors find each other, the latest incarnation of a program that had been going on since the end of the war. Over the years, it had helped thousands of people find long-lost relatives. It was no longer as active as it was in the early years, but the survivor’s group that sponsored the program and the site still thought that the reuniting of families was a worthy mission. Interestingly, with the exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the last ten years, the group’s activities had seen a slight increase. On the site were listings of names of people being sought, and listings of names of people searching. Going alphabetically down both lists I found nothing. Then I entered the several possible variants into the search engine, and again, nothing turned up. Nobody had contacted this site looking for any Gelbermans, and no Gelbermans had listed themselves on the site. Another dead end.

Before moving on, I paused on the home page of the site, unnerved. Again I experienced that great sense of overwhelming incomprehension I always felt whenever I thought about the Holocaust on a human level. It was one thing to learn dates, facts and numbers. And another thing entirely to think about what it really all meant, to think about being separated from Simon, from my children, from my parents, from my sister, or to think about Caleb and Hannah being separated. It was truly beyond my understanding, and the more I learned the less it made sense. One section of the site, “Lost Children,” was devoted to people who had been so young when hit by the horrors of the war that they had no memory of who they really were, of whom their families had been.   In this section were baby photographs of people who had been adopted by Polish farmers, stowed away in convents, thrown out of trains on their way to sure death in concentration camps, people who had been saved by the generosity and caring of strangers but whose identities, other than being told that their parents were Jews, had been completely erased. The site tracked their progress in trying to find their identities, and in some cases there were happy endings. But most of the stories looked hopeless, impossible attempts at unearthing history long erased.

Meanwhile, my computer informed me that I had mail, a welcome interruption of the sadness of these unfinished stories. There was the message I was waiting for, from Meira, the Israeli genealogy researcher. We had never met in person, but we had developed a relationship by connecting on-line in a genealogical research list-serv and agreeing to help each other out now and then with research. If I needed something looked up in Israel that needed to be done in person, I knew I could ask Meira to help me, and vice versa. If it was a big job, I would pay her, but usually it was quid pro quo. Last year I had spent the better part of two freezing February days in a cemetery in Iselin, New Jersey, locating and then photographing gravestones for her. Now she owed me.

She had replied warmly, happy to be able to return the favor. With all the political instability in Israel, work was slow, and she was happy to have something to do. Not one to sit still when there was research to do, she had already been to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Located there was an archive of those who had died in the Holocaust, as attested to by the survivors. The Germans had not, of course, issued death certificates, and so this archive was the most reliable way to get information on Holocaust-related deaths. The goal was to ultimately document the death of every Jew who died during the Holocaust.

What Meira had found was interesting, and worth every minute I spent freezing my tush off last winter. In the archives at Yad Vashem were the documented deaths of the Halizcher Rebbe Yosef Yehudah, his wife Bronia, his young daughters Sura and Chaya Esther, his son-in-law Nossen Shlomo and his daughter Basya, and his two grandchildren Leib Mendel Gelberman, and Yankeleh Chaim Gelberman.   I knew that the archive wasn’t infallible. The center assumed good intentions on the part of the reportees, and simply allowed people to fill out forms stating that they knew the person had died. It was an important service to provide, and generally reliable. But if someone did have a reason to record a false death, it could easily be done.   Still, it was a place to start. Meira promised to send me copies of the documents she had found later on that evening, her time, which would be in a few hours. It was going to be hard to wait to get my hands on the documentation, but I would try my best to be patient.

Before I had too long to sit and stew, the phone rang.

A shaky, elderly male voice with a deep Eastern European accent asked to speak to Mrs. Marcus. Right away I knew this call had to be connected to the Gelbermans, since no else except telemarketers called me Mrs. Marcus, and it was too early in the day for them. They only called during dinner.

“This is Abby Marcus. Can I help you?” I asked politely.

“Maybe rather I can help you,” came the reply. “I am Avrum Shapira, a childhood friend of Mrs. Freiburg. She asked me to call you.”

I sat up straight in my chair. “Yes?”

“I grew up in Halizch.”

“Yes?”

“You spoke with her, but I understand you did not finish your talk, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, then,” he continued. “She is sorry that she was not feeling well enough to finish the conversation. So maybe I will tell you some more stories, yes? You would like that?”

“Yes,” I said again, completely unable to be articulate. And never mind that it was Mrs. Freiburg’s grandson who put an end to our conversation, not her ill health. Who was this man, dropping out of the sky or at least out of my fiber-optic cables?   Maybe miracles really did happen after all.

“Good then. You can come tomorrow, ten o’clock in the morning? We can meet somewhere not too far away.”

“Yes, thank you so much.” Then I remembered that I had promised to go on Hannah’s class field trip to the apple orchard. For a moment I seriously considered not going on the trip, but maternal guilt kicked in. I sternly reminded myself, family first, family first, family first. “Could we meet in the afternoon instead, at like four o’clock?”

“No,” he said. “In the afternoon I go to the doctor tomorrow. We will meet in the evening tonight instead. It is better not to wait too long. Six o’clock tonight. I will be in the Achim Brothers Dairy Luncheonette on Court Street in Brooklyn Heights, near Livingston. You know where it is?”

This was not an invitation, but a summons. I had no coverage for the kids at that hour, as I knew Ronit was not going to be available, but I would figure something out. “Yes,” I said, “I know it. Across from Borough Hall?”

“Yes, that is right. I will see you tonight,” he said, and abruptly hung up.

Now I had to be doubly patient, waiting for the material from Meira, and waiting to hear what Avrum Shapira would say. But it wasn’t like I had nothing to do. For a change of pace, I decided to do some more reading. I grabbed one of the books piled on my desk, took my index cards and red pen, and went over to the couch. Soon I was back in Eastern Europe in the 19th century, watching Chasidism spread and flourish. What was becoming clear was that Emancipation and the choices that went with rights and citizenship had a major impact on the future development of Chasidism. Once Chasidism had been a movement of radical reform in opposition to the yeshiva-focused Judaism of their adversaries, the mitnagdim. In the face of the explosion of options, the two camps realized they had more in common with each other than not and formed alliances against the growing liberalization within Judaism. The differences between the groups became blurred, and the importance of scholarship began to play an important role for the later Chasidic leaders.   As Orthodoxy came into being as a reaction to the movement for reform and liberalization within Judaism, and as Jews for the first time had the option of leaving the ghettoes and becoming part of the mainstream, the more conservative elements within Judaism began to emphasize the importance of tradition and look with disdain upon anything new or innovative. If the Baal Shem Tov himself had appeared in the 19th century, with his radical new ideas and ways of worshipping God, he might have been scorned by his own descendants for not being traditional enough.

The phone rang again, interrupting my thoughts. I got up from the couch and walked over to my desk, nearly tripping over a stack of files I had left on the floor. On the fourth ring I scooped up the receiver and plopped myself down in the chair.

“Yes?” I said, forgetting as usual to be appropriately professional.

A man’s voice, sounding very far away, said, “Is this Abby Marcus?”

Oh no, I said to myself. Not someone else with something they had to tell me. One surprise phone call a day was quite enough. I was getting impatient with the subterfuge. But I tried my best to be polite, and simply said, “Yes, who is this?”

“A friend of a friend,” came the reply, and this time I realized that the far-away sound was the result of someone trying to disguise his voice. “I am trying to help. Stay away from Gelberman. It’s not your business. Just keep away. And tell your red-haired friend to stay away before she gets in bigger trouble than she already is.”

Before I could reply, he hung up.

I slammed the receiver down hard. Damn! Leaning back in my swivel chair, I stared up the ceiling and knotted my hands behind my head. What the hell was going on? Who was the mysterious caller? And what was his definition of “friend,” a word he obviously liked to overuse? What was going on with this case that seemed so innocent on the surface?   My first thought was that Arieh Freiburg was behind this call, but that was too implausible. I couldn’t believe he would actually threaten me, or Sarah Gelberman for that matter. More than scaring me, the call made me angry. I was angry at being lied to, which was by now abundantly clear, but I couldn’t be sure by whom. I was angry at the audacious interference of this mysterious caller. And I was angry that anyone dared tell me what to do or not to do. But I was also worried, not for myself, but for Sarah Gelberman. What kind of trouble was she in? Regardless of whatever was going on here, having taken her money I now felt partly responsible for whatever happened to her.

I dialed *69, trying to find out what from phone number the call had been made. No luck. All I got for my effort was a recording from the phone company, telling me that the number I was trying to reach was not available. He had probably called from a pay phone, or else was smart enough to plan ahead and block his phone.

My whole body was aching by now, and I needed to stretch. I got up, and walked back over to the dry-erase board. There was one more column that needed to be added. Picking up the pen again, I added a column and wrote at the top: Sarah Gelberman? I paused, the pen in mid-air, then underneath her name I wrote the only thing I could think of at that moment to write: Florida. Then I sat down and typed out a note with detailed instructions for Shuki, and left it taped to the door of their apartment so that he would see it right away when he got home from work.

[To be continued….]
His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Thirteen

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 13. Enjoy!

Chapter Thirteen

IMG_1900We headed back from Altoona Saturday night, as something was brewing at work that needed Simon’s attention. The kids and I spent part of Sunday with the Egyptian mummies at the Brooklyn Museum, and the rest just relaxing at home. I had given myself and Jack Gelberman a day off, not including the several hours spent at my computer after they went to sleep and before Simon got home, exhausted and grumpy.

Now it was Monday, and back to work. Though I hadn’t done much on Sunday, others had been working on my behalf. The call I had gotten on Saturday afternoon at Horseshoe Curve was from Shuki, Ronit’s boyfriend, with the results of some legwork I had asked him to do. Shuki worked for a moving company and his hours were irregular. He was always glad to make extra money helping me out. He had been in an elite unit in the Israeli army for three years—though he was on the short side, he was tough and didn’t scare easily. It had been hard to hear him over the noise of the freight train rounding the curve, but I heard enough to know that he was willing to spend a few hours on Sunday walking around the East Village.

I had sent him to scout out the address Sarah provided, in the hope that it was real even though the phone number wasn’t. But surprise, surprise—there was no 47 East Second Street, or rather, there might have been at one time but now it was a vacant lot that had been taken over by community garden activists. But Shuki was a smart guy, not to mention persistent and resourceful. He was being paid to do a job, and he was going to get the job done. He went to 45 East Second Street, and 49 East Second Street. Then he crossed the street and went to 46 East Second Street. Not finding anyone or anything that seemed connected to Sarah Gelberman at any of those buildings, he walked down the block and visited 74 East Second Street.

The lock was broken on the front door to the building, a barely gentrified former tenement most likely now occupied by the graduate students, musicians, artists, and fledging filmmakers who were drawn to the gritty, downtown neighborhood with its surfeit of Indian and Polish restaurants, all-night coffee shops, and independent book stores. He went in and looked at the names on the bells. And there it was–Gelberman, 3B. He rang, but no one answered. Being not only smart but patient, he waited in the vestibule until he found a tenant willing to talk to him. Apparently there had been someone living in the building who fit the description of Sarah Gelberman, but she had moved out about a week ago.

On the e-mail front, there was also some interesting news. I had stayed up late Saturday night when we got home from Altoona, sending off some questions via e-mail and responding to the several messages that were waiting when I signed on. I queried an expert in Polish shtetls about the variant spellings of Halizch, and he verified that Calicz was indeed the same as Halizch. He also pointed me in the direction of the Halizch Yizkor book. Since whole communities were exterminated during the Holocaust, the survivors had created memorial books recording the history of their birthplaces, stories about the people who had lived there, and lists of names of former inhabitants. The publication of Yizkor books was in keeping with the Jewish insistence on remembering our history and our dead. The Halizch Yizkor book, if I could find it, could be a goldmine. And I had made preliminary contact with an Israeli researcher, to find out how to trace Holocaust records, since this was the first time my research had touched on this area. She wrote back with several possible avenues to continue my investigation and I quickly responded with a note thanking her and offering work.

There was also a surprising message from Bird.

Hey Abs.

Got an interesting proposition. How’d you like to come work for my firm full-time? We’ve got an opening for someone with your skills–think about it–benefits, stability, security, health insurance, paid vacations, 401k, you could still work from home but not have the worries of being freelance. Little direct dealing with clients. Wills, dead-beat dads, straw corporations, background checks, fraud, etc. Doesn’t it sound great?????

Let me know what you think ASAP.

Bird

I stared at the screen in disbelief. This job was tailor-made for me. Simon would be thrilled. Yet while I knew I should be begging for an interview, part of me wanted to delete the message and pretend I had never received it. It was everything I should want, but didn’t. I enjoyed the unpredictable nature of what I did, never knowing who the next client would be and what I would learn. I enjoyed being my own boss, setting my own schedule, and dealing with my clients. I liked the thrill of the chase.

Just a few clicks, and the message was archived in some deep, secret place far inside my hard disk. Gone from the screen, gone from the new messages. I definitely couldn’t think clearly now. I knew Bird meant well, but she had thrown a wrench into the precarious balance of my life.

I promised myself that I would seriously consider the offer as soon as I wrapped up the Gelberman case. In the meantime, I had to get organized. At this point, I was going in three directions at once. On my dry-erase board I made three columns. The heading on the first read: Is JG grandson of H Rebbe? Although all signs were pointing to yes, I still needed to do some work to get concrete verification. The heading on the second column read: Why is everyone sure he died? There was clearly a discrepancy, what with such a critical piece of Halizcher lore being that both grandsons had died. More research was needed there. And heading the third column I wrote: Brother? It was time to start actively trying to locate information about the brother. Then, reluctantly, off to the side of the board, heading a fourth, smaller column, I wrote: Arieh F.? What was the story with this man, who clearly did not want me talking to his grandmother? What was his connection, if any, to Sarah Gelberman? Under each heading, I wrote a list of places to check for information and ideas for ways to proceed.

Up to this point, most of my attention had been focused on finding information about Jack Gelberman himself. I hadn’t done badly so far, though there was much more to do. But it was time to go in a different direction and see if Leib Gelberman was alive and well and living in the United States. Or anywhere for that matter. I didn’t think that finding him was going to be easy, because if it was, they wouldn’t have hired me to do it. But before I used any fancy tricks, I needed to cross some of the basic methods off my list.

I went to the on-line Social Security Death Index, just in case he a) had survived the war, b) had immigrated to America, and c) had died here. If all those things were true, and assuming he would have arrived here between 1940 and 1965, and not died earlier than 1965, he would be listed in the Death Index. The Social Security system was computerized in 1968, retroactive to 1965. It was a long shot, but if I did find anything, I would be able to get his date of death, the zip code that the place of death was recorded and the zip code of his last residence. All of this would obviously not help Jack Gelberman meet his brother, but it could provide information that would help him learn what happened to his brother after the war, and might lead him to his brother’s descendants, if there were any. The chances were slim that his brother had survived the war at all, and even if he had, he could be anywhere in the world. He could have changed his name, for that matter. Sometimes genealogy was like playing the slots.

There was also a good possibility that even if he was alive and well, he didn’t want to be found. Terrible things happened during the war. For all the heart-wrenching stories of goodness that emerged from the camps, stories about how complete strangers cared for each other and helped ensure each other’s survival, there were also the other stories. The stories of parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives who betrayed each other for scraps of bread. Why would two brothers not have looked for each other in the last fifty years if they truly wanted to be reunited? What had happened during those years? This was Sarah’s mission, presumably financed by her parents, but was this really what her grandfather would want?

I got nowhere with the Social Security Death Index and promptly put a line through that idea. Either he died during the war, he never came to this country, he changed his name, or he was still alive. Onwards. I went to www.SSN.com again, and made another $24.95 offering to the gods of the Internet. Next I went to findthem.com, where my monthly subscription fee made it convenient for me to find information about anyone in the United States who had a listed phone number. I did a search for Leib Gelberman but turned up nothing. Apparently Gelberman was not an extremely popular last name in this country. I did a modified search for L* Gelberman, expecting to have to wade through several hundred, but only three turned up. There was an L. Gelberman in New Haven, Connecticut, a Leonard Gelberman in New York City, and a Leon Gelberman in Los Angeles.

Cold calls. It was one of my least favorite aspects of genealogical research. But it could be extremely rewarding. I dialed the Manhattan number first. A man answered affirmatively when I asked to speak to Leonard Gelberman. I explained that I had been retained by the Gelberman family to do research on their family tree, and that I was looking for relatives of Jacob Gelberman, from Halizch, Poland. Leonard was interested, but said he had been born in this country, as had been his father and grandfather on his Gelberman side, and didn’t think he was connected to my Gelbermans. I thanked him politely and hung up. Next I dialed the number in New Haven and got the answering machine of a Lisa Gelberman. Another probable dead-end, but I left her my name and phone number with a brief explanation of why I had called. You never know. By this time I needed a cup of coffee badly, or better yet, a double espresso. But I called the third number, hoping to get Leon Gelberman in Los Angeles before he left the house for the day. A man with a slight trace of an accent answered the phone. Once again, I identified myself and explained my reason for calling. He paused and cleared his throat. I felt a slight tingle of excitement, then chided myself for thinking that it could be this easy. After a moment he spoke, and his words burst my bubble of hope.

“That’s not me what you’re looking for,” he said. “I was born in Palestine.”

I could have sworn that he was about to continue, but he remained silent. I thanked him very much and apologized for taking his time. Just before he hung up, he spoke again.

“Good luck with your search. Don’t give up.”

Afterward, I sat staring at my phone. I was left with a totally irrational gut feeling that he had been challenging me to read between the lines. As I sat there, trying to decide if I was simply overdue for some caffeine or if he had really been trying to tell me something, my eye was caught by the sketchy and incomplete Gelberman family tree hanging on my wall. Ruchel, the oldest daughter of Yosef Yehudah, had also married a Gelberman, Yitzhak Gelberman, the brother of Nossen Shlomo. As both Rabbi Springer and Mrs. Freiburg had told me, two sisters married two brothers. It wasn’t uncommon in those days. But she had also told me that the two brothers had been different. While Nossen Shlomo was a shy, soft-spoken Chasid, a devoted follower of his father-in-law, his brother Yitzhak had been a Zionist. Mrs. Freiburg didn’t remember them well, because they left for Palestine when she was a child. Could this Leon Gelberman of Los Angeles, who was born in Palestine, be their son? Could there have been two Leib Gelbermans in one generation? Could Leon be an Americanization of Leib? But if so, why hadn’t this Leon Gelberman reacted with familiarity to the name Halizch, Poland, or any of the family names I had mentioned? If he really was another grandson of the Halizcher rebbe, had he simply not been told his family history? But that didn’t account for the feeling that he had been trying to tell me something. It was unusual for a Jew today to use the name “Palestine” instead of Israel. As farfetched as it might be, could he have used that name on purpose, trying to help me place him in a certain generation? Could he have been trying to tell me that he was another branch of the family I was researching, the branch that had split off ideologically and gone off to Israel in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s, when it was still called Palestine, the branch that escaped the Holocaust? But then why couldn’t he just tell me straight out? My head was now spinning. I was probably making a mountain out of molehill, reading far more into the short conversation than was warranted. But these Gelbermans and their family secrets were making me nuts, and I no longer knew which way was up. If I didn’t get that cup of java soon, my head was going to explode.

[To be continued….]

His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Twelve

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 12. Enjoy!

Chapter Twelve

IMG_2505Horseshoe Curve was a must-see on the list of anyone who was seriously interested in railroads or in the history of American industry, and Simon was almost as big a railroad buff as Caleb. Opened in 1854 by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, it had made possible cross-country train travel and the transport of goods from east to west. Where the Allegheny Mountains had once been an impenetrable barrier, the curve created a kind of horseshoe-shaped shelf upon which the train tracks could be laid. It was still one of the busiest sections of track in the country, with hundreds of trains passing around the curve every week.

We parked the car and entered the official Horseshoe Curve museum. The exhibits were interesting, but the real excitement lay elsewhere. Up a mountain by cablecar and there we were, right in the middle of the curve. Surrounding us on three sides were train tracks, making an enormous U-shape around the contours of the mountain. It was easy to see why it was considered a feat of engineering and ingenuity. Simon sat on a bench, admiring the planning that went into such a project, and the kids ran back and forth in front of the railing that kept the tracks safely beyond their reach. It was a crisp October day, with just enough of a breeze to blow the leaves around our ankles. From this high up, we could see the valley below and the reservoir directly beneath us.

Sitting down on the bench next to Simon, I leaned back and let the sun warm my face.

“So was it worth it coming all this way?” he asked me.

“You mean, to see this?”

He moved closer and put his arm around my shoulder. “No, wise guy. Did you get helpful information that you couldn’t have gotten without making this incredibly long trip?”

“Yes, very helpful. I have some real solid information to go on, and a much better picture of Jack Gelberman.”

“So are you ready to fold your cards and give the granddaughter the information you’ve gathered?”

I bolted straight up and looked at him, shocked. “What are you talking about? I’m far from done. And she’s paid me. I have to finish.”

“I know,” he answered. “But you do have some answers for her. I just think this ‘case’ has some strange aspects to it. Don’t you think something weird is going on?”

“Simon, you need to be more supportive.”

“Oh, Abby, come on. I’m very supportive. But you need to know when it’s time to move on. There are a lot of holes in this situation you’re dealing with. I just don’t want you to get in over your head.”

The trouble was, I still hadn’t told Simon about not being able to contact Sarah Gelberman. This didn’t really seem like the time or place. “I’m okay,” I answered. “I’m not a babe in the woods. It’s interesting, I’m learning a lot, and I’ve been paid. I’m going to see this guy Mort Klein later on, which I’m sure will prove fruitful. I don’t see a problem.”

Simon sighed deeply. “Well, I can’t tell you what to do.”

“Right-o.”

“Abby, I don’t want to fight.”

“So don’t tell me what to do.”

“You really feel the granddaughter is trustworthy?”

Now it was my turn to sigh. “Okay, look, no, she’s not. Don’t scream, but she gave me a false phone number. I’m sure the address is false too. But Jack Gelberman is for real. I’ve been paid enough to let me continue for a while, and I want to figure out what this is about.”

Simon just looked at me, his eyebrows tense with tightly controlled anger. “I can’t believe this. When were you planning on telling me? I mean—”

I cut him off. “Don’t get over-dramatic. Now you sound like Hannah. This isn’t anything I can’t handle.”

Simon was silent for some time. Finally he spoke. “I think you’re making a mistake. But it’s your choice.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “It’s just that I worry about you. Don’t do anything dumb.”

“I won’t,” I said, and squeezed back. But as I spoke, a new plan was hatching in my head.

Suddenly there were two jumping, squirming children in my lap. “Daddy, Mommy, come see!” exclaimed Hannah.

Caleb grabbed one of my hands, and Hannah the other. “Come, come, the train is coming.”

And sure enough, I could hear the whistle. A moment later the train itself chugged into view. A freight train was slowly and carefully making its way around the curve. Hannah jumped onto a bench and began to count excitedly. “One, two, three, four,” she yelled, “five, six, seven…”

Caleb ran to the railing to get as close a look as possible. He waved at the engineer, who waved back.

More cars followed the engine. I had never seen such a long train in my life. It went on and on and on, and so did Hannah. “Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight,” she continued.

As the train progressed, there was no end in sight to the freight cars. Caleb hopped up and down, trying to guess what was in each car. “Bananas, blankets, toys, chairs, ice cream…”

Then came the moment everyone was waiting for, when enough of the train had gone around the bend of the curve so that we were surrounded by it on three sides. Theoretically, the engine could wave to the caboose.

“Eighty-nine,” Hannah recited, “ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two…”

“I didn’t know she could count so well,” I said to Simon.

“Yeah,” he answered just as my cell phone rang. “She’s just full of surprises, like her mother.”

It was the call I’d been waiting for.

***

Over the phone, Betty Klein had been as friendly as could be. When I explained why I was calling, she’d invited me to come over in the late afternoon and have some coffee with them, telling me they’d be glad to have a chance to do some reminiscing. I had stopped at a nearby bakery and picked up a coffee cake. The Kleins lived in Holidaysburg, right outside of Altoona and about a ten-minute drive from our hotel. I was quickly learning that in this small city, nothing was too far away. But when I got to their house, Mort Klein did not exactly radiate a warm welcome.

I stood at the entrance to the Klein’s fifties ranch house, holding the cake box in one hand and my bag in the other. Before I could even shift something to other hand in order to ring the bell, a face appeared at the door.

“Hi,” I said brightly, “I’m Abby Marcus.”

A tall, bald-headed man in his late seventies, wearing jeans, a faded flannel shirt, and sneakers, opened the door. He placed his foot firmly in the doorway, blocking my entrance. “Show me some identification,” he said. He was clearly used to giving commands and being listened to.

Surprised, I stared at him, trying to decide if this was for real. “Will a driver’s license do?”

“Let’s see it,” was the reply.

I handed him the box of cake, and pulled my wallet out of my bag.

He took my license and studied it carefully, looking up at me twice. Grudgingly, and with a sense of disappointment, he gave me back the card. “Don’t suppose you have a P.I. license or anything, huh?” he asked. “A gun license?”

For a quick moment I let myself enter the fantasy and imagine that I was a tough-talking, thin, six foot tall sharpshooter, not a short, out-of-shape mother of two. Many different retorts ran through my mind, but in the end I simply flashed my most virtuous smile and said, “I’m not a P.I., and I don’t carry a gun.” The man watched far too much t.v. “I’m just doing some harmless genealogical research. Would you like to see my library card? Or my Jewish Genealogical Society membership card?”

“Okay, never mind,” he said gruffly, as if I was the one setting up the obstacles. “So you’re Abby Marcus. I suppose I’ll have to trust the rest of your story as well. Mort Klein, nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand to shake mine, then ushered me inside.

The living room was to the right of the doorway and behind that was the kitchen; I assumed the bedrooms were off to the left. The wood-paneled room featured a stone fireplace, overstuffed bookshelves, and glass doors leading to the back deck. A rocking chair was placed next to the fireplace, and signs of a knitting project were in evidence on the table next to the chair. On the coffee table was a crossword puzzle book and the remote control to the television positioned across from the orange slipcovered couch. Also on the coffee table were about half a dozen small puzzles and games of various types, the kind where you have to align all the colored squares up just right, or move the balls from one side to another without jumping any of them, and several books of word jumbles. A red plaid recliner, worn out in the seat, was placed next to the couch, a crocheted afghan hanging over one arm. It was a warm, comfortable room, clearly the center of the house and not just meant for entertaining guests.

“Sorry to welcome you like that,” Mort Klein explained before I had time to fully recover, “but you can’t be too careful today. People think up schemes to prey on the elderly, pretend they’re our friends, you know. We don’t like to think of ourselves as elderly and vulnerable, but we are. I tell Betty that all the time, and still she trusts people too much.”

“No problem,” I said smiling. “I totally understand. Better safe than sorry.”

“Exactly,” he answered. “Just the other day, a young man came by, said he was collecting money for abused children. Betty was ready to let him in, give him a cup of coffee, the whole nine yards. She’s just a sucker for anything having to do with children. Luckily, I heard her and intercepted that one. Who knows who he was? You can’t be too safe.” He stopped, and motioned to the couch. “Here, have a seat. Sorry, I’m not being a good host, talking too much already and we haven’t even gotten started. Betty’s making coffee. She’ll be out shortly. I guess I better bring her this—one second.”

He took the box of cake into the kitchen, leaving me to take a deep breath. Had he been like this in the classroom, or was his overbearing personality simply a result of the boredom of retirement? Seating myself on the couch, I scanned the titles on the shelves. One whole bookcase was filled with science books of various kinds, including textbooks. There were also books on Jewish history and the Holocaust, a sizable collection of art history books, and hardcover editions of popular bestsellers.

Before long, Mort Klein returned with the coffee cake, now decorously placed on a silver-rimmed plate. He was accompanied by a woman I assumed was Betty, carrying a tray of mugs and other coffee-related fixings.

“Can I help with anything?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said, smiling. “Make yourself comfortable. I hope Mort hasn’t been doing his attack dog routine.” She laughed at and looked at her husband fondly. “We don’t need a guard dog with Mort in the house.”

After we were settled comfortably with our coffee and cake, and had made some small talk about the differences between Altoona and New York City, it was time to get down to business. Placing my mug on the table, I took out my notebook and a pencil.

“So, how can we help you?” asked Mort, leaning back in the red plaid recliner.

“I’m trying to find out as much as I can about Jack Gelberman so that I can accurately put together his family tree, and try to locate his brother.”

“Brother? I didn’t know he had a brother,” said Betty.

“I don’t know if the brother is still alive, or if he even made it through the war. But the family wants me to find out.”

Mort looked thoughtful as he chewed a piece of cake. “Jack and I, we worked together for many years. He taught physics, I taught earth sciences. We belonged to the same synagogue. We played bridge now and then, over the years, were on the science curriculum committee together. We were buddies, you know, friends, but not really close. He was a private person, wouldn’t you say?” He turned to Betty for confirmation, and she nodded in agreement. “He didn’t let people in. His wife was the same way. It’s funny, really. We worked together for so many years, knew each other for so long, but it’s not like I really knew him. You always felt there was a whole lot locked up in there. Other than the wife and kids, I’m unaware of any other family.

“Betty, here, she knew Judith, Jack’s wife. Their kids were around the same ages as our kids, you know how that is. They spent time together when the kids were young, play groups, things like that. You knew her as well as anyone, wouldn’t you say, Betty?”

Betty nodded.

“But I can’t say we ever heard about any family, from either of them,” Mort continued. “It was like they were starting from scratch when they had kids, building their world all over again. Nope, don’t know about any other family they mighta had.”

“Except there was that time— ” said Betty with hesitation. “Remember, Mort? When he had to rush to New York and you covered some of his classes that time. Not too long before he retired.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Betty, in the meantime, had gotten up from the couch and crossed the room. She had pulled an album off a shelf and was leafing through it.

“Humm, that’s right, Bets. Forgot about that.” Mort looked like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “We were at school, in the teacher’s lounge, and a call came through to Jack from his wife. Apparently there was some family emergency, and he had to leave town for a few days. Right, right, now I remember. Forgot about that, Betty, forgot all about that. Yup, it struck me as strange at the time, because I never knew he had any family other than the wife and kids. He was gone for a few days, and then came back, and that was that. But I remember while he was gone I called to make sure everything was okay and his wife told me he had gone to New York. Remember, Betty? We both remarked on how strange it was at the time.”

“Yes, I remember. Sure was.”

“See, we knew he was a refugee,” Mort continued.   “You know, a survivor of the camps, and had a lot he didn’t like to talk about. She had no family either. Yup, the two of them musta had some tragic stories to tell. But they were private, didn’t talk about their stories. It was like they put it all behind them. And I’m sure we would have known if there was family. After all, we were at the son Nathan’s bar mitzvah, and what a small, sad affair that was. Just a modest lunch back at the house, no music, no dancing, no family, just a handful of acquaintances like us, and Nathan’s friends. And we were at Nathan’s wedding, also, no family from either Jack or Judith’s side. More like a funeral than a party.”

Betty nodded in agreement as she walked back to us, the album open in her hands. She perched herself on the arm of the couch next to me. “This is Jack, at our daughter’s wedding, must have been 1979. He didn’t like to be photographed, but the photographer was too quick for him here.” She laughed, handing me the album and pointed to a picture on the upper right hand corner. “Always such a serious man. He never seemed to like parties, but if he was invited to a bar mitzvah or a wedding, he came.”

The color had faded, giving the photograph a bleached out look, and his eyes were red from the flash. But I could make out a tall, slim man, wearing a brown sports jacket and white shirt, looking warily into the camera. His dark hair was graying at the temples and beginning to recede, making his large ears appear especially prominent. He was handsome, with prominent cheekbones and full lips, if you liked the strong, silent types. But the redeye from the flash made it hard to tell what he really looked like or what his eyes might have revealed about his character. I studied the photograph carefully, looking for further insight or other distinguishing features, but I didn’t notice anything else that might be helpful to me. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a sign behind him saying something like, yes, I am the grandson of the last Halizcher rebbe, but there was nothing like that in the photo. I sighed and handed the album back to Betty.

Betty got up from her perch on the arm of the couch, and went back to the bookshelf where she tucked it back into its place among the other albums.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to figure out how to steer the conversation back to the mystery phone conversation. I figured that being direct was the best bet. “But if you don’t mind, you were just talking about that call he got. Did you learn anything later about why he rushed off to New York?”

His hand on his chin, Mort tapped his nose and thought for a moment. “It seems to me that there was a problem with a relative, but not a brother. I would have remembered that. I think it was a woman. I remember, when he answered the phone that day in teacher’s lounge, not that I was eavesdropping or anything, him saying something like, ‘What’s wrong with her?’ And he sprang into action, clearly very worried, said he’d be gone a few days, it was an emergency, and so on. I remember, because at first I thought maybe it was something with his daughter. But it wasn’t. Asked a bunch of us to take over his classes. It was out of character.”

Now this was something interesting indeed. As far as I knew, he had had no sisters. Who was this mystery woman?

“Really out of character,” Mort continued. “He was such a self-contained type, didn’t need anything from anyone. And we were friendly and all, like I said, played bridge, helped each other out once in a while, sat together at staff meetings, shared some meals, chaired some meetings, attended each other’s kids’ weddings, but since he left for Florida, I haven’t heard a word from him. Not a word.”

“That’s true,” Betty agreed. I wondered briefly what would happen if she didn’t agree with him, or whether that ever even happened.

“So, can you tell more about his character?” I asked. “Or anything else that might help me trace other family members. Anything about his background?”

Mort shrugged and looked at Betty. “He was a quiet guy, like I said. He was a great teacher, his students loved him because he taught something difficult but made them feel they could do it. Oh, they loved him. I remember thinking, what does this guy have that I don’t, you know? Students who were scared of science and math opted to take his classes, because he had this reputation, a well-deserved one, as a great teacher, someone who wouldn’t intimidate you or make you feel stupid. My own kids tried to explain this to me. And boy did he know his stuff. It always amazed me that he didn’t go into research or academics. He was so bright. But he seemed happy with the life he had, content to stay here in Altoona and teach in the high school and go home every night. Never took on extra responsibilities like coaching or overseeing a club, only what the school assigned him to do. Though he did a lot of extra tutoring of the kids in his classes. He hated to see a kid fail or not live up to their potential.”

“Mort was the advisor of the ham radio club,” Betty interjected proudly.

“That’s right,” he said, smiling. “Before e-mail and faxes and cell phones, that was the greatest thing on earth. Talk to someone on the other side of the world, find out something about life over there. It was great for the kids. They don’t even have it anymore at the high school. How things change. But back to your question, his background, no, I just don’t know much. I don’t know how much his kids or grandkids know, I guess not much, otherwise they wouldn’t have you doing this. All I know is that he came from Europe, I think Poland or thereabouts, and was in the camps. He must have been a young boy.”

“He and his wife met here,” Betty said. “She was a refugee too, you see. She had some incredible story, hid in a barn of a Polish farmer until someone turned them in. Once she opened up and talked a little, years and years ago. The community here, together with the Joint Hebrew Immigrant Charities branch in Pittsburgh, sponsored a group of young refugees. My parents collected clothes and kitchenware and bedding for months in preparation. I think Jack and Judith both came as part of that group. Do you remember, Mort? The idea was to bring these poor young people— ”

“Yes, yes,” Mort interrupted. “Sure, sure, it was big news. To bring them from the D.P. camps, they were all alone, to bring them here and help them get a fresh start. They were given jobs and helped to enroll in the university. You know, many of them had never even gone to high school because, well, you know, they were in those camps. But they learned English and other basics, and they made lives for themselves. I remember when they came, the papers were full of it. They were the biggest news around for a while. In fact, my father, who was an immigrant himself, took it very seriously. He didn’t have a lot of money to give, but he helped however he could. It was important to him. But I remember that he was disappointed, because he was thinking he’d have people he could speak Yiddish with. And this group of young people, including Jack, they didn’t want anything to do with Europe and what they’d left behind. They wanted to learn English and become American as quickly as possible. And really, could you blame them?”

Betty cleared her throat, turned first to her husband, and then turned back to me. “Actually, Mort,” she said, “Just to set the record straight, Jack and Judith both did quite a bit of volunteer work in their spare time. Judith volunteered at the library and was involved in adult literacy. Jack tutored new immigrants in English, both at the high school and in the evenings, at a local church, he would teach adults a few nights a week.”

“Really?” Mort exclaimed. “See, I didn’t even know this. Worked with guy how many years, I never knew this. Amazing. How’d you know, Bets?”

“One time the city wanted to give them both an award. Must have been in 1976, with the Bicentennial, and the city was doing thing on Outstanding Citizens. It was going to be written up in the newspapers, a big megillah. I was on the nominating committee, representing the synagogue Sisterhood. They got this group together of people from all the local synagogues and churches and civic groups, the Rotary club, the Altoona Development Corporation, what have you. They were both nominated, and the newspaper was going to profile all the nominees and people would vote for who they thought should be the Outstanding Citizens, something like that. But when they heard about it, both Jack and Judith asked that their names be left out of it, they didn’t want any recognition for what they did. And that’s just the way they were. So don’t blame yourself that you didn’t know. I was surprised myself.”

“The things you find out about people! So Sarah hired you to do this?” Mort asked me.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Interesting,” he muttered between bites of his second piece of coffee cake. “A’course, I haven’t seen her in years, since they moved away, but I would think she’s too young to have money to hire a detective or whatever you are. She can’t be too long out of college yet.”

“I don’t think she’s doing this on her own. It seems to be a family effort.”

“How nice,” murmured Betty. “So sweet.”

Mort licked his fingers clean and put down his cake plate. “Well, it sure is a nice thing to do for Jack. And why they’d come to you? You specialize in the Holocaust, or finding people or something?”

I was silent. It was a question that was starting to gnaw at me, a question I would really have liked to have asked Sarah Gelberman, if she hadn’t disappeared on me. Then I spoke. “Yeah, I’m good at finding people. But honestly, I don’t know why they came to me. I really have no idea whatsoever.” And that was the truth.

“Let me ask you a question,” I said with hesitation, choosing my words carefully.

“Sure,” said Mort.

“From what you know, and I realize it’s been a while, what do you think about Jack’s kids and grandkids? Are they on the up and up?” I asked.

“Now, what are you referring to?” asked Mort, taken aback. “Far as I know, they’re as straight as they come. The daughter, Beth, she was in sales or something, left here to go to college and never came back except for an occasional visit. Couldn’t wait to leave, I think. But real smart, real nice kid. Probably has a family by now, must be in her late forties. The son, Nathan, also in his late forties, also super-smart. I had him for two classes. Wow, what a mind. But he didn’t go into science. Became a professor of American Literature, if I’m not mistaken. Last I heard, he got tenure somewhere or other. And Sarah herself? Well, the last time I saw her, she was a little girl. So cute, they were, those kids.”

“Cute as buttons,” Betty said.

“Yup. Well, they stood out here, but what can you do? She was a nice girl that Nathan married, don’t remember her name, something unusual, you know, well, whatever. Nice. Nothing weird there. I think she was a professor too, right Betty?”

“I really don’t remember. I just remember talking to Jack and Judith about it, and they weren’t thrilled at first, but they were accepting,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard for parents, you know.”

I wasn’t sure I did know, but I could imagine how hard it could be for parents to let go and let them make their own matches. “Kind of makes you wish for the old days of matchmaking,” I said laughing lightly, fishing for more information. They joined in on the laughter.

“Kids marry who they want, and there’s nothing we parents can do about it,” Betty said. “Though we have nothing to complain about, do we Mort?”

“No, we don’t” he agreed, “Except for that terrible mincemeat pie our daughter-in-law Polly insists on making every Thanksgiving. And then we have to pretend to like it.”

“Now Mort,” Betty chided. “It’s not so bad. It’s just so, so — ”

“So goyishe,” Mort said, finishing her sentence. “Betty’s just too darn nice to say it, but it’s true. Two of our kids married non-Jews. That’s the way it goes here. Life in America, right, what can you do? But we got ourselves some cute grandkids outta the deal, so what can I tell you. Our daughter-in-law Polly, she converted, whadda they call it now? She’s a Jew-by-choice.   And my son-in-law, he didn’t convert but agreed to raise the kids Jewish. So I got one grandkid named Shira McConnell, and I got another grandkid named Shannon Klein. Only in America. But so what? You love ‘em no matter what, even if they were not being raised Jewish, what, I wouldn’t love my own flesh and blood? So what if my father’s turning in his grave. Life ain’t like it once was in the old country. Nothing you can do about that.”

I nodded sympathetically. It seemed like it was time to go, before they started dragging out pictures of their grandchildren. But I had one more question to ask.

“Can you think of any reason why Sarah might think that her grandfather had lived in New York before he retired to Florida? Was she so young when they left here that she might have gotten confused?”

“Naw, she had to be about five, six when they moved away. That makes no sense. Is that what she said to you? How strange.”

I sat back on the couch and looked at Mort and Betty. How strange indeed. I couldn’t have agreed with Mort more. But what I didn’t know then, sitting there comfortably in their homey living room, was just how much stranger it was going to get.

[To be continued….]

His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Eleven

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 11. Enjoy!

Chapter Eleven

IMG_0747The synagogue was a proud, old building, erected during what must have been a boom time in Altoona’s Jewish history. It was designed in the Moorish style that was once popular for synagogues. Like many other congregations in Western Pennsylvania, it had seen better times. Leaving Simon and the kids chasing each other through the piles of crunchy leaves on the synagogue lawn, I walked up the steps leading to a row of heavy carved wooden doors. Once inside, I looked around. Photographs of congregants at a variety of activities lined one wall. On the other wall were framed photographs of every confirmation class, going back to 1911. The contrast between the old sepia-toned photographs and newer color photographs told the story of change. In the earlier photographs, the girls wore long, white, ruffled dresses and demurely held flowers in their arms. The bareheaded boys wore dark suits. The color photographs reflected the evolution of both the congregation and Judaism—both the boys and girls wore tallitot and kippot, and they held Torah scrolls in their arms instead of flowers. There were also fewer students in the more recent photographs. In the 1911 photograph there were 12 students, in 1935 there were 23, in 1970 there were seven, and in 1999 there were three. The entire history of the Jewish community in Altoona could be read in these photographs. The Jewish community had grown up around the railroad industry. Jews had come to the area as peddlers catering to the needs of the local workers. Some of the peddlers had stayed and established roots, opening dry goods stores and groceries. But what was once a vibrant, flourishing community had waned with the end of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s reign. Young people left the area for big cities and opportunities elsewhere. Only a proud fraction remained.

Looking for the rabbi’s study, I peeked into a room that turned out to be the sanctuary. It was a majestic space in the classical style,, with a domed ceiling painted sky-blue and an organ and a choir balcony above the bima. Though the room could easily hold three hundred people I wondered if even thirty showed up for weekly services. Closing the heavy door behind me, I wandered down the hallway looking for the rabbi’s study.

Around the bend in the hallway I saw a door marked “Rabbi Bergman.” I approached and knocked lightly.

A slightly built man in his early forties opened the door. He was good-looking in an average sort of way, with a neatly trimmed dark beard and mustache. On his head sat a blue and white embroidered kippa; his suit was an acceptably serious dark blue of unremarkable cut. His look just screamed “RABBI;” he looked like about ten other of Leah’s classmates I’d had occasion to meet, and nothing about his nondescript physical appearance matched the extraordinarily deep and textured voice I had heard on the phone.

Introducing himself, he shook my hand and welcomed me in to his study. The study was a large, white room overflowing with books. Glass-front bookshelves covered the walls of the room up to shoulder-height, broken only by two windows across from the desk. Above the bookshelves, at evenly spaced intervals around the room, hung various items, like Rabbi Bergman ’s diplomas and his s’micha, or rabbinic ordination certificate. The only bit of color, other than an occasional brightly colored book jacket, was a reproduction of a Chagall painting. The tops of the bookshelves were piled with books, as was the desk, the two chairs in front of the desk, and a coffee table in front of a pale gray couch. There were several more piles of books on the floor.

Rabbi Bergman motioned for me to sit on the couch and, moving away a pile of books, seated himself on a chair. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “It’s just, well, no excuse. I like books.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’m so glad you made time to talk to me.”

“Not a lot of time, but it’s my pleasure. Like I said on the phone, I don’t know how I can help you, but I’ll try. How is my colleague Rabbi Brown?”

“She’s fine,” I answered, “and sends her regards.”

“We were chevruta partners in a Talmud study session at a conference a few years ago. She’s got quite a mind.”

“That she does,” I said, already tired of the chitchat. “She’s pretty amazing.”

Before I could decide how to steer the conversation around to my topic of interest, Rabbi Bergman said, “So what can I tell you about Jack Gelberman that would be helpful?”

“Well, Rabbi,” I began, and he quickly cut me off.

“Please, call me Steve.” He had said that over the phone. Still, it felt strange, even if he was a friend of Leah’s. A rabbi was a rabbi, after all.

“I’m trying to get a sense of him, of his family, of who he is, where he came from. I don’t really know specifically what I’m looking for. This kind of thing is very tricky, you don’t what you’re looking for until you find it.”

He nodded. “Okay. Well, let’s see. He wasn’t a very active member. Kept to himself most of the time. I always got the feeling that he joined more out of obligation than commitment. I had the impression that he came from a much more traditional background, but had rejected it or left it behind. It seemed like he was conflicted. In other words, that joining this synagogue was an uneasy compromise between what he had known at another point in his life, and doing nothing. Maybe he joined for his wife’s sake, or for his children’s, I don’t know. But he never gave and he never took. Never got involved in any thing.   When I first got here as a young, green rabbi, I was disappointed, because I could tell that he knew a lot, I could tell that as a child he was given a solid Torah education, but he wasn’t willing to mentor or teach or share any of that knowledge, not even to chant Torah occasionally, or work with a bar mitzvah student, nothing. In a small place like this, without a lot of resources around, I tend to count on knowledgeable older congregants. Our children’s education is a group effort here.”

I was writing away furiously in my notebook, and looked up when he stopped talking.

He seemed to be considering the direction he wanted this conversation to take. “Look,” he began, “I can’t disclose any thing personal. And in any case, I was only here a few years before he retired and moved away. He never came to me except when his wife died, and even then you could hardly call our conversation personal. But there are two things that stand out when I stop to think about him, and this might help you. I think it’s okay for me to talk about them, because I’m just giving you my impressions, not disclosing anything.”

I nodded encouragingly.

“I knew he was a survivor, but he wasn’t like the other survivors. I mean, not that there’s one way to be a survivor, but even so, he seemed different. He never wanted to participate in any Holocaust observances, any memorials. He never came to Yizkor, and had no yahrzeits listed on our congregational list. Even the survivors who did not talk publicly about their experiences mourned their dead. He never did, at least not within the community. What he did privately, I don’t know.

“But two things happened that, at the time, made me really stop and wonder about him. The first was when we were doing a congregational Shabbaton, a special Shabbat, on Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust. We had a scholar-in-residence come in from YIVO in New York, and we had spent a whole Shabbat on this topic. Everything was connected, the sermon, the songs we sang at services, and then all kinds of activities. It was a wonderful learning experience for the congregation. Knowing that he was a survivor and probably from Poland, I called him and asked him if he would lead one of the discussions on Shabbat afternoon, before Havdalah. It was our next-to-last session, and it was going to be on the destruction of Eastern European, and especially Polish, Chasidism, the end of all those dynasties. I thought he might know something about it, and I had plenty of readings to recommend, in case he didn’t know that much. Being so new and eager, I thought maybe all he needed was a personal invitation to get more involved in the congregation, and that this would be the perfect hook.”

“And how did he respond?” I asked.

“His response was that it wasn’t important. That what happened had happened and we should let the dead stay dead. But what was really weird was that he got very angry about it, and this was someone who was as mild-mannered and even-tempered as they come. He actually raised his voice at me, told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and said, ‘Who do you think I am?!’ Well, I didn’t quite know how to respond to that, and so I just apologized and moved on. It bothered me for some time afterwards because I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong. But what do I know about being a survivor? I chalked it up to my naiveté, which, granted, was considerable. But now you’re saying he may in fact have come from significant Chasidic lineage.”

“It seems like he didn’t want anyone to know.”

“No, and I don’t think anyone did. It didn’t seem like he was someone with a lot of friends. Acquaintances, yes, colleagues down at the high school, but not friends. He was a loner, except for his family. And that brings me to the other story. His wife, Judith, died fairly close to the time he moved to Florida. She had been sick a while, apparently, but no one knew. Well, I didn’t know, and usually if someone knows, they let me know. When she died he called me from the hospital, very formal, and asked me to do the funeral. Of course I said I would. I asked to come over to the house that night to talk to the family and go over arrangements.”

“And what happened?”

“He said no, it wasn’t necessary. Actually, I said funeral, but he didn’t want a funeral–no funeral, no eulogy, just a graveside burial. He said he wasn’t going to sit shiva, and didn’t need for me to arrange a minyan to come to his house for the week. Nothing. I’m not really sure why he even wanted me at the graveside. Didn’t need any help, not a thing. Usually when there’s a death in a congregant’s family, I spend a lot of time with them going over Jewish death and mourning rituals, talking to them, giving emotional support and arranging for community support, even when it’s a congregant I barely know. But no, he didn’t want anything from me. I asked him if he was sure, and he said, ‘The dead are dead. There’s no need for making a production out of it. She’s gone. It’s over. I don’t need a lot of pious nonsense.’”

“He sounds bitter.”

“But that’s what so’s weird. He wasn’t, usually. I’d heard that his students at the high school loved him, he was quiet and reserved but at the same time so warm to people. People felt this immediate comfort in his presence, even I did outside of these two situations, like he wasn’t going to judge you but just accept you. He had this intense way of looking at you that just make you feel safe. It’s a strange thing to say, I know. But it was a one-way kind of thing. He didn’t open up to people, but they would open up to him.”

“And what happened at the burial?”

“He was mostly silent. He said the Kaddish, but nothing else. He told me beforehand that he wouldn’t shovel dirt on the coffin. He said there was enough dirt covering Jewish bodies to last an eternity. But his children did it, and he didn’t stop them. When it was over and I was going to my car, he walked over and quietly thanked me. He said that it was the first funeral he’d been to, the first time he been able to properly bury someone he loved, and that he really appreciated my help. Then he turned and went back to his family. I didn’t really know what to do, since I felt I had barely done anything, hadn’t used my rabbi’s toolkit, so to speak. But apparently it was what he wanted.”

“Humm,” I said, chewing thoughtfully on my pen. “Did you do any follow-up after that?”

“Well, actually, that was strange too. I called a few days later, just to check in and see how he was doing. That’s a normal thing for me to do, just doing-my-job sort of thing. His son answered the phone and told me that his father couldn’t come to the phone because he was davening ma’ariv, the evening service. Remember, he had told me he wasn’t going to be sitting shiva, he wasn’t doing any mourning rituals, he didn’t want a minyan to come pray with him. But there he was, davening alone. It was so sad, and touching at the same time. To have such an intense need for privacy, yet also clearly the need for comfort from the tradition. I asked if I could come the next day to daven with him, and his son said no, it wasn’t necessary. Very polite, but no, my presence wasn’t necessary.”

“And what about the son? Can you tell me anything about the family?”

“Not much. I know he has a daughter, but she left the area long before I came. I only saw her at the graveside. Nathan, the son, was a member here, but like his father, not involved. His kids never were in the school here; if they had been I would surely have known them better. Anyway, that’s another story, nothing to do with the father, but about Nathan himself. I can’t say more about without breaking confidentiality. And they moved fairly soon after that. So I don’t really know them.”

“Well, this has been extremely helpful. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s a nice thing for the granddaughter to do for him, though it seems like there are of ghosts Jack might not want disturbed. Do you think there’s really a chance he came from an important Chasidic background?”

“I’m getting more and more convinced, that’s for sure. But I still have a lot of research to do, and many books to read. I met with Rabbi Joel Springer, and he gave me a lot of homework to do.”

He laughed. “Well, you’ll certainly gain an education doing this, if nothing else. He’s a great teacher. But you know, it’s funny. In rabbinic school, in the classes with Rabbi Springer, we study all this Chasidic wisdom, and Chasidic Torah commentary. It’s great stuff, and makes for great sermons. But it’s completely divorced from modern day Chasidism. I mean, you live in Brooklyn. Those people are nuts.”

“You mean one particular group, or all of them?”

“Yeah, they’re all a little nuts. But Chabad, Lubavich, whatever we call them, they’re really crazy. They’ve got one foot outside of the border of Judaism as it is, and they’re very close to stepping out all together. I have colleagues who don’t even consider them Jews anymore, with their messianic nonsense. There’s a joke circulating now that goes, ‘What’s the religion that closest to Judaism?’ ‘Chabad.’”

“I don’t know that much about it, only that they thought that their rebbe was the messiah, and then he died.”

“Yeah, surprise! I know it’s only one group within the Lubavich camp, but still, they’re nuts. Some say it’s a power play, I don’t know. But meanwhile, there’s no heir, and they act like he’s still alive, running the show. They keep waiting for him to rise from the dead. Well, doesn’t that sound like some other religion we know? It’s just crazy. They took out a full-page ad in the New York Times declaring him Melech Ha-Moshiach, the Messiah King of the Jews. I’m sure you saw, there were billboards all over places like New York, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. They walked around with beepers, waiting to get the call the he was coming. I mean, is that Judaism? Come on. Now they keep vigil at his grave, waiting. They have huge get-togethers, where they rent stadiums, and they show a video montage of him, without even any voice-over. They dance and sing and pray as he looks out over them from the screens above. This is idol worship. This is nuts. This isn’t Judaism.”

“But wasn’t Chasidism always somewhat messianic?”

“Yes, sure, but in the abstract. It’s one thing to hope for a better world, and to even think that maybe joyful prayer and keeping the commandments will hasten that day, and it’s another thing entirely to have decided that the rebbe, who by that time had had a stroke and couldn’t talk, was actually the Messiah. I just don’t get it. So I can study Chasidic teaching all day long, and love it, but this stuff happening today, it’s totally foreign to me.”

He got up and went over to one of the piles of books he had moved off the chair. He returned, holding a thick magazine in his hand. “I mean, look at this. Somehow I got on their mailing list, don’t ask me how. Every week I get this publication, MiBeit HaMashiach, ‘From the House of the Messiah.’ Can you believe this?” On the cover was a picture of Schneerson, the late Lubavich rebbe. His was seated at a table, his face was turned to the camera and smiling munificently. Behind him was a throng of men in beards, black suits and white shirts. “I mean, this is this week’s edition. The man died what, five years ago? But every week this publication comes out, and every week it’s got his picture on the cover, and every week it analyses old sermons or speeches he gave to show that he really is the messiah and that he’s coming back. It’s got all kinds of things in here about how to get prepared and how to do more mitzvos. This is totally crazy stuff. And they say that Reform Judaism has crossed over the line of no return? Come on.   We may have women rabbis and same sex marriages and drive on Shabbat, but we have not yet proclaimed that one of our deceased rabbis is the messiah and will rise from the dead.”

There was a knock at the door and a woman stuck her head in. “Oh, excuse me, Rabbi. We’re setting up the sanctuary and I just need to take the Kiddush cup. Sorry to interrupt.”

“That’s okay.” He got up, stretched, and walked over to one of the bookshelves. From behind a stack of books he extricated a large, ancient-looking silver Kiddush cup and handed it to the woman. The design of the cup was crude, and yet strangely beautiful, with simple vines and leaves spreading upwards from the thick base. “Here you go. I’ll be out shortly.” He turned back to me and said, “Sorry for the rant. Guess I got a little carried away.”

“No problem. That’s a beautiful Kiddush cup. It looked very old.”

He was already taking a robe off a hanger behind the door. “Yes, yes. An anonymous gift from a congregant. Well, I think I need to get going. Are you going to stay for services?”

I nodded. “If my kids can get through it, I’d love to. Can I ask one more quick question?”

“Shoot.”

How apt, since that’s exactly what I was doing. Shooting in the dark, to be exact, going on some vague hunch that I couldn’t explain at the moment. “Did Jack Gelberman ever mention any other living relatives, besides the immediate family? Were there any other relatives at the funeral?”

Steve steadied the hanger with his free hand. “No, no one. Sorry. You know, you might want to talk to Mort and Betty Klein. They’re congregants here, lovely people, and they were friendly with the Gelbermans. Mort and Jack taught together, that kind of thing. I never thought of Jack Gelberman as someone with friends, but the Kleins were probably as close to him as anyone else was outside of the family. Maybe they could be of help to you. Here, I’ll give you their number.” Carrying the robe, he walked back over to his desk, and all with one hand, checked a directory, copied down a phone number onto a piece of note paper, and handed it to me. “Great then. Really nice to meet you.” He put on the robe over his suit, zipped it up, and stretched out his hand. I stood up to shake it. “I’ll see you in the sanctuary shortly. You can see how different services are here than at Leah’s shul in Brooklyn. I’m still expected to wear this thing, but that’s okay. They’re good people here. Anyway, I’ll see you inside.”

I took that as my cue to exit, and thanking him profusely, went out to the community room where I found Hannah sitting quietly on a chair sucking the end of her ponytail, and Simon chasing Caleb.

Simon saw me approach and gave up the chase. “The changing of the guards,” he said to me, grinning, “and boy does that little guard need to be changed.” With that he handed me the diaper bag, and sat himself down next to Hannah.

[To be continued…]

His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Ten

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 10. Enjoy!

Chapter Ten

IMG_2489The trip to Altoona was uneventful, or, as uneventful as long trips can be with small children. We left Brooklyn at 6:30 in the evening, partly because I wanted to get some work done in Altoona during the next day, and partly because we figured the kids would sleep in the car. They did, eventually, at about eleven o’clock and after more songs, snacks, bathroom stops and stories than I cared to remember. I had brought along a collection of Jewish folktales that my parents had given the kids for Chanukah. I was surprised to read in the back of the book that many of the stories had Chasidic roots and some were even attributed to the Baal Shem Tov himself. The kids particularly liked one story about an illiterate shepherd boy who can play the flute but can’t read a word of the prayer book. He goes to synagogue and is devastated to realize that he can’t pray. So instead, he plays a song on his flute to God. The other congregants are scandalized by his impropriety, but in the end the boy triumphs when the rabbi declares that the music he made with the flute was a prayer that went straight to God because it came from the boy’s heart. It seemed to sum up what I had read about Chasidism, with its embrace of the poor and uneducated masses and allowing everyone access to God through expressions of heartfelt joy.

It was a long trip, almost seven hours with all the stops. When we finally got to the hotel, checked in, carried in the sleeping kids and the bags and pillows, Simon and I had collapsed in our bed and fallen right asleep. I still hadn’t found the right opportunity to tell him the details about yesterday’s meeting with Sarah Gelberman.

In the morning, the first stop was the town clerk’s office. I left Simon back at the hotel with the kids, on their way to the heated indoor pool. Altoona was a small city in Western Pennsylvania, not far from one of the Penn State campuses, which had reached its zenith during the height of the steam railroad’s dominance in industry in the forties. While there was clearly an effort towards rehabilitation going on, it was also clear that the downtown had seen better days. The city clerk’s office was located in a small, nondescript municipal building downtown that, according to the sign in the lobby, housed Altoona’s Department of Taxation, the City Manager, the City Solicitor, The Purchasing Department, the City Inspector, the Zoning Department, the Water Authority and the Water Billing Office.

The clerk’s office was on the second floor, up a wide staircase. A black door with a brass sign next to a water fountain announced, “City Clerk.” I opened the door and entered a large, drafty room. Inside was a row of chairs facing a low railing. Behind the railing sat a middle-aged woman at a battered metal desk, entering information into a computer. The rest of the space behind her was taken up with rows and rows of filing cabinets and steel shelves of boxes labeled by number. In one corner was another woman, also working intently at a computer. On the left was a bank of offices, to which the frosted glass doors were closed. Sunlight filtered in through dingy arched windows at the back of the aisles. The woman at the front of the room looked up at me, her teased blond hair and red lipstick the brightest things in this drab room. The nameplate in front of her computer informed me that she was Mrs. A. Romero.

“May I help you?” she asked politely, glancing back at her screen.

“Yes, hi,” I began. “I’m doing some research and I need information on a former resident of Altoona.”

“Alive or deceased?” she asked mechanically.

“Alive,” I said.

She cocked her head slightly, looking in my general direction. “Well, honey, if the person is alive there is very little I can do for you, ‘cept what’s public domain.”

“Yes, I know. That’s fine. That would help. What I’m looking for specifically is a teaching certificate.”

She frowned, looking quickly over her shoulder to the row of offices behind her. “Now, this isn’t about a lawsuit of some sort, is it?”

I smiled, trying to look as innocuous as possible. “No, no, not at all. I’m a genealogist, trying to track down some information for a client, whose grandfather used to live here. It’s a surprise for his birthday, so I can’t ask him directly.”

Pushing her chair back from her desk, she looked up at me with interest. “Well, isn’t that the sweetest thing. My husband is working on his family tree. It’s a lot of work, but soooo interesting. Now what’s the name of this former Altoona resident of yours?”

“Jack Gelberman,” I said.

A smile broke out on her face. “Gelberman? And you say he was a teacher? A man in his mid-seventies or so, it would be?”

I nodded, holding my breath. Could she have known him? That kind of coincidence only happened in books.

“Why, honey, that must be Mr. Gelberman who taught at the high school. I’m a local myself. My Dad came out here to work for the railroad. Sometimes it still just seems like a real small town. Sure I knew him, a sweetheart of a man, quiet but so kind and thoughtful. Always had a word of encouragement, always believed in his students. I had Mr. Gelberman myself for basic science, so many years ago. And then my daughter had him for physics. That was his specialty. I was terrible at science, but Tina, my daughter, she was a very good student. He was one of her favorite teachers. How nice to think of him again after all this time.” She sighed and continued. “Tina became a teacher herself, you know, and I think it was in part because of the example of Mr. Gelberman. He was never too busy to help a student, never made anyone feel stupid, even people like me who didn’t understand a thing. He was so smart, he probably could have been a great physicist, but no, this was what he wanted, to teach high school for his whole career. Don’t know how he had the patience. Here, come on in.” She raised a latch in the railing and a portion swung out to allow me to enter the inner sanctum. She patted the empty chair next to her desk. “Sit down. Let me pull his file.” She got up and walked to the back of the room while I made myself comfortable. “Such a small world, you know. Let’s see, where would it be?”

Her description of Jack Gelberman sounded a great deal like Mrs. Freiburg’s description of Nossen Shlomo. A good man, a mensch, kind and compassionate, but quiet, not leadership material, not ambitious.

She continued looking, talking to me while she searched. Her voice floated back to me from between the cabinets and through the shelves. “I remember his son Nathan, he graduated high school with my little sister. Is it Nathan asked you to do this research?”

“No,” I called back to her. “It’s his granddaughter.”

“How absolutely sweet. Which one? Ah, I think I found it here.” She reappeared from behind a file cabinet, carrying a manila folder.

“Sarah.”

“Sarah. Yes, I remember Sarah. They moved a while ago, around the same time Mr. Gelberman retired I think, but I remember the grandkids. You know, they sort of stuck out around here, but boy were they cute. I remember running in to him at the playground. I had taken my grandkids, and he was there with his. Such a sweet man, so good with kids.”

She began to tell me about her own grandchildren, but I wasn’t listening. I nodded and oohhed and aahhed appropriately when she showed me the framed pictures of them on her desk, but I was too busy processing the information that Sarah Gelberman had been born and lived here in Altoona. Why, then, would she not have told me her grandfather had lived here? She must have known. And what did Mrs. Romero mean by telling me that they stuck out around here? Was she referring to Sarah’s bright red hair? Did all of Sarah’s siblings have the same color hair? Red hair was not common, surely, but it wasn’t that remarkable.

“So would you like to see the teaching certificate?” she asked, pulling me out of my reverie.

“Yes, please.”

She opened the folder, pulled out a yellowed certificate, and handed it to me. There it was, actual documentary proof of Jacob Gelberman’s existence. Holding a document was very different somehow than reading something on a computer screen. According to the certificate, he received a B.A. in physics from the Penn State campus in State College, Pennsylvania, in 1952. He’d continued at Penn State, getting an M.A. in physics and finishing the requirements for a teaching license in 1954. Those dates would jibe with Sarah’s information that he had been a Holocaust survivor, because it would have meant that he had arrived here at the latest around 1948. He’d worked at Altoona High School from 1954 until his retirement in 1996. The certificate also listed his previous places of employment before he began to teach. Between 1951-1954 he worked at a Seltz’s Shoe Emporium as a clerk, and before that, beginning in 1947, he worked at B. Solomon and Son’s Grocery. So he had probably arrived in 1947. It looked like a typical immigrant’s story, arriving with nothing and working at non-professional jobs, getting an education, and landing in the middle class. As a teacher he would not have been wealthy, but his family would have been comfortable, and he would have a nice pension for his retirement years.

It was all interesting information, and helped add to the picture I in my mind of Jack Gelberman. The most interesting bit of information though, was what was listed on the line next to “place of birth.” The handwriting was cramped and hard to read, but it was clear enough that I could make out the words, Chalisz, Poland. I knew from my reading that Chalisz was a variant spelling of Halizch.

I had to hold my breath for a moment. Even though I hadn’t wanted to share my doubts with Simon, in the back of my mind I’d been plenty concerned that Sarah Gelberman was leading me on a wild goose chase. But here it was, evidence on an official document. It still didn’t prove beyond a doubt that his grandfather was the Halizcher rebbe, but all evidence was pointing in that direction. How many other Jack Gelbermans of just this age could there have been from Halizch, Poland? Then again, there were still plenty of questions. I needed definitive proof, but I also needed a plan. In the meantime, I asked to see his voter registration information.

“I can’t tell you who he voted for,” she said laughing, “but I can tell you the first time he was on the voter registration rolls. That I’ve got right here.” She turned to the computer and got to work. “Been a registered voter since 1956. If he was a Republican, he would have helped get Eisenhower elected. But if you don’t mind me asking, how does that help you? Maybe it’s something I could tell my husband.”

Great, I thought, win her over by giving her a lesson in genealogy. Whatever works. “If I know when he first voted, it might give me some idea of when he became naturalized. It takes five years to become a citizen and be eligible to vote. We know from the employment records that the latest he could have arrived in the U.S. was 1947. So he should have been eligible to vote as early as 1953. Why the gap? It’s probably not significant. Either he wasn’t interested in voting until it was a presidential election, or he had just not gotten around to it until then. What it gives me is an approximate date of the latest possible time he might have arrived, which in this case I didn’t really need that since I had his employment history, but it can still be useful. And it also gives me a good estimate of the earliest time he might have arrived. We don’t know anything before 1947. If he had been a registered voter earlier than ’53, we’d have to assume he had been in the country before ’47. In this case, however, either he wasn’t interested in voting, or he really did arrive right around the time he appeared here in Altoona and started working for the grocer.”

“Wow, that’s clever!” she exclaimed. “I have to tell Anthony! Thanks for the tip.”

While I had been discussing voter registration with Mrs. Romero, the other half of my brain had been hatching a plan. This next part wasn’t going to be easy. Mrs. Romero seemed so nice, I hated to be devious. But devious I would be.

“It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much. You’ve been so helpful to me.” With as much casualness as I could muster, I said, “He seems like such a nice man, from everything I’ve heard about him. And did you know Mrs. Gelberman too?”

She smiled again. “Not well. She passed away some years ago. But she was lovely too, like him. She used to volunteer a lot, at the library, and with the Red Cross when they did blood drives, things like that. Always trying to help. Not as quiet as her husband, but still a private person. I think she also went through the war. You know. A terrible thing those people must have lived through. We don’t have a whole lot of people of the Jewish faith here, but those who are here are good people. The town made a real effort after the war to welcome the refugees and helped them get settled.”

“Were there a lot of them that came here?”

“No, not that I know of. I think just a handful of some young, single people like Mr. Gelberman must have been back then. People without families, who could make fresh starts in a place like this. Gave them opportunities to work and learn professions. We should all take such good care of each other, you know. It was a nice thing.”

“Did the Gelbermans ever talk about their experiences, that you know of?”

“Oh, no, never, not in public anyway.” She sighed. “It wasn’t done. You know, today nothing’s private anymore, with those talk-shows about sex and scandals and all, but once it wasn’t considered polite to talk about people’s tragedies and sorrows. As far as I know, and I didn’t know them well, they never spoke about it publicly. Still, Altoona was a small town then, and we all knew. There weren’t many foreigners, and with those accents they stood out. We just knew they’d gone through something terrible, but I can’t tell you what exactly. I didn’t even know he was Polish until I saw that teaching certificate just now. We just thought of him as European, maybe Austrian or something. Tina once told me that during a blood drive at school she saw his arm—he had those numbers there. She was real upset about it. But he always took care to wear long-sleeve shirts, even in the summer, didn’t want people to see, I guess. Didn’t want to call attention to himself. What people do to each other in this world, it’s terrible.”

Trying to steer the conversation back to Mrs. Gelberman, I asked, “So did they meet here in Altoona?”

She pinched up her face, thinking for a moment. “Well, that I can’t tell you, honey. I would have been in grade school then, I didn’t know them or anything about them yet. It’s possible, though. Maybe they met at the university.”

Time to go in for the kill. “But even if they met elsewhere, they might have gotten married here.”

“Possibly. Maybe. I don’t really know. It doesn’t look like he lived much of anywhere else since he got here, but who knows.”

“So, if they had gotten married here, their marriage certificate would be on record here with you.”

Wagging her finger at me, she smiled. “You’re a cute one. You know full well I can’t show that to you. As long as he’s alive, and he’s not the one asking for it, it’s against the rules. Invasion of privacy.” But she laughed nicely, to show that she wasn’t offended by my attempt. “Sorry, honey.”

“I don’t want to invade his privacy. It’s just that if I could see his marriage certificate, I might be able to find out his parents’ names. And that would be a big help in getting on with the research for Sarah. That is, for his birthday. It would lead me to the research I need to do in Europe about his family.” I decided to play it for all it was worth. With her husband working on his own family tree so she might understand. “The information on his marriage certificate is the key to the whole thing, you see.”

She cocked her head and looked at me sideways. Quietly, with a glance at the other woman in the back of the room, she said, “You know I can’t.”

“I know.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I know.”
“It’s against all the rules.”

“I know.”

“No, I really can’t. I could get into big trouble.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Okay, I’m glad you understand.”

“Absolutely. Positively.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry for asking. Sarah will be so disappointed. But it’s not fair of me to ask.”

“I wish I could help.”

“I know. I appreciate it anyway.”

“No, I just can’t.”

“I know.”

Silence. Checkmate. She sat still, checking her nail polish finger by finger, then swiveled her chair and looked at the woman at the other desk, who appeared completely engrossed in her work. She got up from her chair, took an index card and a pencil, and went to the back corner of the cavernous room, on the side far from where the other woman sat. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear the click of her heels as she searched for the right cabinet. The sound of drawers opening and closing echoed through the room. After a few moments of silence, punctuated only by the other woman’s tapping on her keyboard, I heard the heels coming closer. Mrs. Romero came around the corner of a row, and headed back to me.

“Well, then,” she said. “No, no record of that. Sorry I wasn’t able to help you.” As she spoke, she passed me the index card.

I glanced at the paper and saw that she had written the following:

                        Mother – Basya Marcusevich

                        Father – Nathan S. Gelberman

That was it! A direct connection to Yosef Yehudah, the Halizcher rebbe. Mrs. Freiburg had told me that one of Yosef Yehudah’s daughters was named Basya, and that she had married Nossen Shlomo Gelberman. Nathan was the English version of Nossen, which Jack must have thought was more appropriate for American documents. The “S.” had to be for Shlomo. And it was looking very likely indeed that Jack Gelberman was really the grandson of the last Halizcher rebbe, despite the stories that neither he nor his brother Leib had survived the Holocaust. This was amazing. With this information, it would be relatively easy to access further documentation. I looked up at Mrs. Romero, wanting to express my gratitude. But she had turned her attention to a pile of papers next to her computer. I coughed softly, hoping she would look at me. But she kept her face averted, absorbed in her papers.

“Thank you so much,” I said.

“Enjoy your stay in Altoona,” Mrs. Romero said stiffly, dismissing me.

***

The minute I got back to the hotel Simon relinquished responsibility for the kids. All signs indicated that he was extremely stressed and not happy to be here, stuck in a hotel room in Altoona with the two kids. They had already gone swimming, and visited the mini-golf across from the hotel.

Before I could even fill him in on my productive morning, he held up a hand and said, “Abby, not right now. I’m not in the mood for any of that. There’s something big going on at work, which don’t forget is the thing that basically pays all our bills, and I need to deal with it. Just let me be.”

Realizing that it wouldn’t be wise to respond with what I wanted to say, I turned the t.v. on for the kids, who were delighted at this special treat. A little bit of Cartoon Network wouldn’t scar them for life.

“Okay, Simon, give me ten minutes and the kids and I will be out of here.”

But he didn’t answer. He had plugged in his laptop and portable printer, and was already connected to the hotel’s wireless. It was clear he was mentally back at his office, even if he was physically in Altoona. “Okay, I’m here,” I heard him say into the phone.

I sat down on the bed and made some notes in my file about this morning’s events. What a lucky break I’d had. It would have been glorious if I could have gone on-line myself, but there was no way I was going to attempt that now.

As soon as I was done, I gathered the kids and we went back downtown to tour the Altoona Railroader’s Memorial Museum. Instead of being grateful or thanking me, Simon gave me a dirty look as we left the room, and barked at the kids to be quiet while he was on the phone.

The kids were enthralled by the museum. Caleb loved anything to do with trains, and Hannah had a great time playing store and house in the re-created storefronts and period rooms of Altoona history. In the heat of the moment, I bought them both train whistles in the museum gift shop, which I knew I was going to sorely regret later. On the way back to the hotel, I stretched out our time by taking the kid’s to MacDonald’s, another special treat. If you can’t break rules once in a while, why have rules to begin with? Filled up on chicken nuggets and fries, and after the whistles were confiscated, the kids fell asleep during the ten minutes it took to get back to the hotel. I called the room on my cell phone, but it was busy, so Simon must still be dealing with work. I called his cell, and left him voicemail that we were outside the hotel in the car, and that I was going to wait for a while to give the kids a chance to sleep. I knew that if I tried to put Caleb into the stroller to get him upstairs, or even if I carried him, he would wake up and never go back to sleep. Hannah I couldn’t carry anymore anyway. And if they didn’t sleep this afternoon, we were in for a rough evening at services. So I sat in the car while they slept, reviewing my notes and figuring out how to proceed. As I went through everything, I realized there were still more questions than answers.

[To be continued….]

His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Nine

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 9. Enjoy!

Chapter Nine

IMG_2224I was upstairs with Caleb when I heard the doorbell to my office ring. We had rigged it so that I could hear the bell wherever I was in the house. Caleb was mid-tantrum, refusing to wear anything to the park but his favorite fire engine red shorts, despite the fact that it was a cold autumn day.

It was probably someone selling candy for the local public school, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. But you never know. I opened the window in Caleb’s room and leaned my head out. Looking down, I saw a head of bright red hair. My lucky day.

“I’ll be right down,” I yelled. She titled her head up, squinted, and waved.

I took a deep breath. “Caleb, you may not wear those shorts. End of discussion. If you do not put on pants, you will not go to the park.”

Caleb crumpled, deflated. “Can I wear my Batman costume?” he asked.

Another deep breath. “If you wear pants and a sweatshirt underneath, yes, you may.”

He jumped up and put his arms around my neck. “Thank you, Mommy. Thank you!”

I kissed him. “Bye, Cabe, I gotta go now. Go get dressed, and Ronit will take you to the park. Love you.”

“Bye, Mommy,” he answered, busy looking through his drawers for just the right pants and shirt. “Love you too.”

***

I opened the door to my office and let Sarah Gelberman inside.

She nodded her head in greeting, nervously tucking her hair behind her ear as she seated herself on my couch. Luckily this time it was clear of toys.

Before I could even stall with pleasantries while I decided how to approach our conversation, she began to talk.

“How is the research going? What have you found about my grandfather?”

Taking a seat across from her, I studied her demeanor. She seemed to be earnestly interested, but what was the nervousness about? “It’s going well,” I began. “I’ve found some information, but it’s just getting going. I told you it would take some time.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m so excited.”

“I understand. What I don’t entirely understand though is why you didn’t leave me any way to contact you. I need to be able to get in touch. Without a way to contact you, I can’t do the job.”

She chewed her lip. “Okay, well, it’s just that I’m a student, you know, so it’s hard to find me. I’m not in a lot. Classes, studying, you know.”

“Don’t you have voice mail? Or an answering machine?”

“My roommate doesn’t always give me my messages.”

“A cell phone?”

“I don’t keep it on much. Too expensive.”

“So give me your parents’ number. It’s policy,” I lied, opening a file folder. “I need to have a contact number and address in my files.”

She thought for a moment. “Okay, okay, sure, no problem. My address is 47 East Second Street. The phone is 673-9136. 212.” She proceeded to give me her cell number as well, and watched as I wrote the information into my file.

“So what have you found out?” she asked.

“Well, I’m in the process of tracing your grandfather’s family tree. Meanwhile, I’ve been collecting information about the Halizcher rebbe Leib Mendel and his family, so I’m working on it from both ends. The two family trees still haven’t met in the middle, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. I just haven’t come up with the documentation to prove anything yet. And until I do, I can’t find out anything about your father’s brother. But I’m making progress.”

“Okay, sounds good,” she said. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

I shrugged. “Hard to know. Another week or two, at least. It depends how complicated it gets. If I need to contact people in Israel regarding records of Holocaust survivors, it could take much longer. I thought you said there was a lot of time.”

“Yes, yes, I know. I’m just excited.”

“Are you sure there’s no rush, Sarah?” I asked, trying to catch her eye. “Has something changed?”

She was skilled at avoiding eye contact. She kept her eyes firmly focused on her right leg, which she swung up and down over her left knee. “No, no, really. I’ve just never done anything like this before. It’s cool.”

I gave her a brief report on the information I was collecting, and the ways that I was going about collecting it. I told her about my attempt to learn more about Chasidism. I even told her about my visit to Borough Park, though I left out Mrs. Freiburg’s name and any mention of Arieh Freiburg. It was clear that Sarah Gelberman did not completely trust me, and I certainly did not yet trust her. Not revealing my sources was something I had learned long ago, and it seemed especially fitting in this situation. Despite the fact that she was the client, I didn’t want to give her any more information than necessary until the story came together.

When I finished filling her in, she thanked me and laid a thick envelope on the table.

“I haven’t gone through the original money you gave me,” I said, surprised.

She nodded. “It’s okay. In case you have to do some traveling. In the end, if there’s anything left over, you can return it.”

“I really don’t need more for a while,” I said. “You’ve paid my retainer, and given me an advance that will cover quite a lot of travel.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. My parents. You know. This way they’re sure you’ll have enough to keep going. Won’t stop in the middle, that kind of thing. It’s okay.”

I looked at her, again to no avail. Her gaze was firmly focused on a stain on the carpet. Someone was going to have to give this young woman some lessons in eye contact. “I wouldn’t stop in the middle. That’s not how I work,” I replied. “Worse comes to worse, I would just call you. Your parents could send a check.”

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “No need. They feel better this way.”

“Okay, then,” I said, shrugging. “Tell them not to worry.”

I walked her to the door, promising to provide an update in a week.

“And remember,” she said, as she turned to go, “It’s supposed to be a surprise. You can’t contact my grandfather, or do anything that will clue him in that something is going on.”

“Don’t worry,” I said to her, smiling my most reassuring smile. I’m quite discrete.”

“I know,” she answered. “That’s what I’d heard.”

It was only afterward, as I was entering my notes from our conversation into the computer that I realized I had never asked her why she told me her grandfather had lived in New York City and not Altoona. What kind of researcher was I! So much for my fantasies — I would never have made it as a real P.I. Not only that, there were countless other questions I hadn’t asked her as well. Like, for example, if her father had any other siblings who might be able to supply more information. In fact, come to think of it, I’d done most of the talking, and I hadn’t learned anything new from Sarah Gelberman at all.

I was furious at myself for not being focused and prepared. I opened a new document, and began typing a list of questions for Sarah Gelberman. No more fooling around. If I was going to do this, I had to do it right. And if there really was something weird going on here, I had to find out. When I finished the list, I printed it out and put a copy in the file folder labeled “Jack Gelberman.” That made me feel a little bit better. The next time I talked to her, I would be ready to ask questions and hear answers.

I dialed the phone number she had given me, hoping to leave a message for her to call me as soon as she got home. If not, I would just keep calling, even if it meant trying her by cell phone on the ride to Altoona. I was bound to get her eventually. Instead, after three rings I got a message from the phone company telling me that this phone number was disconnected. I had felt like an idiot a minute ago. But now I felt like an absolute moron.   And what’s worse, a gullible moron. Needless to say, the cell number wasn’t active either.

That was when I remembered the envelope on the table. Inside was a stack of hundred dollar bills. One hundred of them, to be exact. I know, because I counted. And then I counted again, and added it to the money she had already given me. She said her parents were funding this. Still, it was a lot of money to spend on a birthday present.

***

Simon arrived in time for an early dinner before we set off for Altoona.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this, Abby,” he grumbled as he picked out a suitcase from the hall closet.

“Oh, come on Simon, we’ll have a grand adventure, off into the unknown,” I said, throwing toys and books and snacks for the kids into canvas bags. “Who knows what we’ll discover. It will be fun.”

“With this particular project of yours, it’s certainly true that who knows what we’ll find. Whether or not it will be fun remains to be seen. I’m just worried — it’s seems like there’s more here than meets the eye.”

“It seems so innocent on the surface. I’m sure there’s a good explanation for the weird stuff, for Sarah’s hinkiness and for that Arieh guy’s creepiness.” I tossed tapes and a cassette recorder into the bag, along with Hannah’s favorite coloring book. “I’m hooked, though, whatever it is. I want to know what’s going on.” And I hadn’t quite gotten around to telling Simon all the details of my meeting with Sarah this afternoon. I had left out crucial items, like the money, and the fact that Sarah had given me fake phone numbers. It wasn’t that I wasn’t going to tell him, but it was a just a matter of when and how. The timing would have to be right.

Simon’s disembodied voice floated down from the bedroom. “I do too, but in a sort of distant way. I’d be happy reading about it in a book. Not seeing it unfold right up close. I don’t want you to get caught in the middle of something ugly or dangerous.”

“Hey, Simon, pack the kid’s toothbrushes and toothpaste,” I yelled back at him. “And make sure I took my toiletry bag. If it’s still there in the bathroom, please pack it. Thanks. Anyway, how could this be dangerous? And ugly, sure, a lot of the research I do touches on things that are ‘ugly,’ but I’m only the researcher. It doesn’t affect me.”

There was silence as we each continued to pack. I went into the kitchen and grabbed packs of juice boxes, then checked that the kids’ pillows, jackets and sleeping bags were by the front door.

Simon came down the stairs with his bag. “Let’s just hope that’s true in this case, Abby, let’s just hope that’s true.”

[To be continued….]

His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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His Brother’s Keeper, A Mystery Series – Part 1, Chapter Eight

Welcome to His Brother’s Keeper, a fictional mystery series set in 2000, in New York. I’ve decided to periodically lend my blog to a friend, Eva Hirschel. Eva doesn’t have a social media presence but she does have a mystery that she wanted to publish serially on-line, so I’m giving her a hand. (If you’re just tuning in now, I suggest that you start at the beginning). Here is Part I, Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Chapter Eight

IMG_2275Thank God for friends. Was there a prayer for that, I wondered.   Sometime during the night, while I was occupied with other matters, Leah e-mailed me the name and phone number of the Reform rabbi in Altoona. She had also given me the name of Altoona’s Conservative congregation and a link to their website. What was even better was that she knew the Reform rabbi, Rabbi Greg Bergman, personally—they had studied together at a rabbinic conference a few years earlier—and she promised that she would call him today and give him the head’s up on my call. Good friends, especially reliable ones, were truly something to be thankful for.

I was going on a hunch that if Jack Gelberman had really lived in a small city like Altoona, it was likely that he had been a member of a synagogue at one time. That wouldn’t necessarily have been the case in a big city, but small cities without large Jewish populations were different. And since his children and grandchildren seemed to still be Jewish, then the chances were even greater that he had at least belonged to a synagogue when his children were young. Contacting the two local synagogues seemed like a good place to begin gathering information, and might provide useful leads onward.

Sometimes genealogical research was like archeology. There were so many layers of sediment to dig through. I’d do hours of research to find out someone’s mother’s maiden name, but that was only in order to get to the next layer, like the mother’s birth certificate or place of birth, or her mother’s maiden name or her parents’ marriage license. Every new bit of information led to another generation, another town, another trail of records. And there were often major roadblocks, especially when I worked for Jewish clients. Countless records were destroyed during the war. And even before the war, there were many inaccuracies and false turns. For example, from as early as the 19th century it had been illegal in Poland not to record a birth. But often people who lived far from registry offices would wait until there were several births to register, so that siblings born years apart would be registered together. The fall of the Soviet Union had been a big boon for genealogists, as previously closed archives were opened to researchers. It was frustrating work, but also exhilarating. Getting that elusive piece of data was a great rush.   It was always worth the work.

Occasionally I would promise myself that the next time things were slow, I would research my own family tree. It was crazy that I knew so little about my own family, given the skills and experience I had gained helping other people with theirs. I knew the websites to check, the libraries to visit, the books to read, the agencies to contact, the questions to ask. Yet there was something frightening about beginning the journey toward my own origins. I knew too well the kinds of surprises I stumbled across in other people’s family trees, and I wasn’t sure I was prepared to deal with whatever I might uncover in my own. Most than likely there was nothing—as far as I knew my family was a run-of-the-mill average Jewish American family of Eastern European descent. I had one great-great-great grandfather who had fought in the Civil War, one grandfather who had escaped the Tzar’s army, and one great-grandmother who had been a vocal E.V. Debs and Margaret Sanger supporter. In fact, family legend had it that that same great-grandmother had come to the United States alone at the age of sixteen because she had run away from the marriage her Chasidic father had arranged for her. All of which was interesting, but nothing too out of the ordinary in the annals of American Jewish history. Perhaps my reluctance had more to do with the disappointment I would feel if my family was simply ordinary. One thing I never wanted to be was ordinary, or typical. So I didn’t know which would be worse, to find some horrible surprise in my family tree, or to find none. All in all, better to not even do the research, at least not yet. I didn’t have a free moment to begin, anyway.

I had promised Hannah that I would take her and Caleb to the library after school, so there was a lot to accomplish in a short time. I got started by tackling one of the books that Rabbi Springer recommended, A History of Chasidism by Rabbi Nissim Rudowsky, filling up index cards with notes and questions. When I put the book down two hours later, my head was swimming with more questions than I had had before beginning to read. Chasidism was a fascinating topic, and I was learning a lot. There was so much I hadn’t understood about the place of Chasidism in Jewish history, and how far back some of the roots of this pietistic movement reached. Nor had I understood how much Chasidism influenced the rest of the Jewish world. Today they were seen, at least by modern, liberal Jews like myself, on the one hand as a quaint, anachronistic, sometimes even embarrassing minority within the Jewish world, an ultra-religious fringe that reminded us of where we might have come from, and just how far we had come. And on the other hand they were seen as a dangerous, threatening group of Jewish fundamentalists with a right-wing political agenda and unethical business practices. But of course, Chasidism was not simply old-time-religion, Jewish style, rather it was a specific expression of Judaism and Jewish spirituality that had its origins in a certain place and time in Jewish history. Today Chasidism seemed removed from the other branches of Judaism being practiced in the United States, and yet so many of the songs we sang in synagogue, the stories we told our children, and the spirituality we sought came out of Chasidism.

The other thing I was learning was about the devastation the Holocaust wreaked on Chasidism. I knew that Jewish life in Poland had been irrevocably destroyed, that a whole world and way of life had vanished. But I hadn’t understood up to now what that meant. Poland had been the central home of Chasidism since it was born in the 18th century. Among the hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews killed in the Holocaust had been a great many Chasidim. Whole dynasties like the Halizchers were wiped out, complete histories were erased and family trees came to abrupt ends. Chasidism had had to be rebuilt, almost from scratch, after the war. The remnants of communities regrouped and rebuilt. Some rabbis had survived, and they gathered followers around themselves once again. Today Chasidism was thriving like it never had before. But the horror and magnitude of what had happened during the Holocaust was overwhelming. It didn’t matter how much I already knew about the Holocaust, how many books I had already read. It was still incomprehensible, beyond the imaginable.   And the faith in God and in human beings which so many had continued to show was also incomprehensible. And yet, if Jack Gelberman really was Yankeleh, the Halizcher Rebbe’s grandson, why had he turned his back on his past? Why had he let his grandfather’s followers believe for all these years that he was dead? What had happened to his faith during those terrible years in Europe? And why hadn’t he passed his story on to his children and grandchildren? If I did manage to put together a family tree for him, would it be as great a surprise as Sarah seemed to think it would be, or would he be upset or even angry to have his past dug up? And then back to that important, disturbing question—why did Sarah tell me her grandfather had lived in New York City, and not Altoona?

I lay on the couch, absorbed in thought for some time longer. Finally, I made myself get up. It was eleven o’clock, and I needed to leave in half an hour. It was time to call Altoona.

I asked to speak to Rabbi Bergman , identifying myself as a friend of Rabbi Brown’s, and his secretary put me right through.

Rabbi Bergman , or Steve as he asked me to call him, possessed a deep, melodic voice. I wondered if it was a natural attribute, or a skill he acquired in rabbinic school. I bet no one ever fell asleep during his sermons.

I had a story prepared about why I was doing this research, but at the last minute I decided to just explain the real reason, without going in to too many details. To my great delight, he knew Jack Gelberman.

“I’d be really happy to help you however I could,” Steve said. “It sounds like a nice thing for his granddaughter to want to do for him. But I don’t really know that much about him. And you realize, of course, that what I can tell you depends on what you’re looking for. There are things that would be inappropriate for me to share about a congregant, of course.”

“Yes, sure,” I answered. “Like attorney-client privilege.”

“Something like that,” he said.

“I’m just looking for basic, public-domain kind of information, things that could lead me to other information. Just trying to track down his family tree, nothing sinister or mysterious,” I said, thinking I should have crossed my fingers when I said those last few words. It was hard to lie to a rabbi. “You know, since he came from Europe after the war, it’s hard to find those records.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Look, services start at eight Friday evening. I’ll be at the synagogue from around seven on. Why don’t you come by and we can talk a little bit. If I can help in anyway, I’m more than happy to. Okay?”

Great—eight o’clock services. Caleb and Hannah would be basket cases, and Simon himself would be undoubtedly annoyed. But I said, “Sure, that would be great. I really appreciate it. Um – just one quick question now, to make sure I’m not barking up the wrong tree entirely.”

“Okay.”

“I take it the Jack Gelberman you knew has moved out of Altoona.”

“Yes, that’s right. He retired and moved down to the West Coast of Florida a few years ago.”

Bingo! I took a deep breath, contained myself, and said calmly, “Great, see you Friday then..”

“Okay, good.”

Altoona, here we come. Better remember to check out some books on tape when we were at the library this afternoon. It was going to be a long ride.

***

The Committee didn’t meet on a regular basis, but we tried to get together as a group at least every other month. It was difficult, since everyone had complicated schedules. Some of the Committee members I saw and talked to on a regular basis, like Leah and Bird. Some I rarely saw outside of our get-togethers. But the group had a life of its own, like the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Individually, we were just a bunch of friends. But as a group, we were something amazing, a tightly knit organism of strong, intelligent, interesting women, as necessary for each of our existences as air and water.

Tonight we were meeting at Bird’s place. Bird was the daughter of former sixties flower children. Her brother was named Cloud and her sister was Sky. Thank goodness they stopped having children before they got to Frog or Grass. Bird and her partner Lydia lived in a spacious, airy, sun-filled loft in a part of Brooklyn known as DUMBO, the area Down Underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It was a semi-industrial area that was also home to many artists and other urban pioneers. Their loft, decorated eclectically but with great care, had once been part of a thread factory, and its enormous windows offered panoramic views of the Hudson River, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Lydia’s collection of Yoruba art was displayed on glass shelves that wrapped around a center supporting column, and their collection of 19th century glass toilet water bottles was arranged around another column. Their many books were arranged alphabetically on bookshelves that covered whatever wall space was not taken up by the windows. All the furniture was either black or a soft, buttery cream. Every book was in its place, and there was no clutter on any visible surface. I knew Bird and Lydia well enough to know that it wasn’t just because there were guests–they really lived like this. Then again, they had no children.

Besides Leah and Bird, the Committee consisted of Meg, a documentary film-maker and professor; Emma, an ob/gyn who was getting married next summer; Claire, who worked in international banking and was pregnant; and Lucy, the director of a center that provided refuge and legal aid to battered women, and who had recently adopted a baby with her partner Amy. With the exception of Lucy, who was living in Northampton, Massachusetts, we had all wound up in the New York area in the last few years.

Bird put out some bowls of chips, salsa, and dips, along with sliced vegetables and freshly prepared endamame. I grabbed a chilled bottle of my favorite beer, Brooklyn Brewery’s Chocolate Stout, and hopped up on a stool.   How wonderful to be out in the evening just for fun, not for work, not something connected to the kids, just for myself. It was a treat whenever Simon and I got our acts together enough to go out on a date, but this was something I missed too, getting to go out on my own and see my friends.

As everyone arrived, clusters of conversations sprang up while the Mets and the Yankees slugged it out on the radio in the background. Bird and Leah were both serious baseball fans and had to have the game on. Claire asked me pregnancy questions, and I tried to allay her fears. She looked great, better than I ever did in either of my pregnancies. As a matter of fact, she looked better pregnant than I looked any day. Some people just had all the luck. She was a few inches taller than I, but looked even taller in her orange platform slingbacks. During the day Claire dressed buttoned-down corporate, but after hours she was something else altogether. She was one of those women who could make any crazy old outfit look like a new fashion trend.   Her shoulder-length curls were swept up in a loose knot at the top of her head.   She wore a tight-fitting orange and gray striped tube dress that showed off her new curves and bulging torso, and silver bangle bracelets. The woman had guts. During both my pregnancies my wardrobe consisted of three choices of black leggings, one pair of blue stretchy overalls, one black jumper and one denim jumper, and an assortment of over-size T-shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, and Simon’s discarded button-downs.

I couldn’t help ribbing Claire about what her pregnancy was doing to her breasts, which she herself normally described as concave. “You look great in that thing,” I said, “but I know the real reason you’re wearing those tight-fitting outfits, my dear, and it’s not to show off your belly.”

She smiled and wiggled her torso. “Hey, this is the first time I’ve had ‘em, so I might as well flaunt ‘em. Now I know how you girls feel. The only problem is, I can’t get a bra that fits right. I don’t even know what size I am anymore.”

“Yeah, and it keeps changing, too. Wait and see what happens when you start nursing!”

“Well, I’ll need nursing bras, but I need some good bras for now.”

“I’ve got the place for you. You’ve got to come with me to Miss Sylvia’s and meet the ladies. They’re the best fitters around.”

“Name the date and I’m there.”

Soon Bird began to produce an intriguing array of bowls and platters and dishes, and we heaped our plates before moving over to the sitting area. Bird was a great cook, having had to learn to fend for herself at an early age while her parents were otherwise occupied at rallies and sit-ins. She had prepared a do-it-yourself kind of meal that involved tortillas, caramelized red peppers, grilled vegetables, shredded cheese, whole cloves of roasted garlic, refried beans, brown rice, sautéed tofu, and salad, along with various salsas and sauces. The objective was to create your own fantasy vegetarian fajita. It was going to be messy, but delicious.

For some time there was only the sound of slurping, chewing, chomping, and swallowing. One of the things that amazed me when I first got to know this group of women was that no one in the group was afraid to eat. Up until I met them, I had only known women who were scared of food. In high school I learned that it wasn’t feminine to be hungry, finish the food on my plate, ask for seconds or eat with gusto. Instead, mealtimes were battlefields, during which every bite was a possible sabotage of the body-image we were supposed to aspire to in order to be attractive. Until college I hadn’t known that eating disorders were diagnosable and could be treated; I had thought it was simply normal for women to deny themselves food or to binge and purge.

The coffee table filled up with empty plates, and the room began to buzz with conversation. When it was my turn to give an update, I found myself telling them about Sarah Gelberman and my forays into the world of Chasidism.

“Chasidism, of all the things, Abby,” exclaimed Meg. “What’s the pull for you? Sounds like there’s something.”

I answered, “It’s interesting, a whole new world and familiar at the same time. I’m getting a crash course in a slice of Jewish life I know nothing about.”

Bird got in to lawyer mode, ready to challenge me. “What’s familiar about them? Is this some kind of back-to-your-roots thing? What do you have in common with a bunch of Jewish fringe radicals, these sexist racists who have some of the worst business practices when it comes to real estate in New York City.”

Leah, defender of the faith, jumped in. “Whoa, let’s hear it for multicultural sensitivity. Any other thoughts on the subject, Bird?”

Trying not to sound defensive, I said, “Come one, there’s all kinds. Some may be abusive slumlords, but just like in any group most are good people. And they’re not all one group anyway. There’s lots of different groups, and they don’t even all like each other. As for them being sexist, it’s not for me how they live, but you have to see it in context. It’s not sexist, just different.”

“All right, maybe,” conceded Bird. “It would take a lot to convince me there’s anything interesting or worthwhile about Chasids, but okay. I don’t know everything.”

“Just don’t tell your clients that,” Leah said, trying to interject some humor. “Like with any other group, stereotypes are stereotypes, and there are so many misunderstandings. And yeah, what happened in Crown Heights in ’91 brought a lot of ugliness to the surface, but it’s also about two groups, both of whom feel they are beleaguered and no one will cut them a break, trying to survive and even thrive in a small amount of space.”

“Okay, fine. Still, you have to admit there are some extreme aspects to the way they live their lives,” said Emma. “Last weekend a colleague had a Chasidic couple who were doing IVF. Saturday was going to be their day, nothing you can do about that. The commandment to be fruitful and multiply takes precedence over the commandment not to violate the Sabbath. So they got special permission from their rabbi to do the procedure on Shabbat, and they stayed near the office in a hotel Friday night so that they wouldn’t have to violate the Sabbath by driving. Okay, so far, so good. But when it was time to do the procedure, they realized that it wasn’t okay for the doctor to be doing what she had to do, since they knew she was Jewish. So they reached a compromise that the husband was comfortable with—the doctor could do the specialized work that only she could do, but they would ask for the help of a non-Jew sitting in the waiting room, and that person would be the one to turn the lights on and off and press the buttons on the sonogram, and do those kinds of things that constitute work that can’t be done on Shabbat.   Well, thank God there was someone in the waiting room who didn’t mind helping. But the whole thing was insane. What they can do, what they can’t do, getting the rabbi’s stamp of approval on everything.”

“Does your practice have a lot of Chasidic patients?” I asked.

“Yes, a good percentage. We’re talking about a group that puts a huge value on being fertile and multiplying. I see women who have had ten, twelve children. Can you imagine? The bigger the family, the better, and the more boys, even better. I’ve had to comfort women who have just given birth to their first child, a girl. And women who have just had their eighth, ninth, or tenth daughter, and still no son. And the worst is when for some reason they are not going to be able to have any more children, and they haven’t yet had a son. You can’t imagine the heartbreak.”

She was right, I really couldn’t imagine it.

“I saw a great documentary recently about them,” said Meg. “ It seems like a nice way to live in a lot of ways, in terms of the way the community takes care of itself. They seem to really support each other and do for each other in all sorts of ways. That’s something few of us experience today, that close sense of community and community support.”

“That’s true,” Emma agreed. “Lord knows we could all use more of that. But it’s a downside too. There’s not a lot of independent decision-making going on, not much room for divergent thinking or behavior. There’s a lot of looking over one’s shoulder. It’s intense social pressure.”

“What about the whole ritual bath thing? How can you justify a belief system in which women and women’s bodies are considered impure?” Bird asked.

Leah waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t buy into that perspective. Mikveh can be a beautiful, empowering thing. It’s not about physical impurity, it’s about ritual impurity. That whole issue is misunderstood. It’s about being re-born and emerging in a new spiritual state. I take people to the mikveh for conversion, or before a wedding, or to mark the end of something significant like chemo, and it’s very moving. As for the issue of monthly mikveh visits after menstruation, I hear that for religious couples having to abstain for a certain amount of time each month is a great aphrodisiac. Judaism isn’t anti-sex. After all, it’s a mitzvah to have sex on Friday nights. The Talmud actually says that women are entitled to be sexually satisfied by their husbands. It’s more about letting women have their own space while their have their periods, having ownership over their bodies and the rhythms of their cycles. That may sound archaic to us, but it’s pretty progressive when you think how long that’s been around.”

Claire laughed. “It sounds like it’s the kind of thing that depends on whether it’s a choice or an imposition. When I don’t want it, I don’t want it, and no one has the right to force me, but when I do, I don’t want some rabbi or priest or politician telling me I can’t. Right? ”

We all nodded.

“That’s the problem with so many of these religious systems, it’s other people telling you what to do,” she continued. “They’re boundary issues, who’s in, who’s out, how much can the system tolerate. Dylan wants to have this baby baptized, but I don’t know, I just can’t pledge my allegiance to the Catholic Church. My parents will be upset if we don’t, but how can I promise to raise this child a Catholic when I’m such a non-believer myself. I have no problem with being spiritual, with God per se, but I have problems with the church.”

Bird said, “Well, sweetheart, I was raised with no religion, and look how I turned out. Scary, huh?”

“You know what our problem is?” Meg asked. “We’re getting too dam old. We’re closer to forty than twenty. I used to be the young prodigy on the Film School faculty, as cool as my students, and now I’m starting feel like their mothers. They’re so young, and hip. I don’t even know what hip is anymore. That’s what’s scary. Who cares about religion, no offense Leah, but what about our lives? Where are we going? How are we getting there?”

“We are not old!” I declared.

“We’re here, that’s where we’re going,” Claire said.

“No complaints,” said Emma. “Though I hope I won’t have a hard time getting pregnant when we finally start trying.”

“Have you ever looked around the video store and seen how many new movies have been made or written or produced or edited by people we went to college with?” said Meg. “It’s getting depressing. I want my one big break before I’m forty.”

“I want to find a publisher for my book. And find a great guy,” said Leah.

“I’m pregnant,” said Bird, and we turned to look at her. “Surprise!” she continued, smiling. “Donor number 376, my lucky number.”

No one said anything for a moment, and then everyone started talking at once, offering congratulations, dispensing advice, and asking for details.

When it was time for dessert, Bird brought out a gorgeous marzipan covered birthday cake full of candles for Meg and Emma, who had birthdays three days apart. We carried the cake, champagne, glasses and some blankets out into the hallway and up a rickety metal staircase to the roof deck. When we were all settled into the various unmatched beach chairs and chaise lounges that Bird and Lydia had scavenged, and wrapped the blankets around ourselves, Bird lit the candles. The lack of streetlights in this industrial neighborhood and the many darkened warehouses made the stars above appear especially bright. The East River looked deep and forbidding at this hour, like it concealed many secrets, but beautiful at the same time. The Manhattan skyline glittered garishly in front of us, rebuking the dark Brooklyn waterfront.

“What a gritty little piece of paradise you’ve got here, huh, Bird?” I said appreciatively.

“Let’s each make a wish,” said Meg, “And see if we can make it come true in the next twelve months. Don’t you think we can have some power over our lives?” She handed each of us a lit candle. “Come on, let’s say our wishes aloud, one by one, so we can help each other make those wishes come true. I’ll go first. I wish to find a distributor for Moon Dance.” She blew out her candle and licked off the marzipan that clung to the bottom. “Go on, you next Emma.”

“Hum.” Emma bit on her lip, thinking. “Okay, I have two wishes. I wish to get through my wedding without destroying my relationship with my mother or Mark’s mother, and I wish to get my article published. Okay, three wishes. To be pregnant by this time next year.”

“Not a bad list. Let’s see,” Claire said. “I wish that by next year at this time I will have gotten the hang of this motherhood thing and will have figured out how to balance it all.”

I laughed. “Good luck.”

“My turn,” said Leah.

“But we know what you wish,” said Meg.

“Maybe I’ll surprise you,” she retorted. “Ha. I wish for peace in the Middle East. The end of hunger. A cure for AIDS.” We laughed. “Well, I do. Okay, and someone to enjoy those good days with.”

“I wish for Lydia to get a big job that’s she bidding for, and I wish to make gobs of money between now and next year, so that I can take time off when the baby is born and not feel guilty or poor,” said Bird.

“You’re not allowed to wish things for other people,” said Meg. “Against the rules. Go again. Though you do get some points for being a better spouse than anyone else here!”

Bird shrugged. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m terrified about being pregnant, and I hope everything will be okay for me and for the baby. I hope I’ll be a good mother. I hope I’ve made the right choice. I hope it won’t resent having a test tube for a father.” She blew out her candle.

Everyone looked at me, waiting to hear my wish. “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you ever wonder when your life is really going to start? I feel like I’m just waiting until something really happens, but nothing ever does. I guess I wish for the adrenaline to start pumping again, to feel like I’m doing something important, to feel like what I do matters. You know?”

“Abby, how can you say that? You’re working, you love what you do, and you’re in the motherhood trenches. You’re raising two amazing kids,” Bird said.

“Yeah, but I keep feeling like I’m waiting for my real life to begin. Like I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go. Little things are interesting, sure, and my kids are great, but it’s so contained, so manageable, so safe and routine. No highs, no rushes, just another day.”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Leah. “It sounds pretty great, actually. No high peaks, but no deep valleys either. That’s not a bad thing. You have a lot to be thankful for.”

“Leah, no sermons, please,” I said. “I’m not talking about values or objective reality. I’m talking about how I feel.”

“I know what you mean,” said Emma, “You want to soar.”

“To breathe pure oxygen,” said Bird.

“To star in your own movie,” said Meg.

“To be the heroine of your own life,” said Claire.

I leaned back and looked up at the stars. “To be spectacular.”

[To be continued….]

His Brother’s Keeper is entirely fictional. None of the characters or situations described in this series are based on real people or events. Copyright (c) 2015 by Eva Hirschel.

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