Grandpa Nachman's Funeral

Grandpa Nachman’s Funeral

By Raanan Geberer

After years of trying to escape the deteriorating Southwest Bronx, here we were – my mother, father, brother and I –driving back there, going south from our Kingsbridge home. Our destination was the I.J. Morris Funeral Home on Jerome Avenue and 167th Street, where Grandpa Nachman — the Communist grandfather, as Dad never stopped reminding Mom with a sneer — was finally being laid to rest after 91 years.

“Look, here’s a bodega! Why don’t we go in their and get some chuchifritos?” he said, mispronouncing the Latin-American word. “Hey, look at this burned out building! That’s what they’re like! One of them had a fight with his brother, he burns his house down! Then, when one of them has a fight with his sister, he burns her house down!” Nobody said anything—it was just Dad’s typical folderol.

Soon, we pulled up to the funeral home, where quite a few cars were parked. We went inside. Too bad, I thought, that his friend Charlie wasn’t around anymore. “Ven I die,” Grandpa Nachman used to say, “I don’t vant no rabbi giving a speech. Only Charlie!”

I sat next to Uncle Itzik, Grandpa Nachman’s brother. Although Uncle Itzik wasn’t part of Grandpa Nachman’s left-wing crowd, he knew many of them because of his involvement with the Yiddish literary and theater world. “Dat man over dere,” Itzik said, “dat’s Sam Liptzin. He’s a humorist from de Freiheit.” The Freiheit was a Yiddish Communist newspaper that competed with the social-democratic Forvertz, although nowadays its editors allowed themselves to be more critical of the Soviet Union than they were years ago.

A rabbi took the stage. It seemed a little strange that there was a rabbi, given the fact that Grandpa Nachman’s friends were atheists and agnostics. But just like they had their favorite newspaper, their favorite surgical supply store and their favorite banquet hall, they had their favorite rabbi as well. He was a fifty-ish, half-bald man with a pot belly who wore a dark gray suit. “Nachman Steinman was one of those whom the famous Yiddish poet Anna Nazhovka called `The Generation Without Fear,’” he said.

He recounted Nachman’s early life, from his poverty-stricken boyhood in the Ukraine to his first job in the garment center, where he started a petition drive for higher wages and fewer hours. No one wanted to be the first to sign lest he incur the wrath of the boss, so he drew a circle and had them all sign at various points along the sphere. On a humorous note, the rabbi also recounted how Nachman had joined the army during World War I so he could become a citizen, only to be discharged three days later. His discharge papers read “Vision—poor. Marksmanship—poor. Calisthenics—poor……”

I’d heard these stories many times. Now, a stooped-over, elderly Jewish man of Grandpa Nachman’s generation went up to the mic. He spoke in Yiddish, but I managed to understand a few words: “Er hot gekemft far zeyn union, far civil rights in de South, veg’n de tragischke milkhome in Vietnam….”

Finally, the funeral came to an end. We were about to get into Dad’s car when Uncle Moe, a younger uncle who was my parents’ age, asked for a ride to his home in Spuyten Duyvil, which was only a little out of our way. “The goddamn Cadillac broke down this morning, and I had to take a private car service down,” he said. He was wearing a double-breasted suit and a wide tie, and he’d begun to grow a goatee. Dad agreed, and Moe slid into the back seat.

“The funeral – well, that’s your mom’s family!” Dad said, turning to me, as he pulled out. “All Communists!”

“They are not all Communists!” I objected. “The only Communists were Grandpa Nachman, Grandma Esther and Aunt Bobbie!” Dad shrugged his shoulders—he could never admit being wrong.

Mom — who had rejected her father’s Communism at an early age — said stoutly, “I’m suspicious of anyone who talks about the evils of fascism without mentioning the evils of Communism. When I was at Hunted College, a girl from my French class brought me to a Communist meeting — the party temporarily disbanded during the war and they called themselves the Communist Political Club or something. Then, a few weeks later, she brought me to an American Labor Party meeting, and the very same people were there. Sure, ‘There’s nobody here but us progressives!’”

Dad changed the subject “So, Moe, what’s cooking?” Dad asked him. “You still working as a manager for the city?”

“Naah! That fu… I mean that goddamn Mayor Beame laid me off,” Moe stopped himself from saying the “f” word in deference to Dad’s dislike of profanity. “Yeah, Mayor Beame and that fiscal crisis of his can go to hell! But I got a new proposition! Me and two of my old Signal Corps buddies, we’re gonna open a combination bar and Mexican restaurant just outside the Cross-County Shopping Center. The location’s fantastic – it can’t miss!”

Dad said nothing. I knew he disapproved of social drinking – he often said, “Good Jewish boys shouldn’t go into bars,” and he bragged that it took years for him and Mom to finish off the bottles of Israeli wine he’d received as a gift.

“I saw old Uncle Itzik there,” Moe said. “Funny, he’s a relative, but I never really got to know him.”

“Oh, Itzik’s marvelous — he’s really into Yiddish culture!” Mom gushed. “He’s written literary criticism for YIVO, that’s the Yiddish scholarly institute. He’s also a Yiddish folksinger — I believe he made a few records!”

“Yeah, sure,” Moe said dismissively, “I bet he made Joe and Paul records! ‘Joe and Paul ah fargenig’n,’” he hummed, relishing the worlds of the old, off-color Yiddish vaudeville song about a young boy who goes to burlesque shows, buys naughty French postcards and locks himself in the bathroom.

We passed Burnside Avenue. “Look at these burnt-out buildings! What do you expect from these people…..” Dad couldn’t let it go.

Moe opened the window slightly and lit up a cigar. “Who cares?” he said. “It’s only the South Bronx!”

I felt an inner rage. Listen, you moron, I silently addressed Moe in my mind, Where did you go to school and get sent to the principal’s office? Where did you play stickball? Where did you have your bar mitzvah? Where did you steal comic books from the candy store? In the goddamned South Bronx!!!

That night, I went back to my own apartment and thought about what happened that day. Here were two polar opposites – the late Grandpa Nachman and Uncle Moe. Nachman’s motives were good – he marched on the picket line for his union, he tried to rid it of underworld influences, he went to the March on Washington for civil rights, he protested against the war in Vietnam. But he’d allowed himself to be taken in by a Communist ideology that I considered to be simplistic, cult-like and authoritarian.

But I couldn’t accept Moe as a role model either. He represented the worst of American consumerism, American materialism. As Mom once said, “Not only does he have to buy the biggest refrigerator he can find, he won’t stop talking about it for months!”

Grandpa Nachman? He had his good points, but no. Uncle Moe? No way. Dad? He would be considered old-fashioned even by the standards of his own era, the 1940s. No, I’d have to find my own way in life, somewhere in between these three. With this in mind, I went to sleep.