Princess of Passyunk Read Online Free Page B

Puzdrovsky at first instead of Waitkus.
    After shul, Izzy’s deli might be open for conversation and refreshment. Ganady had never asked his grandmother how she was able to reconcile herself to frequenting the business of a non-observant Jew on sabes, nor would he. But he did wonder. Baba invariably had hot tea and the boys hot chocolate or cold sodas, depending. And there, Baba would open her Book of the Old World and begin to spin tales.
    They did not start out as tales, to be sure; they started as reminiscences that someone—most often Izzy himself—would call up by saying something like, “So, what do you say, Irina Kutshinska? What do you think of such-and-such?” or “Do you remember so-and-so?”
    One sabes, Esther and Isak Isaacson were at the counter arguing when they came into Izzy’s, Irina and her two good Catholic boys, and Isak said, “So, Irina, you tell me—is it Rabbi Andrukh’s fault or no?”
    Baba sat herself down at the scarred old table by the window and arranged her shawl across the wounded back of the vinyl chair before even letting on that she’d heard. The boys were trying to decide whether it was to be hot chocolate or cold soda on this ambivalent evening in early April, when Baba said, “And what is it that you’re asking is the Rabbi’s fault?”
    â€œWe’re losing our yiddishkeit, is what,” said Esther. “We are Jews who are ceasing to be Jewish.”
    â€œEsther says it’s the Rabbi,” noted Isak.
    Esther—all five-foot-four, 275 pounds of Esther—came rolling over to Baba’s table and sat herself down there, making the chair pop like a mad fire. “Only on yonkiper does Joshua Leved (and that wife of his) come home to shul.”
    â€œMaybe they go to shul in Cherry Hill,” said Baba.
    â€œThen why come back here at all, eh?”
    Baba made a broad gesture that took both hands, both eyebrows and every muscle in her wiry shoulders. “To come home ,” she said. “To come here . This was his home. It’s so strange he should come home once in a while?”
    â€œOnly at yonkiper ?”
    â€œIt’s when they can expect to find the most folks in one place,” said Izzy from behind his counter.
    â€œAh!” said Esther, half-turning and holding up a chubby index finger like it was Miss Liberty’s torch. “Ah!”
    â€œAh, what?” asked Baba. “Why do you figure the Leveds come home at yonkiper ?”
    â€œ Zey hobm meyn ,” said Esther in Yiddish, and Ganady, caught by the gleam in her eye, felt his scalp crawl. “They’re afraid, is what. They think, ‘what if the Day of Atonement steals up while we’re heedless?’”
    Ganady glanced sideways at Yevgeny and saw that the other boy’s face had gone so pale his freckles seemed to be floating above it. He prayed to God that Yevgeny would keep his mouth shut about the Day of Atonement.
    â€œWhat?” said Baba. “They got no synagogues in Cherry Hill the Leveds can face Atonement in?”
    â€œWho knows what kind of synagogues they got in Cherry Hill? All those gansteh machers with their gelt and their big cars and houses. How does one stay Jewish with all that, I’d like to know? Folks leave here, they gehot fley in de nuz —above themselves, you know? They think yiddishkeit is something you can come rub up against once a year and carry the smell home.”
    â€œNow, now, Esther,” said her husband, clucking like an old hen. “How d’you know this, em?”
    â€œIsaacson is right,” said Baba. “How do you know Leved doesn’t come home just because he wants to be with folk he knows? You said yourself, Esther—people get their noses up. Maybe Leved likes to be among menschen .”
    â€œSo I said. Hoping some of it will rub off, no doubt.”
    It was no secret, of course, that Esther had once been sweet