20/9/96

Sharing Herring Made a Man of Me

I missed the  Swingin' Sixties, but shul was where it was at. 

    I was deprived as a child. On frigid Saturday mornings, while my friends were snuggled up in their dens watching cartoons on TV, I had to trudge through snow to go to shul. This was not how I wanted to be raised, but now -- okay, I admit it -- I suspect it might have been worthwhile. I could not have filled this page with nostalgia about the exploits of Spiderman, Bulwinkle and Yosemite Sam.
    At the very least, going to shul gave me an everlasting love for pickled herring.
    When we moved in 1962 to the Montreal suburb of Chomedey, on Jesus Island, the Young Israel of Chomedey was a comfy little place. As more Jews moved in, the synagogue doubled its size, and a few years later, when we'd run out of standing room, it doubled again, to a seating capacity of 650.
    What remains today is a massive structure -- but with too few Jews left to fill a living room.
      One of the charms of Jewish Quebec is that it was a vibrant, largely Orthodox community in the midst of a staunchly religious French Catholic milieu. We could buy a chicken at the NDG Kosher Meat Market, and nobody would think it peculiar that the shop's full name was "Notre Dame de Grace (Our Lady of Grace) Kosher Meat Market."
    My bar mitzva teacher, Rabbi Mund, a member of the extreme-Orthodox Satmar sect, lived on Notre Dame Boulevard on Jesus Island. Only now do I find that insanely funny. 
    Jewish Chomedey rose and fell for the same reason: that penchant we have for migrating. The Jews had pushed out of the teeming ghetto -- the St. Urbain St. parish -- and moved west: to Outremont, Cote des Neiges, Snowdon, Chomedey; then to Cote St. Luc, Hampstead and Dollard des Ormeaux, and finally ... Toronto. Some went east, to Israel.
    In its heyday, our shul on a Saturday morning seemed as thronged as the Montreal Forum that night, prominent enough to entice Menachem Begin as a speaker in 1972. (He was formally presented by my Dad, which at least one of them fondly remembers to this day.)
    Begin was in some ways like an Israeli Mr. Marmor. Mr. Marmor, the shul beadle, was the kind of flawed subhero I've always found attractive. He was a little soft-spoken man with a walrus mustache, raspy voice, thick European accent and a lisp. He had big sad eyes that reflected a heart heavy with the historic burdens of his people. He never shunted children aside, but smiled warmly and patted our cheeks. He made wonderful cholent. I loved Mr. Marmor. 
    Always in the background, Mr. Marmor on one unforgettable day leaped to the fore. He ran to the bima and interrupted Yom Kippur prayers, waving his arms wildly. "Israel was just invaded!" he rasped, his voice choking. "There's a war in Israel!" A great gasp swept the shul. I will never forget the look of naked fear on his face.

IT WAS NOT my bar mitzva that inducted me into adulthood, but another tribal custom: when I was about 11, I was finally deemed old enough to attend the Herring Club. This was a gang of men who slipped out in the middle of Shabbat services, and ducked into a back room for herring, whisky and rough talk. (I was allowed to indulge in everything but the whisky and rough talk.)
    Far enough away from the stern holiness of the Torah scrolls, my Dad and his pals told bawdy jokes, settled shul politics and grumbled about the cantor, the rabbi, the weather and hockey.
    Sometimes Mr. Marmor would set out chunks of honey cake and n'hit, too. (I don't know why we called it n'hit -- also known as garbanzo beans, chick peas or humous.) I learned to scoop a handful into my mouth without the juice dribbling down my chin. And then, like the men, I surreptitiously wiped my hands on the starchy tablecloths.
    I was now an insider, a member of the secret club, and everyone else in shul knew it because my fingers smelled of herring.
    I was intrigued by shul politics, because my father was usually in the middle of it, and our long walk home was dominated by clutches of men plotting, arguing, debating. Even when we got home, he continued the week's diatribe at my mother; it blew itself out only after lunch, when Dad retired for his Shabbat shluf.   
    One time, during Rosh Hashana, my father created a memorable scene, when he objected to the behavior of a particular once-a-year shul-goer. Dad dragged him out, gave him a mouthful and cuffed him across the face. The two men got into a fearful fight -- in shul! On Rosh Hashana! I was very proud. (Some years earlier, Dad lost an argument when the other fellow pulled a gun  on him. In shul! On Shabbat!)
    My father, with his large, meaty hands, was a great shtendl thumper, calling the congregation to order with a few booming whaps on the lectern and a sharp "Sha!" That's when he was performing the role of gabai. I really think they should have placed an honorary shtendl at his pew, so he could thump at will throughout the services.

THE YOUNG Israel of Chomedey placed an admirable stress on "young."  There was a large youth minyan, Bnei Akiva and Young Judea activities and afternoon Jewish classes; there was always a bar mitzva going, sometimes even two on a Shabbat.
    When my older Bnei Akiva friends grew of age they marched off like pioneering heroes to Israel, not to fight, but to study and perhaps make aliya. Ronnie Schondorf went and returned a Marxist; Phil Libman went and stayed, a Zionist. We gained a couple of new ones, too: Anat, a sexy sabra, and Jackie Bendayan, from Morocco, which for us was very exotic.
    Boys were encouraged to participate in the main minyan: first by opening the ark, then as we got older, performing gelila (rerolling and dressing the Torah after it was read), leading the end-of-service songs, occasionally getting an aliya.
    Once they even gave my hagba, which entails hoisting the Torah off the shtendl, holding it high and wide open, and turning this way and that so everyone can see the script. Just as I stepped up to the bima, someone said: "Psst! Don't drop it or we all have to fast for 40 days." It wasn't that he made me nervous; I just didn't have the wrists for the job. I got the Torah aloft but it lurched off in opposite directions. Fortunately, no one trusted me, and two men were there to catch it, or we'd have all starved to death.
    Every week our hazan, a warty old European with the fitting name of Singer, stepped down so some nervous pisher with a squeaky voice could mount the bima for the concluding songs. No matter how woefully we sang, we got a rousing "Shkoyach" and a flurry of back-pats afterward.
    The shul was never prepared for the likes of my cousin, Samuel Richler. The highlight of my bar mitzva, Samuel was a scrawny 11-year-old -- but with a sensational singing voice. He looked like yet another cute kid trying to scratch out the familiar concluding songs, but when he opened his mouth, the place went gaga. And when he belted out "Adon Olam" to the tune of "Jerusalem of Gold" -- my bar mitzva was on the second anniversary of the liberation of Jerusalem -- the vast shul was dead silent, because every throat had a lump in it.
    That day, my departure from childhood, was memorable for another reason. With Samuel's voice still reverberating in the congregation's ears, everyone moved on to the adjoining hall for a mound of Mr. Marmor's cholent. My Auntie Sonja was moving through the crowd to wish me Mazal Tov; from another direction, so was my father's friend, Harvey Wax. They saw each other -- and both went white.
    It was the first time they'd met since just after the Holocaust, when they were young and in love with each other. Sonja was German, Harvey was an American soldier; after Harvey was shipped Stateside they lost contact, ultimately gave up searching and married others. Incredibly, both wound up in Chomedey, a few blocks apart.
    Now, middle aged, holding a plastic plate of cholent, they came face to face again. They couldn't speak then, and never have since.

THE YEARS I came of age were angry, violent, revolutionary times, but I didn't hear about it until sometime later. The Swingin' Sixties whizzed by while I was in the Herring Club, engrossed in our own anti-Establishment issues like should Rabbi Spiro shorten his sermons, and Cantor Singer's gotta go.
    If it didn't happen in Chomedey, for me, it didn't happen. I did know something was afoot when congregants started dressing in pink and mauve -- the men, not the women -- and my Dad let his sideburns grow a few strands longer.
    I heard mention of the Beatles but not of Hari Krishna or Haight Ashbury, Kent State or Woodstock. Peace and love were concepts I took for granted, like God and driving carefully.
    I suppose the opposite was true too: the hippies, yippies and acid-heads had probably not heard of the Herring Club.