The Little Yiddish I Know I Learned From My Grandmother, Part I

    My maternal grandmother, Etta Felger Brock, was born in Ukraine in 1905. Over the next ten years her entire family emigrated to America, eventually settling in Milwaukee. Her father, David Felger, went first alone in 1910. Etta's older sisters Fannie and Rose went next in 1913. In 1914 her mother Sylvia Stelnick Felger followed with Etta, her younger sister Katie, and her younger brother Morey (Moishe). They spoke mostly Yiddish at home, although they naturally spoke Ukrainian. They were close enough to Poland that they spoke fluent Polish as well. For political reasons they felt it wise also to speak Russian. In the long run it was a very good thing they left when they did; following World War II there were no Jews left alive in their village (Ustylúh), including the relatives who died because they would not or could not leave. In my imagination it looks like the end of "Fiddler on the Roof", although I doubt there was any musical accompaniment or any turntable.

    So at age 9 Etta began living in a strange new place, looking for an old familiar face, and learning an entirely alien language. Fortunately the whole family had a facility for languages, and within five years she was speaking English like a native, albeit with a marked Milwaukee accent. Her father died in a factory accident in 1915. She lived through the First World War and the pandemic that followed; her mother, however, died of the influenza in 1918. Etta cared for the younger children for a while, although still a child herself, but they were soon sent to live with an uncle in Montreal, Canada, for a time in 1918 or 1919. Both returned to the United States, and all of the children, including Etta, became naturalized American citizens.

    Etta became of marriageable age (17) in 1922.  The problem, however, was that she was a midget--defined as a perfectly proportioned person, but under the height of 4'10". Dwarves, on the other hand, share the short stature but have some sort of physical disproportion. Nowadays both are defined as dwarves, with those formerly called midgets now called pituitary dwarves, and their condition is said to be caused by Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD). The main national association, the Little People of America, does not distinguish between the two. At the time, however, a midget would look down his or her nose at a dwarf, so Etta had to find another midget to marry. And to complicate matters, that male midget had to be Jewish. So a search began.

    It took a year or so, but she found one living in Buffalo, New York. Norman Franklin Brock stood about 4'6" and had been born in 1900. His father, William Brock, was a miller and Norman worked for him as a laborer in his mill. His mother, my great grandmother Julia Brock, was a housekeeper who ran their home as a boarding house. Norman was their only child, and they worshipped him. William was born in 1856 and consequently was too young for the Civil War and too old for World War I. His father, Wilhelm Brock, moved his family to Buffalo from Germany, and became William Brock, a name that he passed on to his son. Etta married Norman in 1923, and they lived with his parents. 

    Norman spoke neither Yiddish nor Hebrew, so Etta began teaching him simple words and phrases. Unliked his wife, however, Norman had little knack, and even less love, for languages. He refused even to attempt Russian or Polish. Etta was a wonderful cook, having learned (with all her sisters) from her mother. All of them cooked the traditional European Jewish dishes: knishes, kreplach, matzoh ball soup, blintzes, as well as traditional Russian dishes like borscht. Norman, however, was a picky eater, and his mother had indulged him in this. What he wanted was meat and potatoes, and the vegetables he could tolerate were limited to peas and corn. He could stand chicken once in a while, but for the most part it was steaks and roasts. There was little scope for her culinary skills.

    My mother Shirley was born in 1926, and her sister Dorothy in 1928. Neither Etta's nor Norman's family had any significant money, so it was necessary that Norman work. He was unsuited for work as a laborer, as he was listed on the Census of 1920, and he also lacked higher education. He tried working in various businesses for a while, but could never stand working for somebody else. He suffered from what my step-father referred to as "short man's disease". The obvious solution was to start his own business. So in 1929 Etta and Norman moved out of his parents' house (they have a separate address in the Census of 1930) and opened the Normetta School of the Dance.

    It has always seemed strange to me that two people completely untrained in dance could think they could teach it to children. That's what they set out to do, however. They rented halls all around the Buffalo area for one night a week (many were available due to the Depression), put up some posters and put some ads in the newspaper, and waited for the kids to show up. And show up they did, at first in dribs and drabs and later in torrents. For each shiny dime (not an insignificant amount for most middle-class families in those days; only in the forties did they raise it to a quarter) a child between the ages of 6 and 16 was entitled to an hour's instruction in the fundamentals of tap, acrobatic, or ballet. They would teach for three hours each evening, six nights a week, and make a semi-honest living. I qualify that adjective somewhat, since it is usually assumed that a teacher knows something about the subject matter being taught. Norman and Etta knew little, but both had the gift of gab and made each hour enjoyable for the kids who knew even less about what they studied. I also assume that the children enjoyed being taught by adults no bigger than they were. So the Normetta School of the Dance flourished.

    As a cash business there were also tax advantages, again not exactly honest. Their business model allowed them to close down one location and open another at the drop of a hat, and they did so frequently throughout the thirties, usually whenever there was an incident where a child got hurt or when there was a complaint. As Shirley and Dorothy grew up they both became students, and Shirley actually became quite accomplished. She became first a tutor and later a full teacher in the School. She fantasized about a career as a dancer.

    During the thirties, though, Norman's father William died, and the Census of 1940 shows them again living with his mother. They were not in the family home where they had lived before and where Norman had grown up, but in a newer house in a better part of town, on French Street. My great grandmother Julia remained in this house until she died in the sixties.

    In 1940 Shirley turned 14 and had begun high school. She did very well. She was particularly good at algebra, to the surprise of everyone in the family including herself, earning a perfect 100% mark in the subject. In the 1941-42 school year she continued her study of mathematics by becoming the only girl to enroll in geometry, and the roof fell in. For some reason she simply could not understand why triangles were congruent, and the idea of a proof completely baffled her. The outbreak of war in December gave her an excuse, and at the end of the first semester, having failed geometry, she dropped out of high school altogether. She went to work in a defense plant.

    Shirley had grown to the height of 4'10 1/2", and she was proud of that 1/2 inch. It meant she was not a midget, although she was still shorter than everyone she met. Her sister Dorothy reached 5'. Both children were raised ostensibly Jewish, but not a lot of emphasis was placed on the religion. Both wore simple silver Stars of David around their necks. These were hidden by the high-necked blouses they inevitably wore, and very few people ever saw them and so very few people outside of their immediate circle knew that they were Jewish.

    It only took one, though, and that one made quite a fuss about it. It happened during a lunch break at the defense plant in January, 1945. Shirley was 18 and had turned into quite a competent worker, her dreams of earning her living as a dancer far behind her. Her lack of a high school diploma kept her from advancing to a supervisory position, and in fact this event finished her defense plant career entirely. The plant floor was overheated for some reason, and Shirley had unbuttoned her blouse's top buttons. Her Star of David was thus visible, and out of nowhere an otherwise pleasant middle-aged Polish woman stood up, pointed at Shirley, and said in a voice a trifle louder than strictly necessary, "You killed my God!" At this point Etta would have decked the woman, despite giving up a foot and a half in height,  but Shirley was made of less-stern stuff. She didn't know what to say, she didn't know what to do, so she sputtered something about not having been there 1900 years ago and ran crying from the room. She didn't stop until she got on the cable car to go home and she never went back. The plant, by the way, never paid her for her last two weeks and never explained why.

    Etta and Norman began to worry that Shirley was too retiring ever to find a man to marry. And Etta's tradition was that the parents would make the match anyway, although she conveniently forgot the fact that she and her sisters had all made their own matches due to their parents being dead. So they set out to find a suitable husband for their older daughter. Their choice was somewhat puzzling.

    Donald Robert Stevens was 19 at the end of the war and was working at the same defense plant that Shirley had left. He had not been drafted due to the fact that he served two years in juvenile detention for theft. His parents disowned him, and when he got out when he turned 18 in September, 1944, he needed a place to live. Etta and Norman took him in. Initially they had no matrimonial plans for him, as he was a Polish Catholic and they had reason to be skeptical of that particular combination. But as time went on and Shirley showed no sign of finding a husband on her own they reassessed their position. Since she was Jewish their children would be raised Jewish, and that was all that mattered. Living in the same house meant that they were thrown together often, and inevitably unless Etta and Norman intervened to prevent it the two young people were going to be attracted to each other. So they were, and Shirley and Donald were married in September, 1946, when they were both 20. I was born in June, 1947; they wasted no time.

    During this time Shirley's sister Dorothy lived with her grandmother, Norman's father Julia, in the new house on French Street. She married a full-blooded Iroquois, Bud Douglas, in 1950; they had three children: Diane, Debbie, and Mitchell. Bud and Dorothy divorced in the late fifties, and she never remarried. She inherited the house when her grandmother passed away. Aside from once in 1969 when I stopped in Buffalo to see her on the way home from visiting Carol in Rochester and once again in 1970 when she and the children came to our wedding, I had no further contact with her.

    Shirley and Donald (and me, when I came along) lived with Etta and Norman. The end of the war, of course, meant the defense plant closed, and all of the good jobs went to the war veterans. Donald was limited to work as a laborer, and Norman knew there was no future in that. So he suggested to Donald that the young man seek a career in the military. He could retire after 20 years with half pay for life, or after 30 years with 3/4 pay, and he would learn a good marketable trade. It would mean some time away from his family, of course, but the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks. In his own mind Donald was desperate to get out from under Norman's roof, and he jumped at the chance. The Air Force was willing to overlook his "youthful indiscretion" as they termed it, and his enlistment was approved in 1949. After basic training he was assigned to Japan, where as an enlisted airman he could not bring his family. He served in the remains of the postwar occupation and then got caught up in the Korean War. He did not come home until January, 1953.

    The first five and a half years of my life, then, were spent with my mother under Norman and Etta's roof. My first memories are of the house on Buell Avenue, sledding down the railway embankment in the winter, throwing tomatoes picked fresh from the garden in the back in the summer. My mother Shirley once again helped with the School of the Dance, this time as a paid "professional" teacher. I went to many of the sessions simply because there was no one at home to take care of me and babysitting was too expensive. I was never much of a dancer, although I enjoyed the acrobatics and apparently learned more than I realized. I found this out years later when I fit right in to the musical comedy choruses for which I auditioned. I have distinct memories of kindergarten, where I excelled. My mother and my Aunt Dorothy read to me every night and I was reading myself by the time I was five. I have a vague memory of visiting my grandmother's sister, Aunt Kate, in the early fifties.

    It was during this time that my grandmother Etta began teaching me Yiddish. I don't think she ever tried me on Russian, Polish, or Ukrainian, but I can't swear to it. I do know, though, that when several of my college classmates studied Russian, it didn't sound as strange as I expected it to and some of the vocabulary was familiar. My grandmother Etta also tried to introduce me to her prodigious cooking skills, but my grandfather Norman still insisted on good old American meat and potatoes, so that was what I wanted. When we visited Aunt Kate she and my grandmother chatted seamlessly in three or four languages and I was astonished. Despite the informal language lessons from my grandmother, though, the person who had the greatest influence on me during this crucial time was my grandfather Norman. He was a petty tyrant with more than a streak of dishonesty. He thought the world owed him a living, and he had no shame. He built himself up by tearing down everyone around him. And unfortunately I became more like him than I care to admit. Even today, some 70 years later, if I'm not careful some of the old patterns I learned at his knee come breaking through.

    There's more to the story of me and Etta and Norman, and of course Shirley and Donald and Dorothy, as well as others who haven't entered the scene yet. My sincere thanks to my cousin Jim Holzman, Etta's great nephew, for his prodigious genealogical research. I have relied upon it heavily. I will continue with Part II of this narrative when I get around to it.

This is Etta and Norman in 1943.