It was her heritage. Not the holy tongue but the mother tongue. The language of Eema’s parents, Chaim and Freidka Landau, living in the sunny, clement city of Tarnów under the Hapsburg dynasty. They were religious people, Chaim and Freidka. Observant Jews, pillars of the synagogue, but also deep thinkers. And though she never knew them while they lived, this is the way they were always described by both mother and uncle to little Rashka Morgenstern growing up in Berlin. Zey zenen tif tingkerz, deyn zeyde-bobe. Intellectual people. Teachers. Her grandfather taught languages—German, French, also Hebrew—in a local school, and her grandmother taught piano from the parlor of a comfortably appointed house on Lwowska Street.
When they left Tarnów for Berlin, so that Chaim could fill an important teaching position at the Jüdische Mädchenschule, maybe they spoke German in the streets, the classrooms, the shops and public spaces. The language of assimilation. But if they retained a comfortable dialect of Yiddish in their own home, who would care? And if they continued in Yiddish after their daughter, Lavinia, and their son, Fredrich, were born, who could criticize? Yiddish was the language of the heart. So when the time came that Eema had her
Even so, because Rashka grew up in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, that staid dominion of bourgeois Jewish fortunes, their Yiddish remained concealed as the language of hearth and home.
German only in society! Um Gottes willen! Don’t embarrass yourself with Yiddish in front of other Jews. What do you think, this is the Ukraine?
So it was for her a secret language that little Rashka Morgenstern spoke with Eema and Feter Fritz alone. Now, however? In the city of New York? The tribes speak aloud. One is likely to hear all variants and varieties of Yiddish anywhere and everywhere, at least on the Lower East Side. Even today on certain street corners, between Canal and Houston, in certain coffeehouses and meeting spots, outside certain delicatessens, it is the language of public conversation, for heaven’s sake.
The Orchard Café and Dairy Restaurant is one such certain place where Yiddish is king. A Lower East Side institution. It is the domain of the “alter kockers” as Aaron calls these weathered old men. White hair, silver hair, no hair left at all. Many of them men who have transplanted their bodies but not their souls from the old country. They are roosting here on the Lower East Side, bent, round-shouldered, over their chessboards, their backgammon games, slapping down cards and poking pegs into their cribbage boards. They smoke and drink coffee together and deliberate. The State of Israel, the state of Zionism, the state of Jewish socialism, all topics of debate and examination. And they argue. They argue as if they are deciding an ancient biblical grudge over the general decline of everything. Especially literature! Especially art! Especially the Yiddish theater ! Especially the quality of the potato knish now that you can buy it frozen in the grocery like those ummeglich little pizza pies!
Entering the revolving door, Rachel inhales the aroma of stewed cabbage, chopped liver, and boiled kreplach floating in chicken stock. The Miltown had been doing its work. Crossing Orchard Street, she’d felt confident that she could tolerate the stress of sussing out her uncle’s ulterior motives. Even on the train, she’d been paging through the catalog of possibilities in her head. Another gambling debt to a bookie has caught him short? (“These are violent men, Ruchel.”) Or does he need to parade her as his daughter again? (“Only for an hour to convince the bureaucracy. You’ll fill in a few forms and put up a small fee. It’s nothing.”) Or will it be another