Bernie Sanders Came Home to Brooklyn I Knew

In the quadrangle where Gilda and I walked (not always together) more than a thousand times between classes at Brooklyn College, Bernie Sanders kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign Saturday. 

For Bernie it was a return, somewhat, to his roots. He grew up about a mile away, in a three-and-a-half room, rent-controlled apartment at the intersection of Kings Highway and East 26th Street. I passed that corner twice every day on my bus ride to and from my elementary school. Bernie attended Brooklyn College for one year, 1960, before transferring to the University of Chicago (

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/02/bernie-sanders-gets-personal-2020-presidential-campaign-rollout/3040149002/).

BC was and still is a commuter school. Students go home for the night, generally to their parents’ residence, not to a dormitory or fraternity/sorority house. When Gilda and I attended in the late 1960s BC had some 30,000 students. After our marriage and move to Seymour, Conn., outside New Haven, Gilda had to explain to Jewish women, amazed at our good fortune to have found a fellow Jew among the student body to wed, that it was nearly impossible to escape dating a member of the tribe back then as Jews comprised an overwhelming majority of those enrolled.

Sanders is considered a radical by some because of his label as a Social Democrat and his advocacy of progressive programs including universal health care, free tuition at all public universities and a $15  hourly minimum wage.

Truth is, BC was a hotbed of radicalism from the time it opened its doors in 1930. Leftists and Communists were plentiful on campus (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/bc/index.html). Extremism gave way to more mainstream liberalism by the 1950s. Until the mid 1960s male students were required to wear ties with sports jackets or suits; women could not wear slacks. 

By the time my freshman year started in September 1966, BC had become a rather folksy place. You could wear jeans and hang out in the cafeteria all day, if you’d like (as I did). The campus did close down during the Vietnam War protests as the decade came to a close, but the atmosphere as I recall it was nothing like the student revolt at Columbia University in Manhattan. 

Though a part of the City University of New York system, Brooklyn College nationally was considered a top liberal arts institution. Only students with an above average combined SAT and high school grade point score could attend. All at a cost of $50 per semester, equivalent today to $391.33. Books were extra. 

The year I graduated Brooklyn adopted an open admissions policy to anyone with a high school degree. The campus quickly changed. No longer could it be cast as a “white bread” campus. Academic standards deteriorated. It took several years before the open admissions policy was reversed.

The campus Bernie Sanders visited Saturday has been greatly transformed by new buildings on both sides of Bedford Avenue. Guarded gates now surround entrances from the neighborhood of single family homes and moderate height apartment houses. A few years ago, during a nostalgic tour of the Brooklyn of our youth, Gilda and I talked our way past a security guard to gain entry to the campus. Memories overwhelmed us. Good memories. 

Toting a Briefcase: School Days Sans Backpacks

You see them everywhere. Now that school has reconvened I am treated to the adorable vision of children walking city streets with a backpack chock full of books, pencils, erasers and other supplies strapped to their backs. The older they get the fuller and weightier the backpacks appear.

I didn’t have a backpack when I attended elementary school back in the 1950s. I lugged around a leather briefcase that weighed almost as much as I did (I kid you not. I was severely underweight as a youngster, so much so that my sister every day prepared a milk shake enhanced with a raw egg for me, alas to no avail. I remained a stick figure of bones barely covered by skin. My parents, especially my mother, threatened to send me to the polar opposite of a fat farm, a place where skinny kids were bulked up. Of course, my overly skinny childhood and teenage years paid off when I failed my military draft physical as a 21-year-old but that’s a story for another day—if you can’t wait for that day, here’s a link to a previous blog about my draft physical: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/11/veterans-day-salutes.html).

As a youngster toting a heavy briefcase my hands would develop blisters at the base of my fingers. The briefcase was golden brown in color and a size that would have made any first year law associate proud. That’s the closest I ever came to experiencing life as a lawyer. 

I leaned to the opposite side of the hand grasping the handle, the better to maintain balance. I could barely walk half a block before switching hands for relief. The only benefit from the heavy load was it anchored me to earth should a brisk wind threaten to lift my slight frame off the ground.

My elementary school didn’t have lockers to store books overnight. Neither did our desks have large storage wells. We had to schlep books to and from school each day. And since I attended a Jewish day school in Brooklyn (Yeshiva Rambam) we had more books than public school kids because of the extra courses in Hebrew and religious studies.

Now, you might be wondering why I am making such a big deal about lugging a heavy briefcase. Didn’t I ride a  school bus? Not after first grade. From second grade on I took two city buses, the B49 from Avenue W up Ocean Avenue to Kings Highway, then the B7 along Kings Highway to East 31st Street.

Ocean Avenue was a block and a half from our home on Avenue W. School started at 9 am. The trip to school, if the buses were on time, took 30 minutes. On many a morning my brother, sister and I would be challenged to arrive at the bus stop in time to catch the 8:30 bus. Often it was late.

There were no bus shelters, not along Ocean Avenue or at the transfer point at Kings Highway, no place to seek shelter from the weather. If it rained we got wet. If it snowed we got wet and froze. If it was just cold and windy, we froze. If it were hot and sticky, we sweated. 

Each month we’d get a different colored bus pass. Five dollars for unlimited travel. 

All in all, while going to and from school wasn’t as arduous as the process recounted by my father in his shtetl in Poland (“We had to walk miles in snow up to our knees”), my experience was not pleasant. 

As long as I’m recalling early school days, the recent hurricanes in Texas and Florida evoked an enduring memory. It was early in the school year. I was in either first, second or, most probably, third grade. I remember strong winds lashing leafy tree limbs across the windows of our classroom. Our teacher, probably Mrs. Schlesinger, tried to assure her 35 seven- and eight-year-old students there was nothing to fear, but as dismissal time approached, no one was eager to head home. Fortunately, at 4:30 the storm subsided and we hurried to our respective school or city buses for the ride home.

Graduation Day

Fifty years ago I graduated from Yeshiva Rambam, a Jewish elementary day school in Brooklyn, the most notable feature of which was its playground on the roof of its building at 3121 Kings Highway. Thirty-one boys, 13 girls were in my eighth grade class, some of whom have gone on to notable careers, previously mentioned in this blog entry: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2012/01/elementary-ties.html. 

We studied Jewish material—Bible, Talmud, Hebrew language, ritual practices—in the morning, English subjects in the afternoon. Classes began at 9; by the time we were in eighth grade they finished at 5. It was a long day, interrupted only three times, for 20 minute outdoor recesses on the roof in the morning and afternoon plus a 30-minute hot lunch in the school auditorium. 

I was among the youngest in my grade, my birthday falling as it did in March. Just 5-1/2 years old when I entered first grade, by rights I should have been placed in kindergarten. But with the leverage of paying for two other children at Rambam, my mother insisted I be a first grader. 

Rambam was just under three miles from our home on Avenue W. When I started, my brother, sister and I rode a school bus to Rambam. As a first grader, however, my dismissal was at 3, theirs at 5. That first day I boarded the bus for the return trip home all by myself. The next thing I knew I was back at school. I had slept through my stop and did not awaken until the bus had returned to school for its next round of deliveries. Being disoriented, I panicked. Fortunately, my sister arrived on the scene to calm me down. (In case you’re wondering, my mother had gone back to work so she wasn’t home when the bus pulled up in front of our house.)

By second grade I had matriculated with my siblings to public transportation, the B-49 Ocean Avenue bus, a block and a half from our home, to Kings Highway where we transferred to a bus going east to 31st Street. We had student bus passes which, if I remember correctly, cost $1 each month for unlimited rides. 

Two things made those rides memorable. First, it was a lot colder back in the 1950s. I know I sound like our parents and grandparents who would regale us with tales of their slogging through the snow to get to school. But trust me, it was colder when I grew up, especially if you had to stand waiting for a bus to arrive. There were no bus shelters along our route, no stores you could pop into to catch a few moments of warmth while you waited. 

Second, books were heavier back then. I used to shlep to school each day a big leather briefcase packed with thick textbooks. My family teased me that the weight of the briefcase was the only thing keeping me grounded against strong gusts of wind given my skinny-malink status. 

My first grade English teacher was Mrs. Malka. She was probably just around 25 at the time, but seemed older to me. Years later, some 40 years later actually, on Rosh Hashanah eve in our temple in White Plains, I sat behind a fellow congregant whose sister was visiting him. It was Mrs. Malka. She looked the same. I’d see her every year. She passed away a few years ago.

Second grade introduced us to corporal punishment. Our English teacher exacted discipline by either pinching your nose tightly or by bracing your arms while standing behind you and thrusting her knee into your back. When we complained to our parents they, naturally, sided with her, reasoning we must have done something bad to merit such cruel punishment. 

Our third grade English teacher opted for solitary confinement as her preferred means of discipline. She’d place you in a dark coat closet, a practice the administration ultimately forced her to abandon after she forgot to liberate a student when the dismissal bell rang and he was left at school. 

Her Hebrew counterpart was much beloved, especially for the concertina he would play. His most memorable foible was not allowing you to use the footrest in the back of the desk in front of you. “When your feet go up, your brains go down,” he would admonish us. 

Almost all of the Hebrew teachers were either Israeli or from Europe. Our eighth grade Hebrew teacher was thin, bespectacled, with an air of Peter Lorre about him. He’d break cigarettes in half and smoke them in class, holding them like a pincer in his forefinger and thumb, just as we’d seen too many Germans do in too many World War II movies. It gave us the willies.  

There are lots more memories, but this blog, no doubt, already has exceeded most of your tolerances. The elementary school is no more, the building transformed into a wing of Kings Highway Hospital. Yeshiva Rambam, as the saying goes, was very good to me.  

Bar Mitzvah Jubilee

Tomorrow I will celebrate the 50th anniversary of my bar mitzvah, the coming of age ritual Jews the world over celebrate for 13-year-old boys and, in many communities, for girls, as well. As I did half a century ago, I will wear the tallit, the prayer shawl, my parents bought for me as I chant the haftorah and lead the congregation in the musaf service. I will be just as nervous as I was the first time.

I'm not overly observant, though I think I am spiritual and religious in my own way. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Here's what I remember from that first entry into adulthood: Frustrated trying to buy an off-the-rack suit for me because I was too thin for any to fit, my father took me to a custom tailor not far from his factory on Broadway near W. 4th Street. He picked out two fabrics for sports coats. I didn't like either pattern, but this being late 1961, my truly rebellious days had not kicked in. Besides, I didn't fit into anything ready-made. Every few weeks I would take the subway to Manhattan for another fitting until the jackets were ready shortly before my bar mitzvah day, February 10, 1962 (my sectarian birthday is March 6; according to the Jewish calendar, my birth coincided with the weekly torah reading of Terumah, the segment devoted to the building of the Mishkan, the tabernacle, in the desert. My haftorah portion deals with King Solomon’s construction of the First Temple in Jerusalem).

Though a good Hebrew student, I was not confident in my ability to read from the torah as most bar mitzvah boys did, so I didn’t. Truth is, I suffered from stage fright. Still do, though I’ve learned to overcome most of it, and even enjoy speaking before groups of any size. Singing, however, still gives me the willies. I’ve taken some precautions this time, asking Ellie to sing several prayers.

My father was proud of my performance; he subsequently had me audio tape it for friends in Israel. He borrowed a reel-to-reel tape recorder for me to chant into. The tape was converted into records. But when we played the discs before sending them overseas we heard a disturbing background noise. It was the voice of our neighbor Charlie talking on his ham radio set. Our homes were attached row houses; his transmissions apparently came through our contiguous electrical lines. We had previously experienced interference from Charlie on our television set, but this was beyond the pale. There was, however, nothing we could do about it.

My bar mitzvah party was held at the Aperion Manor on Kings Highway in Brooklyn, the same catering hall where my brother celebrated his bar mitzvah four years earlier. For my party I wore a rented tuxedo sports jacket, burgundy with black stripes. Very chic. I liked the way I looked. My ears didn't stick out too far that night. I think I had a good time. Hard to say from the commemorative album, though in all honesty, I and most of my peers were really awkward looking. I danced the first dance with Adina Berzon, a twist, if I’m interpreting the picture in the album correctly. Upon further review, my ears did stick out. Ah, well...

It snowed the night before my bar mitzvah. Three to six inches. Fifteen years ago when I last sang my haftorah in synagogue it snowed 20 inches. As I mark the jubilee year of my bar mitzvah, it’s not supposed to snow, just rain Friday night, followed by a windy Saturday. My father used to say rain was a good omen when embarking on an auspicious undertaking.