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.  

Elementary Ties

Many people use Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites to keep abreast of, or catch up with, relatives, friends, acquaintances or business associates. I mostly rely on the old fashioned conveyers of information: traditional media including newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

Take, for example, a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in the NY Times last Thursday. Entitled “Waiting for Mitt the Moderate,” the Op-Ed piece listed several of Romney’s foreign affairs advisors including Dov Zakheim. Some might recognize that name as a former Defense Department official in recent Republican administrations, most prominently identified as the analyst who shot down support for Israel’s internal development of the Lavi jet fighter in the late 1980s.

I know Dov as a masterful Talmudic scholar from our elementary school days at Yeshiva Rambam in Brooklyn (modesty does not keep me from saying I was no slouch either in the ways of our learned sages). He delivered the English valedictory address at our graduation ceremony in 1962, along with being the co-winner of a Hebrew Department scholarship.

Lest you think Zakheim was a unique performer, our class of 31 boys and 13 girls (yes, this was a co-ed, Orthodox Hebrew school—my, how times have changed!) had several notable achievers.

One of our more interesting classmates was Alan Zelenetz. He was a good graphic artist. To amuse us, he would eat chalk and paper. Perhaps that was the source of his creativity juices. After becoming a rabbi and a junior high school principal at the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn, Alan became a film producer and comic book writer. He co-created the Alien Legion series for the Marvel Comics book imprint Epic Comics. He also co-founded Ovie Entertainment, an independent film production company.

Alan’s cousin, Arnold Saltzman, is a rabbi as well but is probably more well known as a cantor, composer and recording artist. At Rambam, Arnold’s voice was head and shoulders better than any other. Indeed, he was a child singer with the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Dennis Prager stood taller than anyone in our class. Dennis and I continued our association through high school at the Yeshiva of Flatbush and Brooklyn College. While the rest of his high school mates were learning compulsory French, Dennis quietly taught himself Russian. He was, you might say, a gifted student. It was in high school that Dennis met future rabbi Joseph Telushkin, his co-author of several books on Judaism (I knew Joe before Flatbush—we bunked together in Camp Massad Aleph for four or five years in the late 1950’s). Today Prager is a well-known conservative columnist and radio talk show host.

Michael Shmidman is a rabbi, too (is there a pattern here?). He's now the dean of Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies. I don't know how tall he is today, but as a youngster he was short. Still, when it came time to pick our school basketball team, the coach chose him over me. I exacted some measure of unintended revenge the following spring during a class outing softball game. Michael was pitching for his team. I batted a ball right into his stomach, hard enough to double him over and end the game.

Yeshiva Rambam closed the doors to its elementary school in 2005 but it's nice to know my classmates still can make the news. Of course, they don't always do so in a positive light. One of them, who shall remain anonymous, is a major New York City landlord not known for the beneficent treatment of his tenants.

By the way, in case you’re wondering why I have not included any updates on the girls in my class, it’s not because they have not done anything noteworthy. But under their maiden names their accomplishments did not show up in any of the social media I consulted.

Another Argument

Last week, after it was revealed Mitch Miller died at 99, I noted his Sing Along With Mitch show prompted one of my biggest arguments when growing up in the early 1960s (for those who don’t remember, I wanted to watch The Untouchables, but my brother and father preferred Mitch and his gang. Little known fact---one of the stars of Sing Along With Mitch was Bob McGrath who became one of the original cast members of Sesame Street).

Another major argument of my early teen-time transpired one Saturday night in early September. Sadly, I was reminded of it because of another prominent person’s passing. Robert F. Doyle died last Sunday, one day after Mitch Miller. He was 100. Boyle was, in the words of the NY Times obituary, “the eminent Hollywood production designer who created some of the most memorable scenes and images in cinematic history,” in movies ranging from North by Northwest, The Birds and Shadow of a Doubt (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/movies/04boyle.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries). He collaborated often with Alfred Hitchcock.

It was their first work together that got me in trouble. The Saturday night before the Jewish New Year, there’s a midnight service called Selichot (prayers of repentance). Having been bar-mitzvah’ed the previous winter, I was no longer exempt from attending, at least as far as my father was concerned. I, on the other hand, was nearly 30 minutes into CBS’s The Late Show presentation of Saboteur, the World War II thriller starring Robert Cummings that ends with a deadly tangle on the torch of the Statue of Liberty (of course, at the time I knew nothing of the climactic scene. I only knew that going to Selichot would sabotage my enjoyment that night). We argued, loudly. My father left for synagogue, without me, but with a strong admonition that I had better be standing by his side within 10 minutes. I appealed to my mother. Why did I have to go and my older sister did not? (I can’t remember where our even older brother was that night.) It was unfair. Mom could usually be counted on to run interference, but not this time. Reluctantly, I turned off the TV and trudged the four blocks to synagogue.

Eventually, I got to see Saboteur. A good, not great movie. But one that always has special meaning to me. As does Selichot. Gilda and I go most years. It’s one of the most musical and inspiring services of the year.


More Miller Time: My sister Lee reminds me not only did our brother Bernie like Mitch Miller, he used his quota of Columbia Record Club membership initiation albums to secure three Sing Along LPs.

She chose the greatest hits of The Platters, one of Johnny Mathis and a third she can’t remember. I picked Frankie Laine and some Broadway shows. We all agreed on a Ferrante and Teicher instrumental album of movie themes (such as Exodus, The Apartment, The Vikings).


Into the Water: My sister and husband David separately pointed out I fulfilled a parent’s obligation, according to the Talmud, by having my children learn to swim. I don’t hold it against my parents that I never learned. They did, after all, send me to summer camp for 14 years. You’d think I would have learned. I suspect I have a deep-seated, early trauma I cannot overcome.

Of course, I gave the same reason as to why I never learned to ride a bicycle. That phobia vanished when I was 40 when Gilda forced me to learn (a story for another day). If I could learn to ride at 40, perhaps I could learn to swim at 61?

Lee says I should try hypnosis. She even “volunteered” one of her friends who recently became a hypnotist to put me under a spell. And my friend Ken has offered his pool for lessons. All I need now is the gumption to just do it.