More than anything, I look forward to Friday night Shabbat dinner.
Frequently, Karen and I are invited to friend’s homes where we and other guests talk, eat, and sing sweet Shabbat songs. But when I’m alone with Karen on Friday night, there is a certain magic that happens — and I never know what form that magic is going to take.
This past Friday night, Karen and I discussed the book covers our teachers in Yeshiva Flatbush elementary school insisted we use.
Karen and I are from Brooklyn where we both attended Yeshiva Flatbush grade school. In fact, I fell in love with Karen in 4th grade, when we were 9 years-old. This is a tale of helpless and hopeless love that I chronicle in my e-book memoir “How I Married Karen.”
Anyhoo.
Because our textbooks belonged to the school and had to be used year after year, the administration figured that book covers would protect the precious volumes from our obsessive doodles and the considerable wear and tear on the bindings.
Karen recalled the rich kids whose parents bought them the laminated book covers emblazoned with Ivy League crests.
“Right, I remember how shiny they were, the way they kicked light.”
“What book covers did your parents get you?” Karen asked.
“I got the brown grocery bags.”
“Me too!”
“It was so humiliating.”
“Actually, my mother let me buy one laminate book cover a year,” said Karen.
“Get out.”
“ I was so proud to have the Yale book cover because of the Hebrew on their shield.”
“My mother used to cut up the grocery bags, measure with a ruler, and really do a great job making sure the covers fit properly. It was sort of hypnotic, watching her work so intently.”
“I did it myself,” said Karen.
Well, naturally. Karen has always been incredibly self-sufficient.
Karen and I both remarked on how vivid were these memories, both sweet and painful. Sweet, because Karen and I share the same memories; painful because we always felt slightly diminished as kids whose parents could not afford to buy the more expensive book covers. Now, we both understand that having less money might have been an advantage in our moral development. Even now, we never take for granted our home, and the comfortable life we are blessed to live. Said Karen: “Every time I do a laundry, I am grateful that we have a washer and dryer in the house.”
That night, as I was falling asleep, in a Proustian haze, I went over the book cover conversation in my mind and realized just how meaningful it was to share this small but significant memory with my wife.
We are the sum of our memories.
Without those memories, we are emptied of meaning.
To be able to share childhood memories with my wife has deepened our relationship, allowed both of us to better understand the past in order to build our home, raise our children, and move, with some measure of wisdom, into the unknowable future.
I wonder: what happens when a married couple do not share similar backgrounds and memories? What do they talk about?
Ah, the book covers. I went to parochial school in Austin, Tx. Not only did we have the BB covers, but woe to wretched student who didn’t fold the corners correctly and fell under the watchful gaze of Sister Leo! They and those who used scotch tape had most unfortunate fates.
It had never crossed my mind that there were commercial book covers. In fact, I wondered until I got further on, just what were kids making book covers from now a days since brown grocery bags are (mostly) gone.
I suspect that, in part, the reason many couples don’t make it together is because they don’t make their own together memories. By this I don’t mean my memory or my wife’s memory of a shared event but our shared memory of an event, only differing (possibly) by perspective.
My parents had very different backgrounds – hers, melting-pot, intellectual middle class from West Virginia; his, Chassidishe Poland, war years in Siberia, post-war DP camps, and only a seventh-grade education. I think it did put a lot of strain on their marriage. But they had a lot of common values, and they created a world (and a family) which they shared.
As far as book covers go, IIRC ours were made of gift-wrap, which my father, of blessed memory, had collected while dumpster-diving (a skill honed during and after the war) at a nearby Gibson Cards warehouse.
Robert,
I have been a daily reader of your blog for some time now. I very much enjoy the way you articulate your ideas in an honest, unapologetic and undiplomatic way. Keep telling it like it is!
But there was something about this post that compelled me to comment for the first time. I think you had me with the comment that Friday night is the time of the week you most look forward to. I can attest that my husband and children and I whole heartedly agree. Sitting around the table for hours talking about everything from politics (both world and shul) to things like book covers is the most enjoyable part of our busy lives. Company is great (going or hosting) but staying home with just your spouse and/or kids is truly the best.
My school did not enforce book covers, but if it did, my mother would have insisted on the brown paper bag. In fact I remember one kid in school who re-used the same brown paper bag for his lunches for weeks on end. And his father was probably the wealthiest parent in the community. It was just a different value system back then. Funny how that is the stuff we miss.
I am also blessed to have a husband who shares a very similar upbringing to mine. I agree that the values we were raised with and the similar experiences we shared contributes to our happy marriage.
Costanza:
Thanks so much for choosing to comment on this particular post. It is amazing that such seemingly insignificant memories can stir the cauldron of our collective emotions. Hope you’ll continue to comment.
Until you mentioned the brown paper bag book covers, I had forgotten about those – I used them too!
You and Karen have a special relationship
Small world…I am from Lockport NY and lived in Buffalo for years (still own a house there). I am English/Irish/Scot/German; my dad worked as a welder at a steel company in Lockport and my mom never finished high school. Grandpa was a dairy farmer in the Poconos. I am the first in my immediate family to go to college, only one to go beyond an AA degree. My husband is 100% Buffalo Polish, Catholic (I am not), youngest in his family, third to go to college. We met in college where he majored in Poli Sci; I eventually went back to school to get degrees in Engineering.
Our backgrounds and many of our interests are totally different. But we share common values, and made memories with our kids. So we don’t lack for topics.
Dr. Carol:
As you say, though our backgrounds are wildly different, we share the same values. Thus, when you came to LA and and I met you for the first time, it was like sitting down to share a (kosher) meal with an old and trusted friend — who also happens to play the bag-pipes!
Speaking of the bagpipes, we are playing at West Point again on April 26. I will send you links to the videos when we post them.
On St Patrick’s Day I ended up in the front row (not usual for someone who is not a Parade officer and has only been in the band for three years). We won Best of Show, which was a Very Cool Thing.
I remember that marvelous kosher meal quite vividly. Was just thinking about it, actually. I was going through pics I took of Jerusalem, being homesick for her, and remembering the post I wrote for you.
As my wife and I were going to sleep last night, she asked me why so many Jews ended up living in eastern Europe. We are neither of us Jews and I thought I must reread Paul Johnson’s book on the history of the Jews as I have forgotten in the years since I read it. She started to read it but hasn’t gotten that far.
Our shared life is mostly intellectual. When we met, I was the only other person she knew who knew about the yucca moth. For you non-californians, that is how the Yucca plant passes along pollen.
I have started reading a history book that goes into great detail about the migration patterns of Jews into Eastern Europe: The Jews in Poland and Russia: 1350 – 1881 by Antony Polonsky.
The Yucca moth. Of course! Just last night as my wife and I were going to bed..:-)
I almost always got the brown paper bags, but I didn’t care. My father would do an Old English calligraphy title which I thought was amazing. In general, I only paid as much attention to school as I was forced to.
We weren’t allowed to draw on the brown paper covers. But of course, we all did. I too paid little attention to what was goi g on in school. But I did pay close attention to… Karen.
I was curious about the Yale Shield. As my Hebrew is poor it looked to me like Or Yam. But with a little further research I cleared things up, kinda… sorta. This is from Wikipedia about the shield.
“The arms of Yale University, often referred to as the shield of the university. The device on the seal, a book bearing the Hebrew phrase אורים ותמים (English: Urim V’Tamim), *originates from the early eighteenth century*, and its designer is unknown. The arms were illustrated from drawings by Fritz Kredel sometime before 1948. Additional information in Rogers, Bruce, and Lohmann, Carl A. (1948.) The Arms of Yale University and Its Colleges in New Haven. New Haven: Yale University Press. There is minimal innovation upon the pre-1923 design.
Anyway—so much for Wikipedia..not that I didn’t know it is one of the most unreliable “news” sources.
But on to your question. My husband of Moishe3rd fame and I met when we were in our mid twenties. We grew up very differently. He grew up in Buffalo, NY where everything cultural reached there 10 years after they did in the Bronx. My husband was culturally stunted when we met. Also I was Jewish and he was not. That definitely widened the culture gap even further. I almost didn’t marry him. But he was kind of cute and smart and he came from a well to do family, so I married him. Just to round out the picture, I grew up in the Bronx, a poor shnook ( but I never knew it) and finished doing things I don’t want to talk about by the time I graduated HS. That was part of the cultural fast track of NY (secular) life.
Fast forward to today. We are frum, proud parents AND bubbie and zeidy of almost seven eineklach and my husband and I never lack of what to talk about at the Shabbos table and beyond. From divrei Torah of which my husband is so adept, insightful (with the help of Chazal, Rav Shamshon Refael Hirsh and others) and entertaining (he is schooled in theater), history (his passion), current events and of course our children and Jewish life in general we stay engaged and for the most part interested. My job is to make him laugh at just the right spot. We have a grand old time. B”H!
I remember a study showing that Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica have about the same error rate. The difference is that, in Wikipedia, anyone can fix errors. (It is also true that anyone can introduce errors, but for any article that has a reasonable number of watchers, errors get fixed quickly.)
If you spot an error, just fix it (and of course be prepared to support the statement that it was an error). I’ve done so a number of times.
Pkoning
My husband pointed out that the way I read the Wikipedia article was incorrect. The date mentioned was regarding the seal. My cursory reading wrongly said that it was dating the _U’rim V’tumim to the 19th century.
Regarding fixing Wikipedia. Have you ever come across an article written by a “Palestinian” regarding Israel? It would be a part time job to “correct” it.
Karen and I are fascinated by you and your famous husband. Your lives sound like… a movie. What cult were you in? And how did you escape?
I would like to answer your question and inject my own flavor as regards the “cult”. Back in the day, even until today, I never thought of it as a cult. It was a school. It was quite underground and you would not be able to find out about it unless you were “invited” to attend. There were other more public 4th way schools at the time. I only heard about them later. It is interesting how Hashem does lead one to go in the direction they want/need to at different times. Prior to moving out west and “finding” this school, I met up with a old friend whom I had not seen in a long while. He had a book lying around by Maurice Nicoll. I picked it up and could not put it down. It addressed so many questions that I had regarding those life questions, like who am I? I was so excited to find this book. Shortly after I left to move to the west coast and within a year I “found” this school (and my husband). This was a school in the tradition of schools of old, which basically taught “How to become a Human Being” in the highest sense of the term. Schools used different mediums to be the conduit of this knowledge, such as in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, ( philosophical discourse), Guilds, The Grimm Brothers (oral tradition), Rembrandt (art), Shakespeare (theater), the Cathedrals (architecture), Victor Hugo (literature) etc and of course the Bible. The point being, (as in Judaism) one cannot develop in a vacuum, but needs teachers; people who have acquired positive character traits and overcome negative ones. In this school we were immersed in personal experiments that addressed all areas of life, from earning a living, relating to others (in and outside the school) and developing a relationship with G-d. Basically it taught me to have my feet on the ground and my head in the Heavens. In other words be NORMAL, which is a high level indeed. For this I am eternally grateful.
I suspect that the combination of me not being Jewish and not being a New Yorker was a factor in never even thinking about my brown paper bag book covers. I was ostensibly one of the “rich kids” in our beautiful WASP suburb of Buffalo, NY. As I recall, it was the odd kids who had manufactured book covers (they may have also been “rich;” I don’t remember) but, for the rest of us, the brown paper bag covers were way cool because we could decorate them and write on them however we wanted. The kids you envied were the ones that had the most interesting artwork or the latest “stickers” on their book covers.
And, my nice Jewish girl wife from the secular Bronx whom I met in San Francisco while we were both in the same… umm… “cult,” share and shared our mutual aspirations for ourselves and our family. Our pasts and family associations were wildly divergent and still are but – where we wanted to go; how we wanted to live; what aspirations we had and have for our children and grandchildren were the common glue that bound us together from the beginning.
Our childhood memories are a source of “new information” for each other as we each puzzle out these “foreign worlds” in which the other grew up.
That in of itself is kind of cool.
Funny how perceptions shift. Karen and I never thought of the brown paper book covers as cool.
As I asked your wife: What cult?
I’d do “LOL” but I hate that abbreviation – “famous husband” indeed.
It was a Gurdjieff (Ouspensky; Nicoll; et al) cult of the “Fourth Way.” The “teachers” were Alex Horn, since deceased, and Sharon Gans (of Slaughterhouse Five “fame”), since “not doing too well” from all reports.
I escaped in the normal way at the time – I was “kicked out” for not “sufficiently working on myself.” My dear wife left of her own volition, which was unusual, to… pursue being a Jew.
Apparently, from what I have read, it is not so easy nowadays to leave or even to figure out what the cult is supposed to represent. They appear to have gone professional cultist and muddied the waters far beyond Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
However – we both have hakaras hatov (gratitude) for our former “teachers” and “teachings” in that we would not be who we are today without them.
One thing that was taught in the five years we were involved was:
You choose to be born who you are – You chose your parents; you chose the time and place you were born; you chose your life and, most importantly, you chose your religion.
So, the idea was that one should investigate the religion into which one was born. Thoroughly. Go back to whatever church or synagogue or temple or whatever that one was born into and do it all. “Go whole hog and pay the postage” was the odd expression used.
And, after we parted ways with out cult, we continued to do exactly that.
And that led to the exalted status of our lives today in that “Hashem leads a person in the direction that the person wants to go” (Makkos 10a)
You once told me that I should write a book on our life and, when we had the good fortune to host Rabbi Daniel Lapin one Shabbos, he told me the same thing. I have… begun… Just getting to the middle and the end is the difficult part (and, in the spirit of emulating Moshe Rabbeinu, the humblest of all men, my wife would like me to interject that I have been “beginning” this particular bio for the last 25 years.)
Sigh.