A father’s fiery spirit

SARA NUSS-GALLES

“Vos macht a Yid?” “How’s it going?” (Literally, “What makes a Jew?”) Generations of Jews have said this upon encountering one another. When I greeted my father this way, he often answered, “Ich mach mit die zeiten,” (“I make with my sides”). I was puzzled, and who wouldn’t be? As much as he and others attempted to explain that traditional response to me, I never got the whole “sides” allusion. As the kids, say, “Whatever.”

In the last years of his life, I sometimes called my father by his first name – I don’t know why, but it seemed OK and certainly not disrespectful. It was more a fond and jocular endearment. “Hi Herman, vos macht a Yid?” It didn’t appear to faze him at all.

Of course, my father had a lot of names over the eight-plus decades of his life. Herman, on his arrival in America, Hershel to my mother and friends, Zvi to his Russian mishpochah, Tat to my brother, Dad to me, Zayde to his adored grandchildren. And he had another name too, he said, especially in his youth, when the rebbe at his cheder, the Hebrew school attended by Jewish boys in eastern Europe, referred to him as Hershel Flamek – Hershel the Flame, or Hershel on Fire.

My father was born in 1911 on the outskirts of Warsaw. He was fond of saying he was born in the same year as Lucille Ball, the gutsy comedienne who could well have been called Lucy Flamek.

At cheder, Hershel was bored stiff: the discomfort, the heat, the cold, the slow pace, the lack of fresh air, all prompted him to find escape routes. He caught on fast and the rote-learning style of the cheder was deadly to his rambunctious spirit. He jumped at the opportunity to become the babysitter for the younger children. It wasn’t that he loved little ones so much, but he needed a break from cheder and this would remove him from the classroom. So, he became the unofficial carer of the rebbe’s youngest child. This worked well until the tot took to peeing right on my father. There was no washing machine and certainly no dryer in Gora Kalwaria, where my father lived with his grandparents, and, eventually, this daily dowsing rotted Hershel’s single pair of pants.

What to do without incurring the rebbe’s wrath? Hershel Flamek began giving the tot small pinches as he toted her around. And, according to my father, the little one soon began to cry the minute she laid eyes on him. End of getting peed upon and the return to cheder.

One hot summer day as the rebbe leaned back in his chair, the heat and the rote recitations lulled him into a frequent postprandial nap. On a dare, Hershel Flamek pulled out the rope he had smuggled in with him and tied the sleeping rebbe loosely to the chair. The boys’ tittering awakened the rebbe and the sudden awakening caused him to fall over, chair and all.

In a panic, Hershel escaped through the cheder window. Knowing the wrath and corporal punishment that awaited him, my father hid out near the bakery in the centre of the little shtetl. Stiff, hungry and tired, he sheepishly returned home hours later and confessed. His grandfather, an orchard worker, accompanied Hershel to the rebbe to broker a wary peace, but the rebbe knew his customers and realized that despite the boy’s payes (sidelocks) and sharp mind, Hershel Flamek’s spirit would not be easily contained at cheder.

Seeing that Hershel needed to be kept busy, he was assigned the task of fetching the rebbe’s noonday meal. Decades later, my father credited this duty with teaching him an invaluable lesson about women. Each morning, the rebbe sent Hershel to tell the rebbetzin, his wife, what he desired for lunch that day. Day after day, without fail, the rebbe’s request was ignored by his wife. This became clear to Hershel who, finally, asked the rebbe why he even bothered to make a request.

“Oy,” the rebbe answered, tugging on his beard. “Yingale, die kenst nicht frauen.” (“Oy, little boy, you’re still too young to know women.”) “If I have a taste for kliskes mit bobelech [noodles with beans], I ask for ungebrennte zip [blackened potato soup]. I know that, dafke vot die rebbetzin mir geben vos ich vill nischt [I know that, in spite of it, the rebbetzin will give me what I don’t want].”

Hershel Flamek learned his lesson on marital negotiation early and well, as I witnessed over the four-plus decades of his life with my mother, Prywa Lukowska Nuss.

My dear father died in 2000, having proudly met the new millennium and its technological marvels. He was a self-educated entrepreneur of many names and diverse talents, a thirst for knowledge, a love of nature and animals, and, truly, Hershel Flamek, all his years.

Sara Nuss-Galles, whose father would have been 100 this year, has been widely published in Jewish newspapers across the United States and Canada, as well as in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, numerous magazines and anthologies. She also has been a guest essayist on National Public Radio’s MarketPlace.

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