by Marvin Kreithen

Yasha, Yonkel, Jacob, Jack

When I first came to this land, sang the Weavers, I was not a wealthy man. Oh the land was sweet and good and I did what I could.

My father’s death marks the end of an era. My father was the youngest and last living survivor of eight children of Labe and Miriam Krutshineszki that immigrated to America from Russia. When they came here they lost their given names-and took on Americanized names- Aaron, Frank, Minnie, Avram, Herschel, Emma, Clara, Jacob. Krutshineski- Krutchens were the hoops that barrels were made with and my great-grandfather was a barrel-maker became, through the work of some clerk in Ellis Island who was a lazy speller, Kreithen. New names- a new start. Theirs was a generation that would pay their dues in this new land so that their children could prosper and have the things they themselves didn’t dare to dream to have. The philosopher George Guardiff wrote a book called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men in which he pointed out that the true heroes of our time are not Presidents, or Generals or Scientists or Scholars but are just ordinary people going about their lives doing the ordinary things that they need to do to get through the day- fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, husbands, wives. My father was such a hero.

We watch the 11 o clock news and read the newspapers and somehow think the real world is out there and is in incredible disarray. But the world news is just comic books for adults to keep us entertained. Our tradition teaches the world is saved one person at a time. The real world is not out there, or out there, its in here, in this room of people whose lives were touched by my father, and in here, the stuff were made of, as in V’havta in our heart and in our soul. My father’s generation knew that, my father knew that.
How do you measure a man’s life? By the wealth he accumulates.? By the clothes he has in his closet when he dies- and we were surprised to find out my father didn’t have an extra pair of black shoes to be buried in- my father was a simple man- he would say you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time. Or by his attributes- what values did he lead his life by, how decent a person he was, how kind, how caring, how giving? How buoyed were you when he was near you, what memories of him will you always keep with you?

My father was born, Yasha Krutchineski, in a small town called Rudamisl, outside of Kiev. His father had left for America leaving his wife pregnant with a son who was to become my father. The plaint goes ‘Bist schwer zu sein Yid ’. Abandoned, left to fend for herself my father’s mother scrubbed floors and did other menial tasks to keep the family going. One day, my father wrote, the Cossacks were celebrating. The Cossacks broke into the house my father and his sisters were in and pointed a gun at my father’s head. His sister’s cried out ‘He’s too small to kill’. So the Cossacks took my father’s uncle out and shot him.
My father came to America at the age of 13. He was put into the fourth grade- where he was taunted by the rest of the class because he was older than everybody else- it was the last grade he finished. He had to go out and get a job to help support the rest of the family. At the age of sixteen he writes ‘My beloved mother died’- just three years after he came to America- a stranger in a strange new land- now as an orphan taken in by his sister Emma to live with. My aunt Emma’s husband Sam, got my father a job in the clothing industry.

This is what he accomplished: Someone befriended him and helped my father learn to read. My father learned to appreciate and love opera…. he went to Art school at night. Though he never got past the fourth grade in school, my father was an educated man.

Conversant in three languages- Russian, Yiddish and English—self taught well enough to keep the minutes at the Newman club where he belonged the past few years.

And something else. My father’s legacy to us, his children. On a wage of about $75 a week, my father made sure all four of his children went to college and graduated.

My father worked for over 47 years as a cutter in the clothing industry. This is what a cutter does. He gets a roll of goods, puts it on the end of a table on rollers, and then makes a spread by layering out the sheets of goods over a long table. He then fits patterns on top of the layers, maybe 40, 50 sheets high. Using the patterns as a guide he cuts the goods out. He ties like parts together, and then he starts all over again.
There is an essay by Albert Camus in which he writes that the Myth of Sisyphus is the basic metaphor for man’s existence. Sisyphus has been punished by the Gods- he is fated to the eternal existence of rolling a heavy rock up a hill. Once he finally manages to get the rock up the hill, the rock then falls back down and Sisyphus has to repeat the task. Camus writes ‘I wonder what Sisyphus was thinking as he watched the rock roll down the hill.

For over 47 years, often 10 hours a day, _ day on Saturday, sometimes 51 weeks a year, my father acted out the Myth of Sisyphus. If I now wonder what my father thought when he completed a spread, I’ll never know. I never thought to ask. My father was a duty person- bound to his duty to provide the essentials of a living for his wife and children- and what he did again and again and again and again was what he had to do to do this.

Consider this arithmetic- 2 spreads a day, 40 high, 8 coats per spread, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, 47 years- my father cut the coats that clothed over 7 _ million people.

On the week my father turned 62, he retired. He was one of those people who managed to thrive in retirement. I have an artifact of his working days- the shear he used to cut odds and ends with. When he retired I don’t think he ever wanted to see it again.

This is what my father taught me:

At 3:30 the night I graduated high school after partying all night I was stinking drunk and puking in the middle of D and the Boulevard. I got home and to bed about 4:30. At 6:30 my father woke me- this was to be my first day at a summer job at the shop he was working at. I said I really wasn’t feeling that good. He looked at me, he didn’t say much, and I knew I had let him down- he had put himself out to get me the summer job and jobs were not that easy to come by. So I got up and went to work. If my father could get up and go to work day after day, sometimes not really feeling too good, I could do no less. What I remember about my father is that he didn’t miss many work days- if he didn’t work, he didn’t get paid. And that summer I didn’t miss any work days either.When I first came to this land I was not a wealthy man. Then I took myself a wife and I did what I could. Called my wife, the Joy of My Life. How the land was sweet and good. And I did what I could.

My father and mother were married November 5, 1933. They stayed married for over 55 years, till my mother died. We marry for passion, we marry for romance. Someone said we marry to find in others those parts of us we feel are missing in ourselves, to feel complete. I think my parents were married the old fashioned way- it was expected of them as part of the ritual of growing up. The Torah says succinctly- Isaac married Sara, and THEN he loved her. I think after all my father had gone through- he was terrified of abandonment, of being alone- my father wanted companionship. My mother wanted an acceptable escape from her strict Orthodox father’s house. And so Jacob and Rose were joined together in marriage
When I look at my parent’s marriage what I used to see were married singles- my mother took care of the house, the kitchen and us children. My father worked, to make a living for the family. My mother used to go to the movies with her next door neighbor and of course at parties, politically incorrect, the men used to be with the men and the women with the women. I never saw my parents hold hands, I never saw them say I love you or be affectionate. It was part of the kinnehurrah- the bitter lesson in life they learned growing up in the stetl- where life was tenuous and each day you were at risk- to love something too much- is to wish it away.

We’ve all gone through many years of going to school- where we were taught skills to prepare us for our careers. Besides that we can take courses on practically every subject- how to watch our weight, how to do Microsoft Windows- and so on. There is nothing to teach us about marriage except life itself. We learn most about marriage by watching our parents marriage. Both my father and mother were abandoned by their fathers fleeing from Russia as unborn children in their mother’s bellies. They never saw their fathers until many years later when they came to America. Marriage to my parents was on the job training. And what they did, especially for us children was extraordinary. Thru good times, thru bad times- often needing to choose between the pain of bad or worse.

This is what I will remember.

The last six weeks of my mother’s life was a horror- she had cancer that had invaded every part of her body and she was racked with pain. ‘Jack’ my mother would call out, and he would be by her side to ease the pain- every moment- day and night- he took care of her- made sure she was fed, helped her out of bed. My father, even though he was in his eighties and was not great health himself, was there for her when she needed him, always -till the very end. Perhaps that’s what love is- kindness, caring, being there for each other- two people huddling together to keep out the eternal cold.
Jacob married Rose.. and then he loved her.

To me, my father was a hard man to please. And as Jean , his companion for the past 4 years can attest, he often had to be reminded that he was having fun. Smile, Jean would tease him.. and then he would smile.
In the summer of 1977 as my payback for the summer vacations at Atlantic City my father gave us I loaded my father and mother and my wife Leslie and my two children- Rebecca and Joshua into a station wagon and we headed West to see the country. We drove to Colorado Springs and saw the Garden of the Gods, and then past Pike’s Peak to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, over the 6 million dollar highway from Ourey through Silverton to Durango up the narrow winding trail to the top of Mesa Verde- where my father after looking out the window of the car at the precipices only safe driving and guard rails kept us from falling down said in a huff ‘you people must be crazy to take me here’. The next day my mother, who was 65 years old, and my daughter who was 3, walked up the 30 foot ladders- from which there is a few hundred foot drop to the bottom of a canyon -to gain access to cliff dwellings- while my father with folded arms in closed body position waited annoyingly for us at the top of the mesa. Then we went to Canyonlands and Arches and Bryce and the Grand Canyon and Zion. What we experienced was extraordinary, magnificent scenery, the wonder of God’s majesty. Through it all my father seemed (and the Yiddish word is )beroigas. Then we came to Las Vegas and the glitz and the lights of the Casinos and the tinkle bells of slot machines hitting. My father lit up. Now, he said, my vacation begins. When he came home, then he told his friends and neighbors about his terrific adventures and how wonderful the Grand Canyon and Disneyland and all the other places he visited were.

This is what I also will remember- When we grew up we spent our summers down the shore. We stayed in a room at the Mostovoy’s, a Victorian boarding house, together with the rest of the people who stayed there- who we got to know intimately- there was a community kitchen, community bathrooms. On Saturday nights in the parlor Sylvia Mostovoy would take out her accordion and Lucy Mostovoy would play the piano and my father would sing in Yiddish- Rezl, Tumbalaika, Shein vie die la Vune, Mien Yiddishe Maidele and so on into the night. My father was the star of the show, it was one of the times in his life he would smile, his aura would glow- I think he was truly happiest whenever he sang.
My favorite was a Margaitkelekh, (Daisies), about Chavele, a young girl who goes off into a wood to pick some daisies, meets a stranger and finds love. In the last verse, the day is over, her lover has left, Chavele sits alone in the wood, left with her memories she murmurs the lidele: tra -la- la- la.

When my mother died, the world lost her strudel.

When my father died, the world lost the lidele: tra-la- la -la.

Our tradition tells of the Lamed Vov, the few righteous people, who balance the callousness and perversity of the world with acts of loving-kindness. My father was such a man. We will all miss him.
I will miss someone I could always depend on.
I will miss someone, who in his way, gave me the unconditional love only a parent can give his child.
.
Now, Dad, NOW your vacation begins.

When I first came to this land- I was not a wealthy man. Told my son- my work’s done. How the land was sweet and good and I did what I could.