Mark Klempner's Blog
August 26, 2018
One Hand, One Heart: Meeting Leonard Bernstein
Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein. To celebrate, I posted a piece on facebook about the time I met him when I was a seventeen-year-old street busker in Cambridge. I am now posting it here also.
One Hand, One Heart: Meeting Leonard Bernstein
by Mark Klempner
As the world celebrates Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year, I am reminded of my own encounter with the great composer and conductor. His affirmation of my musical abilities was a vital counterforce to the doubts and insecurities I struggled with as a teenager.
The year was 1973 and I was trying out for the electric guitar part in a Harvard production of West Side Story. Not that I went to Harvard. On the contrary, I was a ragamuffin street singer who busked by day and sang in coffeehouses by night. A few months earlier, I’d abandoned my suburban life in Niskayuna, New York, and run off to Boston to try to be a musician.
In a way, I was fleeing a burning building. My mother was on the verge of a psychotic break, which occurred later that year when I returned home for Thanksgiving. My father, tough Holocaust survivor that he was, became even more closed down as my mother slipped into schizophrenia. Even when things had been less grim, my father's relentless demands that I forget about music and concentrate on getting my grades up in high school made me dig into the opposite position.
The night I told him about my Boston plans, he completely lost it. “You’ll starve on the streets!” he yelled, his face flushed with anger, the arteries in his neck bulging. “And when it happens, don’t come to me for help.”
In response, I dragged my amp and electric guitar down into the clutter of the basement and started playing searing guitar solos at maximum volume. I could barely stand the sound myself, but within seconds I got the reaction I wanted. My father came stomping down the basement stairs and lunged at me, trying to stop the din. I danced out of his grasp, hitting staccato blues notes rapid-fire that came at him like sonic bullets.
He finally yanked the black power cord, and the room became oddly silent except for our labored breathing. He trudged up the stairs without another word, and I, stunned that for the first time we had almost come to blows, quietly determined to leave home as soon as possible.
I chose Boston because it was a place I'd never been, and I heard it had a vibrant music scene. I ruled out New York City because I had many relatives there, mostly Orthodox Jews, whom I might turn to in desperation but who would try to get me to listen to my father. In Boston I had only one sort-of friend: a boy who had graduated from my high school two years earlier, who said I could crash on his couch.
Once in Boston, I noticed an ad in The Globe announcing open orchestra auditions for West Side Story, plus a spot for one electric guitarist. I felt that the part had my name all over it because I’d listened to the soundtrack so many times that I knew I could play it by ear. Never mind that I could barely read music. At the audition I had just enough sight-reading skill to recognize the solo I was asked to perform—after which I played it flawlessly. A couple of weeks later I was notified that I got the gig.
Soon I was sitting in the dark orchestra pit with my Les Paul guitar, Fender amp, and a look of consternation on my face. Surrounded by classical players, I would have felt out of my element anyway, but these were super-achieving Harvard kids who made no effort to disguise their indifference to my presence. But the biggest challenge I faced was simply playing the music in front of me.
The guitar part, in addition to its complex polyrhythms, contained notations written so high up on the staff that they might as well have been a flock of birds flying over it. I tried to figure them out, but when that proved too difficult, I simply started to play what I thought sounded good. I was hoping that the musical director wouldn't bust me, but I never dreamed that Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, would begin showing up at rehearsals.
Bernstein was on campus that year to deliver the Norton Lectures, but he also took an interest in the production. To be anywhere near Bernstein was thrilling, but I worried that his legendary ears would surely detect my jerry-rigged approach to his music. Would he call me out—even banish me from the production?
I often saw him talking to the musical director, but several rehearsals had passed and I still had the gig. I wondered if Bernstein was too busy discussing other issues to worry about the guitarist. Or perhaps he just hadn’t gotten around to me yet.
Yet, after two-and-a-half months of rehearsal, I was still there. The musical opened and had a two-week run, playing to full houses and receiving an enthusiastic review in The Globe. Jubilantly, I walked across campus to the cast party following the final performance.
It was a nippy spring night. I reached the hall, its tall, mullioned windows illuminated in the darkness. Scanning the high-ceilinged room, we soon spotted Bernstein, with his silver hair, high cheekbones, and enchanting smile. Despite my lingering anxiety, I could not help but draw closer.
“Marx was right,” Bernstein was saying, his brow furrowed. “Money is the root of all evil!” He then took a vigorous toke from a joint and gazed hard at his interlocutor, a man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches. I was shocked to see Bernstein smoking pot; my image of him from TV’s “Concerts for Young People” instantly evaporated.
“Nonsense,” the tight-lipped man countered. “You of all people must realize that man’s lust and aggression are a product of his own psyche. It’s Freud, not Marx, you should be quoting.”
As the tension between them grew, Bernstein turned and looked at me. To my surprise, he beamed and waved me closer, extending his arm to part the circle of people surrounding him.
“You’re a good guitarist,” he said, offering me a firm handshake.
I felt so relieved that I almost hugged him. Here was the great maestro who had composed the marvelous music I’d loved since early childhood. And he had affirmed my talent, despite my father’s negative messages, despite my difficulties reading music, and despite my scruffy look—jeans and denim jacket—among all the evening gowns and fine suits.
He asked me my name, and wanted to know what I was studying. I told him that I wasn’t in school but had come to Boston to play music. He arched his eyebrow as if wanting to know more, so I told him that besides playing guitar, I also wrote songs.
“What kind of songs?” he asked.
“Impressionistic.”
He cocked his head, intrigued but quizzical.
“What do you mean impressionistic?” His eyes, although bloodshot from the pot and the late hour, were scrutinizing me now with full attention.
I knew that I was using the word in my own particular way and that I might not be using it correctly. I inwardly sighed, regretting that he wasn’t stoned enough to have lost more of his critical faculties.
“Songs that paint pictures of my impressions of life,” I replied in my spaced-out seventeen-year-old way.
He gave a nod, and his eyes flashed. When he put his hand on my shoulder, it felt like a benediction.
I never saw Bernstein again, but every moment of our encounter remains engraved in my mind. I held onto his compliment about my being a good guitarist like a talisman.
Years passed, and in therapy I learned how to tune out my inner critic, born of my father's put-downs and dire predictions. I was also able to shed the dark fearful worldview I'd absorbed from my parents. Eventually I developed compassion for them.
As my life as a musician unfolded, my self-confidence grew with each positive experience I had playing live gigs and studio sessions. Along the way, I realized that my feelings of having been an imposter during those West Side Story days stemmed from a deficiency that didn’t matter outside the classical world. All the producers I worked with were happy to have me infuse my own creativity into the performance. In light of that, Bernstein's compliment seemed all the more precious. He had praised me for the guitar part I'd improvised, not for the part as he’d written it.
When Bernstein passed away in 1990, I was living a busy life as a musician in Los Angeles. My heart gave a tug as I thought of that night we'd met. He had taken the skinny, bedraggled teenager standing in front of him seriously. I felt unmistakably that he was on my side and wanted me to succeed. He was right there with me, and he cared.
© 2018 Mark Klempner.
One Hand, One Heart: Meeting Leonard Bernstein
by Mark Klempner
As the world celebrates Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year, I am reminded of my own encounter with the great composer and conductor. His affirmation of my musical abilities was a vital counterforce to the doubts and insecurities I struggled with as a teenager.
The year was 1973 and I was trying out for the electric guitar part in a Harvard production of West Side Story. Not that I went to Harvard. On the contrary, I was a ragamuffin street singer who busked by day and sang in coffeehouses by night. A few months earlier, I’d abandoned my suburban life in Niskayuna, New York, and run off to Boston to try to be a musician.
In a way, I was fleeing a burning building. My mother was on the verge of a psychotic break, which occurred later that year when I returned home for Thanksgiving. My father, tough Holocaust survivor that he was, became even more closed down as my mother slipped into schizophrenia. Even when things had been less grim, my father's relentless demands that I forget about music and concentrate on getting my grades up in high school made me dig into the opposite position.
The night I told him about my Boston plans, he completely lost it. “You’ll starve on the streets!” he yelled, his face flushed with anger, the arteries in his neck bulging. “And when it happens, don’t come to me for help.”
In response, I dragged my amp and electric guitar down into the clutter of the basement and started playing searing guitar solos at maximum volume. I could barely stand the sound myself, but within seconds I got the reaction I wanted. My father came stomping down the basement stairs and lunged at me, trying to stop the din. I danced out of his grasp, hitting staccato blues notes rapid-fire that came at him like sonic bullets.
He finally yanked the black power cord, and the room became oddly silent except for our labored breathing. He trudged up the stairs without another word, and I, stunned that for the first time we had almost come to blows, quietly determined to leave home as soon as possible.
I chose Boston because it was a place I'd never been, and I heard it had a vibrant music scene. I ruled out New York City because I had many relatives there, mostly Orthodox Jews, whom I might turn to in desperation but who would try to get me to listen to my father. In Boston I had only one sort-of friend: a boy who had graduated from my high school two years earlier, who said I could crash on his couch.
Once in Boston, I noticed an ad in The Globe announcing open orchestra auditions for West Side Story, plus a spot for one electric guitarist. I felt that the part had my name all over it because I’d listened to the soundtrack so many times that I knew I could play it by ear. Never mind that I could barely read music. At the audition I had just enough sight-reading skill to recognize the solo I was asked to perform—after which I played it flawlessly. A couple of weeks later I was notified that I got the gig.
Soon I was sitting in the dark orchestra pit with my Les Paul guitar, Fender amp, and a look of consternation on my face. Surrounded by classical players, I would have felt out of my element anyway, but these were super-achieving Harvard kids who made no effort to disguise their indifference to my presence. But the biggest challenge I faced was simply playing the music in front of me.
The guitar part, in addition to its complex polyrhythms, contained notations written so high up on the staff that they might as well have been a flock of birds flying over it. I tried to figure them out, but when that proved too difficult, I simply started to play what I thought sounded good. I was hoping that the musical director wouldn't bust me, but I never dreamed that Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, would begin showing up at rehearsals.
Bernstein was on campus that year to deliver the Norton Lectures, but he also took an interest in the production. To be anywhere near Bernstein was thrilling, but I worried that his legendary ears would surely detect my jerry-rigged approach to his music. Would he call me out—even banish me from the production?
I often saw him talking to the musical director, but several rehearsals had passed and I still had the gig. I wondered if Bernstein was too busy discussing other issues to worry about the guitarist. Or perhaps he just hadn’t gotten around to me yet.
Yet, after two-and-a-half months of rehearsal, I was still there. The musical opened and had a two-week run, playing to full houses and receiving an enthusiastic review in The Globe. Jubilantly, I walked across campus to the cast party following the final performance.
It was a nippy spring night. I reached the hall, its tall, mullioned windows illuminated in the darkness. Scanning the high-ceilinged room, we soon spotted Bernstein, with his silver hair, high cheekbones, and enchanting smile. Despite my lingering anxiety, I could not help but draw closer.
“Marx was right,” Bernstein was saying, his brow furrowed. “Money is the root of all evil!” He then took a vigorous toke from a joint and gazed hard at his interlocutor, a man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches. I was shocked to see Bernstein smoking pot; my image of him from TV’s “Concerts for Young People” instantly evaporated.
“Nonsense,” the tight-lipped man countered. “You of all people must realize that man’s lust and aggression are a product of his own psyche. It’s Freud, not Marx, you should be quoting.”
As the tension between them grew, Bernstein turned and looked at me. To my surprise, he beamed and waved me closer, extending his arm to part the circle of people surrounding him.
“You’re a good guitarist,” he said, offering me a firm handshake.
I felt so relieved that I almost hugged him. Here was the great maestro who had composed the marvelous music I’d loved since early childhood. And he had affirmed my talent, despite my father’s negative messages, despite my difficulties reading music, and despite my scruffy look—jeans and denim jacket—among all the evening gowns and fine suits.
He asked me my name, and wanted to know what I was studying. I told him that I wasn’t in school but had come to Boston to play music. He arched his eyebrow as if wanting to know more, so I told him that besides playing guitar, I also wrote songs.
“What kind of songs?” he asked.
“Impressionistic.”
He cocked his head, intrigued but quizzical.
“What do you mean impressionistic?” His eyes, although bloodshot from the pot and the late hour, were scrutinizing me now with full attention.
I knew that I was using the word in my own particular way and that I might not be using it correctly. I inwardly sighed, regretting that he wasn’t stoned enough to have lost more of his critical faculties.
“Songs that paint pictures of my impressions of life,” I replied in my spaced-out seventeen-year-old way.
He gave a nod, and his eyes flashed. When he put his hand on my shoulder, it felt like a benediction.
I never saw Bernstein again, but every moment of our encounter remains engraved in my mind. I held onto his compliment about my being a good guitarist like a talisman.
Years passed, and in therapy I learned how to tune out my inner critic, born of my father's put-downs and dire predictions. I was also able to shed the dark fearful worldview I'd absorbed from my parents. Eventually I developed compassion for them.
As my life as a musician unfolded, my self-confidence grew with each positive experience I had playing live gigs and studio sessions. Along the way, I realized that my feelings of having been an imposter during those West Side Story days stemmed from a deficiency that didn’t matter outside the classical world. All the producers I worked with were happy to have me infuse my own creativity into the performance. In light of that, Bernstein's compliment seemed all the more precious. He had praised me for the guitar part I'd improvised, not for the part as he’d written it.
When Bernstein passed away in 1990, I was living a busy life as a musician in Los Angeles. My heart gave a tug as I thought of that night we'd met. He had taken the skinny, bedraggled teenager standing in front of him seriously. I felt unmistakably that he was on my side and wanted me to succeed. He was right there with me, and he cared.
© 2018 Mark Klempner.
June 5, 2016
Holocaust Rescuers and Our Digital Age
Recently the grandson of Kees Veenstra, one of the Holocaust rescuers I feature in my book, contacted me by email and explained that he is the youngest grandson and did not get to know his grandfather very well because he was still quite young when Kees died.
He said he had read my book and got a lot out of the chapter about Kees, but he wondered if it might be possible to go a step further and listen to the interview recordings.
I told him I would be more than happy to try to make that happen, but that I had donated all my interviews with the rescuers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).
I told him that I would get in touch with USHMM and see if I could arrange to get him access to the interview tapes of his grandfather.
I had forgotten the librarian's name who runs the archive at USHMM, so I googled my name and the name of Kees Veenstra thinking that would bring up the information I'd need to track down the archivist.
To my amazement, it not only brought up that info but right at the top of the page there was a button to push that would enable any visitor to listen to my interview with Kees Veenstra!
Apparently all the interviews have been digitized and they are all available on the USHMM website, accessible with a click or two by anyone in the world with access to the Internet.
It is instances like this that make me really appreciate living in this digital age.
Here is the link, if you'd like to check it out:
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/c...
He said he had read my book and got a lot out of the chapter about Kees, but he wondered if it might be possible to go a step further and listen to the interview recordings.
I told him I would be more than happy to try to make that happen, but that I had donated all my interviews with the rescuers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).
I told him that I would get in touch with USHMM and see if I could arrange to get him access to the interview tapes of his grandfather.
I had forgotten the librarian's name who runs the archive at USHMM, so I googled my name and the name of Kees Veenstra thinking that would bring up the information I'd need to track down the archivist.
To my amazement, it not only brought up that info but right at the top of the page there was a button to push that would enable any visitor to listen to my interview with Kees Veenstra!
Apparently all the interviews have been digitized and they are all available on the USHMM website, accessible with a click or two by anyone in the world with access to the Internet.
It is instances like this that make me really appreciate living in this digital age.
Here is the link, if you'd like to check it out:
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/c...
September 11, 2013
Review of Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Family Moskat"
I'm finally done with Isaac Bashevis Singer's 600+ page novel The Family Moskat. I suppose any novel set in Poland about Jewish people that ends just before World War II has got to be tragic but Singer's is tragedy within tragedy within tragedy. The lives of most of the people, even before the outer threats, are tragic, even the deeply religious people who are sustained by their inner faith see the traditions they have known and loved being undermined or dismantled due to new patterns of thought that are sweeping Europe.
All the marriages are unhappy or become unhappy, the main character, Asa Heschel, is deeply flawed and never actualizes his potential and acts like a mensch only sporadically, despite the fact that he is gifted with an immense intellect and spiritual sensitivity.
Unlike Tolstoy, Singer even makes all of his simple folk pathetic, such as the drunken peasant who comes home and beats his wife, or the petty thieves and prostitutes. There really is no redemption in this novel, as Singer is fully aware, for he ends it with the lines, "Death is the Messiah. That's the real truth."
And yet, even with this plot drenched in melancholy, Singer has written a great novel. I would call it great simply on the merit of its scope and breadth. Very few novelists would have the ambition to even attempt to write such a sweeping, historically demanding novel, and only a rare few could pull it off.
And Singer does pull it off: he creates a seamless fictional world in which dozens of characters live, each character with a distinct way of talking, thinking, behaving.
And in the background, history grinds on, history that Singer handles no less expertly than his characters. Nor does he neglect the natural world: hundreds of descriptive passages are sprinkled throughout the book that vividly render the fields, forests, skies, landscapes etc. of Poland, as well as the marketplace, streets, parks, restaurants, shops, sidewalks, and all the other varied features of Warsaw.
Each description is plain enough to not distract, yet rich enough to evoke a striking multisensory image. As a craftsman, Singer is a master at providing the significant detail and making each setting feel real, not just a backdrop for the plot to unfold.
And the plot, also, is full of twists and turns, occasional suspense, and quite a bit of drama. Like "War and Peace," it contains love stories, war stories, and many subplots. It contains just enough seemingly random happenings to make the reader feel that that this is exactly the way real life proceeds, and, indeed, Singer is a master of realism.
If you like historical fiction, want to learn about pre-WWII Jewry in Poland, want to understand the environment in Poland before the Nazis invaded, Singer delivers the goods. But beyond all that, his novel transcends its time and place, albeit not as profoundly as the masterworks of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but excitingly close considering that he was an author who was with us right up until the 1990s.
All the marriages are unhappy or become unhappy, the main character, Asa Heschel, is deeply flawed and never actualizes his potential and acts like a mensch only sporadically, despite the fact that he is gifted with an immense intellect and spiritual sensitivity.
Unlike Tolstoy, Singer even makes all of his simple folk pathetic, such as the drunken peasant who comes home and beats his wife, or the petty thieves and prostitutes. There really is no redemption in this novel, as Singer is fully aware, for he ends it with the lines, "Death is the Messiah. That's the real truth."
And yet, even with this plot drenched in melancholy, Singer has written a great novel. I would call it great simply on the merit of its scope and breadth. Very few novelists would have the ambition to even attempt to write such a sweeping, historically demanding novel, and only a rare few could pull it off.
And Singer does pull it off: he creates a seamless fictional world in which dozens of characters live, each character with a distinct way of talking, thinking, behaving.
And in the background, history grinds on, history that Singer handles no less expertly than his characters. Nor does he neglect the natural world: hundreds of descriptive passages are sprinkled throughout the book that vividly render the fields, forests, skies, landscapes etc. of Poland, as well as the marketplace, streets, parks, restaurants, shops, sidewalks, and all the other varied features of Warsaw.
Each description is plain enough to not distract, yet rich enough to evoke a striking multisensory image. As a craftsman, Singer is a master at providing the significant detail and making each setting feel real, not just a backdrop for the plot to unfold.
And the plot, also, is full of twists and turns, occasional suspense, and quite a bit of drama. Like "War and Peace," it contains love stories, war stories, and many subplots. It contains just enough seemingly random happenings to make the reader feel that that this is exactly the way real life proceeds, and, indeed, Singer is a master of realism.
If you like historical fiction, want to learn about pre-WWII Jewry in Poland, want to understand the environment in Poland before the Nazis invaded, Singer delivers the goods. But beyond all that, his novel transcends its time and place, albeit not as profoundly as the masterworks of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but excitingly close considering that he was an author who was with us right up until the 1990s.
April 2, 2013
Isaac Bashevis Singer's Descriptions of People
I have been noticing what marvelous descriptions Isaac Singer provides of fictional people. Unless he had a phenomenal memory, I can't imagine that he came up with these descriptions while sitting at his desk....my guess is that he tried in his notebooks to describe people he saw in real life, and then assigned some of those descriptions to the characters in his novels.
Example from Enemies, A Love Story:
I heard that Singer would often sit in a cafeteria on the lower East Side (or West Side, not sure) for hours each day, sometimes writing, sometimes reading, sometimes visiting with people whom he knew or who recognized him and came over to chat with him. I bet that was where he did these literary sketches of people.
I had to be on public busses a lot today and I took out my notebook and tried to do a literary sketch of the person in front of me. I filled three pages just from looking at the back of this person. I am going to try to remember to do at least one of these sketches whenever I take a bus; I could feel that it was sharpening up my powers of observation and my ability to describe what I observed. And who knows, maybe I'll use part of one of these sketches when I someday need to describe someone in a novel.
Example from Enemies, A Love Story:
Next to her stood a tiny man wearing a felt hat with a feather in it, a checked jacket that was too light for a cold wintry day, a pink shirt, striped trousers, tan shoes, and a tie that was a mixture of yellow, red, and green. He appearly outlandishly comical, as if he had just flown in from a hot climate and hadn't had time to change his clothes. His head was long and narrow and he had a hooked nose, sunken cheeks, and a pointed chin. His dark eyes had a humorous expression, as if the visit he was making was nothing more than a joke.
I heard that Singer would often sit in a cafeteria on the lower East Side (or West Side, not sure) for hours each day, sometimes writing, sometimes reading, sometimes visiting with people whom he knew or who recognized him and came over to chat with him. I bet that was where he did these literary sketches of people.
I had to be on public busses a lot today and I took out my notebook and tried to do a literary sketch of the person in front of me. I filled three pages just from looking at the back of this person. I am going to try to remember to do at least one of these sketches whenever I take a bus; I could feel that it was sharpening up my powers of observation and my ability to describe what I observed. And who knows, maybe I'll use part of one of these sketches when I someday need to describe someone in a novel.
February 11, 2013
Gisela is a Great Grandmother!
Those of you who have read my book will be happy to learn that Gisela Söhnlein, who helped to rescue hundreds of Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, has just emailed me with the news that she has become a great grandmother. It truly amazes me that this woman who spent almost a year in a concentration camp and had for the five years of the war and the time leading up to it lived in a world where the future looked so bleak, has lived to be ninety-two and reached this happy and rare milestone. Mazel tov Gisela!
January 24, 2013
Isaac Bashevis Singer Festival, Part 2
About two thirds through "Short Friday," a slim book of I.B. Singer's short stories, I came upon "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy." This story, which takes up just 24 pages of the mass-market paperback, was the basis for an entire feature film. And it won an Oscar too. I makes me marvel at the short story form . . . how much can be done with so few words.
I've started reading Singer's novel "The Slave" and notice the pace is a lot slower and there is much more description, both of the characters and the settings. This is fine but it doesn't necessarily make it better than the short stories. Which makes me wonder why Singer chose to turn some of his ideas into novels and others into short stories.
It would seem that a more complex story that takes place over a longer time would require a novel. And yet "Yentl" is quite complex and takes place over a period of several years. Some of Singer's short stories span decades. I really love the short story form because it cuts away everything unessential. The benefit of novels, though, is that when the reader is wishing the story wouldn't end, it doesn't—at least not so soon.
I've started reading Singer's novel "The Slave" and notice the pace is a lot slower and there is much more description, both of the characters and the settings. This is fine but it doesn't necessarily make it better than the short stories. Which makes me wonder why Singer chose to turn some of his ideas into novels and others into short stories.
It would seem that a more complex story that takes place over a longer time would require a novel. And yet "Yentl" is quite complex and takes place over a period of several years. Some of Singer's short stories span decades. I really love the short story form because it cuts away everything unessential. The benefit of novels, though, is that when the reader is wishing the story wouldn't end, it doesn't—at least not so soon.
January 15, 2013
My Isaac Bashevis Singer Festival
I'm continuing my private Isaac Bashevis Singer festival because every time I read a story of his, it speaks uncannily to what I've been thinking, feeling, or going through. Read three short story collections ( "Short Friday," "Crown of Feathers", "The Spinoza of Market Street") now on to a novel, "The Slave."
He came from the same town in Poland as my paternal grandmother and they knew each other as children, in fact, I think he came to her house for cheder (religious lessons) at one point. She carried on a correspondence with him in Yiddish. Good reason for me to learn Yiddish.
More than any other writer I know, he's able to bring to life the pre-WWII Jewish community. However, I also the stories set in New York, as well as those set in Israel.
I wish I could have met him while he was still with us! Yet his literary works throb with life and I feel his spirit as I read them.
He came from the same town in Poland as my paternal grandmother and they knew each other as children, in fact, I think he came to her house for cheder (religious lessons) at one point. She carried on a correspondence with him in Yiddish. Good reason for me to learn Yiddish.
More than any other writer I know, he's able to bring to life the pre-WWII Jewish community. However, I also the stories set in New York, as well as those set in Israel.
I wish I could have met him while he was still with us! Yet his literary works throb with life and I feel his spirit as I read them.
