Tag Archives: #jewishlife

Over the rainbow for “Wicked” witch Elphaba

The usual costumes on Purim are straight from Shushan—Esther, Mordechai, Ahasuerus, or even the bad guy Haman. But some people treat Purim like Halloween, choosing their favorite from a gamut of options. This year, if I went with the “Halloween” option, I would don a black cape, a black hat, and lots of green face makeup. Yes, I would be Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.

So why would I choose to dress up as one who would be considered in Jewish tradition as one of the Amalekites? The Wicked Witch of the West is one of the most evil characters in all of literature and, thanks to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, one of the most hated characters on the movie screen. It comes from my childhood love of the book by L. Frank Baum and my adult love for anything Wicked.

The Wizard of Oz began its almost forty-year annual run on CBS in 1956 when I was six years old. Like most children, I hated the Wicked Witch and the monkeys, but I loved Dorothy and her companions. Her rendition of “Over the Rainbow” is as of today my favorite song of all time. I watched the televised movie at least ten times.

Soon after I saw the movie, my parents gave me a hardcover copy of the book. I read it so many times that the cover fell off, and the pages became torn and dog-eared. While doing some research for this story, I failed to locate the exact edition I had treasured, but I compromised and bought an illustrated copy for my Kindle.

Oz fell by the wayside for many years. Gregory McGuire’s novel was creative but long and dark. I would stick to Baum’s original, if you please.

Then came Wicked. In the fall of 2004, my dear friend Melanie Bleich took a chartered bus down to Times Square. As was our tradition, we had lunch at Carmine’s. Then we headed to the Gershwin Theatre for the show. Kristen Chenowith had left her role as Glinda in July 2004, but Idina Menzel still had her role as Elphaba. The story, the costumes, but especially the music swept me away. Less than two years before we saw the show, doctors had diagnosed Melanie with non-smoker’s small cell lung cancer. She had already undergone surgery, chemo, and radiation. But that was a good day. When Elphaba and Glinda sang “For Good,” a song about friendship, I cried openly. Melanie passed away in May 2015 after a ten-year battle. To this day, when I hear the lyrics, “You’ll be with me, like a handprint on my heart,” I automatically put my hand on my own. I saw the stage version of Wickedtwo more times, once in Schenectady in 2009 and a second time in Denver in July 2024 with my Colorado family.

How does Larry feel about my passion for Wicked? He is still suffering from his experience of seeing The Wizard of Oz at the movies when he was four years old. Grudgingly, he joined me twice to see the play. And he certainly didn’t share my excitement about the news that a movie version would hit the theaters on November 24, 2024.

Being the wonderful husband that he is, Larry agreed to go with me soon after its Thanksgiving Day opening. We settled into our seats with a huge bucket of popcorn, got through all the previews and then VOILA! The film begins by shedding light on why Elphaba was “greenified.” About ten minutes in, the opening credits flashed on the screen. Wicked. Part One. Larry literally shouted out loud, “PART ONE! You dragged me to a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and it’s only PART ONE?”

I loved it. Larry conceded he enjoyed it more than the play. It took a full year for us to return to Wicked: For Good. (I promised Larry that there would not be a Part Three.) As always, I cried when the two leads sang “For Good.” Larry cried for happy because it was over.

For weeks after seeing the movie, I was totally obsessed with the music. Alexa dutifully played songs from the movie; I scoured the internet for clips related to both the stage and movie versions, including several versions of “For Good” sung by children, various choruses, and even Cantor Avi Schwartz and Julie Benko. Not surprisingly, I play “For Good,” “Defying Gravity,” and “Over the Rainbow” on the piano more than any other sheet music I own.

So yes, Elphaba would be my Purim costume of choice, my character of choice. Unlike the one portrayed by Margaret Hamilton (a former teacher who loved children and appeared on Mister Rogers Neighbor to assure children she was not the person in the 1939 movie), Elphaba is a misunderstood outcast whose intelligence, independent spirit, and strong drive to do what is right leads her to her own happy ending. May she always defy gravity!

Photo of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz book cover, May 17, 1900. W.W. Denslow, author. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. W.W. Denslow.

Larry, Sylvie, Marilyn and Julie at Wicked at the Buell Theatre, Denver, Colorado, on July 25, 2024.

From boy to man: Jewish lay leader impresses his congregants…

Should I stay? Or should I go? A Passover dilemma

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As we prepare to celebrate Passover, I contemplate my ancestors’ flight out of Egypt. If the Exodus happened today, I am not sure if I would ever make it out of Egypt.

According to the midrash, the Pharoh commanded the Israelites to leave immediately following the tenth plague. As we all know, they had so little time that the bread had no time to rise. As a woman who loves to bake challah, I could live with whipping up the dough and foregoing the rising process. As long as I had butter and raspberry preserves matzoh would work until the manna rained down. (Hopefully, mine would taste like vanilla ice cream.)

My first problem is that there is no way in the world I would have had time to pack.

Friends I know who pack the night before any trip would have done well that evening. Those carefree individuals would pull out their sachets, throw everything in, and figure they could pick up whatever else they needed at the closest desert oasis.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. I start filling my suitcase at least a week before scheduled departure, often packing and repacking several times. Too many shoes. Too few tops. Do I need a dress in the desert? And what about my denim jacket? I love pairing it with almost everything in my closet, but maybe a fleece would be more practical and take up less room. How in the world could I pull this off before we headed out?

Full disclosure: I don’t even leave my house for a few hours without packing enough for an overnight stay. Along with my essentials—wallet, iPhone, sunglasses, lipstick—I need to cover all my bases. A book. My notebook and a pen in case I get hit with a writing inspiration. A phone charger. A sweater or fleece in case I get cold. Shorts in case I get hot. My water bottle. A Quest bar in case I get hungry. I stuff more into my oversized handbag for a simple errand than the Israelites grabbed in the middle of the night.

Even if I’d managed to pack my bags and prepare the challah that turned into crackers, I would have had to dash back home for the items I’d forgotten. My phone. My keys. My sunglasses. No matter my preparation, I always leave something behind when departing. The Red Sea would already close by the time I made it to the shore. I would wave to everyone while watching all of Pharoh’s soldiers being drowned.

And could I ever have left my home in the first place?

According to scholars’ interpretation of Rashi’s comment, only one-fifth of the Israelites left Egypt. Eighty percent stayed put, out of fear of the unknown or feeling comfortable despite their inferior status in the kingdom. Eighty percent! But thinking about it, would I have been in the majority? Would I have given up freedom to stay put? Could I have left my familiar life and my stuff behind?

As Dan Schur writes in an April 22, 2022, article for the Jewish Journal, “the overwhelming majority of the children of Israel chose a compromised but familiar existence over the potential dangers that more dramatic and assertive actions might have brought.”

Could I leave my piano? My lanai that overlooks a pond? A house that brings me so much joy?

So, maybe I wouldn’t have left in the first place. I would have packed Larry some matzoh and lots of water, given him a kiss, and would have waved goodbye. Who knows? Maybe those 40 years of wandering would have somehow led him back to me.

Sources:

Newhouse, Alana. “The Jews who didn’t leave Egypt: A lesson from the past about choosing freedom over servitude. Tablet Magazine. April 14, 2022. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-jews-who-didnt-leave-egypt

Schur, Dan. “The Jews who stayed behind.” Jewish Journal. April 22, 2022. https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/347149/the-israelites-who-stayed-behind/

Should I stay or should I go? Too many packing decisions!

Remembrance and Legacy featured in Heritage!

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Christine DeSousa, my editor at the Heritage Florida Jewish News, wrote this article for the upcoming issue of the Orlando-based paper. Thanks so much, Christine! My book is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format as well as through IngramSpark.

“A tiny person with a big heart:” Losing our Bubbe on Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving has always been our favorite holiday. When we lived in Clifton Park, we celebrated for many years by running the Troy Turkey Trot in the morning and then joining the family for dinner at Larry’s cousins’ home in Argyle, New York. Our most memorable Thanksgiving was also our saddest. In 1974, two and a half months after we married, Larry’s beloved grandmother passed away.

Bubbe Rose was the matriarch of Larry’s family. Her tiny stature — she was under five feet and weighed less than one hundred pounds — belied her powerful presence. Everyone loved her.

Bubbe Rose was instrumental in making sure Larry and I got married. We had been seeing each other for a little over two months, but Bubbe was getting impatient and decided to intercede.

“So what is your relationship with this woman?” Bubbe Rose asked her only grandson.

“We’re dating,” Larry responded.

“You’ve dated long enough!” Bubbe said. “She’s a nice girl. Marry her.”

Fortunately for Bubbe, Larry and I didn’t waste much more time. We got engaged on Rosh Hashanah but waited to announce our plans after the Yom Kippur break-the-fast at the Shapiro’s Saratoga Springs home. As the holiday coincided that year with Larry’s father’s birthday, we held off until Ernie blew out the candles on his cake.

“I have a special present for you this year, Dad,” Larry said.

“Another stupid tie?” Larry’s sister Anita chimed in.

“No, I am giving you a daughter-in-law. Marilyn and I are engaged!” The family was thrilled, but no one was happier than Bubbe Rose.

Rose [née Slominsky] Hurwitz was born in 1894 in what the family believes was Russia. At a young age, she emigrated to the United States and settled in Syracuse. There she met and married Mose Hurwitz, a coal merchant. Their daughter (and my future mother-in-law) Doris was born in 1920; their son Asher was born eight years later. Rose was a true balabusta, a competent and skilled homemaker, and her home became the gathering place for family and friends for the Jewish holidays. Doris and Ernie were married in the Hurwitz living room on June 20, 1942.

Bubbe’s home in Syracuse remained the heart of the family throughout the next two decades. Immediately following their wedding, Ernie reported for duty at his army assignment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Doris joined him but returned to Syracuse to deliver their first child, Anita, a year later. Five years later now living in Schuylerville, New York, Doris returned to Syracuse for the birth of their second child, Larry. Mose died less than a year later, and Asher took over the coal business. In 1950, Ernie’s mother Celia died, making Rose their only surviving grandmother.

When Ernie was called back to service during the Korean War, Doris, along with the two children, waited out his return at Bubbe’s home. Once Ernie was discharged, the family moved to Saratoga Springs, where Ernie resumed his pre-military career running Shapiro’s of Schuylerville. Every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur was spent in Syracuse, along with frequent visits.

By the early sixties, Doris and Ernie had added two more children to their family: Marilyn in 1953 and Carole in 1959. Rather than Doris and Ernie packing up the six Shapiros for the drive to Syracuse, Bubbe Rose and Asher came to Saratoga Springs for most of the holidays and for at least one weekend a month. If the family couldn’t be in Syracuse, Bubbe and Asher brought Syracuse with them: baked goods from Snowflake Pastry Shoppe; white fish and cold cuts from one of the city’s kosher delis; and back issues of the Syracuse Herald-Journal so Doris could catch up with her hometown news.

Larry has two favorite stories about Bubbe’s legendary cooking skills. On March 29, 1959, Larry and Asher watched their beloved Syracuse Nationals defeat the Boston Celtics in the sixth game of the playoffs in the city’s War Memorial auditorium. (Unfortunately the Nats lost the critical seventh game, a loss Larry still remembers with regret.) The next day, Larry came down with the flu, necessitating his staying in Syracuse for the following week. Bubbe Rose believed that the only way to cure him was to feed him endlessly.

In 1971, Larry was accepted to graduate school at Syracuse University, and he moved in with Bubbe Rose and Asher. He probably did not weigh more than 126 pounds when he arrived. Along with breakfast and dinner, Bubbe insisted on packing him elaborate lunches, which Larry shared with his envious fellow students. In less than two months, he had gained sixteen pounds, some of the weight taken off before he graduated. By the time we met at a Purim party in March 1973, he had settled into his adult weight..

We were married on September 8, 1974. Bubbe Rose attended the wedding, looking beautiful in a long pink gown. On November 23, she suffered a stroke. Doris immediately went to Syracuse to be with her. As the week progressed, her condition worsened; by Wednesday, she was unconscious and unresponsive. On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, Larry and I drove to Syracuse to see her for what we knew was the last time. We walked into the hospital room, quietly shared with her that we were there, and told her how much we loved her. To our surprise, she reached out and gently touched our hands. Moments later, she passed away. In a strange way, we got to spend one last holiday with her—a holiday we will always remember.

Was Rose Hurwitz a remarkable woman? She did not write any books. She did not make any scientific discoveries. She was not a movie star. To her children and their siblings, however, she was as remarkable as anyone who had ever lived.

How do you honor a person who meant so much to you? You pass her story onto your children and grandchildren. You have a daughter, a granddaughter, and niece who all have the middle name of Rose. And you always remember that Thanksgiving Day when she touched your hand for the last time.

Bubbe Rose front and center at our wedding

Shapiro Publishes There Goes My Heart

Making a difference in the new year

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This article was originally written for Rosh Hashanah 5785 (September 2024). It may be a little late for the High Holy Days, but the message is also valuable as we begin the secular year of of 2025.

The High Holy Days is a time for us to turn inward, to reflect on our lives, not only where we have been but also where we hope to go in the coming year. So much of the world needs our help. What can one person do? How can one person make a difference?

In the Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon writes,“It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” That quote has been in my email signature for several years and serves as a reminder to me and those that read it that we can all can make a difference. No, we cannot save the world. But our inability to do EVERYTHING does not give us a pass on doing nothing.

This truth is found in the often-told starfish parable. An old man is walking along the beach in which hundreds of starfish have been washed along the shore during high tide. As he walked, he came across a little girl who is throwing the starfish back into the ocean. “You realize that you will not be able to make much of a difference,” the old man tells the little girl. She picked up another starfish and threw it as far into the water as she could. “I made a difference to that one.”

It reminds me of “starfish” moment. On a recent trip to the beach, Larry and I were walking along the edge of the water. As Larry was enjoying the waves and the birds, I was picking up garbage and sticking it in a plastic bag I brought with me for that purpose. A broken styrofoam cup. A short length of cord. A lone flipflop. And a dozen or so plastic caps from water bottles.

“You can’t pick up every bit of litter on the beach,” Larry said.

“Yes. But I can do something!”

Yes, Larry was right. I am not going to pick up every piece of litter on a beach. But I can at least fill up a plastic bag with some of it.

Giving away my freshly baked challahs also gives me a chance to do something . Early into the pandemic, I started baking three or four challahs a week. At least one of the challahs went to someone in our community who needed cheering. The first one went to a friend whose wife was in a memory unit at the hospital. Week after week, we delivered challahs to people who had lost their spouse, who faced illness; who got bad news from their families. My small challahs were small tokens of love and caring. My challah baking has slowed down in recent months, and I usually make extras to tuck in the freezer to pull out as needed. It just filled my need to do SOMETHING!

For the past ten years, my writing has been a way for me to feel as if I am making a difference. Initially my writing focused on my family stories. In the past eight years, I have become captivated by telling other people’s stories, the lives of Holocaust survivors. So much has been written already: fictional accounts, memoirs, graphic novels, poetry, plays. Many of have become classics: Elie Wiesel’s Night;Prima Levi’s Man’s Search for Meaning; William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. Then why do I continue to interview Holocaust survivors and their families?

Writing these stories allows me to do my part to make the world never forget. Each story is a statement against Holocaust denial. And having each story published has brought feelings of pride, comfort, and maybe some peace to the subjects and their family. Following Rabbi Tarfon’s advice, my inability to write everything doesn’t mean I cannot continue to do something.

And what happens when one person joins others to make a difference? Fortunately, I am surrounded by people in my 55+ community who are also doing their part to help people in the greater Poinciana area. Solivita has over 200 clubs, and many of them support the local community. The Do Unto Others Initiative (DUO) has raised over $260,000 in 11 years to support the work of the St. Rose of Lima Food Pantry. Another club, Solivita Friends Helping Those In NEED, provides similar support for St. Vincent de Paul St. Ann’s Food Pantry in Haines City. Solivita Friends of Elementary Education Schools (SoFEEs) provides nourishment, school supplies and seasonally appropriate clothing to local elementary schools. In the past nineteen years, Stonegate Women’s Golf Association (SWGA) has been able to provide over $300k to local community charities. The Solivita Performing Arts Council (SPAC, Inc.) has raised over $139,000 since its inception, providing grants to help local schools purchase and maintain instruments, fund band and choir concerts, produce school theatrical productions, fund thespian workshops and support art projects. SOLABILITY, a club consisting of individuals of varying abilities, provides activities accessible to all. Members of the Butterfly Club provide financial support for our beautiful butterfly garden; volunteers keep it weeded and in control. Our Book Circle, which has over 30 book clubs under its umbrella, donates books and financial help to Polk County Schools. The Shalom Club makes an annual contribution to the Perlman Food Pantry or Jewish organizations supporting local families. The organizations above represent only a small sample of ways individuals have joined together to help those in need.

So, yes, one person can make a difference. Wishes for a sweet, healthy 5785. May it be a year in which each of us make a difference.

Solivita’s butterfly garden

Published in Rosh Hashanah 2024 issues in Capital District New York’s The Jewish World and Orlando’s Heritage Florida Jewish News.

Solivita is a 55+ community for active adults in Poinciana, Florida.

“The Mother of Women’s Swimming:Charlotte “Eppy” Epstein

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O mermaid bold, long may you hold/ The wreath you’ve won by swimming,/And spoil for gents their arguments/ Regarding Votes for Wimmen! “To a Lady Swimmer,” William F. Kirk 1914.

I love to swim. So it is no surprise that I spent much of the first week of the 2024 Paris Olympics watching the swim competition. I cheered on Team USA as they won twenty-five medals in the thirty-nine events in the Paris La Défense Arena. As I yelled “Go! Go! Go!” at the screen during the 1500 freestyle, Katie Ledecky’s last race, my granddaughter admonished me. “Your screaming isn’t going to make a difference,” she said. Hey! Maybe it did! Ledecky won the fourteenth medal she had earned over four Olympics.

Ledecky, Torri Huske, Jenny Thompson, Dara Torres, Janet Evans, Donna de Varona, and every woman who dove into an Olympic pool has a Jewish woman to thank. Charlotte “Eppy” Epstein, considered the “Mother of Women’s Swimming in America,” was not an exceptional swimmer herself but believed that athletic competition was as important for women as it was for men. Her determination and leadership impacted not only the sport of swimming but also how women perceived their own bodies and their place in the world.

As Glenn Stout recounted in his 2009 book, Young Woman and the Sea, How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, until Epstein transformed women’s swimming, societal norms discouraged women from swimming or, in fact, from “breaking a sweat” anywhere but in the kitchen. Social bias against women’s participation in sports was the norm. This was best represented by Olympic founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France, who thought women’s competition in athletics was “physically dangerous for such delicate flowers and morally offensive.”

Even if they could get in the water, the standard female bathing costumes hindered women swimmers. Kristin Toussaint described them in a 2015 Boston Globe article: “black, knee-length, puffed-sleeved wool dresses worn over bloomers with long black stockings, bathing slippers, and even ribboned swim caps.” In 1907, Annette Kellerman, an Australian competitive swimmer and vaudeville star, was arrested for indecency by Massachusetts police for wearing a one-piece bathing suit that ended in shorts above her knees. “Kellerman may have been thoroughly covered,” Toussaint said, “but to her fellow bathers, she may as well have been naked.”

Epstein changed the narrative in 1914 when she founded the National Women’s Life Saving League, which offered the “delicate flowers” a place to swim and take lessons. Using negotiating skills she learned through her job as a court reporter, she convinced the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to permit women to register with their organization for the first time and to sponsor competitive women’s meets. According to Stout, Epstein worked “behind the scenes … extolling the advantages of having a women’s swim association managed by women while deftly praising the example set by the AAU as an organizing body without peer —essentially killing the organization and its male overseers with kindness.”

In 1917, she struck out on her own, creating the New York City Women’s Swimming Association (WSA) to further advance the sport. She successfully battled the United States Olympic Committee, enabling American female swimmers and divers to compete in the Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. Through her efforts, swimming dresses and bloomers were replaced with outfits closer in style to Annette Kellerman’s. The success of the American women’s swim team led to the inclusion of track and field and other sports for women in future Olympic Games.

Epstein served as the women’s swimming team manager for the 1920, 1924, and 1932 Olympics. Her swimmers and divers dominated the games, holding fifty-one world records over the course of her twenty-two years of coaching. Her protégées included Eleanor Holm, Aileen Riggin, Helen Wainwright, and Gertrude Ederle. Epstein also served as chair of the national AAU women’s swimming committee.

Her Jewish roots became part of her legacy. The WSA team swam at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association of New York for national championship meets in the 1920s. In 1935, Epstein served as chair of the swimming committee of the Second Maccabiah Games. In 1936, she refused to attend the Berlin Olympic Games and withdrew from the American Olympic Committee in protest of the United States’ participation in the “Nazi Olympics.”

During her lifetime, Epstein also used her position to battle for women’s suffrage, staging “suffrage swim races” with her teammates, and fought for further bathing suit reform, distance swims, and additional competitive events for women. She continued to have a major influence on swimming until her death in 1938, just short of her fifty-fourth birthday. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

“By motivating young women to follow their passions in a sport that did not yet fully accept them, Epstein truly changed the way women thought about swimming,” according to Women in Swimming (Betsey Bennett. “Charlotte Epstein and the Swimming Suffragettes.” Women in Swimming. October 25, 2018). “And her impact did not end in the pool; once women gained freedom over their bodies in sports, they were better able to achieve liberation in other facets of society.”

On Wednesday, July 31, after binging on a morning of Olympic events being broadcast on NBC, I headed for the small pool in our Colorado rental complex. I swam 1500 meters in over an hour, approximately four times Ledecky’s time of 15:30.02 minutes in Paris earlier that day. I may not be setting any world records, but I too am a beneficiary of efforts of the small Jewish powerhouse from Brooklyn. I did not fear being arrested for wearing a TYR swimsuit, and no one feared that this “delicate flower” could not survive the multiple laps. I tip my Speedo swim cap to you, Eppy!

In 2024, Disney+ released the film Young Woman and the Sea based on Glenn Stout’s 2009 book. The movie tells the story of Epstein’s most well-known protégé, Gertrude Ederle, the first woman who swam the English Channel. Sian Clifford, who played Epstein, said the movie is “a beautiful, inspiring story that should have been told before.”

“Charlotte Epstein serves as a symbol of the critical efforts of a Jewish sportswoman to improve the competitive opportunities and quest for physical emancipation of American women using their bodies in aquatic sports,” wrote Linda Borish in her 2004 paper. (“The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions … Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein, Gender and Jewish Identity, and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports.” The International Journal of the History of Sport_, Vol. 21, 2 (March 2004): 197-235.

All women swimmers—or all women athletes for that matter—have Eppy to thank.

Originally published August 16, 2024. Updated July 2025.

Note: First Place Winner, 2025 Florida Press Association’s Sports Feature Story, Category C (Small newspapers).

SOURCES

Borish, Linda. “The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein, Gender and Jewish Identity, and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports.” www.researchgate.net. March 2004.

“Charlotte ‘Eppy’ Epstein.” International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.Website: http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/Ch

Charlotte Epstein. Jewish Virtual Library. Website: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/epstein-charlotte

“Sian Clifford Spills Secrets on ‘Young Woman and the Sea’ at Premiere.” Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3sXvDepTr8

Stout, Glenn. Young Woman and the Sea, How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

Toussaint, Kristin. “This woman’s one-piece bathing suit got her arrested in 1907.” July 2, 2015. https://www.boston.com/news/history/2015/07/02/this-womans-one-piece-bathing-suit-got-her-arrested-in-1907/

Charlotte Epstein. Photo Credit: Robert SlaterGreat Jews in Sports, (New York, Jonathan David Publishers, Inc., 1983), p. 65.

Thank you, Eppy! Here I am doing the American crawl in our pool in Solivita!

What’s your resolution? White Rabbit vows to be on time.

Growing Up in Coney Island by Frances Cohen

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I have published this blog on September 1, 2024, what would have been Frances Cohen, my mother’s 107 birthday.

I spent most of my early childhood in Coney Island. I loved living in that special section in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, especially during the summer.

We did not have many of the conveniences that we have today. Rather than a refrigerator, we had an icebox. The iceman delivered ice every other day. We
had a pan under the ice box. When we forgot to empty the pan, there would be a
huge puddle on the floor. There were no supermarkets, just local grocers. Milk,which was not homogenized, was purchased from the grocer. It was stored in a large metal buckets and ladled out. As the ladle was often left out with the milk uncovered, flies and roaches swarmed around the bucket. Mice licked the ladle until they were chased away by the store’s resident cat. When we brought the milk home, the cream was on the top, and my mother would make whipped cream with a hand beater. I grew up before radios, washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers. Even toilet paper was yet to be invented. We used orange wrappers and pages from the Sears catalog.

I lived two blocks from the beach and the boardwalk. I loved to go swimming in the ocean and walking the boardwalk. We had two big amusement parks within walking distance, Luna Park and Steeplechase. I preferred Luna Park as it had a circus. It was such fun watching the clowns, the animals, and especially the men and women on the trapeze. Nearby was the famous Nathan’s hot dog stand, where we could buy a hot dog with sauerkraut for five cents.

As there were no televisions, we went to the movies every Saturday. For ten cents, we saw a double feature along with newsreels, a serial, and cartoons. We bought a penny’s worth of candy and enjoyed the entertainment. On rainy days, we stayed indoors, drawing pictures with crayons and reading books from the library. We did not have as many toys as our grandchildren and great grandchildren have today, so we improvised. My brother made a train out of drawers from my father’s Singer sewing machine.

As all little girls, I loved to play with dolls. My mother had bought me a small celluloid doll with moving arms and feet that I could even bathe. I wanted a new doll carriage, but we were in the midst of the Great Depression, and my parents could not afford to buy me one from the store. So, we became creative. A shoebox became my doll carriage. My mother made a hole at the end of the shoebox and put a string through it so I could pull the carriage. The top of the box became the hood. She also gave me scraps of material which I made into a pillow, a carriage cover, and clothing for my doll. With a child’s imagination, I thought that my doll and doll carriage were the most beautiful in the world.

It was convenient to live near the beach, but my neighborhood was not the best. It was all pavement—no flowers and no lawns. One summer, my second-grade teacher thought it would be a good summer project to learn how things grow. The last week of school, she had us bring in a small wooden cheese box and a small potato. She helped us put the dirt that she supplied into the bottom of the box. We cut up the potato, placed it in the dirt, and then covered the potato with more dirt. I placed the potato plant on the fire escape and watered it every day. In July, I was happy to see some green leaves. My parents and teacher had never told me that potatoes grow underground. So, when August arrived, I got so angry that no potatoes had grown on the leaves, I just dumped the plant. I was so surprised to find four little potatoes!

Looking back, I had a very happy childhood. Although we did not have much money, I never felt deprived!