A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-February, 1988 | Thought Catalog

A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-February, 1988 | Thought Catalog

Wednesday Night in Williamsburg: Mark Wholesale, Inc. Ribbon-Cutting Celebration at the Lot on Rodney Street and Broadway

Coming home from the concert at East River Park, as we got off the J train at Marcy Street, we heard klezmer music, and as we turned onto Rodney Street just north of Broadway, just behind where we're currently living, we saw a gorgeously decorated party at the vacant lot.

A poster at the entrance described this private party for VIPs as a "ribbon cutting" and names Mark Wholesale, Inc., which has its business on Bedford Avenue, so I guess they're opening something here. Cool.

There was a lavish display of lights, liquor and food under a big white party tent, and Hasidic men were gathering at small tables in front of it. Soulful klezmer music was playing, and a man with a sweet voice sung lulling songs in Yiddish. We stared from behind the chain link fence and listened to the pleasant, highly amplified music. The smell of seared beef - filet mignon? - made even a vegetarian a little swoony, so we left after a while of being outside, listening in.

Even as we write this at 10:30 p.m., from our bedroom, which faces South 5th Street, we can still hear the party band playing klezmer.

Sunday Afternoon in Chinatown: Eleventh Annual Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival at the Museum at Eldridge Street

This afternoon we were in Chinatown to attend the jam-packed eleventh annual Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival.

We were there in 2007 and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at the event sponsored by the Museum at Eldridge Street, based in the historic synagogue at 12 Eldridge Street near Canal Street.

Last year over 8,000 people attended, but the streets of the Lower East Side/Chinatown have traditionally been wall-to-wall people, though not always having as much fun as they did today.

On the street, there was mah jongg play and lessons by veterans of the game from the Project Open Door Senior Center on nearby Grand Street and by MAES Friends.

As a kid in the 1950s we grew up thinking mah jongg was a Jewish game. Six years ago, when we were living in the Paradise Valley section of Phoenix, a group of Jewish ladies from our condo played every Wednesday afternoon at the cafe of Borders Bookstore across the street from us on Cactus Drive.

We arrived at the end of the first set by the truly great klezmer musician Ray Musiker.

We've seen Ray perform here before. He's still at the top of his form. Last month, at the Brooklyn Public Library tribute to Dave Tarras, we mentioned our love for the innovative klezmer album Tanz!, featuring Ray's brother Sam Musiker (married to our grandmother's cousin Brauny) and Sam's father-in-law Dave Tarras (married to our beloved great-great-aunt Shifra), and of course Ray himself.

City Councilmember Margaret Chin honored Ray Musiker with a plaque for his longtime service to the community and this long-running festival.

She also gave an award to the Museum of Eldridge Street, which has done great work for the community at the restored synagogue.

Following the Ray Musiker Klezmer Ensemble was a great performance by several members of the EastRiver Ensemble, a collective of top-notched musicians from north China, based in Chinatown just a few blocks away from here, which performs under the auspices of the Mencius Society for the Arts.

Drawing upon the timeless folk repertoire of the Hebei and Donbei regions of China, EastRiver plays traditional music with flair.


Unlike other Chinese ensembles, EastRiver is uniquely led by the yangqin, a Chinese version of the hammered dulcimer which showcases the beauty and precision of this music.

There were lots of folk activities from the two cultures for both adults and kids, including yarmulke making, Chinese brush painting, Chinese papermaking and paper folding and Jewish papercutting, Chinese knot tying and tzitzit tying, and more, although we were disappointed there was no math tutoring.



There was the traditional singing table, of course.

Then there was the inevitable, and as far as we know, nontraditional, face painting.

Kids also learned to make Chinese and Jewish dumplings

of the dim sum and kreplach varieties.


On the block, at 12 Eldridge Street, we passed the Buddhist Association of New York, where a worship service was underway.

We were on our way to catch a street performance by the fabulous Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars band, justly appreciated by the many tall music lovers in front of us.

Four years ago, when we last saw Sifu Ken Lo, the martial arts master and all-around genius, we learned a lot about both Chinese calligraphy and Cha Dao (the Art of Tea).

Today we caught him teaching both, but here he is upstairs in the Orthodox synagogue's women's balcony, enlightening us on the mysteries of our favorite beverage.

He handed this young man a cup of tea and explained to pour it into the smaller cup and then smell the original cup.

Downstairs, Mark Sommerstein was giving Yiddish lessons. Farshtaist? It may be a legend, but we used to hear of old-style Cantonese restaurants in Brooklyn with Chinese waiters who spoke fluent Yiddish.

We heard most of a talk about the synagogue's history in the magnificent sanctuary, which we've explored before today.
Here's the Wikipedia version of its history:

The Eldridge Street Synagogue is the first synagogue erected in the United States by Eastern European Jews. One of the founders was Rabbi Eliahu the Blessed (Borok), formerly the Head Rabbi of St. Petersburg, Russia. It opened at 12 Eldridge Street in New York's Lower East Side in 1887 serving Congregation Kahal Adath Jeshurun. The building was designed by the architects Peter and Francis William Herter, (but unrelated to the Herter Brothers cabinet-makers). The brothers subsequently received many commissions in the Lower East Side and incorporated elements from the synagogue, such as the stars of David, in their buildings, mainly tenements.[3] When completed, the synagogue was reviewed in the local press. Writers marveled at the imposing Moorish Revival building, with its 70-foot-high vaulted ceiling, magnificent stained-glass rose windows, elaborate brass fixtures and hand-stenciled walls.

Thousands participated in religious services in the building's heyday, from its opening through the 1920s. On High Holidays, police were stationed in the street to control the crowds. Rabbis of the congregation included the famed Rabbi Abraham Aharon Yudelovich, author of many works of Torah scholarship. Throughout these decades the Synagogue functioned not only as a house of worship but as an agency for acculturation, a place to welcome new Americans. Before the settlement houses were established and long afterward, poor people could come to be fed, secure a loan, learn about job and housing opportunities, and make arrangements to care for the sick and the dying. The Synagogue was, in this sense, a mutual aid society.

For fifty years, the Eldridge Street Synagogue flourished. Then membership began to dwindle as members moved to other areas, immigration quotas limited the number of new arrivals, and the Great Depression affected the congregants' fortunes. The exquisite main sanctuary was used less and less from the 1930s on. By the 1950s, with the rain leaking in and inner stairs unsound, the congregants cordoned off the sanctuary.

Without the resources needed to heat and maintain the sanctuary, they chose to worship downstairs in the more intimate house of study (Beth Midrash). The main sanctuary remained empty for twenty-five years, from approximately 1955 to 1980. In 1986 the non-sectarian, not-for-profit Eldridge Street Project was founded to restore the synagogue and renew it with educational and cultural programs.The late Judge Paul PE Bookson was most instrumental in maintaining the Orthodox Religious services at the Eldridge Street Synagogue and its building restoration. The Eldridge Street Project completed the restoration in 2007 and re-opened to the public as the Museum at Eldridge Street, reflecting its cultural and educational mission. Congregation Kahal Adath Jeshurun continues to meet for evening services in the Beth Midrash and daytime services in the main sanctuary.

The Eldridge Street Synagogue was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996.

It's definitely a worthwhile trip to visit the Museum at Eldridge Street just to see it and learn about the history of the building and the community.

The museum contains a number of interesting artifacts


as well as interactive exhibits.

It was a great pleasure to be back on Eldridge Street today. We're grateful we got to attend another Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival.

Thursday Night at Grand Army Plaza: Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi play the music of Dave Tarras at the Central Library's Dweck Center

We had a terrific time tonight in the Dweck Center of the Central Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza, listening to Yale Strom and his excellent band Hot Pstromi peform the gorgeous music of Dave Tarras (our great-great-uncle, married to our beloved Aunt Shifra) and discuss Yale's book, Dave Tarras - The King of Klezmer.

Joining Yale Strom on violin were some amazing and versatile musicians: Peter Stan, who flew in from Zimbabwe this morning, on accordion;

David Licht, founding member of the Klezmatics, on drums/percussion;


Sprocket on bass;

and on reeds -- clarinet, saxophone, piccolo and about five other instruments, it seemed -- Norbert Stachel.

In between the fantastic numbers,

Yale talked about Dave Tarras' life and music. From what we've seen so far of Yale Strom's book about Dave Tarras, which we happily bought at evening's end, it's a great resource. We already have read about how Uncle Dave and Aunt Shifra took her little niece Ethel (our Grandma Ethel Shapiro Sarrett) when they fled Czarist Russia back in 1918, and how Dave's first job in America was working in his brother-in-law, our great-grandfather (who, based our experiences with him, was not such a nice guy). Tonight we found this 1931 or 1932 pic of our mom, Marilyn, as a baby with Grandma Ethel's first cousins, including Dave and Shifra's daughters Brauny (who married the brilliant musician Sam Musiker) and Rose.

Yale mentioned how in the Ternovka area near Uman in what's now Ukraine, the klezmer musicians like the Tarras family interacted with, influenced, and were influenced by the Roma, and the music of nearby Bessarabia, Moldavia (now Moldova) and Romania, as in this incredible "A Rumenisher Nign," performed by Uncle Dave in this recording:

Our old friend the clarinetist Bert Stratton of the Cleveland band Yiddishe Cup (who wrote this great Mother's Day op-ed column for the New York Times) has a ten-foot tall plywood cut-out/statue of Uncle Dave (created by the band's vocalist Irwin Weinberger) in his basement.

Here is a pic of Dave Tarras at our bar mitzvah reception at the Deauville, a beach club in Sheepshead Bay, on Saturday night, May 30, 1964. We were such ignorant kids then that we didn't realize how frustrating it must have been for this most brilliant of all klezmer musicians

to play stuff we listened to, like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You." But Uncle Dave and his band played everything, including the Beatles, really well. It was only when we got older that we realized his true excellence, as on our absolute favorite of his CDs, Tanz! With Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers, the brilliant, revolutionary 1955 blend of klezmer and swing.

Thanks to Yale Strom and his band,

tonight we were able to remember the life and music of Dave Tarras (and to meet his grandson Dr. Marc Tarras and his kids, our third cousins), and for that we're very grateful.