I Would Do It Again - Perhaps: A Rabbi's Memoir

I WOULD

DO IT AGAIN-

PERHAPS

A Rabbi s Memoir

Simon Glustrom

Copyright © 2000 by Simon Glustrom.

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Contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

A POSTSCRIPT TO

MY DEAR FAMILY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dedicated to my extended family

who appreciated my

unconventional humor but

believed me when I was serious.

PREFACE

When I was a freshman at Yeshiva College I took delight in telling my friends the story of the science teacher who asked his students, What are rabies, and what would you do for them? One child blurted out, Rabies are Jewish priests, and I wouldn’t do a thing for them! Although the student might have shown less prejudice, he revealed a widespread ignorance about rabbis and the rabbinate that extended and continues to extend deeply into the Jewish community as well as others.

A true story: in the early eighties I was deeply impressed with the intelligence and curiosity of a young man in the community. I agreed to teach him privately for three years until he graduated from high school. Without any such suggestion from me, he approached his parents and announced that he wished to pursue rabbinical studies after completing college. Both objected to their son’s plan. He insisted on knowing why. Their answer was both direct and evasive: A rabbi is just different!

This response was probably their way of expressing in code language a reluctance to see their dear son enter a difficult and unrewarding profession. Every congregant would presume to be his boss. And if one dug a little deeper, one might find his parents concerned about changing their life-style. Would they have to accept a greater commitment to the synagogue and the observance of Jewish traditions? They were not ready to make supreme sacrifices. Why did their child have to complicate their lives along with his? If he were to become a lawyer, physician or businessman, the pattern of their lives would not be affected at all.

But a rabbi is different. Ask a veteran rabbi what happens when he enters a house of mourning. Feeling the rabbi’s presence, the guests begin to speak in hushed tones; casual or humorous conversation is put on hold. The rabbi is sure to judge their behavior.

A rabbi is different. People hold him\her to a higher standard than most other professionals. Often it’s an unrealistic level of behavior. I have frequently discovered people straining to overhear my casual conversation with a third party or throwing a sidelong glance in my direction—Who is he talking to with such enthusiasm? Why with her? Why not with me? She’s not even a member of our congregation!

The implication? She doesn’t help to pay the rabbi’s salary; she has no legitimate claim on the rabbi’s time as I do.

If indeed a chasm exists between rabbi and congregant, the Conservative rabbi probably feels its effects more than his Orthodox or Reform colleagues. The Orthodox rabbi and his congregants strictly observe the Sabbath and the dietary laws. Some Orthodox laymen are more pious than their rabbi. Their personalities may clash on other issues, but not ordinarily on the degree of their religious observance. Likewise, Reform rabbis do not generally feel a serious gap between their own religious observance and that of the laity. Most Reform rabbis feel free to eat in the homes of their members.

Of the three religious bodies, the gap between the Conservative rabbi and his congregation is most apparent and most deeply felt. Most Conservative rabbis feel bound by the strictures of Jewish law in their personal lives. The great majority of their congregants, however, do not pattern their lives according to halakhah (Jewish law) either on the Sabbath or during the week. In fact, their level of personal observance is not very far removed from the practices of most Reform Jews. The breach between the Conservative rabbi and his constituents has become a source of inner conflict, unfulfilled expectation and frustration on the part of the rabbi.

The parents of my prize student intuitively grasped the problem: The rabbi is different.

In the end my disciple threw caution to the wind; he also transgressed the fifth commandment by applying to rabbinical school. After ordination he eventually became a distinguished rabbi. His proud parents have playfully reminded me that I encouraged their son to transgress one of the essential commandments in the Torah. They were on target, however, when they cautioned their son that a rabbi is different. Vive la difference.

Over the years people have frequently asked if I would have become a rabbi had I known what to expect when I embarked on my career. I was always just too busy to ask myself that question. I see little value in looking back to question what I would have, could have or should have done with my life. I have simply attempted to do my best at each stage in my career. I have occasionally felt remorse for individual actions or decisions but I do not feel regret for having chosen the rabbinate over another more lucrative or less stressful profession. In spite of the solitariness that most rabbis endure and the need to march to the beat of a different drummer, the spiritual reward of creating a difference in the quality of people’s lives justifies the effort.

This is not to say that I have been free of self-doubt along the way. I have occasionally questioned the extent of my influence over individuals and my ability to make a difference in people’s lives. Fortunately people did not hesitate to remind me otherwise in little notes of thanks or verbal expressions of gratitude. I have also been fortunate that any who felt I had shortchanged them showed greater restraint than the appreciative congregants.

One of my nagging regrets is that I never took the time to keep a diary throughout my forty-three years in the rabbinate. So much of the rich anecdotal material, the humorous incidents, the human tragedies—both preventable and unavoidable—that I encountered during my long career would have been preserved. Sitting down to write a personal memoir would have been much less daunting.

Why my need to compose a memoir at all? Most of the autobiographies I have read have been written by highly successful personalities who have achieved instant name recognition. Their lives are intertwined with those of other high achievers, familiar to the general public.

Their story is not my story. My purpose is not to tell of my contacts with the rich and the famous, though I have met a number of both over the years. I am writing this memoir to jog my own memory in the hope that I can yet recall some of the people who influenced me in my early years and affected my life and career. I also want to reflect on the years leading up to my ordination and consider my personal reactions to the people with whom I worked in both my congregations. In addition I include some of the social and religious problems I encountered in the rabbinate over a period of more than four decades. Living and working in one community for forty-one years has given me the unique opportunity to return to my pioneering years and observe some of the changes that have evolved from the time I was initially engaged until my retirement from congregational life.

Anyone who expects these reflections on the community to be an exposé will be sorely disappointed. Certainly there have been times when I would have taken sadistic delight in producing a nasty critique of the community as a few of my colleagues have done. Fortunately, that urge to attack subsided after I calmed down and maturity prevailed.

When I retired in August of 1991 I set up an agenda of goals. High on that list was this book, to be written primarily for the benefit of my dear family and friends and my own satisfaction. Should the general reader find interest in these recollections, I gratefully share them.

Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher was asked by Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times why he gave up writing a book on the Iran hostage affair. Christopher responded, I don’t like using the vertical pronoun. I can appreciate the Secretary’s reluctance, but without the I’s, me’s and my’s I could never have embarked on this memoir. I ask for the reader’s understanding; this book is not intended to be the autobiography of a narcissist. I could hardly have relied on a biographer to write about me. So I have written about the person with whom I am most intimately acquainted. I don’t think I have spared describing my strengths, weaknesses and failings as I see them. It is difficult, even painful to write a memoir, precisely because it is so personal, yet it has turned out to be one of the most rewarding and liberating experiences in my lifetime.

Blessed is God who has relieved me of further responsibility for this child.

This is a paraphrase of the prayer recited by parents on the day of their child’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah

CHAPTER ONE

EARLY YEARS IN ATLANTA

My story begins with my parents, Ida and Solomon, both born in Russia. When Ida Okun arrived at Ellis Island at the age of eighteen in 1908 she had a feeling that she would probably not see her parents again. She also left four siblings behind. Although she never returned to her birthplace in Minsk, she did eventually meet her brothers and sisters again after many years of painful separation.

On her arrival in New York she stayed with relatives for three months before going to Atlanta, where she lived out the rest of her life. She enjoyed the pulse of New York City and would have preferred to settle there, but her Uncle Motte Koplin, who signed her affidavit, came up to New York to accompany her to Atlanta. In Georgia she was shabbily treated by the young male cousins in her new household. Their excessive demands demeaned her and they were insensitive to her deep loneliness and her need for privacy. She welcomed the long hours required at her job at J. P Allen, a downtown department store where she found appreciation and respect from her employer and co-workers.

My mother shared a distinctive physical feature with two of her siblings: thick eyebrows extending over her deep-set dark eyes. When she smiled—never all out, but enough to light her face—she released a sense of warmth that revealed her natural beauty. As a very young child, I was impressed by the skill with which she was able to transform her long brown hair into a bun at the back of her head before I could count to fifteen. She didn’t need cosmetics and seldom used them unless urged to do so by her daughters before a special occasion.

Mama enjoyed running with me when she was in her forties and I was a ten-year-old. We would visit her dear cousin Rosie Wilensky who lived a mile or so away. Although I felt self-conscious when strollers laughed as we raced by them on the sidewalk, I was delighted by the stamina of my middle-aged mother as she kept up with me. When she was in her eighties, Mama would repeat to her children that she had no reason to envy anyone—except for her few contemporaries who were still able to walk briskly without the aid of a cane—her nemesis.

My father, Solomon Glustrom, left Odessa for Buenos Aires on the Thespis in May 1907. At age twenty-one, he left his parents and an elder brother, Shimon, after whom I was named, and a younger brother, Azer, who joined my father in Atlanta after several years. In South America my father was offered menial work in a sugar cane field. It took only a month or two for him to decide to make his home in the United States. After a short stay in Galveston, his port of arrival, he left for Birmingham, Alabama, where he was received by his warm and effusive Tante Fruma. Soon, hearing that Atlanta was a more exciting city for young bachelors, he left Birmingham.

He and his brother Azer became house-to-house peddlers, as did so many other immigrants of their generation. Eventually the two brothers opened a dry goods store together in Atlanta. However, because their personalities were so different, they soon parted ways. Azer was ready to take business risks; my father was ultra-conservative. Azer saw the advantages of owning property; Papa was fearful of ownership and always rented. In the end each opened his own business.

Like Mama, my father possessed distinctive features: a dark complexion, a full face and a broad nose. He parted his magnificent shock of black hair straight down the middle of his head. Papa could have been a stand-in for a sheik or Aga Kahn III, but his East European accent left no doubt about his origin. To imagine how Solomon Glustrom looked before my birth, I have relied on photographs taken in his thirties. He was a dapper man, fastidiously dressed with a stickpin in his bright tie, a gold ring on his left pinkie and gold cuff links to round out his careful sartorial self-image. Although he gave less attention to the details of his appearance as he grew older, he never lost interest in good grooming, especially for social occasions.

Papa was obsessed with routine. He ate at the same time every day and allotted himself fifteen cigarettes daily. Wednesday evening was his bath night and no one else in the family could use the one bathroom during the two hours necessary to prepare his weekly ablution. For that matter, no one could enter the steaming room for at least an hour after he had completed his ritual bath. Only he could tolerate the intensity of the heat. We complained strenuously about our Wednesday evening cramps. Papa occasionally gave us the benefit of a half-smile, but there was no other concession to his family—a clear case of the Jewish papa’s infallibility.

I was never able to learn much from my parents about the details of their meeting in Atlanta and the events leading up to their marriage. I don’t know if the proposal scene in the park was apocryphal, but my mother did tell us that she and Shloime were seated on a park bench when he put the question to her. She couldn’t speak until she saw a horse standing nearby nodding his head. She took the horse’s action as a sign to give my father an affirmative reply, so she did. Mama occasionally referred to that interlude of high romance in her life. What did I know? she would say, I was only a young ignorant girl!

My parents were temperamentally poles apart. Mama was much more socially oriented; Papa, though courteous to friends and strangers alike, did not require a social life outside his family. He was entirely consumed by his work and the need to make ends meet. Mama possessed a spark of spontaneity; Papa was directed by his need for order and routine. In spite of their disagreements, I don’t recall hearing quarrels between them in front of us children. Mama usually conceded to Papa’s idiosyncratic needs. However, I am convinced that in her heroic attempt to prevent flare-ups at home she lost some of her natural joie de vivre that would have enhanced the flavor of her life.

Ben was the first born, ten years my elder. Sarah followed, two years later. Then came Naomi, born after another two years. Six years later, on March 4, 1924, I joined the family, the first of us to be delivered in a hospital. I remember nothing about my infant years on Kelly Street and have to rely on my siblings to fill in the blanks. They usually laugh convulsively when they recall our Spartan life and the absence of basic comforts that many poor people in America regard as necessities today. It is much easier to laugh retrospectively about the crowded conditions we endured, but while you are in the midst of such deprivation, you find little to laugh about, especially when you are aware that others, living a few blocks away, enjoy considerable comforts.

I am unable to recall much about the balance of joy and sadness during those harsh years on Kelly Street, but I think the scales must have been weighted more on the side of cheerlessness. All I can remember about our very modest home was the acute need for more space. I recall frequently bumping into other members of my family as a toddler. However, I was always picked up and hugged by whomever I collided with. I could only find enough space to walk around freely in our tiny front yard or on the porch, never indoors. After we moved from the neighborhood some former neighbors told me more about my life on Kelly Street than I had learned from my parents and siblings. For example, I was not aware that I suffered from asthma until I was old enough to discern the difference between normal and abnormal breathing. Apparently my mother spent hours caring for me during the night when my allergies were especially severe. I don’t imagine that my brother and sisters were very happy about the inordinate attention I received from her during those stressful times.

Because of my position as the youngest, I was sometimes treated as a mascot around the house. I liked being spared such harsh treatment as the spankings the others could expect after tracking the ubiquitous red Georgia clay into the living room; I was merely warned not to repeat the offense. However the advantage of special treatment did not make me feel a full member of the clan. My remarks were not taken seriously around the dinner table. No one cared to elicit my opinion. What could an eight-year-old add to the table talk? I felt especially disenfranchised when I couldn’t even take sides in a family argument: Should we take another boarder into the house? Whose turn was it to help Papa in the store? Who was going to tend the furnace in the basement? I found myself a listener rather than a participant in the dynamics of our family life.

As a result of their school schedules, combined with their active teenage social lives, I mostly felt deprived of my siblings’ attention, but I savored those precious occasions when Ben took me for an automobile ride or Sarah brought me to a friend’s house or Naomi invited me to a basketball game at the Jewish Alliance.

My childhood impressions of each of my siblings remain vivid. Ben was handsome, his charm irresistible. Yet he was capable of displaying an explosive temper. My parents were proud of his skill on the violin, especially when he was invited to play at his high school graduation and even though he once appeared on stage with a black eye that was never explained. Ben was an amateur entertainer, appearing on stage and radio as a singer of popular melodies. He aspired to become another Bing Crosby and had a distinct crooning style. My big brother could be imperious. He didn’t hesitate to put the family to work when he sold football colors during the fall season. Before the Saturday games my mother and sisters cut and ironed the colored ribbons and then attached them to the miniature footballs that Ben sold at the game. Some Saturdays he would return with as much as a hundred dollars. And this was during the depths of the Great Depression.

Unlike my brother, I did not show an interest in accumulating money in my early years. Yes, I did sell lemonade and Coca-Cola on a busy corner where the trolley stopped, but I would undercharge my customers; I also spent my earnings on Hershey Bars and sweet rolls without saving a dime. Members of my family would chide me for my lack of interest in business matters. For years my sister Sarah, who attended Commerical High School with Ben, reminded me that when I waited on a customer in Papa’s clothing store I would reluctantly lift a pair of socks from the box as if a foul odor disclosed they had been worn for weeks by a tobacco farmer. I reacted to Sarah’s half-serious criticism with a sense of pride.

To this day my siblings remind me of my first business venture at age nine. I agreed to sell Liberty magazines to family friends and neighbors on the block. As an incentive I could earn prizes in addition to the five-cent commission for the sale of each magazine for twenty cents. When I approached Abe Butler, one of our family’s closest friends, he graciously handed me two dollars as a gift. Abe had no idea that I would give away nine magazines without charge and bring the two dollars to the manager in order to receive the incentive prize right away. It was a handsome flashlight, which I later found could be purchased for one dollar at Woolworth’s.

Ben’s winsome personality did not go unrewarded either financially or sexually. He was deluged with calls from young women. When my mother picked up the phone in Ben’s absence, she could always differentiate between his Jewish and non-Jewish pursuers. In her inimitable fashion, firm but diplomatic, she requested the non-Jewish girls not to telephone the house. She was concerned that my brother, the catch of the day, would marry out of his faith.

I was unaware of Ben’s sexual activity until I was well into my own teens. It was then that I understood the function of those condoms that Ben kept exposed in his top dresser drawer during my early childhood years. I had always thought they were balloons. When I was old enough to ask him why he did not hide the evidence, he responded without hesitation that Mama, of all people, advised him to keep rubbers in his pocket just to be safe. I didn’t believe Ben at the time, but I heard the unvarnished truth many years later. When Mama was visiting with us in Durham, North Carolina in 1949 (my first pulpit) my wife Helen brought her to a meeting of clergymen’s wives. During the discussion Mama told the group that when she learned her teenage son knew how to protect himself she was relieved and pleased. Needless to add, my dear mother created almost as much excitement in that sleepy southern town as the annual Duke-North Carolina football classic, especially in light of the place and time of her stunning revelation. Just to set the record straight, Mama did not actually advocate pre-marital sex for her children, but she was fully aware that she was unable to curb Ben’s appetite. Intuitively she fulfilled the proverbial Talmudic saying: If you grasp too much you hold on to nothing; if you grasp little you can hold on to it.

My sister Sarah looked a lot like our mother with her dark, deep-set eyes and broad generous smile. Sarah was clearly the most conventional of my three siblings, her values more Victorian than Mama’s. Although she enjoyed an active social life as a teenager, she hoped to settle down with a Jewish businessman and begin raising a family. My parents were enthusiastic when she announced her impending marriage to Hyman Shaffer (Shafe), who had no difficulty blending into our family. Shafe was especially attentive to our parents. Sarah, of all my siblings, showed the greatest empathy for my emerging religious tendencies. Although Sarah was not given a formal Hebrew education, she developed strong ties to a synagogue immediately after her marriage.

I have never been able to determine the source of Naomi’s physical traits. No one else in the family possessed her high forehead, kinky dark brown hair or slim youthful physique. Her almond-shaped eyes were distinctly her own. Naomi was the most fun. Totally uninhibited, with colorful speech, she was as spontaneous as Sarah was guarded. She began dating a guy named Happy at the age of fifteen. They were compatible only in their immaturity. I liked his breezy, boyish manner, but the way he stared hungrily at every woman on the street made me uncomfortable.

After repeated attempts my parents realized they couldn’t break up the relationship. They finally had to make peace with a marriage that was destined to fail. I had never heard of a marriage ending in divorce, and when I learned what was happening to Naomi, I was infected with some of my parents’ sense of shame. Several years after her break-up, Naomi met Army Private Bernard Sachs, a resident of New Jersey who was stationed in the south during part of World War II; their subsequent marriage offered Naomi a better start—and much relieved my mother and father.

During the twenties and thirties most of Atlanta’s Jewish community, including my parents’ friends and relatives, lived on or near Washington Street on the south side. We followed the trend, moving from Kelly Street to a bright and airy upstairs apartment on Washington Street when I was four. The trolley ran the length of this street and let passengers off in the center of town. My father never owned a car so he, like many other businessmen, found it convenient to get to work by streetcar. Here in contrast to Kelly Street, there were many more people, although it was an uncongested neighborhood with no stores. It was lined with large old private homes.

Washington Street provided us with a real neighborhood feeling. We frequently stopped off to chat with families sitting on their spacious front porches. My parents didn’t have to worry about my walking alone up and down the street during the day at the age of five. A few years later I walked long distances at night with no apprehension. Yes, there was one spooky house whose owner (whom I had never seen) reputedly kidnapped children. So when I walked past this eerie spot at night I broke into a run. This was not just another Halloween trick to me—I had no reason to question the myth.

My few close friends were not Jewish. I spent many hours in their homes and was frequently invited for lunch. I had no idea that the food I enjoyed with them was not kosher until my mother pushed the panic button and began to tell me the facts of Jewish life. I suspect she called my friends’ mothers and diplomatically asked them not to serve me any meat products. The invitations for lunch tapered off after her calls.

My closest friend, who lived across the street, had more toys than I had ever seen in a store, with the exception of Rich’s department store downtown. He was most generous with his possessions, urging me to take toys home—and he never asked me to return them. For several weeks before and after Christmas I spent many hours with my friend, Junior. Surely I was envious, and couldn’t understand why we should be deprived of a Christmas tree. I accepted my parents’ explanation, yet I had no intention of leaving Junior’s home during the Christmas season, no matter what I was expected to believe about the meaning of the holiday. I was not told that I was forbidden to help decorate their tree, nor did my friend’s mother receive a call from my mother. I was relieved to be able to continue my daily visits without parental interference at Christmas time.

In