Author Archives: Ben
A Rite of Return
PART ONE Introduction:We who cherish history know that place matters. We’re accustomed to applying this term to streets, buildings, docks and other physical sites whose preservation we hold dear. But many spaces, un-measurable in feet, un-countable in floors, carry historical heft. Moments in time occupy places in history much as do physical landmarks. Documents, likewise. […]
A Con Grows in Brooklyn
A CON GROWS IN BROOKLYN… Brooklyn, March of 1961: The Cold War shivered America, the perils of internationalism evident all about. Camelot’s reign in the Kennedy White House had just begun, though, and Jackie’s hiring of French chef Rene Verdon to reign over America’s presidential kitchen heralded a new day in what had been a […]
Posted in Essay Categories, Lost New York
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An Indecent Encounter
Behind the coffee counter, Hyapatia seemed pained when I asked for my usual two pounds of Soho Blend. It took but a moment to find out why. Just as I mouthed “percoloator grind, please,” her tormentor reappeared. “Eks-kyewz ME !,” a lacquered young East Sider spewed. I blanched in shock as I wiped myself off. […]
Framingham Public Library: A Rite of Return: Serendipity and Historiography in the Recreation of the Life of Henry Knight Dyer
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Forty Days and Forty Nights
Tears poured from my eyes as I paused by the windows of the jetway, girding myself for the flight abroad. Through the glass, I gazed upon the 747, an old warhorse with “Jerusalem” painted on its brave nose, the Magen David proudly adorning its tail. What made me choke with emotion and recognition? Was this […]
Getting In Her Licks…
Lourdes draws the faithful, and Mecca has the Hajj, while hot June brings masses of pilgrims to Jerusalem. But New York has the strangest shrine of all. Earlier this summer I sat in a vest-pocket park down on Perry and West 11th Streets. In ones and twos, earnest acolytes appeared out of nowhere, each clutching […]
Cold Storage
My wife tells a story that I never get right. The details don’t really matter, though it’s the moment that counts: A precious thing bonds her psyche to mine: the Yiddish inflection of older relatives (though hers was Bronx-ite and mine through parents who fled Philadelphia to live among the lost tribes in East Tennessee). […]
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Ad Lo Yada: Til One Doesn’t Know
“Until one doesn’t know,” goes the traditional imprecation towards insobriety for Jews celebrating the hanging of Ahashueros’ evil minister Haman and his ten sons. The group had plotted to kill all the Hebrews in Persia, and were foiled only by the intervention of the King’s favorite dancing girl, the Jewess Esther, implored by her cousin, […]
Hillbilly Kheyder
August 1966. I’m fourteen years old, an acne-ridden, hook-nosed Jewish kid from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on the train to Jordan, a Greyhound bus neaded up north, alone through the summer night. My parents trusted me to spend an entire week wandering around New York on my own, staying with my uncle in his tiny rent-controlled […]
