\n
\u201cDo you need a job?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI could use one, but I walk the picket line in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
My neighbor, Steven called to say, \u201cI just left my afternoon job at a yeshiva in Monsey. If you want it, here\u2019s the number.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was early September, 1968. The United Federation of Teachers in New York City called a strike after a few confrontations with the Ocean-Hill Brownsville school district in Brooklyn.\u00a0The district community board wanted \u201ccommunity control,\u201d which meant, standards be damned. Eliminate the white, Jewish teachers. \u201cBlack teachers for Black students,\u201d was their rallying cry.<\/p>\n
Julius Lester, a Black who hosted a show on radio station WBAI-FM exhibited the erudite quality of the district\u2019s scholarship.<\/p>\n
An ode to Albert Shanker, the president of the teacher\u2019s union:<\/p>\n
Hey there Jew-boy<\/p>\n
With your yarmulkah on your head.<\/p>\n
You pale-faced Jew-boy<\/p>\n
I wish you were dead.<\/p>\n
This was typical of the intellectual rhetoric licensed teachers and the public were exposed to in the Ocean-Hill Brownsville\u2019s demand for \u201ccommunity control\u201d.<\/p>\n
With no income during the strike, as well as three children and a wife at home, I phoned the principal of the yeshiva to arrange an interview.\u00a0The school, in Monsey, NY was no more than five miles from my home.<\/p>\n
An unpaved road led me to a squeaking gate supported by two, rusty hinges connected to a square, gray post. Beyond the gate, a grove of overgrown, untrimmed bushes landscaped a turn-of-the century, two-story surreal building. This somber scene reminded me of a supernatural setting for a 1940s Grade B mystery movie.<\/p>\n
The house, a colonial had scattered traces of the original white paint flecked between its dried, splintering clapboard.<\/p>\n
Since no one answered the bell, I opened the door to find myself rocking on an undulating floor covered with carpeting that could hardly be distinguished from the flattened dead grass that led to the entrance of the building.<\/p>\n
Through a musty odor of mildew, I made my way to the principal\u2019s office.\u00a0His appearance was that of a sage from the Bible. He wore a black, satin frock with a belt separating the exciting parts of his body from the cerebral. A black skullcap, black shoes and white stockings completed the costume. His curled sideburns, like spiral bedsprings hung alongside a gray beard growing out of a wrinkled, sallow face. Somewhere, within this hirsute portrait emerged a pair of sallow eyes covered by heavy lids. This was Rabbi Yaffee, the principal.<\/p>\n
I introduced myself and told him that I was a licensed teacher of biology in a Bronx high school. He was happy to have an experienced teacher for his boys.\u00a0In addition to teaching geometry as well as biology, we agreed on a salary of $100 per week. As I left for my car, the rabbi called out to me,<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Wolfe. Dis bizzness of evolution nonsense, don\u2019t bodder mitt it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best way to defeat your enemy is to know all about him,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cDese are young boys and you could talk dem into anyting.\u201d<\/p>\n
I promised I wouldn\u2019t cover the topic.<\/p>\n
How will I teach biology without charts, textbooks, slides, or microscopes? Will the boys have a ruler, a protractor or a compass for geometry?<\/p>\n
The picket line gave me the opportunity to slip into my high school lab. I borrowed a microscope and some appropriate slides and placed them in my car. Before I returned home, I removed some biological charts and a perforated chart that would create a graph on the blackboard when wiped with a chalky board eraser.<\/p>\n
A few classes convinced me this yeshiva was the dumping ground for the mentally challenged that dropped out of one of the many yeshivas in Monsey.<\/p>\n
Sholem was a gentle soul, but the slowest. His father would appear every Friday. Before class began, he would whisper, embrace Sholem tenderly, place a few dollars in his hand, kiss him on both cheeks then leave. Reuven was an Israeli. He was an auditor who came to class to hear English spoken. Avrum was the only legitimate student. He took notes and remembered everything. Mendy and Yossi weren\u2019t discipline problems, but were, except for Avrum not academics.<\/p>\n
Awakened at 6:00 AM, they said morning prayers then had breakfast. The curriculum consisted of Hebrew, Torah study and its commentaries, then English. Drowsing in a sea of knowledge at 4:00 PM, this group of five boys plodded into my classroom in a catatonic stupor.<\/p>\n
Protozoa was the biology lesson for the day. My daily visitor, Hershel, was a senior, who claimed that he was going on to Yeshiva University in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, what are you teaching today?\u201d<\/p>\n
I had placed a prepared\u00a0demo slide of a red-stained paramecium under the microscope.<\/p>\n
Like a good teacher, I told him to look through the microscope and tell me what he saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it? Anyone knows, it\u2019s a shtickle<\/em> borscht” — ( a piece of beet from borscht) he declared.<\/p>\n Was there any use to go on to explain the characteristics of an paramecium?<\/p>\n Without a textbook, without protractors, compasses or rulers, they had neither the physical nor mental tools to learn geometry. It was a total charade, but it was fun.<\/p>\n I planned a lesson that needed neither textbooks nor tools. I drew a right triangle on the board with the figures 3 and 4 for the arms, and 5 for the hypotenuse. At this time they knew, or should have known it was a right triangle.<\/p>\n What kind of diagram is this?<\/p>\n In chorus, they said a triangle.<\/p>\n \u201cVery good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat kind of angle is this?<\/p>\n Yossi called out the correct answer, “A right angle.”<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does the word perimeter mean?\u201d<\/p>\n Dead silence. All agreed they never heard of it.<\/p>\n Pointing to the hypotenuse of the triangle, I said,<\/p>\n \u201cIf Sholem started to take a walk up this side which is 5 miles, and then went\u2026<\/p>\n Avrum chimed in, \u201cHe\u2019ll never make it Mr. Wolfe.\u201d<\/p>\n Should I go on?<\/p>\n Finally, I thought, if we arrived at the meaning of perimeter then we could learn how to square a number.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does the word square means in mathematics?\u201d<\/p>\n Sholem raised his hand., \u201cI live near New Square. Hassidm live there. It\u2019s near Monsey. That’s a square\u201d<\/p>\n I should have stopped right there, but I went on.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a Greek mathematician named Pythagorus. If he was given some information about the sides of a right triangle, he could tell you its perimeter and hypotenuse.<\/p>\n \u201cWas he Jewish?\u201d asked Mendy.<\/p>\n That was it, onward to graphing. I rolled down the perforated stencil chart that I borrowed from my school. By rubbing a blackboard eraser embedded with chalk dust, I created a graph. When I completed drawing the x and the y axis with red chalk, a voice from the rear of the room boomed out,<\/p>\n \u201cMenn tuhr nisht! Menn tuhr nisht! \u2013 (<\/em>You\u2019re not allowed! You\u2019re not allowed!).<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed what Sholem?\u201d<\/p>\n Mein zaydeh ihz gevenn a Talmud chochim, und ehr hott gzzogt, menn tuhr nisht! \u2013<\/em>My grandfather was a genius of the Talmud and he said, you\u2019re not allowed!<\/p>\n \u2018\u201cNot allowed what? Sholem?\u201d<\/p>\n “A\u00a0tsaylum!”<\/em><\/p>\n Avrum interjected,<\/p>\n \u201cPay no attention to him, Mr. Wolfe. He\u2019s telling you when you made a cross with the red chalk, his grandfather, the Talmud genius said, you\u2019re not allowed.”<\/p>\n Avrum went on to say that in the morning they did calisthenics and were told to extend their arms horizontally creating a cross. Sholem burst out with the same, \u201cMenn tuhr nisht!\u201d<\/em>\u00a0He kept on the ranting.<\/p>\n \u201cKeep kviet, I tell you. Keep kviet Sholem,\u201d shouted Reuven, the Israeli. Sholem persisted,<\/p>\n “Menn tuhr nisht! Menn tuhr nisht!”<\/em><\/p>\n With that, Reuven jumped on Sholem, pinned him down to the floor and twisted his arm behind his back.<\/p>\n Reuven rose in triumph and shouted, “You see Sholem, you don’t fuck with a\u00a0sabra<\/em>\u00a0(an Israeli)”<\/p>\n What was this worth? A front seat at a Seinfeld episode?<\/p>\n The cook at the yeshiva needed flour. She came to me at the end of my day and asked if I would drive her to the grocery store. I owned a Volkswagen beetle. Obviously, she generously sampled what she baked. With great difficulty, she tried to squeeze into the back seat.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d I asked. \u201cThe front seat is big and comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n How was I to know that sitting next to a man that was not her husband was verboten<\/em> in the Orthodox community? What if I made skin contact while shifting gears and she became overwhelmed by a fit of passion, and defiled me and disgraced herself? Fortunately, the spinster cook wedged herself into the back of my Volkwagen. She returned a virgin with a bag of flour.<\/p>\n My salary, when I received it was $100 a week. Rabbi Yaffee would solicit door-to-door in the community hoping to accumulate the money to pay me. As far as tuition from his students, one would think they were all on football scholarships.<\/p>\n Frequently, my weekly checks were as absent as the information I tried to impart in Sholem’s head. When the boys got wind of it, they asked me whether I received one of \u201cRabbi Yaffee\u2019s famous basketball checks.\u201d<\/p>\n Famous basketball checks?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n In unison they stood up and pretended they were bouncing a basketball.<\/p>\n The New York City teacher strike ended, but I continued to teach at the yeshiva in spite of Rabbi Yaffee\u2019s meager attempt to compensate me.<\/p>\n At the end of the term Regents week arrived. I wasn\u2019t close to finishing the curriculum in either biology or geometry. Avrum passed both exams, while the others failed miserably.<\/p>\n Rabbi Yaffee owed me $100 for my last week of work.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t vohree about it. I got it written down.\u201d<\/p>\n The year is 2014. Forty-six years since I didn\u2019t have to “vohree about it”.<\/p>\n Somewhere, in Rabbi Yaffee\u2019s notebook, it is written that he owes me $100, and forty-five years of interest.<\/p>\n Edited from\u00a0Coming Home: A Soldier Returns From Korea\u00a0<\/em>by Daniel Wolfe \u00a0danielwolfebooks@aol.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDo you need a job?\u201d \u201cI could use one, but I walk the picket line in the morning.\u201d My neighbor, Steven called to say, \u201cI just left my afternoon job at a yeshiva in Monsey. If you want it, here\u2019s the number.\u201d It was early September, 1968. The United Federation of Teachers in New York… Continue reading A Monsey Experience<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[127,126,128,129,125,124],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-albert-shanker","tag-julius-lester","tag-monsey","tag-ny","tag-ocean-hill-brownsville-school-district","tag-ufy-strike-in-1968","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/2392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielwolfebooks.com\/danielsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}