I’m sure,’ I shot back to her, without a word being spoken.
‘Yetta Landau has raised single-handed the money for two ice machines to be sent to the front,’ Ma hurried to tell me upon her return. ‘Few people realize how essential ice is for the field hospitals, or would think it worth their attention, but she cares nothing about the popularity of her causes. Indeed the less they are known, the harder she works at them. And then there are her family responsibilities. It is no exaggeration to say she has raised her sister’s family as if it were her own. How many aunts would do as much as Dear Yetta has done?’
Miss Landau had become Dear Yetta on the strength of two hours’ acquaintance. Not only had Ma freshened up her gray lawn and attended the B’nai Brith Sisterhood Combined War Charities Craft Bazaar, but she had also circulated. Cards had been exchanged, some from as far afield as East 92nd Street, and visits were presaged. Visits appropriate to a period of national austerity, of course.
I heard the door creaking open on Ma’s narrow life and I was glad. The pace of her days quickened and filled with Thrift Drive rallies and fund-raising teas. Weeks passed without our boys receiving monogrammed handkerchiefs or any vegetables getting canned. And when I came home from bandage rolling she was no longer inclined to listen to my news. She wanted me to listen to hers.
Yetta Landau was sister-in-law to Judah Jacoby, and Mr Jacoby had been ten years a widower, left with two sons to raise.
‘It was Oscar’s bar mitzvah,’ Ma started on the first of many tellings of the story. Oscar was the elder Jacoby son. I had no idea what a bar mitzvah was.
‘It’s a special kind of birthday,’ Ma said, hurrying on.
‘How special?’ I asked. Since Pa’s death my own birthdays had become the occasion of muted, utilitarian giving.
‘Special for boys,’ she said. ‘Now, please don’t interrupt. Mrs Jacoby had not been feeling well but no one suspected she was mortally ill. It was only when she was missed during dinner and found collapsed in her boudoir that the gravity of the situation was realized. By the time she was seen at St Luke’s Hospital it was too late. She had suffered a fatal torsion of the insides.’
Ma refused to tell me how they knew what had killed her if it was inside, or to explain why boys had special birthdays. Only that Oscar Jacoby was now twenty-three years old and had just completed basic training at Camp Funston.
I asked Honey if she knew about bar mitzvahs.
‘It’s a Jewish thing,’ she said. ‘They have to go to the temple and read an old scroll and then they get gifts and money and a dinner.’
I asked her how she knew.
‘Because Harry did it,’ she said. ‘But Sherman Ulysses won’t. We’ve progressed beyond that.’
Giving up dinners and gifts didn’t sound like progress to me.
I said, ‘Is Harry Jewish then?’
‘Poppy!’ she said. ‘What kind of a question is that?’
I had no idea whether it was a stupid question or merely an embarrassing one, so I took it to a person who already knew the extent of my stupidity and lack of savoir faire. I left home an hour earlier than usual and stayed on the trolley-car as far as Uncle Israel’s office.
‘Don’t tell me the Red Cross have run out of work for you,’ he said when he saw me. Simeon had left Uncle’s door open when he showed me in and was hovering just outside, remembering my earlier show of spirit, no doubt.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I have something to ask you and if you don’t mind I prefer not to do it with that person eavesdropping.’
‘Pops!’ he said. ‘Simeon is my right-hand man.’
Still, he sent him away and closed the door.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘what is it? Are you sure I’m the person to ask? Mightn’t Honey be more suitable? Or your aunt?’
‘Uncle Israel,’ I began, ‘I want to know if Harry Glaser Grace is Jewish.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see. Well, I suppose it all depends what you mean by …’
‘I don’t know what I mean by it,’ I said. There was a little tremor of frustration in my voice. ‘I’m not even sure what Jewish is.’
He lit a cigarette.
‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘Shall we begin with Moses? No. Let’s begin with Abraham.’
So my uncle told me a story about people who lived in tents and sacrificed sheep and listened to the Word of God. It was a rather long story. By the time he mentioned the Free Synagogue on West 68th Street the urgency had gone out of my question. Harry had many faults but I was certain he’d be too scared to sacrifice a sheep.
I said, ‘Honey says Oscar Jacoby had a bar mitzvah party because he’s Jewish?’
‘Yes,’ Uncle Israel replied.
‘And Honey says Harry had one too. Does that mean he used to be Jewish?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘So you can stop being Jewish? Like biting your nails?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, and got up and walked around behind his desk. I suppose he knew what was coming next.
‘Are we Jewish?’ I whispered. ‘Am I?’
I suppose I had actually worked out the answer already.
Uncle Israel weighed something invisible, first in one hand, then in the other, then sighed deeply.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said. ‘But it’s really not a thing to get bothered about. These days …’
I said, ‘Oh I’m not bothered about it. Do you know, I always thought it would be nice to be something, apart from just an heiress. Like Junie Mack is Scotch and Mrs Lesser’s kitchen maid was albino. And now it turns out I am something. What fun.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘my advice is not to make too much of this. No need to make, what shall we say … a feature of it. One needs to rub along in society. And in business. There are degrees of Jewishness. Yes. It’s really a question of degree. How are the bandages going?’
‘Very well,’ I told him. ‘It does me very nicely until I come into my money and can buy a hospital to take to Flanders.’
Something occurred to me.
I said, ‘Is Cousin Addie Jewish too? I suppose she must be.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose she must.’
I gave Uncle Israel a most affectionate kiss.
‘Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘I knew you were the person to ask.’
‘Pops,’ he said, as I was leaving. ‘Another word of advice. I wouldn’t trouble your
