Samuel Tenenbaum here sets down his memories of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in an era when life there—he would insist—was better. 

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Brownsville, you should know, was originally settled by the overflow of people that spilled out of the tenements and slums of New York’s East Side. There they had lived, with innumerable children and innumerable boarders, in railroad flats with the front and the back room sucking up a dim light and the middle rooms dark, with no warm water, no central heating, no bath, and the toilet in the yard. So the East Siders journeyed to this strange remote section of Brooklyn, reached by ferrying across the East River, followed by interminable trolley rides; and later, when a bridge was built across the river, by elevated transit lines at a cost of a nickel.

Here, they thought, they could escape the squalor, the noise, the fetid odors of pushcarts laden with foods and flies. Weren’t there in Brownsville green fields, and, a little way up, real cows and real farms? And didn’t children walk out to these farms with pitchers to buy the milk, fresh as it came from the cow’s udders? And didn’t the wife buy vegetables in season direct from the farmer? And didn’t goats and pigs wander around the fields and streets? And didn’t the bread-winner, when he came home from work at eight or nine o’clock at night, after milling for an hour or more in the horribly congested trains, also taste of this new life? For what good wife—after her husband fell into the kitchen chair and tried to keep his eyes open for the evening meal—would not save a glass of that milk for her husband? And didn’t that glass of milk, fresh from the cow, hold sufficient strength and goodness in it to overcome the evils of the foul city and the dark, dank factory?

Soon these journeying East Siders made up the largest Jewish community in the world. At one time, Brownsville and its environs numbered two hundred to three hundred thousand Jews (exact figures are impossible to establish), making its Jewish population certainly twice as large as present-day Jerusalem and about one-third that of the new state of Israel.

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Yet, unhappy to remark, how many noisome features of the East Side slum quickly reappeared in the farmlands of Brownsville! With a world of building space to choose from, speculators erected rows on rows of tenements and jerry-built, identical private houses, all railroad flats, so that light and sun were here, too, rare and precious. As on the East Side, in sweltering heat the citizens sought relief at the candy store, with its “syruped” seltzers, ice cream, and malted milk. Here too were the fire escapes, loaded with bedding out “to air” and in summer also with children and grown-ups. The kitchens, dull, luridly-lighted, were still on public view from the street. In them, one could view the panorama of Brownsville home life: the husand disrobed to the waist, the children coming in and out, for food and reprimands, the tired, monotonous, plodding steps of the wife, as she fussed with pots, pans, dirty dishes, as she washed and ironed clothes. And in Brownsville, too, as on the East Side, the immigrants found sweatshops—real sweatshops—to work in for starvation wages, while a small minority of the more ambitious scrimped together a few dollars and opened shabby little candy stores, grocery stores with empty shelves, dark, uninviting dry goods stores, delicatessen stores with rickety chairs.

The homes were dull by comparison with the street, which was the scene of neighborhood living. When a child became sick enough to be taken to a hospital—may it happen only to one’s enemies—the entire block was sad. No polite ladies peeped from behind curtains. In Brownsville, the women were curious without curtains, and you may be sure that little escaped them. When a girl strayed and had an illegitimate child: woe to that girl and woe to that family!

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In All of this, I assume, there is nothing unique, nothing that is not more or less true of all poor, dispossessed communities. But this is not really my story, which concerns a Brownsville in which there was such a love of learning, such a respect for ideals and idealists, as I have encountered nowhere else.

Today, children may go to school as part of a compulsory routine. In Brownsville when I knew it, school was a major occupation, not of the children alone but of the whole neighborhood. Every teacher was discussed with the minute detail a jeweler devotes to a watch; the principal of the local public school had the same authority and prestige as the most learned dean of our most respected university. School to Brownsville represented a glorious future that would rescue it from want, deprivation, and ugliness. It did not matter how poor and povertystricken these ex-East Siders themselves may have been—when it came to education, nothing was too good, no sacrifice was too great for them to make. Harvard, Princeton, Yale—the lowliest Brownsville family did not regard these institutions as too good for their children.

As I recall my childhood, we were all measured in educational potential. Next to an allegation of illegitimacy, nothing more damaging could be said than: “He has a stuffed head. In school, he’s put back and left back.” The relative scholastic progress of the children provoked intense jealousy and rivalry among neighbors. On coming home from work, the first question the good Brownsville father asked was: “What happened in school?” And the child had to bring out the test papers and the marks.

“My Milton got all As.” Milton’s mother would look down her nose at Harry’s mother, whose son “got all B’s.” Don’t talk of failure—then the whole house went into mourning.

The Abramowitz family included five sons and one daughter. Mr. Abramowitz, a successful butcher, was regarded as a real millionaire: the women said he “had at least ten thousand dollars.” They lived in a detached house with a porch, and at night, the women said, Mrs. Abramowitz’s big pots “overflowed with meat and every luxury that a stomach could imagine . . . like a hotel. . . .” But all did not go well in this troubled world for the Abramowitzes. Five of the six children did poorly at school and the meat was as lead in the Abramowitzes’ mouths; no one envied them. “What can you expect of butchers’ children?” said the women. “Butchers’ children remain butchers.”

As tall, powerful Mr. Abramowitz hewed away at big chunks of meat, one could feel his sense of frustration and inferiority. One child, David, showed promise: he did well at school, and he went regularly to the library and took out big books. After the family had reconciled themselves, with some difficulty, to the fact that the other children would never be great scholars, it concentrated all attention on David. When David did well in school, the whole Abramowitz familyparents, brothers, and sister—felt that they had done well. When David entered Columbia, the whole Abramowitz family felt that they had become Columbia students. When David took an examination, the whole Abramowitz family sweated it out. When David became a lawyer and opened his own office, Mr. Abramowitz wanted to cover his big butcher shop window with signs advertising the fact. David had to speak at length and persuasively before he convinced his father to substitute a small, dignified announcement. Henceforth, in Mr. Abramowitz’s store the important thing was not the meat, but David, “my son, the lawyer.”

I remember an elderly lady, thin, anemiclooking, and very, very sad. She came regularly to our home, always with an old creased shopping bag made of black oilcloth. When she came, my mother would gather old bread, left-over food, and whatever good food she could spare. We never regarded her as a beggar or as one asking charity. In fact, we all respected her. Her son was attending medical school. She was a widow, with two other small children, and her son had no one but her to help him. I remember the time she came to make a cash loan: her son was being graduated from medical school and he now needed money to open an office. My mother gave her ten dollars, which was an enormous sum for my family in those days. It would never occur to my mother not to make this sacrifice for so holy a purpose.

I still remember the pride with which my family looked forward to the forthcoming social visit of the doctor himself. He was coming to repay the loan personally. We had known his mother, but we had never seen the son. My mother gave the house an unusually thorough cleaning. Every member of my family was there, even my father. When the doctor came in, he was offered the best seat. My mother took out her best dishes and served cake, which she had baked especially for the occasion. As I look back at this incident, I perceive with what humility and respect my parents regarded what they thought was an educated man. My family didn’t want the ten dollars which the doctor was now returning; neither did they know how to refuse it. So finally, at the end of the visit, when the doctor held out the ten dollars, my father held back from taking it; my mother did also. Since the doctor looked foolish holding the money, my mother finally stepped forward and took it, but held it in her hand lamely until the doctor left, as if not knowing what to do with it.

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If Any social hierarchy existed in our community, the European gymnasium student ranked high, next higher came the European university student, but the aristocrat of them all, the possessor of the most exalted rank, was the Russian social revolutionist.

There was Moses, with his thick glasses, frail body, and worn threadbare coat, from whose stuffed pockets protruded bundles of newspapers and magazines. Moses had been active in radical Russian circles and when I knew him he was an anarchist, a vegetarian, and a Darwinist. In our house, he always sat at the head of the table, and he was always welcome for a meal or for any courtesy he might ask. I listened fascinated as he discussed politics or read to us from the voluminous “literature” he always carried with him. By occupation a house painter, Moses was frail and sickly, and what worried and puzzled my father was how he managed to make a living; for, in fact, Moses never seemed to be in need of money. Many years later, by chance, I encountered Moses’ boss, and, naturally, we began to talk about him. “What kind of a worker was Moses?” For an answer, the man laughed. “You couldn’t expect work from Moses, not from Moses!” he said. And then he told me how in the middle of a job Moses would get into long political and philosophical discussions with the other workers. I asked, “Why did you keep him?” “Moses!” he exclaimed. “Fire him! How could he make a living? With Moses, one did not try to think of profit. Why, he knew more than a professor.”

Occasionally—not often—we would be defrauded, as in the case of Mr. Freedman, and the big books he took from the library, and his flowery and ornate Yiddish, so that frequently we did not understand him. Mr. Freedman boarded with the parents of a friend of mine. When I visited the family and I looked into Mr. Freedman’s room, I saw him, true enough, bent over a book, but fast asleep. I even saw him at times pick up a book and, although he tried to keep his eyes open, in several minutes they began to droop. I began to suspect the intellectuality of Mr. Freedman and I imparted my doubts to my mother. At first she refused to listen, but she, too, had had occasion to observe the learned Mr. Freedman bent over a book, but fast asleep. For a while she was a little cold to Mr. Freedman but this did not last long. Soon she was welcoming him to supper with her cold cordiality. “A man,” she told me afterwards, “who has dealings with such learned books can’t be ordinary.”

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Even those who scoffed came to pay tribute, in their own way. Among the Brownsville settlers there arose a group who prided themselves on being hard-headed and “American.” They sneered at education and their measure of a man was not how learned he was but how large his bank-balance: “How big a check can he write?” Their favorite folk-tale was of the man who applied for a job, which paid a pittance, as sexton in a synagogue. He was turned down because he was an illiterate. And, continues the story, he went into business and now he is president of the synagogue.

But this same group went into the market to buy professional men as husbands for their daughters. Since doctors in Brownsville represented the apex of knowledge and wisdom, they could command a dowry of as high as twenty-five thousand dollars, pre-war value. At times, a family might subsidize the schooling of a promising student, with the understanding that when he was graduated from college he would go through with an arranged marriage. Dentists, too, had a market rating, and they commanded dowries ranging from ten to fifteen thousand dollars; teachers and accountants fetched about ten thousand; pharmacists, seven to eight thousand. Optometrists, veterinarians, engineers—all commanded a price, depending on the amount of education and the prestige of the occupation.

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In Other neighborhoods, the ice cream parlor, the poolroom, the dance hall was the favorite gathering-place. In Brownsville, it was the library on Glenmore and Watkins Avenues. There we got to know one another, there we argued about books and writers, there we made intellectual discoveries. We were first-generation ghetto immigrants. Our taste in literature did not come to us by family tradition; we ran across books and authors by chance, mostly by hit-and-miss. Hence, our password: “Do you know of a good book?” I “discovered” Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells; and I am indebted to a friend, my high school teacher, who introduced me to Balzac, Romain Rolland, Zola, Anatole France, Maupassant.

A book such as Jean Christophe was kept hidden in a special alcove, carefully guarded by a vinegary librarian. I remember how she scrutinized me to see if I came up to specifications, whether I was of the right age and maturity. Never have I seen anyone—before or since—hand out a book more unwillingly and disapprovingly, as if she herself had somehow become an unwilling accomplice in a plot to undermine public morals. If the truth be told, many of my books seemed to come from that forbidden section, so that the librarian, even when I didn’t ask her for a book, developed a special disapproving eye for me. I remember by chance picking up Dame Care. I began reading the book in the stacks, standing up, hour after hour, how many I will never know. I was brought back to this world by flickering lights, which was the librarian’s signal for closing time. I now own Dame Care but I have never re-read the book. My wife who has read it lately tells me it’s so-so.

The library was something more than a place where one went for books. Here one met and made friends, those from high school, but even more important, those men and women who had little formal schooling, who worked in factories and were Socialists, anarchists, Zionists, Macfaddenites, chiropractors, atheists, food faddists, sun worshipers, Buddhists; men and women who wanted so much from life: to be great writers, to be great humanitarian leaders, to be innovators of world-shaking importance.

In the files of the library, one can find today the reminiscences of a Brownsville librarian, which he published in a professional journal about forty years ago. Excerpts follow:

“. . . you are constantly beseeched for more books on sociology and for the best of the continental literature. Your reading room is full of young men preparing themselves for civil service and college-entrance examinations. Your reference desk is overtaxed with demands for material for debate on every conceivable public question, from ‘equal pay for women’ to the comparative merits of the library and the gymnasium. And there are more youngsters awaiting help in looking up every single allusion in their text-books than the assistants can serve . . . and what is better still, you have to be conservative and ever on your guard lest your reading public increase three times as fast as the library’s resources. . . .

“Their reading is an odd mixture of the serious and the childish. Their race tragedy often sobers them in appearance and taste early, and as is well known they are very precocious. Sometimes a little toddler will come in whose head just reaches up to the registration desk and to the surprise of all . . . will read right off some paragraph given as a test. . . . Toward those books whose use some libraries restrict, the attitude of the adults is very liberal. No explanation completely satisfies them and their indignation rises high when they learn that libraries occasionally see fit to withhold certain volumes of Tolstoy, of Zola, or of Shaw.”

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I Should like to tell you about Ribber, a shy, timid, sad boy. His parents were impoverished, and Ribber only managed to stay in school by selling pretzels on street corners. In school he did not do well, and in his sophomore year he was flunked out. Ribber continued selling pretzels. One day I met him in the library, and I spoke to him for the first time. I do not believe that he was more than nineteen or twenty, but he took from his pocket letters from famous universities (if I am not mistaken, one of the universities was either Harvard or Chicago) thanking him for his contributions of rare and old editions of Shakespeare and the Bible. He showed me communications with professors. In fact, he had now in his possession a rare edition of the Bible, and he was debating with himself whether to donate it to a professor in the Princeton Theological Seminary or to a professor in the Jewish Theological Seminary. He even knew what scholars would most appreciate the worth of his rare finds. He refused all payments. And how did he—this pretzel seller—find these books and how was he able to buy them? They weren’t costly, he explained. “This valuable Bible,” he said, talking about his latest find, “cost me eighty-five cents. I picked it up from a pushcart.” It was a matter, he told me, of having the patience to seek and of being able to recognize what was valuable.

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Another shrine of the neighborhood was the Labor Lyceum, the official headquarters of the Socialist party and the local trade union. Presiding over this institution was Sol Hurok, whose early entrepreneurial ability was devoted to managing the campaigns of the local Socialist party. Hurok first learned to make culture pay when, to gather funds for the party, he organized concerts with the help of top-flight artists and also with the lesser talents of loyal party members.

Early, Hurok showed that he had a unique talent for gathering dollars. Hurok would carefully coach the members of the Young People’s Socialist League on the art of selling the magazines and pamphlets that both furthered the cause and helped the party’s treasury. When all other Socialist party locals were conducting perfunctory campaigns, Hurok, with the same undeviating purpose with which he raised money, rallied speakers and supporters, flooded the district with leaflets, Socialist newspapers, and circulars, arranged monster mass meetings. In fact, Brownsville was among the first districts in New York State to elect a Socialist assemblyman, Abraham Shiplacoff.

During campaigns, the Labor Lyceum was the center for Socialist propaganda, but during the year the building bulged with educational activities. The courses and the lectures scorned such practical and mundane matters as salesmanship, charm, or personality. Instead, Brownsville flocked to hear erudite discussions on such subjects as: “Moses, Jesus, Spinoza, and Marx,” “The History of Human Thought as Exemplified in the Workers’ Struggle Against Capitalism,” “Kropotkin, Spencer, and Marx,” “Dickens, Zola, Flaubert, as Interpreted from the Viewpoint of the Class Struggle,” “The History of Philosophy, from Greek to Modern Times.”

Either in the Labor Lyceum or in other educational forums, which dotted the neighborhood, proponents of all causes found adherents. Anarchists held meetings in which they held forth on free love, the essential goodness of man, the abolition of police and jails. Health faddists conducted campaigns against doctors, who, they maintained, were part of a giant conspiracy to keep the workers sick. Birth-control advocates here had strong support and sympathy. In fact, it was here that Margaret Sanger in 1916 established the first birth-control clinic in America. Zionists, too, in a more quiet way, were equally active.

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In The course of writing this article, I revisited my neighborhood. I have not lived there for nearly a quarter of a century. There are still pushcarts in Brownsville; the street life is still teeming and dramatic. But the old Brownsville—the one that loved learning and knowledge—is gone. Brownsville is now “Americanized,” with the movies, the radio, the automobile, the national chain stores (no longer independent little stores) providing focal points. Still essentially a Jewish community, the stream has not been fed by new immigrants. The shabby old tenements, more odorous now and more dilapidated, are being occupied by an influx of new minority groups, probably even more dispossessed and less advantaged than the immigrant Jews. Large numbers of Negroes have entered this community; also Italians, White Russians, Arabians, Syrians.

Brownsville residents, in the course of time getting better jobs and becoming more prosperous, began to desert the ghetto community for more fashionable areas—Flatbush, the Bronx, Riverside Drive, the West Side of Manhattan. The exodus was especially rapid among the second generation, who, unlike their parents, did not develop close ties with neighbors, civic associations, or the local synagogue.

Not everyone left, of course. I remember one family that lived directly underneath an elevated train. The father was a pushcart peddler, but he had two daughters who were school teachers, a son who was an accountant, and three other daughters, two who worked in offices and one who worked in a factory. .The girls especially wanted to move, since they felt that the shabby house harmed their marital chances. The father was adamant in insisting on remaining. “Look,” the father once told me, pointing to the rumbling sound made by a passing train. “It’s like music. If you look outside the window, it’s always like a show.” And that was his favorite recreation after tramping the streets all day—looking out the window and watching the train pass directly before him.

At times, the departure of the young from the family home had painful consequences. There were the Silvermans, whose son, a successful doctor, moved to Riverside Drive. The Silvermans one day went to visit their son. They came back disappointed. They told of a “fancy soldier,” and how he telephoned, and then the “soldier” said the doctor was not at home. They went several other times, and always with the same results. After that, the Silvermans rarely spoke of their son. He would occasionally visit the family, but his visits became fewer and further apart. It would not be truthful to say that this was an isolated case. Such things happened, even to Brownsville parents.

By and large, however, successful children were exceedingly solicitous of their parents. They came back to the old homestead for family reunions and they plied their parents with expensive gifts. When the Cohens celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary, a son presented them with a tour of Palestine. Another son made a generous gift to a local hospital, and still another made a generous donation to their parents’ favorite charity. In a family on my block, one of the sons who had become a millionaire (a real one) lavished luxuries on his parents. He renovated their two-family house with so many improvements and so many modern gadgets that it became a community showplace. The parents generally protested against such extravagance and it was clearly the children who had the greater pleasure, perhaps nostalgic, in generously giving.

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Recently I visited the library on Glenmore and Watkins Avenues. Physically, I found the place as charming as I remembered it. The tables were polished; the floors were waxed; the iron grillwork on the balcony was as graceful as ever; the books were as inviting. But there was a strange and eerie quiet. I was astonished to learn that the library was open only twice a week, and that even for this limited period, there was little activity. Two librarians were eager to serve me. What a change from my youth when we waited outside in long lines for the library to open, so that we could enter first and rush for our favorite book!

I walked over to the Labor Lyceum. The street was familiar, but the building itself looked strange to me. In front of the building, huge trucks were being loaded. The building had been converted to a factory. If you look upward toward the roof, you can still see the name “Labor Lyceum” clearly inscribed. Brownsville’s body is still there, but not the soul.

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