Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (16 page)

It did not matter whether we were in Polishtown, the South Side, or in some town in Wisconsin; Herman always acted like he belonged. His customers welcomed him with loud greetings and implored him to gossip about their competitors or commiserate about the state of business, which was never quite good enough. He was, for these shopkeepers, like the traveling storytellers of old who kept people apprised of the news from abroad.

In exchange for his information and stories, Herman took the kind of liberties reserved for family, grabbing Cokes or cookies for us without ever asking. I’ll never forget how he reached right into the oven at one bagel shop on Kedzie Avenue and pulled out a handful of hot mini-bagels and gave them to us. I don’t know which was more impressive, the exquisite taste of a bagel so perfectly fresh and hot, or my grandfather’s pain-defying reach into the oven. For me, a skinny kid, the sight of those huge callused mitts plunging into the oven was the
very picture of toughness. The only way we could hold on to our treats was to juggle them from hand to hand while they cooled.

Often gruff and intimidating with adults at home, Herman was usually energetic, confident, and generous with us boys. He gave Gary and me tickets for the one and only pro football game I ever saw, at a frigid Wrigley Field. (The Bears moved to Soldier Field in 1971.) During a trip to some general store in the hinterlands, he sprang for my first wristwatch. I was six or seven years old but he did not buy me a kid’s model with Mickey Mouse or some other playful image on the face. Instead he got me a serious grown-up timepiece with a big white dial and black hands that pointed to numerals stamped on the face in blocky black type. My wrist was so skinny that he had to get a woman’s model and he asked the store owner to punch two extra holes in the leather strap so it would stay on. However, it was a real watch and Herman knew that when I wore it I felt one step closer to adulthood.

In most cases, days spent driving around with my grandfather were about adventure and involved a lot of raucous interactions. His big, meaty hands made the steering wheel look small and delicate and his booming voice—“Shut up back there already!”—practically shook the windows of the car. On one occasion, when Ari and Rahm went out with him, the Big Bangah actually followed through on a threat we had always considered idle. For years he’d warned, “I’ll put you out of this car and leave you here!” but we never believed him. On this trip he got so fed up with Ari and Rahm that he actually pulled over on some isolated roadside in rural Wisconsin and ordered them out. They were about seven and nine years old and could not believe that Herman would actually drive away, but he did.

Ornery as they could be, Rahm and Ari were also little boys and as they watched the station wagon disappear they became worried, anxious, and then truly upset. Rural Wisconsin may as well have been Zamboanga to them and they soon began to panic. They thought about finding a pay phone to call for help but realized that they did not know which way to walk in order to find civilization and that even if they did find a phone they did not have any money to pay for a call. In their telling of the story they were stuck there for an hour before
Herman came back, muttered something about hoping they had learned a lesson, and let them into the car. For all I know they had only been alone for a few minutes or so.

Fortunately, Herman rarely acted on his threats. Instead he took pains to instruct us on how to be his kind of man. At mealtimes he might take us into a diner, or roadside café, and generously urge us to order what we wanted, including foods that were never in the refrigerator at home, like cherry Cokes and orange pop. Watching him move so confidently as he interacted with shopkeepers, countermen, cooks, and bakers was like watching a veteran pol work a precinct meeting. He flashed a huge smile, talked sports and current events, slapped backs, and busted chops. Despite our current reputation, my brothers and I were cautious and even a little shy back then whenever we entered unfamiliar settings or encountered new people. We would each develop strategies to overcome this social anxiety to a certain extent, but Ari and I will never be as comfortable as Rahm, who was destined to become a professional politician and nearly Herman’s equal when it came to small talk and jokes.

Between stops, the Big Bangah told us stories about how he had managed to make it in a world that wasn’t always friendly to a Russian Jewish immigrant with hardly any formal education. The world he described, where powerful people and institutions rejected him because of his religion and nationality, led him to develop his tough, masculine personality. It was not the world we knew, but hearing about it helped us understand and appreciate him even if we could not emulate him.

A different, but equally impressive view of Herman’s life came into focus when we attended services at the storefront synagogue he had helped to build. Located in the old Jewish neighborhood of Albany Park, the shul was home to about a hundred congregants, all middle-aged and older, including my family. We were the only children who ever attended the services. My brothers and I resisted and complained about getting dressed up and schlepping to the synagogue but once we got there we were proud to see how much people respected our grandfather. All during services he would wander the aisles, and whisper to
various congregants. And he would invariably be the one who supplied the food for the Yom Kippur break fast or Saturday kiddushes. Most important, when something needed to be done—someone driven home after services, food delivered to someone who had just come home from the hospital, or an electric light fixed—Big Bangah just did it without the need to be asked or thanked. We basked in the reflected glory and, since we were the only children who attended services there, we came in for lots of cheek-pinching attention.

Services at the temple were conducted entirely in Hebrew, but if someone made impromptu remarks, they were made in Yiddish. Attendance varied depending on the time of year, but high holy day services were always quite crowded. They frequently got too loud for anyone to hear the actual prayer service. And then Herman would raise his enormous mitt of a right hand and bang it down on the counter, instantly bringing order to the old ladies gossiping and other loud murmurings.

On Yom Kippur we also watched as the congregation raised the money to fund the shul for the coming year. Conducted during a pause in the service, this collection began with an announcement. A few thousand dollars were required to pay the utilities and repairs, and members were asked to say, out loud, how much they were willing to contribute. Offers of ten to twenty dollars were voiced and usually the action stopped a few hundred dollars short of the goal. Everyone would look toward my father. He would smile and nod, which was the signal that Dr. Emanuel would fill the gap.

After services people stayed to mingle over honey cake, tea, and kosher wine. Many but not all of the people who went to that temple kept kosher households, either out of religious conviction or because the practice was part of their Jewish identity. When it came to theology the people at the Albany temple, like Jews in general, were all over the map.

In my family, we expressed our Judaism through our commitment to Israel, attending Jewish day school, and a devotion to the Friday night dinners. In keeping with tradition my mother lit candles and did the blessing, my father did the wine blessing, and one of us kids
blessed the challah. My parents were not so religious that we did the handwashing, blessing of the children, or grace after meals that my children and I now include. Attendance at these dinners was mandatory and only a medical emergency would keep my father away. The meal was never fancy, but the table was set with a white tablecloth and cloth napkins, and the menu invariably included a roast chicken, vegetables, and salad.

If ever peace reigned in our home it was on these Friday nights when the TV and radio were switched off and no one answered the telephone. We still indulged in lively conversation and debate, but we made more of an effort to show respect for one another as we affirmed our Jewish identity.

In our family, the God of the burning bush was a concept that served a purpose when it was devised in ancient times but was not a matter of literal truth. Sure, there were references to God in our everyday conversations, especially from my mother, but in truth she was agnostic, and my father, if pressed, would say he’s an atheist. But this would not be a deeply considered answer. It would be a way to brush off the question, which he wouldn’t consider seriously. My father was never the type to be seriously bothered by a metaphysical question. He had neither a scientist’s nor a theologian’s interest in the origins of the universe or the nature of morality. Instead he was interested in watching and interacting with people, and thrilled at both the variety and the creativity in human expression.

For our mother, who was more concerned about us attending synagogue, religion was a matter of us being authentically and culturally Jewish. Going to synagogue was a matter of Jewish identity in the America of the 1960s, which was overwhelmingly Christian in fact and spirit. In Israel, attending synagogue doesn’t mean the same thing. In a land that is Jewish, you never feel any pressure to attend religious services because you don’t have to prove your membership. You are Jewish by birthright, conversion, and location and that settles it. In the America of our childhood, attendance at Friday night or Saturday services signaled your commitment to your Jewishness and the Jewish
community. It was a way of showing, to yourself and the world, who you were.

Given our household, none of us brothers became believers in God, but we are all deeply Jewish and take the practices seriously. Our children have gone to Jewish day school; each of us still makes Friday night dinners special and says all the requisite prayers. Interestingly, two of my children and one of Rahm’s are strictly kosher. More important, we never saw a contradiction in practicing Judaism and yet not believing in God. For us Judaism is a religion without a supreme authority like the pope. Instead it offers a tradition in which sages offer various interpretations and arguments about the meaning of every passage of the Bible. As a result we became imbued with the Jewish ethos of constantly challenging authority, asking questions, and examining every aspect of life.

The fact that my parents did not believe in a man-in-the-sky kind of God and ate some nonkosher foods did not make them any less accepted in the shul or the community. They were loved and accepted because of their generosity of spirit. They always made an extra effort to include you in their circle.

My father’s openness meant that once you got to know him, almost anything could happen. A young single woman who became his office assistant told him soon after she was hired that she had never seen a baby born and was eager to do so. This was the 1960s, a time when delivery rooms were off-limits to everyone but medical personnel and mothers, most of whom were drugged and would never recall what went on. Ignoring prevailing custom, my father took his assistant to a hospital where he had privileges, got her into scrubs and a mask, and all but shoved her into a delivery room, where he explained that she was in training for something and would like to observe. The doctors and nurses simply nodded and let her watch for as long as she cared to stay there.

Diane Fisher, who married and became Diane Ianiro, would say
that this experience changed her life forever. The birth she witnessed dispelled the mystery if not the fear around an experience she was quite certain she would have in the future. More important, the respect my father had shown her by admitting her to a sort of secret society and assuming she could handle it gave her a sense of self-confidence and made her feel like she was Dr. Emanuel’s colleague and not an employee. Diane, who was so pretty that all three of us developed crushes on her, spent her entire career in my father’s practice and became a close family friend.

Over time, many friends, colleagues, neighbors, and allies in various political battles found acceptance and comfort inside the family orbit. In turn, Rahm, Ari, and I would bring our friends, classmates, and even our teachers around. Some would sample the raucous enthusiasm they found in our home and feel so overwhelmed they never came back. Others felt warmed by the affection and liberated by the way they were invited to speak their minds.

The longest-running family friendship has been with the Glasses, who met my parents soon after they returned to Chicago from Israel. From the day when I asked Carol Glass to peel that orange, she and my mother have been steady friends, as close as sisters. Bill Glass was as much an uncle as any blood relative and his sons were the boys we knew best from the time we were toddlers until we went to college.

It would be hard to exaggerate the amount of time we spent with the Glasses and the importance they played in our childhood. Like us the sons were three Jewish boys growing up in middle-class Chicago. But unlike us they attended public school and were not subject to nearly as much pressure when it came to academic success. Less focused than my parents when it came to educational enrichment, Bill and Carol did not take their sons on regular outings to museums, the ballet, and the theater. Bill Glass was more of an all-American dad, the type who trekked with his sons (and occasionally an Emanuel boy) to his alma mater, Michigan State, for football games. He also loved to indulge us at roadside restaurants. Every time Bill drove us to their Michiana cottage, on the lakeshore sand dunes at the Indiana-Michigan border, we stopped at the famous Phil Smidt’s restaurant in
Hammond, Indiana, to fill our bellies on fried lake perch, coleslaw, and french fries.