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MAX: I'll tell you about my love affair before sixteen... before I came to America. I fell in love with a girl... my mother's sister's daughter. My cousin! She was so pretty... something like you! I was so serious about her that when I came to America, I was sixteen and a half, I kept writing letters to her. I was so serious [at] that time, I thought that right away I gotta get married. She answered me, and... I came to where the girl was... before I went to America. So I had a boyfriend, a friend... So, like two girls that get a liking for each other, I get a liking for him. And we shared our secrets! And I remember I used to get letters from that girl, and we both read the letters. Heh, heh... And we had to answer the letters, we also did it together!
LISA: Whatever happened with that girl?
MAX: She got married I suppose! Without me! My friend, his name was Avram Hirsch. So soon I got a letter... on the telephone, was no telephone, excuse me. There was no telephone... heh, heh... And he came running, as we made a date, and we got it, and we used to read the letters, and answer the letters, it was real pure love…
NARRATOR: Pure love was a relatively new concept in the shtetl. The arrangement of marriages was another way parents could insure economic stability for their children; romantic love was foolhardy and impractical. Matchmakers earned a livlihood –although meagre at best– well into the beginning of the twentieth century and could be found hawking their services on the Lower East Side. But the same circumstances that caused the physical uprooting of a people were also responsible for a spiritual uprooting of traditional values and mores. The Western world brought ideas of love and romance along with railroads and mass production. It was inevitable that with exposure young Jews would begin to yearn for its rewards and emulate its social traditions. There is little apparent difference between Max's episode and the antics of an adolescent American boy today.
MAX: I think I told you once, that when I became 15 years, I developed a romance! And the maidel's /21/ name was Faigeleh. Faigel was a girl's name. And Faigeleh, is like now, a pet name. So I was so serious about that girl, that I thought she was the prettiest, and the smartest and sings better than everyone, and I took into my love my friend, Chaim Moshe. Together we used to write the love letters! Together, I mean it! We'd both read them! And both answer it, too.
NARRATOR: Max Leavitt was a sentimental romantic of the most extreme kind. No doubt the qualities of Faigeleh did exist; or that they were the source of his attraction. It is possible that Max exaggerated the entire "affair" for the sake of sensation. It is equally possible, however, that it was not an exaggeration to him at all; it could very well be that this was the only way he remembered the romance. In contemporary psychological terms we might interpret it as a fantasy escape; a defense mechanism against a hostile world. But to Max it was just an unconscious means of acquiring some happiness – real enough, if only fanciful and temporary.
LISA: Did you know this girl in school?
MAX: You see, she was in the family... Both the same age, foolish in love...
LISA: She was your first cousin!?
MAX: My first cousin, yeah. But she was very sweet. And she enjoyed that intrigue about love letters, and she wrote me my answers, and me and my boyfriend used to answer her. It was like a triple, a triple love...
LISA: Did first cousins marry then?
MAX: Yeah, sure.
LISA: That's interesting. So why did you stop writing her?
MAX: Well, when I came to America I wrote to her a few letters, and then by itself... it vanished, it vanished, it vanished... Especially when I got acquainted with Jennie! This wasn't no more kid love, no?
NARRATOR: Enjoying the recounting of his "love affair," Max nevertheless acknowledges the adolescent nature of the romance. While in the shtetl it was an amusing game to play, but which was disposed of with emigration and adulthood.
MAX: Life wasn't the altogether, like they sing in the songs, misery, misery, misery. We lived our youth, and with all the fun and all the romances that you hear about nowadays, legally and illegally, it was the same thing seventyeight, eighty years ago...
LISA: What do you mean, legally and illegally?
MAX: I mean you find now the burlesque, the dirty pictures and all this... those things were going on in our years too!
LISA: Yeah, pornography?
MAX: Pornography! Not exactly like it is today, because everything today, is, everything is carved to the point, to make it worth... but the urge for sex was that time the same thing as it is now. Same thing! Boys from twelve, from thirteen, fourteen made love, with girls, same thing, were curious about the other sex! Otherwise they wouldn't have no generations!
NARRATOR: The above exchange was quite a shock to my naive sensibilities.I seem to have one set of beliefs for myself, and quite another for those of Max's generation. I found it startling that an 85-year old man would speak so explicitly, and also that there were, in fact, such activities among the Jews of Tsarist Russia. In the Broadway hit, Fiddler on the Roof, in which the wondrous effects of romantic love were explored and ultimately accepted by a Jewish father, it never occurred to me that sex might be a factor.
Traditionally the Eastern European Jews did not consider sexual activity as impure or evil; as a requirement for procreation, it was seen as a positive good. But the concept of sexuality as a basic form of entertainment certainly did not exist in shtetl life until the end of the nineteenth century, when the influence of Western values began to have an impact. An oppressed people who were continually faced with economic deprivation were not likely to deprive themselves sexually; as soon as something better was offered they welcomed it wholly.
LISA: Did you know when you met Jennie that you would make her your wife?
MAX: Nah, you can't know that. I was pushed to Jennie from my mother's sister, because I was the only boy around... My aunt made the match: "There's a pretty girl walking around, why don't you go together?" So we had a concert in Whitman Park – they used to have the concerts every summertime. So I went to a concert and I met Jennie! And ever since then, fartik /22/ I fell in love [with her] and we didn't let go of each other.
IMAGE: Jennie, ca. 1915
/21/ Pretty girl
/22/ Finished through meaning??? “ready”
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Oh, she was pretty, Jennie, was she pretty. Blond, reddish blond. And what's more, you know she could cook!
LISA: Were you chaperoned on the first date?
MAX: Chaperoned, no. We were grown-up people already. She worked in a shoe factory, and I worked in Washington Street, [in] my store. I was supposed to be my own boss. Then I got married and I came to New York.
NARRATOR: The adolescent crush of fourteen year old Mordecai in Wysokie Litewskie seems in one way to have been a natural precursor to the real love he found as Max Leavitt in Whitman. The progression of romantic events – the meeting, attraction, love, marriage, children, happiness forever – rolls very smoothly over the tongue. But something was nonsensical about the situation.
NARRATOR: It was certainly plausible from Max's point of view. He was lonely in his cleaning store, for it was difficult to meet young Jewish people. So in the interest of insuring cohesiveness of the small Jewish enclave, Max's Aunt Gittle, in whose house he lived, played the obligatory role of the matchmaker.
NARRATOR: Yet it is difficult to imagine their actual meeting. Whitman Park: a few acres of patchy grass with a baseball diamond and a well-cared for gazebo. I could envision how the musicians must have looked in 1917 in that bandstand; perhaps a Maurice Chevalier-type who would sing to the lovers as they strolled around the grass on warm spring evenings. But the inclusion of Max and Jennie into this fanciful movie in my brain was like Bergman redirecting Gigi. What were the first conversations they had with one another? Were they in Yiddish or in broken English? The linguistic differences and the clashing sensibilities seemed so obvious to me!
IMAGE: Max and Jennie, 1917
NARRATOR: Having been raised in a middle-class Jewish suburb, I was not directly exposed to anti-Semitism until I left. Perhaps the estrangement I felt to exist in Whitman was simply within myself.
NARRATOR: In preparing for adulthood Max assumed that he would live among gentiles. Having no strong religious convictions, he was already partially assimilated by the time he arrived in Whitman. And yet he also knew well upon arrival that anti-Semitism was part of the package of living and working with gentiles. And so he managed to meet his love and to marry her in Whitman. He could have met her anywhere. The location didn't matterwhat mattered was only that they find similar people to share their lives withthis naturally requiring that they be Jews.
IMAGE: Max during WWI, 1918. He was drafted but had only served three months when the war ended.
IMAGE: Herbert and Benjamin as infants
IMAGE: Herbert and Benjamin as college graduates (1940)
LISA: You didn't know you would have twins?
MAX: I knew, I knew... I could tell, you can't hide those things, you know. You remember that!
LISA: So there was no surprise when the doctor said that there was another one on the way.
MAX: Yeah, there was no surprise.
LISA: Were there many people in the room? Did she have a midwife?
MAX: Yeah. A midwife and a few neighbors coming in – curiosity, especially when they expected another baby! It was news!
MAX: Herbie made such a riot, he hollered murder! You know what happened? When Jennie had the first baby, the doctor said there's another one – I was so worried, I sat down on Jennie's belly. I was worried! I didn't know what to do! So I sat down on the bed... on Herbie! Herbie gave such a riot, he started crying! Why did I sit on him?... I got up and let nature take its course. 'Cause this is a moment you don't get it so often. I didn't expect to be here, just like I didn't expect anything else…
NARRATOR: The twins were born two years after the marriage of Max and Jennie, one and a half years after the move to New York, They were born into a Jewish world where people lived on top of one
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NARRATOR: another and so knew each other's business. The Bronx wasn't the Lower East Side, but it was a far cry from little Whitman. The Max Leavitts and their neighbors were slightly more affluent than those in the southward tenements, yet they were all part of the same fabric.
NARRATOR: If there was any culture shock befalling Max and Jennie when they came to New York there was no hint of it in Max's descriptions. After all, how can a person feel culture shock when he really doesn't leave a culture? The emigrants from Eastern Europe had brought their attitudes and values along with their few possessions, implanting them in the New World as a base to work from. After eight years in Whitman, Max was now in an element more familiar to him. He treated the arrival of the twins like everything else; it was a surprise perhaps, but at the same time was meant to be, and so was accepted.
MAX: Well I hit Saul, I hit Saul a lot. You I didn't hit.
GEORGE: Well, a couple of times. Mom did most of the hitting. But you gave me a whack once, I'll never forget it. You were sitting around, trying to teach me to tell time. And I was not interested. I don't know, I must've been old enough, I just wasn't interested, and you were getting impatient. And I was giving all the wrong answers, so finally you gave me a whack, pow!, and I read it, immediately! (Lots of laughter)
MAX: I remember, I remember (clamoring for attention) I ran after Saul, around the table.
GEORGE: I remember somebody running around somebody around a table. Was it Saul?
MAX: He didn't report the report card! He denied it, he didn't want the report card. So I started chasing around the big table, remember the table?
IMAGE: Saul in wedding party
IMAGE: Saul in U.S. Army with George, 1943
GEORGE: I remember the big table, I used to hide underneath. (Laughter)
NARRATOR: Discipline of the Leavitt boys was basically handled by Jennie, the undisputed queen bee. Max's major personality traits included a penchant for order; his main concern was that things should always run smoothly, whatever the circumstances. How this tranquility was achieved and maintained was really left up to Jennie. Although her children's health was of utmost importance to her, she viewed corporal punishment as a primary and necessary means of health preservation.
NARRATOR: Max, however, was not beyond occassionally whacking his children's rear ends. He was not the stereotypical husband whose major function was to support his family and to remain mute at domestic matters. The issue of his sons' education was of primary importance, so when Saul repeatedly came home without his report card, Max took things into his own hands.
IMAGE: Paul in 1943 with Maurice Schwartz during a production of "The Family Carnofsky"
IMAGE: Paul in in 1955
MAX: So this is one angle, and then you must know an angle in our life that Paul came up in his long glory about Hollywood. You know that, don't you? He went to – you don't know nothing?shame on you! He went to Hollywood and he took a, what do you call it?... [screen] test! And he passed, and he got an agreement with... Warner Brothers... And one nice day in August, I don't remember the year, the contract from Hollywood and Warner Brothers came to our house and offered them a contract for seven years, with how much money?... a nice sum of money we should come to Hollywood. He's gonna work for Paramount, for Warner Broth... .And don't ask what was doing in the Leavitt family. Everybody was up, newspapers were doing writeups... So, me and Jenny started to prepare for the trip. And it came records from Hollywood, and what was the name of the woman who took part, a writer – a famous playwright. Brenda...
GEORGE: Brenda Weisberg.
MAX: Brenda Weisberg, see! She took personal interest in Paul and we, me and Jennie received letters. And the initiator was one fellow named Maurice Schwartz. Ever hear of a fellow named Maurice Schwartz? He was a Jewish actor, the best actor that the Jewish stage gave out in those years. He was not a cheap actor, he was the best, with a literary act like I couldn't tell you... I couldn't tell you who to pair him up [with] nowadays, big shots you know, but he was the best Jewish actor on the stage... And we received letters from Maurice Schwartz, and he [was] congratulating us: "Mr. and Mrs. Leavitt, we are having a second Paul Muni," you know Paul Muni? And meanwhile in the midst of our family people started to buy our furniture, cause they figured we're gonna pack in New York cause we were gonna go to California. This is a separate chapter of our life.
LISA: You were going to move to California?
MAX: Yeah!
LISA: You were gonna take Georgie with you too?
MAX: Everybody! He could be an actor too! On the record, Maurice Schwartz congratulated us on having a second Paul Muni, "and you're entitled to it, you're the best father and mother..." and everything was ready to shooting. When all of a sudden we received a letter from Paramount…
GEORGE: Warner.
MAX: Warner Brothers, they changed their minds, "he's too young for old roles, too old for young roles. Therefore, we are postponing the signing of the contract
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IMAGE: untitled (family portrait, two men in back row wearing uniforms. US Army, US Navy)
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MAX: indefinitely." So that was the end of a thing. Needless to say, that it put us very backwards in our life. And we had to go back like plain people. But all were sure that we are gonna move to California.
NARRATOR: Max took such pleasure in the relating of their experience with Hollywood! With just two children left at home, Max and Jennie put great hopes into going to California to foster the career of their son the actor. 1944, the middle of the romantic war movie era, was a time when tragedies and comedies, great success stories and monumental losses were the stuff of daily newspapers. The Yiddish theatre had thrived on the Lower East Side for decades; great names like Jacob Adler and Molly Picon had emerged from this very unique form of drama. The Yiddish theatre had evolved from a people released from oppression; as the assimilation process began to take hold, the genre naturally became absorbed into American society.
NARRATOR: It made sense, therefore, for Max and Jennie to be attracted to Hollywood. They were not victims of a doctor/lawyer syndrome concerning their sons. After all, there were five of them. Most
prevalent for Max and Jennie was for their sons to be successful at whatever they chose to do with their lives.
NARRATOR: Although the contract fell through for Paul, his talent as an actor was utilized later on in life, successfully manifesting itself in his role as an independent business entrepreneur. I see his vitality and forcefulness come out of that love for acting; it was a natural part of him then, and certainly has been fully utilized.
MAX: [After the twins] I had another one, and then another one, but then I wants a girl. I didn't know what a girl looks like! So my wife was [going to have] the fifth baby. And I prayed [to] God, I wanna have a girl! So when my wife started to go to have the baby, so... the doctor, was the same doctor! So the doctor said to my wife, I don't guarantee you that you're gonna have a girl. If you wanna have a girl, change either the doctor, pick another doctor. Or change your husband! So what do you think happened? She had another boy! I don't know why she didn't change husbands.
NARRATOR: As the daughter of Max and Jennie's youngest son, I am obviously quite glad that Georgie was a boy. The ongoing joke has been that Jennie, in her desperation for a girl, dressed him in Scottish-like kilts and kept his hair in long golden locks until his bar-mitzvah. In fact, Georgie turned out to be the tallest and one of the largest of all five.
NARRATOR: In reality, to be the mother of five strapping boys placed Jennie permanently in an exalted position. She never felt that something was missing, and was known to have encouraged other women to have as many boys as possible. Poor Max, however, had to wait for his first grandchild to appease his desire for a little girl. He was a ladies' man throughout, who appreciated his future daughters-in-law as much for their very existence as for their various merits.
IMAGE: untitled (couple, woman at left)
IMAGE: George, ca. 1934
IMAGE: George, in 1947
LISA: What do you think about intermarriage?
MAX: About what?
LISA: Intermarriage. Marrying outside the. faith.
MAX: It's a big danger... it's a... danger.
LISA: Why?
MAX: Because between a man and his wife there's a lot of obstacles as it is... let alone to add another item, another item which is not under control.
LISA: You say you weren't religious when you were growing up. Let's say a man and a woman were raised really not knowing about their religion at all, but they're different religions. Do you see that as being equally problematic, equally hard? They don't have a sense of who they are, they don't have a sense of their own identity.
MAX: Impossible! We live in a society where no matter where you are you find different religions and different problems. You see that even without this here problem, the problems that are about, can arise…
NARRATOR: Max's strong feelings against intermarriage were based more on cultural differences than on religious conviction. His Jewishness was a permanent part of him; in his household Yiddish was the first and major language. Jewish culture pervaded the apartments, the neighborhoods, the schools. All of his children received a Hebrew education and were bar-mitzvahed, but the family did not adhere to Jewish law in everyday activities. They were not kosher, did not attend services steadily, and did not strictly observe the Sabbath. Although they were surrounded by Eastern European Yiddish culture, his children were not entirely sheltered from other cultures and religions. It was inevitable that in a city like New York, into which all races and types were moving, the tight-knit Jewish community would change. Yiddishkeit /23/ had grown out of a self-protective need to stay together; in the United States this need was gradually diminished. Thus Yiddishkeit flourished only as long as it was needed.
NARRATOR: Still, most of the first generation of children spent their childhoods with others of their kind. The Jews went to the City College of New York with other Jews, established businesses with Jews, and married Jews. Intermarriage was almost unthinkable. Persecution and pogroms were still too fresh in the memories of the parents – the fear that it could happen again made it essential that the Jews stayed together.
NARRATOR: Of Max's children who married, all chose Jews. It is difficult to say whether this was out of their personal convictions or more out of respect for their parents. One son did marry a gentile after a divorce; but it was twenty years after his first marriage. Out of ten grandchildren to result from those marriages, three out of the five who have married are married to non-Jews.
NARRATOR:Max took all of this in stride; perhaps his attitude towards his own family was the employment of his practical over his emotional side. His preoccupation with the failure of his own second marriage, however, significantly colored his words.
/23/ The culture of the Eastern European Jews
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IMAGE: untitled (color 12 people, Max behind top row)