Liverpool Jewry: the changing years. Liverpool Jewish Gazette, April 26 1968
The second in a series of articles written by Abe Max
Standing next to my mother, I watched a man strange to me, helping the driver of a horse cab to lift off from the luggage carrier on the roof steel bound trunk. The man was my father who had left Liverpool some six months previously on the last lap of a journey commenced in ‘der heim’, as the Russian Pale was known to our immigrant parents. I was three years old at the time and my father had come back to what had been regarded as only an interim stop, defeated by a combination of labour troubles in New York, which meant no chance of employment at his trade and an inability to find a job which did not entail working on the Sabbath.
Fatherless at birth, he became doubly orphaned when his mother died seven months later. He was taken in by a woman who had been his aunt when her first husband was alive. He was apprenticed at an early age to a ‘schindel macher’, which meant a maker of wooden tiles which covered the timber-built houses of those days. His bed was among the shavings under the bench and much more than his contemporaries he used the ‘shtibbel’ or little shul, in the village as both a place of worship and a spot to sit down after a day’s labour.
In double danger
Not having had the benefit of a formal education in a cheder for long, he picked up knowledge by ear and trained his memory to retain it. I used to marvel at his ability to go to shool between mincha and maariv and repeat the alternate lines of the psalms which used to be said at those times on the Sabbath.
Having no parents and no papers, in those days an absolute essential, he stood doubly in danger: firstly from the Russian military authorities because boys in his circumstances became by decree, ‘children of the little father’, meaning the Tsar of Russia. This meant being drafted in to the army with little chance of getting out before twenty-five years, and secondly from his own people who, given a quota by the government of Jews to serve in the forces from each area, seized on men in his circumstances to fill up the lists. (note – even though the concept of cantonist was abolished in Russia in 1855, it appears from this account that it continued into the end of the 19th Century)
My mother’s ‘nadan’ or dowry, was the few roubles which bought a ticket for my father to travel from Hamburg to Liverpool, as the first step to going to her brothers in New York. So he ‘chapped der grenitz’, thst is, stole across the border, into Germany, reached Liverpool and eventually sent for my mother.
His training in Russia enabled him to master the skills of cabinet-making very quickly and he obtained work at the Model Cabinet Works in West Derby Street, run by Messers. Ramm and Israels for many years. My father in later years often said ruefully that his initial skill was a mixed blessing because those without it turned their hands and energies to dealing and business, becoming well off in later years, and, as I was to hear many times later, “you’ll never make money at the bench”.
We lived in that part of Smithdown Lane near Oxford Street and Bamber Street, opposite substantial houses set back from the road by long gardens and rising terrace-like up the slope of the land in that neighbourhood. I caused my mother much concern by getting lost frequently, the passing herds of sheep going to the abattoir, a common sight in those days, were an irresistible attraction. On being questioned I invariably gave my name as Bamber Street, the inhabitants of which quickly became accustomed to seeing a small boy being led by the hand of a policeman and directed him to my home nearby.
Glaziers
In order to curb my propensity for wandering away, I was sent to school in Smithdown Lane which, built on a slope, had a boys’ playground reached by a long flight of stone steps.
The family shopping was done at Sandersons, a grocery shop in the middle of Bamber Street. The wife ran the shop while her husband continued in his occupation of a glazier. In those days it was a common sight to see a glazier with a wooden pack on his back containing glass and a can dangling below holding the putty. A number of our community followed this trade and it has been the start of two or three prosperous property businesses of today.
A daughter of the Sanderson family was in charge of the delicatessen section in Coopers of Church Street, where she was to be seen for many years attending to requirements with a smile and seemingly unhurried efficiency, amidst the bustle and turmoil of the ‘Paysedike’ orders. I see her brother occasionally still in the glazing. He is in charge of a gang that will take out broken plate glass windows and putting in new ones, working with an ordered dexterity where every man steps forward to do his part under the cheerful eye of the foreman.
Another grocery store nearby was in Crown Street, run by the Joseph family and I have a vivid recollection of seeing there sugar in a cone-shaped form like a dunce’s hat which was later cut up by using a kind of hand guillotine. This lump sugar was of a close consistency than that of today and in longer and flatter pieces. We used to call it ‘rusisher’ sugar in our family and it was perfect for holding between the teeth while drinking a ‘glezzel tay’ – Russian tea.
The Albert daughters
In those days a samovar was a common sight in Jewish homes and tea was sipped, I’m afraid rather noisily, between lips and teeth holding the piece of sugar. No doubt many will remember the mantel-piece graced by a pair of brightly polished Shabbos candle-sticks and the ‘shtaysell’, which was the pestle and mortar used to pound the ‘mon’ or popy seed for flavouring the ‘’homontashen baked for Purim, while on the sideboard, and reflected in the mirror back, was the samovar, made of a silvery-coloured metal, while the other two were made of brass.
Although the family moved away from the district we still went back for the ‘Peysedike’ order in which there were always ‘prelaytes’, a kind of cup cake to which I looked forward eagerly for my share o nthe first day of the festival.
The family moved to Crown Street with its tall three-storey houses, not Crown Square I must repeat. There was a vast social difference between them. The latter being a sort of court with small houses, long since swept away. We had as neighbours the Latins, who later opened a tailoring shop in Brownlow Hill. One of the sons is Joey Latin the solicitor.
Shopping was done at Albert’s when the daughters help their mother to serve customers from far and near. The shop was always, it seemed to me, full of good things and people. There was always a kindly word for me from the good lady in charge and often a little delicacy as a gift. The grocery shops of those days were the market centres of the community and the owners a sheet anchor when things were bad. Much help was given by them to families in need, quietly and without strings.
Soon we moved again, to Iden Street and shopping was now in Fairclough Lane. For meat at Goldbergs, later taken over by the son Simon, or at Mrs. Bredski’s in Montague Street, groceries at Michaelson’s, who later moved to the top of Brownlow Hill, greengroceries at Strofsky’s in Crown Street, wine for Shabbos and yom-tov at Cohen’s and papers in Yiddish at Kantrowitz.
I can remember the proprietor help by his daughter, Leah, still happily with us in Israel. The Jewish newsagents in the district sold a number of papers in Yiddish and one went there for religious books and other requirements. Kantrowitz’s was especially favoured by my mother because they ran a lending library where for a penny a volume, she took out romances and dramas written in the mother tongue. I remember that my father bought from the same shop a printed sheet containing the Aleph Bet and below it the musical notations for singing the haftara, which was pasted on a board and used in many cheders which abounded in the neighbourhood. I learnt them at home with the script writing in Hebrew from my mother’s tuition.
Perhaps some of my readers will remember two glaziers who lived off Fairclough Lane, in a side street – Mr. Barton, a small chubby person married to a wife much taller than him, and Jacobs der Blinder, a giant of a man who had lost the sight of one eye almost completely.
When the Sbbath was coming in I was sent with the tepple containing the Shabbos cholent to Drogey’s, the Jewish baker in Montague Street, to be put in the oven and kept warm overnight for the meal after morning shool. The tepple was an enamel-lined pot tapering towards the mouth and particularly adapted for the cooking of tzimmes or cholent. I’ve tasted modern varieties of these dishes and also kashes made from ‘hobbener gritz’, but they cannot compare withb those made in my mother’s tepple for succulence and taste.
Rolling pin
No self-respecting housewife of those days was without jars of home-pickled herring, home-made raisin wine, mead for Pesach, ‘rossel’ – a kind of beetroot soup – pickled ‘uggkess’, a barrel of sauerkraut, ‘retach’ in salt, beetroot in vinegar, her own baked bread for Shabbos, and of course cake for visitors. I never remember my mother baking kichel, that tasty egg-bound biscuit so beloved in those days, though others did.
The ‘valgerotz’ or rolling pin was used to effect in those days to make the flat lengths of dough hung up, often over the kitchen chair to dry and then to be cut expertly into thin or thick ‘lockshen’. And the ‘farfel’, the ‘crepplach’, the ‘knishes’, the ‘’verrenkes, the ‘homontashes’, light as a feather, covered with egg and full of ‘mon’ made to mama’s own recipe. Where are to be found the ‘atkes of yesteryear, the blintzes, the stuffed kishke and the roast chicken helzel with such a succulent mixture? Who today makes the strongly flavoured ‘fissnoge’ from a bullock foot split lengthwise or the more delicately-flavoured calf’s foot jelly, both seasoned with pickle sauce and dotted with pieces of egg?
Remember the latkes, piping hot from the pan and covered with sugar, the blintzes filled with ‘kezz’, ‘lekach’ with honey, nuts inside and on top, with ‘ingber’ to taste? Or the ‘ziss und zoer’ – sweet and sour - cabbage soup and ‘tzimmes’ and ‘kampote’ flavoured with ‘flomen’ and raisins? One could tell the birthplace of the housewife in der heim from the sweetness of these two dishes. The nearer to Poland, the sweeter the concoction, Oh! The quantities of ‘tzibbeles’, ‘burrekes’, ‘hinnisher’ fat and ‘tzimmering’ used in those days, all sacrificed now on the altar of calories and diet.
Sprintz’s cheder.
The Jewish quarter of Mount Vernon Street was not known very well to me though I remember Alper’s butcher shop and a bakery run by Mr. Zachlinsky. Better known was the Crown Street area, where was to be found Strofsky’s, the greengrocer, a tobacconist run by a Mr. Seloff (we lads of course nicknamed it Sheloff, meaning sleepy in Yiddish) and Brown the cycle dealer in Pembroke Place.
Then there was Moon Street, where lived the Goodstones, the Baileys, the Winetrobe family, the Mandels and Mr. Sprintz, the rebbe.
Mr. Mndel was a cheerful chossid, broad-shouldered and rosy-faced, who sang out lustily in Islington shool on Shabbos and on yom-tov, and many of my readers will remember Spritz’s cheder, where the Aleph Bays was taught to the accompaniment of much noise and a liberal use of a ‘patch in ponim’ or a reminder form the strap. This was the traditional method used in those days and we and our parents expected nothing else, and we got it there in quantity!
In nearby Elizabeth Street were the Blacks, the Schnitlinger family, Ellenbogen the dentist, the Curlenders and Erlich the bakers. We now come close to Brownlow Hill and its adjoining streets, but this must remain for another day if my readers so desire it.