Papa Was a Fixture

Papa was a fixture. In the 1960s he was a fixture on the University of California Berkeley campus, as familiar and recognizable as the landmark Campanile. With his flowing white hair and long white beard, Papa looked every inch the patriarch. Every day he walked along famed Telegraph Avenue to the campus, settling himself on a bench located a few yards inside the Sather Gate entry. There, with a newspaper or book in hand, he would read, enjoy the weather, and chat with students.

As the oldest child in a large, poor family in Poland, Papa’s own formal schooling had ended with his Bar Mitzvah when he was 13. At age 21, with the collusion of his mother, he escaped army service because, he said, “Being a soldier in the Czar’s army was not a good thing for a nice Jewish boy.” Hiding by day and walking at night he made his way to France where he joined a group of fellow escapees working in a factory owned by another Jewish refugee. Then, with the loan of $10.00 from a friend, he became part of the early 1900’s mass immigration to the Goldeneh Medina where he worked in a sweatshop on the Lower East Side—and where he met his future bride, my mother. It did not take long before they accepted the $25.00 offered by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) to those who would leave the crowded Lower East Side, and they moved to San Francisco.

Learning was Papa’s passion. He spoke five languages and read everything he could get his hands on, including the dictionary, the encyclopedia, the Yiddish newspaper, and always books. He and my mother impressed on my three brothers and me the love of learning and the need for education, and in the early 1920s the family moved to Berkeley, “…to be in walking distance of the college when the ‘kinder’ are ready.” (All four of us became college graduates.)

From 1925 until 1948 my parents owned a “Mom and Pop” grocery store on the north side of the Berkeley campus. I still remember how annoyed my mother would be when the store was full of waiting customers and Papa would be off in a corner discussing history or arguing politics with a professor. And during the depression years, when more than one professor became unemployed, their grocery “charge accounts” were carried on the books until financial conditions improved. The store was open seven days a week, 363 days a year, closing only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Years later, when enjoying the sunshine on “his” bench, Papa was approached by a gentleman identifying himself as a “delivery boy” who had worked in the folks’ store in the 1940s, driving the truck and delivering groceries that customers had ordered by telephone. He said, “You may not remember me, Mr. Rubin, but I have never forgotten you. You gave me a job when I desperately needed one, and you paid me 60 cents an hour when the accepted “Fair Bear” wage in those days was 40 cents an hour. I’m the vice-president of an international company now and I travel all over the world, but I doubt that I would have gotten where I am without your kindness and your encouraging me to stay in school.”

When Papa retired in 1948 there was no provision for the self-employed under Social Security. Later, when he became eligible under a category providing for very old people who had never had a chance to work under the Social Security system, he refused to apply—as a matter of principle. It took some persuasion by a family member before he finally signed the necessary papers. In due course a check for $9,000 arrived —for all the back payments he had earlier refused. He still balked at keeping the money so he gave it away, to his beloved Boys Town of Israel. He said, “It’s the best investment I can make. It is the young, not the old, who build a country, and we must help them.”

How Papa loved the Cal students! He felt invigorated by their enthusiasm, inspired by their eagerness to learn, and warmed by their compassion toward him. He envied their youth and the opportunities ahead of them. Papa had great faith in the younger generation. He was quick to give his support to the growing student activism that led to Cal’s famous Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. He disapproved of the violence that enveloped the campus but liked the fact that students were getting politically involved and taking a stand on the Vietnam War.

Living so near the campus was a bit precarious in those days. Several times Papa’s apartment was filled with tear gas floating up from Telegraph Avenue below. Wiping away tears, Papa said, “Where I came from we couldn’t do what those students are doing now. Tear gas is better than bullets.” As a Jew, he knew the value of free speech.

Later, when there were complaints about the hippies and street people who crowded Telegraph Avenue, Papa said, “leave them alone—in 20 years they will be buying stocks and bonds and paying a lot of taxes.”

After my parents retired they made plans to visit Israel. “We never thought we would live to see the day when Israel became a state,” they happily exclaimed over and over, and they were among the early tourists to make that wonderful journey. Unfortunately, during the first week of their trip, following a visit to relatives, (Holocaust survivors who were living in the refugee tent city of Tel Aviv where conditions were very primitive), Papa became ill with amoebic dysentery. It was only after his return home that I learned about his serious illness and that his life had been saved by heroic care at the newly re-opened Hadassah Hospital.

After Mama’s death, Papa returned to Israel in 1963, “…To see all the things I missed last time.” And at the age of 100 in 1981, in a last trip that included his children and grandchildren, he was honored by Jerusalem’s Mayor Teddy Kollek, interviewed on television and feted as the oldest tourist ever to visit the country. His picture appeared on the front pages of The Jerusalem Post and The Los Angeles Times, the latter with a headline reading, “For his 100th birthday they gave him Jerusalem.” On his return home the student newspaper, The Daily Cal, printed a picture and story about him on the front page. When the inquiring reporter asked the secret of his long life Papa pointed a hand to the sky and said, “He’s lost my computer card.”

Papa didn’t attend synagogue services very often, and as a child I asked my mother about that. She said, “He’s seen too many pogroms,” and said no more. But in my eyes he was the very model of what a Jew should be. He understood compassion and tzedakah and morality and he knew Torah, and all those were a part of his everyday life.

Papa lived to be 102 years old. I remember him and I smile.