Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog, page 11

14. The Day that Berkeley Burned

September of 1923 was miserably hot. Every day dry winds swept down from the northeast. It was the kind of weather that made me wish we lived in San Francisco instead of on the east side of the Bay. Looking back now, I divide my life with Mim into our world before September 17th and our world afterward.

On the afternoon of 17th, Ephraim was at Double-J, and Mim was with me. I had persuaded her to go shopping for a new dress. Paul was in elementary school—second grade I think—and Rachel was in...

13. Life before the Big Fire

So there I was, in Mim’s bathrobe and towel. With that embroidered prayer shawl in one arm and Rachel in the other. Should I have told Mim about the phantom I know now was Serakh? Of course.

But did I?

No. I’m not proud of that. Mim smiled at me and took the baby. “I figured you’d get curious about the prayer shawl one of these days,” she said. “You remember your promise to tell Ephraim if anything happens to me?”

I nodded. I cleared my throat. I had every intention of telling her then. I did. A...

12. How I Met Mim’s Phantom

It was a glorious Sunday morning in June, shortly after Mim’s parents made their surprise announcement and left Berkeley. Ephraim was working at Shaker Press, to make up for not working on Saturday. Shabbat was important to him, even though her rarely went to services. He stuck to some traditions and rejected others, which I guess made him like most of us American Jews.

Paul and Rachel, 1919

Baby Rachel was sleeping in her bassinet, in the nook off Mim’s bedroom. I’d joined Mim that morning, af...

11. Mim’s Parents Made a Fatal Mistake

Let’s put 1918 behind us. Here’s a print from my collection. Olympic with Returned Soldiers. It’s from the painting by Arthur Lismer, when the ship harbored in Halifax after the Great War. Luxury liners had been pressed into duty as troop ships. In 1919 they were still painted in dazzle camouflage, which was supposed to make them harder for German U-Boats to spot. Picasso said dazzle was the perfect example of his Cubist painting. If I’d only bought more Picasso’s before he was discovered… we...

10. In 1918 We Went from Bad to Worse

What a horrid year! Men left for war. Women did the best they could on the home front. Victory gardens. Liberty Bonds. Red Cross volunteer work. Everyone dreaded the news from “over there.”

We struggled through the frigid winter of 1917-1918, which was the second arctic winter in a row. Then came influenza, a plague of biblical proportions. While our soldiers were dying in trenches in Europe, we were dying in our beds back home.

In early October, influenza took Ephraim’s sister, Rivka. Until th...

9. The Edge of Disaster

I freely admit that I put Serakh out of my mind, although I did remember my promise about the prayer shawl. So much happened in 1917, and most of it I’d rather forget. The one bright spot was Jeannette Rankin, so I’ll start there.

In March of that year, when President Wilson was starting his second term, Jeannette was sworn in as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Mim was ecstatic. Ephraim stayed home with Paul, so she and I about two dozen of our friends celebrated...

8. “You’ll Think I’m Insane.”

See this print of the Daughters of Zelophehad? I came across it at an art auction in 1932. A copy is in the 1897 book called Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us. I’ve kept the print to remind me that illustrations of Bible stories are fanciful—and that what happened to Miriam Josefsohn Jacobowitz was extraordinary, but true.

I wish I could tell you that I believed the fantastical story that Mim told me back in the fall of 1916, when her mother sent the old teddy bear that had belonged to Dan...

7. The Baby and the Bear

Mim loved being pregnant, despite the queasiness in the early months and her waddling walk in the last weeks. Ephraim was over the moon.

Mim gave birth to Paul Daniel Jacobowitz at 4:38 in the morning on May 8, 1916, after 17 hours of labor. I was so frightened for her, because she was such a slip of a thing, and this was her first child. Mim had planned to have a midwife. I persuaded her to try the new “twilight sleep” that they offered at the hospital. Morphine to ease the pain, and another...

6. Our PPIE in the Sky

I’ll never forget the day after Mim’s wedding. Alexei tried to cheer me up with a jaunt to the Oregon coast for a few days before we returned to Berkeley. Sea stacks and sand dunes. And a bubble bath after dinner. For two.

I was inconsolable. Nothing he said or did could shake me from the dreadful feeling that Mim would let Ephraim take one-third ownership of her father’s print shop. She’d be back in Portland for the rest of her born days, and what would I do?

When Alexei said I had a telephone...

5. How To Ruin a Wedding

Remember what I told you last time about those 18 valentines? And how Ephraim came to stay with us that first time? And how I told her to follow her heart and I went to bed early?

So, what did happen then, when the two lovers were alone? Well, let me put it this way. Sweet Mim never did have my more robust appetites, or at least she never acted on them while she was a single woman. When Miriam Josefsohn wed Ephraim Jacobowitz a little over a year after that night in the gazebo, she was still a...