Writing about my father, Irving J. Abramowitz, is very difficult. It is difficult because he was a modest person who would not want a “big deal” made of his passing. It is difficult because, to me, he was my father; growing up, I thought everyone’s father was like my own or did the things that my father did for us. As I grew up, I realized just how special a father I had.
Unlike most of my contemporaries, my
father was a Baltimorean, by birth. His parents and grandparents settled in
Baltimore in the 1880s to 1900s. He was born on Baltimore Street in 1925, and
his bris was performed by his
grandfather, Rabbi A. Nathan Abramowitz (the first Chabad shaliach to Baltimore of one of the
Rebbes, and the first mohel to be
allowed to practice in the local hospitals).
My father grew up during the Depression.
Of course, being a child, he was shielded from its consequences. His earliest
memories were of living with both sets of grandparents and not only having to
share a room but sharing a bed as well – a fact of which he reminded me
whenever I would ask for a room of my own.
He attended Talmudical Academy, where his
grandfather, Rebbe Shifman, taught. After TA (which only went through
eighth grade at that time) he went on to City College, which was and
remains a high school. He graduated during World War II and, as he was only 17
at the time and not eligible for the draft, wanted to go to University of
Maryland to begin his college courses. My grandfather, J. Max Abramowitz had
other ideas. He contacted Senator Millard E. Tydings and told him that he was
not trying to get his son out of the army – what he wanted to know was were
there any things he could do to prepare for his service. Senator Tydings told
him that the army needed soldiers who could type and do office work. So instead
of College Park, my grandfather signed him up, and my father attended Strayers
Business School (now University) and learned typing. Seventy years later, I
handed my father my laptop and he could still touch type.
* * *
When he turned 18, my father was drafted into the
army. He did his basic training in Texas. There is a very nice picture from
that time on Rosh Hashanah with my father reading the Torah in his uniform.
Once basic training was over, his barrack mates were lined up, and the
commanding officer went down the lines telling 49 soldiers they were going to
aerial gunnery school. He came to my father and said, “Do you want to be a
cryptographer?” My father said “Sir, yes sir.”
Forty-nine soldiers went to aerial
gunnery school, and my father went to the library to find out what cryptography
was. After cryptography training, my father was sent to Nome, Alaska, where he
always stated that 1) he was never so cold in his life; 2) there was nothing to
do; 3) there was nothing to fear except the polar bears, and 4) that he
“thanked the good L-rd” every single day for sending him there. Due to his
assignment and location, my father was actually the first person in North
America to know that World War II was over. He decoded the message, which
needed to be relayed across the Pacific. (There were no satellites or
underwater cables at the time.)
After the army, my father returned
to Baltimore, completed college at Johns Hopkins University and ultimately
ended up going into the insurance business with my grandfather. It was while he
was at Hopkins that he met my mother, Grace Zerivitz, tblc”t, at Levering Hall. She was attending night school there –
the only way women could attend undergraduate school at Hopkins.
My parents married in 1951 at the
Belvedere Hotel, and Lou Bluefeld catered the event. In the early 60s my father
switched from selling insurance as his father did to management, and ultimately
became the agency head for Lincoln National in Baltimore. At that time there
was no kosher food available in downtown Baltimore so his lunch was always ice
cream and a Tab until they discontinued that drink and he had to substitute a
Diet Coke.
When he took over the Lincoln Baltimore
office in the mid-60s, he was the only Jewish, let alone Orthodox, agency head
in the country, and remained so for many, many years. Being the only Orthodox
Jew in a position was something that was to become common to my parents. They
believed that if their conduct was honorable, they would be accepted anywhere.
That was an odd concept when places still had restrictions on where Jews could
live and even the Jewish community was divided between the German and Eastern
European (all referred to as Russian Jews) – and my parents were Eastern
European Jews.
Even when my father went to Associated
functions, there was no kosher food available. As Carmi Schwartz (one of the
first frum employees of the
Associated) reminded me during shiva,
it took years of lobbying and, ultimately, a resolution approved by the Board
of Directors of the Associated to have the kitchen kashered and provide kosher
food – a practice that was ultimately expanded to all constituent agency
functions. But when my parents began, all they could do was sip their water and
watch others eat.
* * *
As we grew up, we became aware of more of what our
parents were doing in the larger community, continuing the chesed they had learned from their parents. My mother’s
grandfather, Adolph Pariser, started Pariser’s Bakery in the late 1880s, and
her father, Joseph Zerivitz, ran it for decades. My mother tells the story of
how her father brought home bread from his bakery and she would take it to
school every school day for the children who did not have lunch. A friend
brought jelly and peanut butter from her father’s store, and children had
sandwiches for lunch. This was before government-funded school lunch programs. At
the time of Mr. Zerivitz’s death in 1972, Rav Ruderman, zt”l, sent a letter to the family telling how my grandfather
provided bread to Ner Israel from the day the Yeshiva opened until the time of
his death – and he never wanted it known that it was a donation. He had been
their longest and most devoted donor.
My father’s parents were similarly
involved in all types of organizations, beyond shul and beyond the Orthodox
community. I still remember how on, Yom Kippur, my grandfather would walk from
Beth Jacob, near Northern Parkway, up Park Heights Avenue to Baltimore Hebrew,
stopping at each synagogue and giving the Israel Bond appeals. Then he had to
walk back to Beth Jacob for Mincha. He did this for two decades until he was in
his 70s.
My father began his communal work doing
G-Day for the Associated. Before they had the Super Sunday phone-a-thon, the Associated
had volunteers knock on doors asking for contributions. It was while knocking
on doors that my father encountered the only person he ever met who actually
gave tzedaka until it hurt. He
knocked on a door, and when it opened, he immediately knew that the man who
lived there was poor. His clothing was threadbare, and there was little
furniture. My father tried to say he had the wrong door and leave, but the man
asked him to come in. He told my father that he knew my father was there for
G-Day and that he wanted to contribute. He told my father that he was living on
a pension. Rent was a certain amount, food and utilities, etc., until, after
all my expenses, he said, “I have five dollars left for cigarettes for the
month – and I am giving that to you.” Over the next decades, my father raised
tens of millions of dollars for many charities, but he never forgot that lesson
on giving tzedaka and tried his best
to teach it to many people.
* * *
Despite work and his communal commitments, my father
believed that his presence was needed in our life. He was home for almost every
dinner. He would go back out to work or to some meeting, but he would be home
to eat with us. As children, we did not know how difficult that was – we
thought that is what parents did. My father taught lessons to us by telling
stories – not stories from Torah or Mishna, stories from his life or the lives
of his parents and grandparents. At the shiva
house, so many people who spent time with my father would speak of how he could
teach a life lesson by telling a story – not speaking about himself.
My father’s parents gave him the
Judaica-collecting bug. He loved going to Howard Street antique shops and
asking for Jewish things. But even better was going to Rheninger’s, in
Pennsylvania, to go through other people’s junk, looking for an item that
someone disposed of believing it had no value. His Judaica formed an integral
part in his storytelling life lessons. Once he was looking over books spread
out on the ground, being sold for almost nothing. He noted among them a Chumash, and rather than let it sit
neglected on the pavement, he purchased it, and it became the Chumash he used in shul.
Tuesdays were very special as that was
the day of the Tel Aviv flea market. So the day was dedicated to searching Tel
Aviv and Yaffo for Judaica. The grandchildren and other family and friends
always wanted to accompany him and meet “Grandpa’s friends.” All of them were
introduced to antique dealers, artists, and craftsmen. He would show them how a
wooden box could become an esrog box
in the hands of the right person. Best of all, everyone who went with him dined
in the Yemenite Quarter at Maganda. The waiter simply served him bean soup and
goose liver every week, always with a Diet Coke.
My favorite story though, was the
time, in the 1980s, when he went to a silver factory. In talking to the owners,
he commented on a chanukiah on the
shelf, which was brass, not silver. They told him that their father had made
the menorah, and it was so special to them it was displayed, even though it was
not silver. My father said that he had the same one, in silver. The owners
explained that was impossible. It could be similar but not the same, as their
father did not make objects out of silver. My father said he thought it was the
same. He finished his business, got on the bus, went back to the Old City, took
the menorah off the shelf, got back on the bus and went back to the factory. He
put the menorah in front of the owners who took it apart and started crying.
They said they recognized the craftsmanship, and it was apparent to them that
their father had made that menorah. When they then asked if they could purchase
it as it was so special to them, my father said no. If G-d led him to find the
menorah on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, use it for 20 years, bring it to
Israel when he made aliyah, and then
find the sons of the man who made it, it belonged there with them, and he gave
it to them, free of charge. A similar story happened with a Yemenite silver
belt. My father used those stories to teach the importance of family and
heritage and chesed.
Besides telling his stories, my father
was a great listener. Whether asking for millions of dollars for a charity or
just chatting with the bus driver on his way to work (yes, he took the #47
express bus to work for many years), he cared about what others were saying. It
made him a successful salesman, office manager, and father.
* * *
Both of my parents were raised in Zionist homes. In
fact, when my father’s grandfather told his grandmother that they were going to
America, she told him that she would only go if that was simply a stop on their
way to Jerusalem. In the pre-Israel and early state days, arms were stored
under their porch on Chauncey Avenue, a few blocks from the Shul in the Park
for smuggling to Israel. It wore off on the later generations; all of my
father’s grandchildren, including our children, are Israeli citizens today, and
all of his over 40 great-grandchildren (ken
yirbu) are Hebrew-speaking Israelis.
What my parents left behind in Baltimore
when they moved to Israel, was the keter
shem tov, a good name. The list of organizations in which they were
leaders was long – mostly Jewish but not exclusively. They always participated
quietly. It was never about them being in charge; it was about making certain
that a needed job was completed. At the Associated, they held numerous
positions. My father started in young leadership, when the program was in its
infancy, and limited to men. After numerous other positions and offices, he
ultimately became the first Orthodox campaign chair of the Associated’s annual
Campaign in nearly 50 years. Similarly, my mother was chairperson of the
Associated Women’s Division as well as president of her local chapter of
Mizrachi Women, now AMIT.
While my father did keep some of
his grandfather’s Chabad traditions, such as the manner of wrapping tefillin, he was not a by-the-book
Chabadnik. But he did practice the Chabad concept of choosing one mitzva to
make your own and do very well. For my father that was kibud av va’eim. He had
seen how his parents cared for their parents, including having his grandmother
live with them for many years. My father revered his parents. He accepted
anything they said or did as being correct, without question. His parents lived
only a few blocks away from us, which made visits easy. Several mornings a
week, he would go over to their home for breakfast – and it was not only
because he liked his mother’s cooking. (My mother could never make the blintzes
correctly.) Rather, he wanted to make certain they were okay and see if there
were any errands he could run for them.
When my parents made aliyah in 1983, the hardest part for my father was being away from
his parents. A year later, he came back from Israel to help them move to
Jerusalem. After they moved, every weekday (which remember, in Israel, is six
days a week) he would get on the #38 bus in the Old City and go to visit my
grandparents in Rechavia. He would sit with his mother and play dominos or simply
talk to his father. But he had to make certain there was nothing they needed or
wanted. The Torah states that the reward for honoring one’s parents is long
life. The proof of how his parents kept this mitzva is that they were rewarded
with long life together; they were zocheh
to over 70 years of happy marriage. My father was similarly blessed, living to
age 95 and passing away a month after he and my mother celebrated 70 years
together, which tradition considers a full lifetime. It is my sincere hope
that my family and all members of Klal
Yisrael be so rewarded.
* * *
Micha tells us, “People can tell you what
is good, but what does Hashem ask from you, but to do what is just, love chesed, and walk humbly with your G-d.”
My father did all these things in exemplary fashion. He taught us more than the
books could by leading through example, and He walked humbly with his G-d and
with his fellow man. “Blessed is the man who trusts Hashem, and Hashem is his
trustee…with everything he does, we will be successful.” (Tehillim) Truly, my father trusted Hashem with all his heart, was
grateful to Him to no end, and Hashem paid him back in kind; he was objectively
successful in everything he did. As much as we miss him, we are confident that
his legacy on Earth will remain for many generations. People will remember his
stories and the numerous lessons he taught us, and, having been such a
successful salesman and appeals-man in this world, that he will vouch favorably
for us all as a meilitz yosher.
