Gary M. Pomerantz

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A Story of Family: In search of Grandpa's world

A visit to the old neighborhood ...

... mirrors the
journey of a lifetime

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
February 1, 1998

By Gary M. Pomerantz
Staff writer

Grandpa was an Old World man and, God knows, he had Old World habits.

He smoked Denoblis, cheap, thin Italian cigars that had a rancid smell, and he never smiled in family photographs.

His name was Philip Pomerantz, and in October 1912, at the age of 13, he arrived at Ellis Island with his sister Rose and widowed mother, Dora. It must have taken some doing, and some money, to slip out of what was then Russia.

Before their boat passed Lady Liberty, someone opened a Torah and gave Grandpa a bar mitzvah. At Ellis Island, his two older brothers came to retrieve them. Louie and Yurna had arrived about two years earlier to avoid conscription in ---or persecution by ---the czar's army. They had set up an apartment at 75 Johnson Ave. in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn.

Grandpa would marry, have two sons, and work classic immigrant jobs as a leather cutter, cabdriver, bakery manager and hospital orderly.

I was 7 in the spring of 1968 when Grandpa dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 68. Two heart attacks, really. The first he survived long enough to say to a nurse, "Get me a pencil, a pad and a blonde."

The second came hours later. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery on Long Island, N.Y.

I hardly knew him.

Tell us a story, Daddy. My sons make the same demand every night. Usually I make up a story about spaceships, dinosaurs or lava.

But once I told a true story: "A long time ago, there was a mean Russian czar who had mean soldiers who scared a little boy and his family so much that they ran away. They got on a boat, crossing the ocean for days, and finally came to America to be free."

Tell us more.

"Well, his name was Philip Pomerantz, and he's the guy who gave you your last name."

No, really, Daddy.
"Really."
Tell us more.
I can't. I don't know any more.

I wanted to know more. Deep down, I wanted to place myself, as both an American and a Jew. I've never questioned my Jewishness, any more than I have my Americanness.

But once my maternal grandmother, hearing me announce my engagement, asked, "What's her name?"

"Schwab," I said.
She said, hopefully, "Could be."
Jewish, she meant.

"It's not, Grandma," I said, and she slumped in her chair. All five of her grandkids, including my two brothers, married outside the faith.

More than half of American Jews today marry non-Jews, producing in the rabbinate a fear that interfaith marriage will cause Jewish heritage and traditions to diminish, then die.

I've heard an Atlanta rabbi sermonize that Jews like me don't have "a Jewish identity" but rather a "Jewish identification." He likened it to a Braves fan who identifies with the team but isn't a player.

Such a thought is a pathetic indignity, an intramural form of anti-Semitism. Bar mitzvahed at 13, I have spent little time in synagogues since, but ask me what I am and I shall reply, proudly, "I am a Jew," same as my parents, grandparents and great grandparents. It is my heritage ---and, yes, my identity ---and one day my three children will know it as part of theirs, too.

How dare he tell me who I am, and what I am not?

I called my father, Ed, a 67-year-old marketing executive in Los Angeles and the last surviving member of his family. I said, "Let's go to Kremenchuk, Dad." He had never been there, never even thought of going. "Are you serious?" he asked.

Yes, I said.

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