and welcome back to another season of the ribbon book club season three a dear america podcast my name is jen i'm kate and we're we're back baby season we we don't really do like strict seasons but we take the summers off right because we're not animals we're not animals also we're teaching or talking about elementary stuff we should take an elementary schedule yeah so what'd you do over summer summer break
out you were with me so i feel like it's a little silly telling you about it but we definitely saw hosier highlights yeah it was the best it was magical it was the best concert i've ever seen yeah david was a full convert yeah um i hosier was so magical and we got to eat good tiki food beforehand love that love a big giant cocktail that was lovely
yeah what else i'm going to the renaissance fair in two weeks fantastic very excited is it one of the themed weekends um yes i believe it's the viking weekend i i don't have enough outfits to dress to theme so i shall be wearing my usual get up
cool but we love it we love a costume yeah you should get a lot of use out of your renaissance costumes because why not otherwise what's the point of having them there's something so um wonderful about a renaissance fair and i don't people who aren't from the states the all five of you who listen
don't live in the states and maybe not don't know what a renaissance fair is um it's just it's a really fun time to go hang out uh at a manufactured old-timey village and wear pretend dress-up clothes that are not remotely dress-up people yeah you don't they're not remotely historically accurate there is no particular time frame we're going for it's i believe that
The group of people that kind of oversee Ren Faires is called the Society of Creative Anachronism.
Oh, wonderful.I think, yeah, leaning into the fantasy elements of it really helped me kind of get over myself in terms of
you know what the real history period should be like and this ain't it yeah oh yeah no no no but yeah i'm gonna go maybe eat a turkey leg shoot some archery yes the turkey leg is really my favorite part um i also enjoy watching when they have joust i love watching the joust it's a real knight's tale moment i have a lot of feelings about that movie i know me too also i think if you put me in a heath ledger allentutic sandwich oh
It would be a fun, good time. Hey, no.
I shouldn't be on an elementary ed show.
Anyway, so we are going to start a new book.As we are wont to do.
If you're not familiar with the show, we're going to do the same thing we always do, which is start a new book and read the first half of it.
yeah so this this book is dreams in the golden country the diary of Zipporah Feldman a Jewish immigrant girl it takes place in New York City in 1903 it was written by our pal Katherine Lasky oh that's why it's so good I didn't look yeah
but like my goodness these characters are so realistic and the way that our author speaker you know the imaginary author of this diary speaks to us she sounds like a 12 13 year old
yeah so the other book i if i'm if there's a list in the back of the book is correct this is katherine lasky's second book in the series the first one being journey to the new world right where we met our friend mem oh she's got an appreciation for girls with weird names
okay so zippy mem zippy those are weird little nicknames yeah and like i think we could appreciate that katherine lasky thinks that's funny because it is i did also i started reading i read like the first paragraph of this book and i was like i need to confirm that our friend katherine lasky is jewish because otherwise i'm going to be
yeah so scared yeah she is she is she's not i think she's i think her grandmother was jewish so it's um but yeah she she definitely mentions her her family history in the about the author section so i was grateful for that and yep we do uh we do a quick few and then we also move on to real to to mention that neither of us are jewish
No, but there is a lot of Yiddish in my family's language.Okay.We use Yiddish phrases.We both have Polish heritage.We do.Which is not Jewish, but you know.No, well, I mean.I'm Polish Catholic.
Polish Lutheran.Wow.I'm pretty sure we were the ones who were carrying out the pogroms.Wow, okay.I'm pretty sure that that's our family's heritage.
So let's get into it and then we will let you answer for your family's crimes.
Yeah, no.Well, I mean like I can't be sure, but like
they were definitely czarists who lived in like poland russia prussia yeah okay so your family was the guy from fiddler on the roof who was like hey tevye we're really good pals but unfortunately i do have these orders from the czar to
that's literally what i was thinking of yes your family's wedding what other thing that i super duper love about this book is how fiddler it is okay let's talk about let's talk about fiddler on the roof for a second because a lot of people might not have the history that i have with fiddler on the roof which is being violently shaken through it by me oh no i mean that that's the later part of it the early part is it was one of like three movies that my my oma had
um and so you know how everyone has like that small handful of of like videotapes that you grew up with that you you know that those movies by heart the core allure yeah and so the fiddler on the roof was one that she owned and it was our favorite movie that she owned so we watched that your grandma had excellent taste over and over and over again um ad nauseum it is one of my favorite musicals to this day
because I love depressing historical musicals.
But you know what?For all of Fiddler's depressingness, and woo, it's in there, it's also very joyous.Individually, these characters, we really learn to love them and their worldview.That little nudge when Tevye is like, if that's not love, what is?
That's marriage right there.
Yeah, you know like big theme in that musical is Honestly a very connected to the theme of this book, which is Kate how do you carry on traditions as the world around you is modernizing and and getting more Globalized like it's you're in more contact with other people in other cultures, right?
And so it's it's you know, it's this family with three daughters, well, they actually have five daughters, but three daughters who are of marrying ages, and they're finding and falling in love with people and men.
And I was like, I don't know why I'm not being heteronormative about this.It's not like one of them is gay.
If only.I would love a gay version of that show.Like, are you kidding me?That would be amazing. Because there's a lot of similarities between the oppressions there.
Yeah, I think if they were to keep going with the younger daughters, I think one of the younger ones would be gay.
Yeah, queer code the little one.
That's also biologically correct.The more children you have, the more likely the later children will be queer.
Oh, interesting.I knew that was a thing with boys.
Yeah, right.I mean, like all girls are kind of bisexual, I think, so.
Yeah. You're bisexual until proven otherwise.
Yeah, I mean, I think everybody.Sure, we're in long-term heterosexual relationships.Doesn't mean a thing.
Gay.So anyways, Fiddler on the Roof.
What are we talking about?
We want gay Fiddler.We want gay everything.
I was reading all of the Jewish idioms and phrases in Yenta's voice.Aren't they so fun?And so if I kind of slip into imitating any of that energy if I'm reading passages, please forgive me.
I'm not trying to be anti-Semitic.I just really love
they're on the roof yeah um i i kind of sound like tevye a lot so it's fine we'll just we'll just have half the cast covered the 1960s video just movie is so so good i don't know if you have you actually seen it yeah okay
Well, because you were all surprised when we did go see it live.Right.
I had not purchased the movie until after you and I saw it.
OK.So that was your first time seeing it.Yep.
And I could have done without the puppets. Dani, have you not seen Fiddler?Oh my god.I think we need to watch it together.You're gonna love Fiddler.It's so good.I'm gonna sing it at you, though, like the whole way.Like, I play all the parts.
It's very sweet, it's very funny, and Fiddler is fantastic, but this book, there's no way this novel is not inspired by Fiddler.It is beat for beat Fiddler on the Roof.
Well, it's not, but it's like they could come from the same village.
They could come from the same village, they have basically the same family setup, they're coming up with the same suitors.
This could essentially be the sequel.
the spiritual because the fiddler on the roof spoiler alert ends with them leaving their village true of anatevka although i wish that they would have left as early as this family does leave because this family leaves after the 1901 pogrom
yeah now there had been i looked this up explain like what let's explain what pogroms are um so this they are from she name checks zarika um which i looked up is a village in what is now ukraine sure um all of those borders were much more malleable yeah um back in the day so it was i believe part of russia at the time yeah everything was
Either Russia or Prussia and that time.Yeah, so Russia and most of Europe, you know is historically pretty anti-semitic and around this time Historically and also now yeah.Yeah.Yeah.
No, I like there's a long history of anti-semitism in Europe In fact, if you picture a villain, uh-huh what you're picturing for the most part are Jewish facial features because that's how we've created a visual villain.
That's how you tell somebody this is a villain.
You make them look Jewish.The fairy tale creatures of goblins are based on Jewish people and JK Rowling definitely leaned into that.Never heard of her.We don't need to go there.Never heard of her.
Anyway, so pogroms were this kind of series of they would
imagine like a mini holocaust like they would run into this village usually briefer violence yeah yeah uh not as not quite as it wasn't as systematic for sure it was more bursts but definitely orchestrated by the government still yeah still government ordained and often they were pushing people off of their land out of their businesses out of their homes
sometimes killed, sometimes conscripted into the czar's army.This did start in the 1800s, so like I think the first one was Odin, Odessa, Odessa in like, I'll get there.
So Odessa, the Odessa pogrom was like 1887 and it started there and moved forward as they claimed these Jewish
and these are widespread throughout russia um you know and what are now eastern european countries that are independent from russia yeah um so it's well they're trying to be independent and that's right yeah i'm sorry apparently i watched a lot of cnn this so political
So anyways, these pogroms, this family decides to leave after the, hang on, I wrote this down, Kishinev pogrom, 1901, 49 people were killed, 92 were gravely injured, and many women and girls were assaulted.
So that kicked off a large-scale and organized effort for Jews to emigrate and they would pool their resources forming unions of people who would leave, protecting those who were left behind while they waited for more money to be sent.
so they're just leaving in waves now which is awesome I love this community's willingness to look at the facts and organize because they are taught to be pragmatic yeah and it I the little I know about Jewish culture is that it is kind of part of their religion to to be like the chosen people but like
chosen by god but also like chosen to kind of be suffering in this world and and that has kind of been the history of kind of the diaspora and you know they got it down to a science they're like yeah yeah yeah but what else is gonna suck
Yeah, well, and it's also just a reaction to historically the rest of the world being like, can you go somewhere else?Right.Could you just NIMBY, like not be my neighbor?Yeah.So a lot of them come to New York or the United States in general.
Although still largely in New York, because what they learned is that there are safety in numbers.Yes.So you will find, for example, a lot of Jews in West Michigan.
yeah and and that's why new york has such good bagels and lox and like pickles yeah they're street vendors who don't sell anything but pickles what a nirvana oh see there's the connection to the renaissance fair oh yeah we'd love a pickle at a renaissance fair absolutely god guys i could go for a pickle right now yeah big big old pickle big old pickly pickle okay
All right, so we've got Zipporah.She has two older sisters, Miriam and Tova.We don't get to learn in the first 80 pages of the book much about Miriam in terms of personality.
We hear a lot about Tova.We do, yeah.Tova's the eldest.This was the moment where I was like, I have to confirm Katherine Lasky's ancestry because the beginning of the second paragraph is Tova finds out a lot.She roams all over this place.
She is very nosy. I need to, just one second.Hold tight.So yeah, we start at the very beginning there on Ellis Island in New York, which is just like the most quintessential coming to America immigration story.
Ellis Island I feel like I don't need to do a ton of introduction to the concept of Ellis Island but it was at this time the main processing port for immigration into New York City and by extension the you know east half of the United States and so this is where a lot of European immigrants are coming from coming into especially and they had
you know this is where they did all of the medical checks to make sure that you know we're not bringing any diseases or undesirable people.I think the Irish one that we just did, what was her name?Mary Driscoll.
She had a little bit about this when coming and arriving and
i don't remember her ellis island no i don't think she she just gets off the boat i think she went in and picks her up yeah yeah but i think there was mention of like illness on the boat yes it killed everybody yeah yeah so this is i think that kind of
the more government systematized version of how immigration has evolved by 1903.
So we get this very good description that they're sitting you know waiting in this huge you know this baggage room they've retrieved all their trunks and they're waiting to get processed and Tova is
Wandering around trying to understand what to how to do this and how to get through And they and notably they're traveling with the sisters and their mother their father is already there and they are meeting him So he we find out that he arrived two years earlier and has been saving up money to bring them over So
and oh okay so yeah and it says we are from Tsarika uh a little village in Minsk Gubernia in Russia so I think that is I don't know if that's our I want to I want to see that word where is it it's on page four okay guberria gubernia gubernia
There's a lot of Yiddish words in here too that I'm gonna struggle with.
I think it would be fair based on what I know of Jewish people and the way the culture that they're describing amongst their family I think we would call them Hasidic Jews today in that the father keeps would have kept side locks which are um and then he he does not round the corners of his beard and that's what uh Zippy's expecting but father's changed a bit
Her mother wears a wig.Yes, and then an additional covering which a lot of orthodox orthodox are acidic.You're right.There's different versions and I apologize.
I'm not Well, they're also not using the language that would tip us off specifically, but I think it's important to know that some of the things that these like fashion things that they're describing are Mm-hmm are part of their Religious observance.
Yes, so that's I don't know.
I think it's really cool but it is also one of the first things that starts getting worn away by American culture and what Lasky's doing here that we were talking about is that she She shows the tension between old world culture.
Yeah and new world culture and like trying to like make those agreements between
where you're from and where you're going yeah so we have mama as like the the most you know traditional you can tell that she's like not super excited to be coming but right but why would you leave yeah it's that amnesty international poem you know you leave home when home is the mouth of a shark yes exactly
Yeah so I want to just read one section of their time in Ellis Island.
They're getting closer to the health inspection part and she's like she's annoyed with Tova but then Tova like really steps in and uses her knowledge to really save them and get them into the country.
um so she says if I ever criticize Tova again may I be left speechless may the uppermost one make my tongue drop from my mouth here's what happened and how Tova saved me the doctors they come up to you the women go in a line where there is a nurse as well they unbutton your collar to check for the next swelling called goiter they look in your ears and next
for bad backs or lameness.The worst part is the eye examination.They take a button hook and flip up your eyelid.There's a bad disease called trachoma.And if you have it, they send you back.
Well, they flipped up my eyelid and the nurse lady takes a piece of chalk and marks a letter on my back.E for eye in English.I have no eye disease at all.
The day before we landed, a piece of soot from the ship's smokestacks blew into my eye and caused a redness. When the nurse wrote this letter on my back, my mother gave a little scream.I froze.
Miriam looked as if she might faint, but Tova quickly pushed me forward.I will never know how she did it, but faster than shooting star, she turned my coat with the chalk marked inside out.
Before we knew it, the man at the last medical table had stamped our papers and they quickly move on.
Isn't that so clever?Like Tova really sets herself up as like quick thinking.She also, in the following pages, we learn that she's been heartily teaching herself English.
And that she's the most fluent of the family.And she helps the rest of the family learn, which is so cool.
yeah did did i read this right that she's the middle sister tova oh no she's the she's the oldest yeah tova's 17 she's the eldest miriam is the one we really don't get a sniff of miriam because she's just sort of there she'll come up more later she does yeah but tova is um she's a classic oldest daughter
you know, being super, like, type A responsible.We've had very different experiences.No, I know, but I'm not talking about your... No, I understand the psychological eldestness.
There is a general agreed upon stereotype of eldest daughters that maybe doesn't apply to you, but it does apply to many, and I think a lot of them will identify with Tova.Yeah.
So we the next entry they have found their way to their tenement where they will live a tenement friends is a word for basically an apartment They were apartment buildings built in New York City that are horrible conditions, essentially.
They were a huge source of rickets in the United States.Rickets are caused if you get an inadequate amount of vitamin D, which we get from the sun.And often, children who lived in tenements got so little access to sunshine
yes that their bones didn't grow straight they developed rickets the earliest forms of tenements um were essentially just big blocks of buildings that were just subdivided into all these tiny tiny apartments and many of them were entirely blocked in you know didn't have any outside walls and so therefore didn't have any windows and so yeah they would
frequently not have any access to sunshine or ventilation.And so there was this great innovation in tenement architecture that was called a dumbbell tenement where they would cut these shafts of air into the interior space.
And so there would be like a small courtyard, but it's not like, you know, a European apartment building is often like has this wonderfully airy, you know, courtyard, and then stairs and balconies around the middle.
um that's not what this is this is essentially a shaft of air that's you know maybe you can you can reach your hand out the window and then almost touch the other building and so yeah it lets in some fresh air but you're not getting like greenery or sunlight if you think about like kind of classic joke apartment in new york city where the
Wall to the next building is three feet in front of you.
Yeah, that's what we're talking.That's exactly it.Yeah, so If you want some actual like great period photos of what these looked like Check out the famous photographer Jacob Rees rii and J-S.I think he was Dutch.
That was the most surprising string of letters.Could not have predicted that for the name Rhys ever.
Yeah, I know, right?And he published these photos in a book called How the Other Half Lives.And they are... Oh, R-I-I-S.There's no J. Oh, okay.That's better.Sorry. Listen, Dutch people throw in- Yes, they'll throw in any console.All the time.
Yeah, so check out those.Also, the Tenement Museum, if you're in New York City, is actually three blocks away from where they end up, which is number 14 Orchard Street, which is on the Lower East Side.
And the Lower East Side is, was a huge neighborhood of these tenement buildings.And you can, it's also where the Garment District is, so it was where they had a lot of factories.
Trying to show where it's factory perhaps?
Oh interesting yeah.Yes there's a lot of garment factories in this neighborhood that the people in the tenements are working at so.
In fact I think both Tova and Miriam pick up jobs.
Yes yes. so we they arrive they see papa and mama is shocked he no longer wears his side locks as she calls them those curls by the temple yeah and you know he's
his beard looks different and also they can tell that he hasn't been playing his violin he we learned that he's he was a violin player and music instructor yeah and he had a college graduate degree with that from the yes we'll find out the college of music in st petersburg yeah so he's highly educated
um but worse than you know the state of papa is this tenement um she says it is you know awful i can't believe that back in russia everyone called america the golden country um there is nothing golden it is only darkness we entered a hall so skinny that fat gittle from pechenka street could never have fit
bad smells swirled around us there are gas lights in the hall but because the landlord tries to save money he will not turn them on until it is completely dark outside but it is always completely dark inside the staircase is narrow and rickety when we got to our apartment before we entered papa proudly pointed to a door in the hallway that is the lavatory we share it with other the other family on the floor the she hands which sounds very irish
he says we are lucky to have such a luxury so we enter this place our apartment again he tells us we are lucky we have not just two rooms like most we have three rooms a parlor a kitchen and a dark windowless bedroom we three girls will sleep in the parlor and mama and papa in the back room
so our midwest sensibilities that's a tiny apartment and to make matters worse they have a border they have oh yes they have an old man who also lives with them and he smells bad and you wanna he only has eight teeth and who's this guy
That's a great question.I skipped ahead to what we were doing next.Okay, well his name is... Reb Tevye is all that's coming to my mind, but that's not right.
That's definitely the guy in Fiddler, but he has the same function in their society, which is to be a gifted scholar of the Torah.
He's not the same.He's actually, well, he's not a rabbi, but he's... No.
The important part is that Tevye is not a scholar because he's poor.
Right.What am I coming up?What is reb something in Fiddler?And it's not Tevye.It's reb something else.
They call him reb Tevye.I think that's like, this is, listen, we're not Jewish.This is the part where we're not.We are guessing.
So anyways, they are talking about this, I think it's pronounced gon, G-O-A-N.
yeah and it means that he's a gifted scholar of the torah and i think reb might just be the same as mister i think so i think it's just an honorific right so his name is reb simca yes um and he's he studies the torah he's a religious scholars the uh talmud the the the horde that starts their religious that's the the shofar shofar i do know that my
God, I'm so lost.I took notes.The Talmud is a collection of scripture.Yep.
Yep.So anyways, should edit all that out.Nah.
Just edit out all the wrongs.
Sorry for any inadvertent crimes we are committing against the Jewish people.It's intended to be nice.I love mommy's repeated phrase.Mommy?Whatever.I will fight you.I am having uterine cramps and I'll fight you.
I've already yelled at my husband today.
all right so this guy's here he smells bad he looks weird and he's a further person cramping up their three calling him uh except for the fur he looks like a bag of bones chicken bones he is so small and i had the most visceral memory of reading this as a kid and just being so grossed out at this like so evocative description of the
holds her hands during Shabbos and she said his hand feels like chicken skin, like plucky and wet.
I mean, yeah.When you get old, your skin gets very thin and your hands get very bony.He's just an old guy, but you know how sometimes kids are so grossed out by old people.
I think that's one of the things I love about this book already. is that she feels real, right?Because she is making these inappropriate things, but she's also this really gifted, very keen observer.
And that's going to be important later, but it makes the reading of this so much more interesting, right?I think Mary Driscoll was like, yeah, that girl had black hair and like,
okay but it didn't like get us anything whereas Zipporah is telling us a lot yeah um and sometimes she's really funny too she is sardonic yeah the way that she like she's like this place sucks um i think is really really great um yeah well they have this whole back and forth about like oh we're so lucky to be here and she's like really this is lucky and she
she does go over like what you know some of the the tragedy that happened back in the old country and you know what happened to this poor girl who got her ear cut off by a scythe right and you know so she's like but am I lucky am I lucky to live with a smelly little bag of chicken bones who incidentally is a genius
and I I think that's she captures a lot of the um kind of a mild letdown I'll say of of being poor and and hearing all these stories of moving to America and I think Mary Driscoll to be fair to her also had a very similar experience of of hearing that like oh the streets are paved with gold yeah because remember I was I was super mad at her aunt for
for kind of selling her this really like false bag of goods.You know, image of like, oh, the streets are paved with gold, this is the golden country.And then they get there and it's like, oh no, poverty.
Right.Poverty is, we're still poor, just in a different country.
For some reason, I find the poverty of the Jewish people here less I suppose thorough than what Mary Driscoll's story was describing of living in like that ghettoized neighborhood.
It's a very different kind of systematic
oppression um because for the Irish they were all collectively starving to death right so I think in terms of like what everyone went through yeah probably Mary Driscoll and her people might have all been suffering a little bit more than maybe specifically Zipporah was
yeah um but for for zippy and her you know yeah zippy and her community it's like oh you're not actively all starving to death but people could come through and you know cut your ear off or kill you or you know take your land and so yeah it's it's a different kind of threat
but the the suffering i think in america yeah it seems like mary driscoll living in that two-room parlor that she shared with a lady her weird son and a pig yeah just like the three-room tenement sounds like a palace it has a bathroom mary driscoll could never
I just feel like New York City is maybe being painted a little bit better than Lowell, Massachusetts in this one light.But it doesn't matter.It's still not good.
We don't need to necessarily play Poverty Olympics.But you know, both situations are not good.
I tend to be- But if they are, Mary Driscoll is America and she is bringing home the gold. Suck it, Australia.
I've watched a lot of news, and I'm chronically online.
Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Olympics.
I guess that's what we've been doing with our summer is I've been glued to my screen the past couple of weeks watching the Olympics and then messaging you about out of context Olympic stories.That's fine.I enjoy them very much.Yeah.
um can we get into shabbos yeah so shabbos is the Sunset Friday night start of the holy day.It's a time for family.It's time for prayer.There's a lot of singing.And they bring in a Shabbos goy, which is like the most fun.
I would love to be a Shabbos goy.I would too.So this guy, Sean O'Malley, he's Irish.He seems to be like a nephew of the Sheehans or something.He knows their business.
He's an Irish fireman.Right. Who is more qualified to turn off gas lamps?The fireman.
at his hands he seems yeah yeah zippy is like immediately uh look how cute he is has a crush on him who can blame her a little bit um so on shabbos you're not allowed to do any work you have to keep the day holy which means abstaining from work which is to uh sundown friday to sunrise sunday yep yes okay yep exactly um and so work
doesn't just mean like clocking in at your job or going to basketball practice it also means flushing a toilet or turning on your oven or turning off a light that's all considered work and if you do it then you are marring the holy day.
You're not resting.So I have a question about this that occurred to me while I was reading it um what do they do in their village in the old country where they're presumably did they have
a Chavez boy who like maybe set their fires for them?They maybe did.
I think it's a really great question and I don't know.Because in Fiddler on the Roof, our historical text, they did live amongst Gentiles.So maybe they would hire one and he would go around.
It'd probably be a great like little like effectively the same level job as like a paper boy.
exactly the same thing it's like oh you're the paper boy but you just turn it off you're the paper boy paper boy
OK.Yeah, so possibly.And they do talk about paying Sean O'Malley, which is very cool.So it's like a job.It's a way for him to make extra income.And he gets to cross these otherwise kind of strict cultural lines.It's kind of an intimate position.
It's always a good spot.Yeah, like he becomes a well-known family friend, essentially.Yeah. It's a good thing to be yeah, he's like essentially the only non-jewish person they know right although They will get to know the she hens a lot at first.
They know them through their screaming.Yeah because they are Loudly fighting are notably a young couple married.
Yep, and And the man's mother.Every girl's dream to live with your husband and your mother-in-law.And we learn that the elder Mrs. Sheehan has this conspiracy theory that the young bride is a... Who's from Northern Ireland.Is a dirty Protestant.
I think you're a secret Protestant.You're a dirty Protestant.And she's like, Catholic but okay.
I don't know what to tell you.
And so they hear all this screaming because they share the floor with them.So there's these two apartments, presumably identical, three rooms on each.So there's the Sheehan's.I didn't catch how many kids they have, but they do lose a baby.
Yeah, pretty early on and we learn a little bit about Jewish death practices versus Catholic death practices Yeah, the Irish tradition of having a wake Jewish people try to bury the body as soon as possible like within 24 hours Mm-hmm, but she reflects that she likes Having a chance to say goodbye
she doesn't like seeing the body though no but who does um so just you know but she doesn't mind it by the end because he looks so peaceful like he's sleeping and clean anyway we're getting ahead of ourselves um i'm just jumping yeah because we have to cover a lot so we find out that the page the two sisters are going to get jobs in factories um
I think Shirtwaist Factories.Not the Triangle one.Nope, not the Triangle one.But like, ooh.
We'll get to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
I don't remember what year Triangle was anyway.
I'm honestly shocked that's not just like something you know in your heart.
Right, like how I know Leonardo DiCaprio's birthday, you don't just have that.
I have to, I should remember it because it's the year before Titanic, which is the other Roman Empire in my mind. Thanks, Leo.You gave us so much.
Yeah.So, but Zippy is not going to work.She's going to school and she's kind of sad about it because she yearns for the mines.
She has to go to school and learn English.
Well, she's upset about being placed at a grade that isn't appropriate for her age group.And that brings me to a point I wanted to talk about.That is the systemic humiliation of immigrants.
So there seems to be a couple, you know, effectively government programs in place that are meant to humiliate these people who come to America.
So on the child level.I think Ellis Island is for sure one of those.Exactly.Exactly.Treat you like a bunch of.
Having a public medical examination, having a button hook used to flip your eyelid up, I know it's so upsetting. That's humiliating.Yeah, having people write on your clothing to label you is a humiliation tactic.
Yeah, like There was a teacher in a public school when I was a kid and this child was supposed to be wearing their new glasses to school and She didn't do it didn't do it didn't do it.
And finally the teacher took a sharpie and wrote on the kids face Where are my glasses?
And there was of course a big outcry about that and that's appropriate and correct that teacher was way out of line.
Because we no longer use humiliation as a teaching tactic.Now it should be noted as I recall that teacher who was from the South Bend School District
um was an older she was older yeah and i i saw the pictures of the kid it was blue sharpie it like it was so public and so humiliating and embarrassing that was the point of it to embarrass this kid into wearing their glasses
yeah so yeah the the public health inspection deciding whether or not somebody's going to be a public nuisance asking a woman with three kids if she's married in 1903 oh yeah that was that was a funny that's a shot across the bow yeah but then these children who have to learn english i understand the logic
Mm-hmm of all of these systems.I understand why they would do this and why this they would think this is necessary But there is an aspect of humiliation to it.
There's also an aspect of are you going to be an adequate worker?
That's something they're looking for.They want to make sure these kids learn English so that they are good workers but also placing these kids in a grade level that is not appropriate to them is meant to humiliate them.
She's placed in, I think, first grade.
Yeah, she put her with the first graders where she doesn't fit in the chairs and she can't make any friends.
But she does make one friend.She does.
Blue Wolf, which is a great name.
Because Katherine Lasky digs a nickname.
She does.Yeah, Blue Shorf or something. Bula.You're skipping ahead.Where is she?Oh, okay.Here we go.Bluma.
Bluma should let you go page by page.
Bluma Wolf.She is a German Jew.So she doesn't speak Yiddish, but German and Yiddish are close.There's a lot of similarity.So they are intelligible.
um just one more before we skip ahead to I just as I saw as I was flipping that um so one of the fun things about this book is that um Zippy is very interested in uh world news like what's going on around and and so I love that here's about um typhoid Mary yes
and how she feels kind of safe from her because we know she's not a Jew.Yes.People who are eating kosher are not getting this.
If you don't know about typhoid Mary, around this time there was a woman named Mary who was at first unintentionally spreading the disease typhoid which is, you know, can be spread through your food.
She was a cook for a wealthy family and she refused to wash her hands
uh and she kept getting people sick with typhoid eventually they figured it out and they're like hey Mary can you wash your hands before you you know prepare food for other people and she's like no she just I literally refused to to wash her hands and she kept like going from you know family to family and like town to town because instead of like
changing anything about herself and her habits she would just move to somewhere that didn't know who she was and then start infecting those people.I think typhoid is something that like you can have.It lives latently in the body.
Yes so she like wasn't exhibiting any symptoms but she had she was asymptomatic but had typhoid and so she was just spreading it.And she knew.And at this point she knew.
Yeah she killed people and
and she just people told her just wash your hands like you can keep cooking for people just wash your hands and she refused typhoid mary disgusting and horrific and you go out in public with covid and you're not wearing a mask you're the same oh i have a lot of feelings about that yeah uh yeah no you're i i agree um and eventually they to to button the story on typhoid mary they eventually literally like exiled her to an island like napoleon
and was like you are not allowed to cook apparently rightly so anymore so yeah zippy feels relieved because she's jewish they only they keep kosher so they only eat kosher food and
um yeah so we will that's all i have to say about that we will get other i can i pivot from there absolutely so one of the things that i'm really enjoying about this book is how through again our keen observer who's like an enthusiastic learner uh katherine lasky is giving us context of the history of this time period
And I don't feel other authors have done that as efficiently.Catherine Lasky puts a lot in.I love her.
Yeah, so we also, one of the ways she practices her English is by reading newspapers.And so we will get other ones.I'm also seeing something else that I want to come back to.
um but some other oh she learns about Marie Curie um the scientist in in France who and who she and her husband discover radium and notably will die from it later in life but all of their notebooks are still radioactive yeah we haven't gotten to that point yet so Marie Curie is still alive and still doing cool things um like glowing in the dark
yeah um that's not true i don't want anybody to think she did that well but possibly people who played with radium did right um so the thing that i wanted to mention was um a person a character that we never meet um but is is mentioned frequently which is tanta fruma who i believe is their aunt because tanta is aunt is aunt and it's both russian and german and also dutch
So like kind of like the lowlands.
So Tantafruma has is is she who is the person that I imagine speaking like Yanta from Fiddler on the Roof because she is known for all these these idioms that Zippy and her sisters and her mother will all kind of like say at each other like in entire conversations or arguments they will just like quote Tantafruma.
so she's having a hard time learning English she's making so she's making herself feel better by making a list of Yiddish words for misery pain and sadness and then Tova finds it she says I'm a fool I should not be making lists of Yiddish words for misery that I should be making the list in English
And then she quotes Tante Fruma for five minutes on fools, and I'm so mad that I argue back each time.Tova, a fool remains a fool.Me, there's an exception to every rule.Tova, better to be a wise person in hell than a fool in paradise.
Me, this is paradise?This rotten little room?This rotten little apartment with smelly, red chicken bones?
Hava, well, I've got a match for you.
Yes, it's good.I love it. Ooh, but, ooh, that same entry ends in a really kind of heartening way.
So Tova gets mad and she goes over to the cupboard and she gets something and puts it in a spoon and she brings it back and she like, you know, says, here, take this.And it's honey.
And she explains that this is what they do for boys when they are learning, when they're at their first day of religious school.
For every Hebrew letter that they can say correctly, they get a drop of honey on their tongue, so that learning will always be sweet.
Yeah, but she says, never for girls.Tova must have read my thoughts.In America, learning in schools is not just for boys. I saw Miriam watching us and her eyes filled with tears.
I knew then that she would rather be crunched into a small chair with a classroom of six-year-olds than be working in a shop with Papa.I felt bad in spite of the honey in my mouth."Like that that hits hard.Oh you know this is this experience.
Isn't Katherine Lasky so good?Like she's filled out this whole world for us in the space of like 20 pages with giant type.
yeah giant type and all of these like um words that she explains so we're getting all this like yiddish vocabulary that we're like oh i'm understanding what what shabbos is or like a shabbos gore or like they they go through other jewish holidays like they explain like yeah like it's interesting to study a culture by looking at its language and that might be one of the things like we're getting just a sliver of
well and and not just the Yiddish language but like the phrase out like they're the way they speak is culturally significant it certainly is so we're getting a lot of that and so this and while we're getting this picture of like oh this is life is hard you know like this is not what we thought it was going to be like why did we come here she twists it all of a sudden says oh
the one thing that is that we do have here is the ability for girls to learn and that's worth something.
Absolutely so so another you know this tension between these old world traditions and the new world kind of hustle culture there are some benefits um it's
throughout the book in fact a lot of times the thumbs up comes for the american culture yeah you know these women are allowed to study they're allowed to touch the torah scroll which never would have happened in the old world yeah they go to the they go to temple for shul and um there's they they divide the the room by gender and
um and they wall it off by a screen and as they kind of indicate was traditional in the old country they would bring out the Torah for the men to look at and study and touch but the women were never allowed to even see it I think so here they're even allowed to reach through they're still walled off but they're allowed to touch the Torah which is hugely significant for them having never done it before
one thing that i learned a while ago is that torahs are not like bibles in that you wouldn't have your own copy and you wouldn't have you know like a lot of publications of it widely available so what exists that i think is hand scribed
uh especially the ones that are very old are super special yeah and have to be taken care of uh that's why they have like mezuzahs which have a piece of torah scroll inside of them to like touch on your way through a door i just think that's cool
yeah and there's it there's a long tradition of um what we would call abrahamic religions um kind of relationship to their holy texts because um muslims also have an interesting relationship to the quran the quran and and the the text of it and and
you know how it's it is or is not allowed to be translated and Catholics like there are the Christian tradition also had this in that for a very long time
people didn't i mean this is before the printing press too so like you know people didn't have their own copy of the bible at home and it wasn't it was only allowed to be in latin and the priest was the only one allowed to read it and to to teach from it and then the you know protestant reformation um argued that it was important for everyone to be able to read the bible
and so that's like the first time that Christians began to have their own copy of the Bible and so like that's where it really kind of branched off from what had been this tradition and there are reasons for and against it and so yeah yeah
yeah definitely it's interesting i i i just i love how much texture there is in this book there's a lot of detail there's a lot of framing um i think this is
a very we're at the hands of a very skillful writer who's created very real characters she packs a lot into like we're so she meets her friend blue um and she goes over to her house and they and they kind of experience you know a slightly different like they're i feel like they're less orthodox um yes uh but she meets like uh she's
got like little siblings and there's also a baby on the way kind of put off by the dad yes also for the record like all she they reference a lot of like street corners and like streets they're all within that same neighborhood like i look i was following along with it on google maps because i'm a nerd so and i find it interesting that you could go to new york city and and go on a on a tour that follows the locations of this book
That is cool.I like that.Again, it's she's very detail driven, this author.I would be interested in reading her other books.I think she wrote The Owls of Gehul.That's her big famous one.I think that's Katherine Lasky.
I feel like that sounds familiar.Okay, we are googling it right now.
um so and we learned that her father uh blue's father um has a push cart and sells suspenders can we talk about blue's father are you gonna go into this whole whole deal because
can i finish you finish and then we'll talk about this because i have stuff okay um because we also um learn about uncle moish who is mama's brother who is also living in new york and he works at brooks brothers so it's we're getting the sense of like you know we're working at different garment factories shirtwaist factories uh mr wolf is
you know, selling suspenders, and then Uncle Poish is working at Brooks Brothers with his higher strata of job, you know, within the same kind of garment industry.So we're gonna see this kind of like class strata.
And yeah, because he's always been a better tailor than Papa, because Papa is, as we know, a violinist.So like, you know, that's, that's not his what he's trying to do.
okay yes we're gonna go into the high holy days but if you want to go on a time uh just a side note i think katherine lasky is telling an audience of young women to compare and contrast different suitors
So one of the things that is a central theme, and I maintain Fiddler on the Roof is definitely the seed of Catherine Lasky's writing here.Of course I can't say it definitively, but I believe
So we're comparing, contrasting different suitors and the kind of lives we would have with them.And I think that is something that girls think about a lot and I think it's something that girls especially should think about a lot.
And Katherine Lasky shows us in Blue's Father a jerk dad, a jerk partner.He does nothing but sit in his chair and read the newspaper and issue commands.When the baby starts to cry, he says, silence that.He calls it it.Yeah. Yeah.
And that is something that we should be evaluating.
When girls are considering what kind of life they want, what kind of partner they want, what kind of future they want, finding the right kind of partner whose goals and dreams and attitudes match up with their own is really important.
And I don't think it's something that we overtly talk to young ladies about or young children. Yeah, this is really matters to boys also.
Yeah, if we're involved in the gender binary, I didn't necessarily pick up on like that what you just said, but like it, this actually makes a ton of sense, because the next entry, she's talking again about the she hands.
And they're yelling at each other.And finally understood one of the one English word no to little Protestant.
So I do think it's funny.It really is.Well, it's not funny.It's really sad.
But we say this as Americans who do not have the long baggage of that is very real and very intense between Protestants and Catholics.
But also the whole thing is a little stupid.
because we see it as like you're both Christian like who cares but for Irish people it wasn't a very big deal and it matters it still is right because there was a system in Ireland yes as we established yeah yeah yeah that made it really matter yeah so we're here we can kind of like dumb
yeah like i can like my mom's side of the family is catholic and my dad's side is protestant and that was not a are you also the product of an unholy union between a catholic and a protestant yeah same same peace in our time baby um anyway so i sounded so much like tony stark right then i don't know who that is oh what an offensive statement to a millennial i was just trying to rile danny
I don't think you can, Ryle Danny.Look how comfy he is in his onesie.All right, so I have to cook dinner for seven people.So what have we got?I had it.
We got sidetracked by you laughing at Little Protestant.It's funny.What I was going to say is So, the two Mrs. Sheehans are yelling at each other.
When I came out of the lavatory, Mrs. Sheehan was running down the hall crying, this is the younger, and Grandma was glaring at her.The grandmother looks awful, she has no teeth, her face collapsed, blah, blah, blah.
So, there's no mouth really, just a dark hole that is sucked in and spits out words.So evocative.
Right?She's such a great writer.Yes.And she made this girl so keenly observant.
Yes. So, Mr. Sheehan just stood in the doorway looking one second at his wife and the next second at his mother as if he didn't know whose side to choose.And then he just goes inside.
And I think this goes very well with your point about Mr. Wolf because this is, here's another example of like, ladies, you don't want this.Right, is this what you want?You don't want this.
Where we look at Papa.Yeah.
Papa seems to be a pretty, like he puts in extra work. He's a provider when his wife is getting lonely and kind of crying out for connection Let's talk about yeah, they're big drama.
So the drama that develops between Papa and Mama is that?Mama notices all these little parts of the way that you know, they culturally dress and you know practice their faith and their culture that he is a Not participating in anymore.
He cut his side locks and pretty soon.He might not be wearing the little fringes or and He also notably skips shul at one point and and shul is church is right Yeah
so mama comes home and is furious with him for skipping this very important service and he's like listen i had work to do i had i'm making all of this money he actually he was handed like take-home work essentially and was paid a bonus for it and so it was like we need money like he's got money they've ever brought home yeah and so zippy
works on this wonderful compromise this is what i love about this her i i love this about her is that she's she's actually very invested in in finding compromise between her family and like she's solving adult problems yeah yeah book puts on these books oh often put on kids and also but also kids will do will do this um yeah
It's a very classic thing.
Like how many times did you picture your house getting like broken into and how you would like ninja fight it away because of your training from the Power Rangers?
Well, okay, so what she does is she realizes another problem.Not only is Mama scared of Papa losing his, you know, devotion to their culture, but she is also lonely.
she's sitting at home while you know papa and the two older sisters go off to work and Zippy goes to school and she doesn't know english and she doesn't really so she doesn't really can't talk to anyone she can't talk to the she hands because they speak english and she doesn't and so she realizes okay she needs something to do
um and she remembers that her mother is a good seamstress and so what she does is she persuades her father to use the money that he you know made from this extra work to rent a sewing machine
for Mama, and Mama starts sewing, working as a seamstress on the side.She starts a side business.And she's actually pretty good at it.And while she's doing it, Zippy is teaching her English.
So she points out all of the parts of the sewing machine and says the English words for them, which means that Zippy has to learn all the English words for his sewing machines.
But in learning them herself, in teaching them, she learns them better herself.She develops her own English and she starts to really advance out of first grade.
Which is a huge way to really internalize something that you're trying to learn is to teach it to someone else.It's the best way.And to feel that responsibility of like, oh, someone's relying on me to know this, so I need to know it.
and this is where another character comes in named Yitzhak Silver who goes by Yitzi, another fun nickname.
I'm telling you, Katherine Lasky loves a nickname and as somebody who loves a nickname, I respect it.
Yes, so he is this annoying little boy who is kind of like, is kind of like a busy body, like has all of these connections.He reminds me of the Artful Dodger.
he really does yeah he's like oh he's like oh you want to do this i got a guy i let me just let me go do this and you never know how truthful he's being right like and so i love him yeah he's like he's so like chatty and he's like trying to fix everything and trying to like be important and zippy does not like him but she realizes that he's very helpful because he um finds
clients for mama to to um to so for um so he and he even starts kind of expanding her business yes like what do you see out there because i see customers right like don't you do like he's such a newsy yeah that's what what's that movie where this
Oh, I think it's Hook, the little kid with like the business suit.Oh, yeah.
That's who he lines to go.
Yes.He's like, hey, I gotta go get some business.He actually finds a client uptown, which is very notable.
We get to see the difference again in class of a governess who is working
uptown for another German Jewish family and they are wealthy they live off Fifth Avenue and so I think in the novel they say that the German Jews have been here longer and they're more established and they speak like real Yankees yes
yeah so that's that's another way that they are differentiated they are not as you know orthodox they don't do you know all of the like cultural habits that you know we might today you might say like oh you're you're ethnically jewish or you're you know you're you're jewish but you're not practicing or or something like that um
so yeah she's the governess and she's like oh if you know I like what you do I'll get more work for you and she does she ends up getting mama commissioned to sew uniforms for the entire house staff and then eventually even the lady of the house like this is
this is exciting like the this is like the most like america's success you know story of the book so far we're like heck yeah mama so mama's doing the work so that's yitzi um he is also just kind of constantly hanging around he's like oh we're gonna have it's the holiday where we have to build a sukkah on the fire escape so i i know how to get stuff for that
Don't you worry guys, I'll get you some bamboo poles.Don't even worry about it.
But then Sean O'Malley, right, Sean O'Malley, he comes through as well because he's also hanging out.
Oh, Sean O'Malley's around a lot.
I wonder why that's important.Yeah, we're gonna, I think we could skip through most of the holiday stuff.I agree.We're also not nearly as far as we should be.
well but in fairness we're discussing a very dense world yes so if we don't make it all the way to page 80 that's okay but i will not allow for three times i think so we did kind of allude to a lot of this stuff already so i'm kind of flipping through
oh yeah the only other thing i think we really haven't covered is papa and the orchestra yeah let's talk about that because i think that i think that's actually a good note get us to also jump into the next part where we can end on um so this is another instance of zippy kind of seeing a problem in her family that she wants to fix which is like okay she set up her mother to like have her own little side business which is
going great and as if he's really happy oh and then we'll come back to oh the mr wolf dipping should we i think we'll cover him in book two in part two okay because it's not pertinent yet it's just like yeah well i don't know how pertinent it's going to be in the second half to be honest but oh you don't think they'll ever answer it i don't know
I think with the baby coming, like it's going to become a more pressing issue as we discuss.
The baby comes in the first half.
Right.And Blue starts falling behind in school.
But I think it's going to become more pressing in the second half.Okay.Okay.I don't, I can't prove it.I haven't read it.Me either.I don't know.If I were writing this book, that's how I would do it.
I don't know.Anyway, yes.
So she's fixed this problem for her mother and now she wants to, she sees like one of the long-term problems that her father's been dealing with is that he's been so focused on working and making money to support his family that his violin is in a corner collecting dust.
and in a moment of like happiness when you know they're they've worked out this problem for her mother and they're like kind of finding some success and some footing in this world her father takes out his violin and starts playing music for the first time probably in years and that just creates such a warm happy environment and the
tiny little apartment that they live in that Zippy's like this is yes this is what was missing and so there's one day where she's out with her friends and she sees an advertisement for a symphony I'm trying to find where that ad is
and so she they are looking for musicians um and she's like oh papa would be great for this but he's never gonna go out and do it for himself and so blue's like you should just sign him up for it she's like oh okay um so oh okay i think
Okay, there we go.So they're forming the Russian Symphony Society of New York.And it's Yitzi who is like, of course, he's like, you should sign up your dad.And so she's like persuaded to go do it.So she goes to sign up.
And they walk into this room and there's men jabbering away, but mostly in Russian.And so she's like, oh, I got to break out my Russian.And you're like, okay, zippy, casually, trilingual. Et cetera.And she's, and so she speaks to the man.
She's like, I'm here for my father.He's a violinist.He's a graduate of the Imperial Conservatory in St.Petersburg, and he was a teacher there also for many years.It was like magic.The man's bushy eyebrows went up, and the talk in the room died away.
And what might be your father's name, he asked.I said, I started to say Yekul, his Yiddish name, but I stop just in time and give his Russian name, Yasha Feldman. Yasha Feldman several men exclaimed.Isn't that so sweet?
Mm-hmm they know him he's here they all get excited and one says ah no problem then with the Tchaikovsky or the Glinka if we can get Feldman and and they ask you know where can we find him and she rattles off her address
and so they agree to come see him and convince him to join um and yeah so they they do they show up and they have this wonderful like a reunion which must be so wild to like not know that this person you knew and could be conscripted could be dead yeah
to just suddenly be like oh you're here I haven't seen you in years I didn't know I had no idea what happened to you and here you are like that's magical um and so he starts practicing with them they work out a deal that you know they practice on Saturday but mama doesn't want papa to do that because that's the sabbath and so he's like okay what if I go but I don't play and she's like okay that's fine um and
and then we learned that uh we learned uh papa's pet name for zippy um which is bulba malak oh god i'm so sorry um Which translates to, he used to call me Bubba, but I didn't like being called a little doll.
I said I would rather be called a potato than a silly little doll.A potato, he said, will make compromise.A little bit of earth and a little bit of heaven.You are my Bubba Malak, my little potato angel.
I just think that's so cute and it feels real.I love this book so far.
Is that the note you wanted to end on?Not quite because so I'll end on that.
um he eventually um he he practices and then they go to see him perform and it's beautiful and it's wonderful and then they have this you know there's this bonding experience between father and daughter and she points out that you know there's they're in the theater district so she points out that there's a theater doing a play and she's like oh I would love to go and
it's getting to be December so like there it's Hanukkah and so they have you know this series of of nights where they're lighting the menorah and she's telling her mother stories about the frost trees that are like the the frost on the window that look like trees and so she's telling her mother's stories about the magical frost forest on their window
and for one of her for the last Hanukkah gift she gets from her father tickets to go see the play and she goes and she falls in love with it and she decides like for a while she was like obsessed with Marie Curie she's like I want to be a scientist out and then she learns about the Wright brothers she's like oh I want to go meet them and then she goes to see this play and she discovers her true passion which is the theater
So I think that's a good place to end it.Amazing. Isn't it great so far?I am in love.I am instantly reminded of how much I loved this book when I was younger.This is not the first book that we've read that I'm like, oh yeah, I remember reading this.
But this is the first book that I've reread that I'm like, oh, I remember this plot.And I remember loving it.And I think it's because I love Fiddler on the Roof.
there's just something about like i'm telling you the two a jewish family just tried to make it and find the line between tradition and modernity and americanization and uh i think the two are inextricably linked yes and it's yeah it's a beautiful story i i'm really loving it um i'm excited to see where it goes me too
Shall we go make chicken sandwiches?Chicken sandos.I gotta go light up the grill.Sounds delightful.Okay well it's so good to be back.Catch you guys in a fortnight.Yeah see y'all on the other side.
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