Angel: 178th St. NYC
"The Final Solution" by Harold Lewis
Angel: 178th St. NYC
Stewart Florsheim
Every morning on 178th Street he rummaged
through the trash for his daily paper.
I watched him from across the street,
the cantor who inspired tears
when he taught me the haftorah
for my Bar Mitzvah. Sunday afternoons,
I went to his third-floor apartment
that had the odor of chicken soup
and feather beds that had not been aired.
I walked down his long dark corridor
and sat with him at the dining room table.
He opened the haftorah for the book of Genesis
and I began to read my portion, Toldoth Yitzhak.
You have to do better, he would say,
I want your parents to be so proud of you.
After the lesson he unrolled a lace tablecloth
over the table then walked around it,
carefully unraveling each fringe:
My wife brought this back from Germany .
With the same hands he searched
through the broken Coke bottles, used Kleenexes.
He picked up one or two papers
till he found the one he wanted,
that day's Daily News. Perhaps
it was his way of honoring the past,
back in Germany, once it became Judenrein
and he had no money or dignity,
save for his faith in God that would
inspire him to sing like an angel.