‘Meant To Be’, by Rabbi Marvin Hier

In an excerpt from 'Meant To Be', the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and  its Museum of Tolerance remembers growing up on the Lower East Side.

It has been more than 50 years since I left New York City’s Lower East Side. But that immigrant neighborhood of crowded tenements, synagogues, kosher delis, and Yiddish theaters has never left me. The people and places I first encountered on its bustling streets did not just form a backdrop to my childhood; they shaped my view of the world and my place in it. Every decision I’ve made, every project I’ve undertaken, can be traced back to those endearing characters on Cannon, Columbia, Grand, Delancey, Essex, and Henry streets.

There was our family dentist, Dr. Celnicker, who cut costs by making temporary fillings from yesterday’s newspapers. “Moishele,” he said to me one day as I looked past my scuffed saddle shoes and out the window to Clinton Street from his reclining dental chair. “Do you want me to use the sports section, or would you prefer the movie section?”

“I wouldn’t mind Joe DiMaggio’s box score!” I answered.

Across the street, the Syd and Howe Candy Store sold chocolate syrup that made the best egg creams in the neighborhood. Every Friday, cars lined up on Houston Street, trunks opened wide, waiting to be filled with two-gallon glass bottles. One afternoon as I was sipping an egg cream at the soda fountain, a Chassid barged in waving a bottle overhead. “It’s just milk and chocolate—it’s kosher, right?”

“Absolutely,” replied Joe the Fountain Man. “Just don’t drink it with a fleishig [meat] kugel.”

Harry the Pickle Man was a fixture of the neighborhood. My buddies Willie Lehrer, Sheldon Miner, and Seymour Brier and I would sometimes meet at his stall between Sherriff and Columbia streets, and tussle for the best positions around Harry’s stout wooden barrel. Convinced that the bottom of the barrel yielded the most flavorful pickles, every woman had the same request for Harry, better known by his Yiddish name, Hershele:

“Please Hershele, zei a zoy gut [be so kind] and give me nor fin hintin [only from the bottom].” 

As I watched Hershele submerge each glass jar—and the sleeves of his heavy wool coat—into the dilled brine, I decided it must be the wool that gave his pickles their unique flavor.

Some of the great Jewish sages of our generation lived on the Lower East Side. Strolling down East Broadway, you might overhear your neighbor offering, “A gutten tag, Rebbe” (Have a good day, rabbi) to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the world-renowned Lithuanian rabbi and scholar. Or you might see a young mother waiting outside the famous Boyaner Rebbe’s shul to beseech him to say a special prayer for her sick child. 

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Source: Tablet Magazine