Page 247 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Reminiscences

Papa seldom used profanity (except when struggling to fix his car)
or obscenities, especially with family. One night at dinner the subject
came to Aimee Semple MacPherson, an evangelist whose scandalous
personal affairs were at the height of their publicity. Suddenly he
pounded the table and shouted, “She’s a prostitute!” Immediately he
turned red in the face, and left the table in a hurry.
On the other hand, he admired good-looking women and was
critical of a woman who looked oppressed and harassed by a bunch
of kids. He depended on Mama to do his bookkeeping, yet he often
said to her, “Ha!—when you come into a store, the price goes up and
they bring out dreck to sell you.” He did not like his women to look
attractive—he feared sexual advances from outsiders. Even his
friends might seduce his wife, borrow money and not pay it back.
New or pretty clothes were smuggled into the house, and then
covered by a coat when worn. Lipstick came out of the purse two
blocks from home. While he did not look well-groomed himself, he
criticized others: if they were neat and clean, he ridiculed them; if
they were messy—the same.
But Papa was hypocritical about this. He was often taken with
flamboyant women, who looked like floozies—to the annoyance of
his wife and daughters. “She’s nicely dressed,” he’d say, but never
allow his women to dress like that. As daughters we were not allowed
to clean, cook, or sew. We were to read, read, read; he would quote
us something from Bacon about the “complete man.”
Papa was always reading, and fulminating at what he had read.
The Teapot Dome scandal made a tremendous impression on him.
When it came to scandal and corruption, he used to get very excited
and angry. He was very much up on events in Europe. He saw the
danger of Hitler way ahead of most people. He would also read
Josephus a little each night, because he liked history, and of course,
Marcus Aurelius, Maimonides, and Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy.
He liked to read in bed at night: we all got that bad habit from him!
Papa loved books. He often went to secondhand bookstores. We
still have his Old Testament in Hebrew and English. His father
David once sent him the Talmud in about ten volumes; when he
moved to Orange Street they were lost. He read magazines like The

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