Page 286 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Reminiscences

Jonathan (AR’s grandson)

As youngest of the grandchildren, it was (after around 1950) my
duty to recite the Four Questions at Rothstein family seders on
Figueroa Street, and it is now my privilege to be the last to
reminisce—trying, perhaps, to answer a fifth question: who was
Abraham Rothstein? Like my older grandsiblings, I have many vivid
and many vague memories of the man, his habits and his
environment. The “old world” aspects of his home and personality
stood out, of course, in sharp contrast to the bland characteristics of
the postwar America in which I grew up.
In my childhood he existed as not merely another elderly relative,
but as a dark and mysterious force, a man unlike all others in my
limited experience. His face was fixed in a forbidding frown, breaking
into a devilish grin only upon the execution of a word or deed
designed to discomfort somebody else—usually me. I was ticklish
and hated to be teased: cause or effect of my wariness in his
presence, I cannot to this day be certain. But his grandchildren
(judging from their recollections as well as my own) were much more
fascinated than repelled by his gruff manner and mild torments: we
knew he loved us, and to be loved by such a strange and dangerous
man was wonderful in itself. The time I spent with him in my
formative years has eroded in memory to a bedrock of just a few
incidents, but his influence on me was definitive, as great as or
greater than that of any other adult in my juvenile world.
Appearing last in this chain of reminiscences, and having the
advantage of editing all the earlier links, I am also relieved of
repeating any common anecdotes. Suffice it to say that I, too, can
recall many discrete events and objects in the house on Figueroa
Street: Plutonian adventures in the basement, visions of the antique
car hulking dimly in the garage, moments of sun-baked amusement in
the totally cement-covered minuscule back yard and the vast half-
plowed field in front of the house, grandmother’s delicacies tasted in
the kitchen, card games learned in the dining room, terrifying
coconut heads leering down from the living room bookcases—all
remain in my memory like fleeting snatches of videotape. But every
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