Page 46 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Father and Mother

Judaism, a good pious fellow and, of course, poor, also. He married
my uncle Leiser’s daughter Gittel, a goodhearted girl loved by my
mother and us children. She had a golden heart, always bringing meat
to us when we were in distress. She would do anything for us.
Yankel, her husband, used to teach me the Talmud, in which he was
profoundly learned. He had plenty of time while he was eating kest;
that is, his father-in-law, my uncle Leiser Binshtock gave a dowry
including a promise to sustain him, along with his future children, for
three years after the wedding. Yankel was studying to be either a
rabbi or a shochet. He made the shochet grade, but could not find an
opening at the slaughterhouse.
America is not the first nation to originate trusts and unions: the
shochtim had this long before Gompers landed in Norfolk Street in a
cigar store. In Pelcovizna was a slaughterhouse owned by a Jew
named Abraham Inventarsh; I mention this name because his
grandson, who calls himself Sam Leventhal, is the butcher on Adams
Boulevard that you probably know or heard about. My daughter
Hilda went to school with his girls. In that slaughterhouse were three
shochtim one of whom was my uncle Leiser. The head rabbi in
Warsaw, who was well-known in Poland, controlled the kosher meat
inspection. The shochtim, to control the price of their labor, managed
through this rabbi to shut out anyone else from working in the
slaughterhouse. It was a racket, organized by the rabbi, who received
a certain income from it, so much per head of cattle killed for the
kosher trade. The shochtim were protected by him and they protected
his racket.
Yankel tried in vain to get into the trade, but the three shochtim in
Pelcovizna would not let him in. His father-in-law would have liked
to see him earn his own living, but could not say a word for him.
That rabbi had the power to put my uncle himself out of business, by
declaring as treyf an ox he had killed, claiming he passed a lung that
was tubercular, or by crookedly framing him with one of the Jewish
skinners bearing false witness. Well, Yankel kept eating at his in-laws’,
even when he had a twelve-year-old son. My father, who could have
gone before the governor of Poland and complained, asking him to
investigate the affair, would not risk my uncle Leiser’s position. My
father did, however, have friends who he tried to get to force Rabbi
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