Page 391 - WhyAsInY

Portrait of a (first) MarriaGe
retrospect was probably an economic mistake, although, also in retro- spect, not a social one.
While we were in Brooklyn, when we didn’t spend time with Michael and Susan, we socialized primarily with Bob and Ellen Israel, who lived in our building, and a couple I now know as Marge and Larry Maltin. They were yet another Rebell connection, as Marge Maltin was a childhood friend of Arthur’s wife, Adele.
The time spent with those people, and with the friends with whom we socialized after we moved to Scarsdale in 1972, paled in comparison with the time that we spent with the Rebell family at large. I’ve already enumerated the vast number of Rebells and Podells who attended or were on the phone at the time of the baptism by fire (you should again pardon the expression) at Girard Street on Rosh Hashanah 1968. In the few years after our betrothal, eight children were added to the Rebell family. Accordingly, in the Rebell immediate universe, there were four anniversaries and sixteen birthdays per annum, of which we attended a high percentage. Of course, there were also two Seders, two days of Rosh Hashanah, two days of Yom Kippur, and one or more days of Thanksgiving and other special occasions the only purpose of which was to see one another, all to be added to weekend days spent in Lake Mahopac and, starting in 1977 or so, annual Rebell family ski trips to Vermont with all hands on deck.
For an only child whose adult family social life had been generally limited to my parents and two of my cousins, this was quite intimidating at first and almost overwhelming, if not suffocating, in the years to come. I had never dealt with a large family before, and I certainly hadn’t dealt with any family that was as wealthy, self-aware, self-impressed, disci- plined, competitive, serious, goal-oriented, conspicuously community- minded, charitable, religiously observant, or unified as this one was. The Rebells thought of themselves as a family, as a distinct entity with its own ethos.
I did not feel overmatched when it came to smarts or schooling or—I hasten to add—in the height or humor departments. (Phyllis, a bit shorter than I, was the tallest of the Rebell family; Sylvia had the best
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