Second Avenue Deli
Introduction: Memory and Memoir
Over the years I have been amazed and excited by how much family information can be collected from the Internet — especially from the vast store of Polish town records that survived the Holocaust. Where town records exist they have allowed us to reconstruct generations of our family background.
But records do not exist or are largely unavailable for many of the towns and countries from which our ancestors came. And even where they are available, there are often questions that they cannot fully answer.
How did people living in small Jewish neighborhoods go about their daily lives? How did family members interact with neighbors, with Christian townspeople and with town officials who sometimes came from other lands? Why did some of our ancestors, men mostly, sometimes appear in different residence and birth records with different occupations — once, perhaps, as a “laborer” and another time as “musician” or “merchant” or “shoemaker”? How and where did people purchase food? What did they eat and how did they prepare it? And how did they spend their spare time — or did they even have spare time?
Records can provide and connect the bones of family past. Memory, when it is transcribed into memoir, provides the flesh and blood and heart.
Helena Halborn’s memoirs, and the memoirs written by other members of our family are convincing proof of the value of the written word in helping us understand the lives of family members from older generations.
In a world growing more fragile it seems compelling to document what we know about ourselves and our ancestors. With that in mind, this story — helped along by old photographs that have brought back lost memories — is meant to recount my frequent visits over a period of 40 plus years to Ida Merkin Riskin and Abe Riskin, a beloved aunt and uncle who lived in New York City. I have written about a few members of this large family before in a family book and in a story on this web site called For Katherine. Nevertheless, I have added a short introduction to the family in a brief backstory called Leaving Orsha, because the family provides a picture of what working class immigrants were like and what kind of lives they made for themselves in New York in the early years of the 20th Century. I have used their Americanized names in this post. In the brief backstory, Leaving Orsha, I have introduced their Yiddish names — the names they were given at birth, in the town of Orsha, in what is now a part of Belarus.
2016
In 2016, Norm and I — already into our 80s and two years past our 50th wedding anniversary — visited New York City for the first time in about 10 years. Neither of us had ever lived in New York. But from 1950 one had spent considerable time there. In 2016, Norm was scheduled to speak at a conference. Our hotel room was fine — located near Times Square just a block from the NYU Center where Norm was speaking and we had a great view of the Empire State building. But this time everything seemed different — crowded and difficult to manage. People raced up and down subway steps and pushed passed us on the sidewalks. Streets were jammed with cars and busses unable to move more than a block every few minutes. It was difficult to hail a taxi to make our way to museums or restaurants. After just one day we both realized that while the city looked different, and local travel had been slowed by overcrowded and deteriorating transportation systems, it was mostly the two of us who had changed — we were slower, less able to manage subway stairs or keep up with the rapid pace of foot traffic on the city sidewalks. We had grown old.
Yet, in spite of the difficulties produced by our age, both of us were overcome by a strong sense of nostalgia. New York held so many memories for us — and those memories were primarily centered around my Aunt Ida, who had lived in the East Village, at 166 2nd Avenue, a short block from the 2nd Avenue Deli. So one thing we wanted to accomplish, between Norm’s speech and his interactions with conference attendees, was to revisit the 2nd Avenue Deli and the lower East Village neighborhood of Manhattan where Ida lived for most of her life, first with her mother, my grandmother, Zipa (Celia) Merkin, and later with her husband, Abraham Riskin. We discovered that the deli had moved to 33rd Street in 2014, and while we were unable to make our way to the East Village, we did manage to get to the deli and shared a sandwich piled high with delicious corned beef, a large plate of pickles and an evening of reminiscing.
A Long Engagement
After immigrating from Belarus, my mother’s sister, my Aunt Ida spent all but 12 years of her 89 year life in New York. For almost all of that time was spent living in the same apartment building at 166 2nd Avenue, a short block from the 2nd Avenue Deli, a deli that became a part of this story because it was favorite of ours and a setting for some of our time with Ida and her husband.
It is hard for me to believe I first met my Aunt Ida 79 years ago, in the summer of 1941, when I was eight years old. Ida was single then and she traveled to Los Angeles just a few months after the death of my grandmother, Celia, and a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The second visit with Ida had to wait until after World War Two, when Ida came to Los Angeles with her husband, Abe Riskin. Ida and Abe were “lantzmen” — fellow Jews from the same Eastern European shtetl of Orsha, in the Mogilev region of Belarus. Whether they knew each other in Orsha, I do not know. But they did find one another in New York. And by 1920 they were engaged.
Both immigrated to America in the early years of the 20th century. Both immediately found jobs — Abe as a painter, Ida as a seamstress. Both continued to support their younger siblings, and, in Abe’s case, his sibling’s children — his nieces and nephews.
In the mid 1920s, Ida took on the responsibility of caring for her mother, my grandmother Celia Merkin. Meanwhile Abe put his nieces and nephews through high school and college — a process that continued during World War Two. He enlisted in the United States Army in August, 1942. From that date until the end of the war, he put his painting skills to work camouflaging Army installations while sending his Army paycheck to his brother so that his nephews and nieces could complete college educations. Throughout the war he and Ida continued to focus on their nieces and nephews.
So it was that my Aunt and Uncle ended up with the longest engagement I have ever heard of — over 25 years. They married on May 26, 1946, just 18 days after VE Day.
Joan Freulich at Brandeis University, autumn, 1950.
1950
In early September, 1950, a few years after Ida and Abe visited us in Los Angeles and a few years before the 2nd Avenue Deli opened, I took my first trip ever outside California, and my first ever plane ride. I was headed for Brandeis University in the suburbs of Boston, where I had been accepted to the second class of the newly created school named for Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish United States Supreme Court Justice. I was scheduled to spend my first two weeks on the east coast in New York City with my Ida and Abe before taking a train to Boston. Ida had been charged by my mother, her sister Katia, with seeing that I was sufficiently outfitted with winter clothing to make it through a Boston winter.
Jet planes were not yet in operation and I remember that the flight, on a Lockheed Constellation propeller plane, was a long one — more than eight hours. I was met at New York’s LaGuardia Airport by my cousin, Myron Merkin, the youngest son of my uncle Sam Merkin. Myron had been sent to pick me up, apparently because my aunt and uncle thought it would be nice if I met and befriended a nice young relative closer to my own age who might be able to introduce me to some of his friends.
The ride to Manhattan with my cousin was almost unbearable and seemed to take forever. All my efforts to start a conversation with Myron were met with barely audible grunts. My Merkin cousin, four years my senior, a new engineering graduate of New York University, and someone I had never met, said not one word for the entire ride.
I remember to this day that my first impression of New York was that it was not my kind of place. The road was crowded, the bridge underpasses and tunnels were covered with suet and graffiti. Roadside plants were weighted down with grime and already fading with approaching autumn — a stark contrast to the green, well-washed suburbs of Los Angeles, where I had grown up.
View from Apartment 15A, Ida and Abe’s apartment at 166 2nd Avenue, New York, photographed in the 1960s by my father, Roman Freulich.
166 2nd Avenue
Ida Merkin lived at 166 Second Avenue for most of her life — first, from the mid 1920s until after World War Two — in Apartment 8C, a studio apartment she shared with my grandmother, Celia Esterkin Merkin. She kept the same small apartment after my grandmother died in early 1941. Then, after the war, Ida moved to Apartment 15A with her longtime fiancee and new husband, Abraham Riskin.
15A was a one bedroom apartment overlooking 2nd Avenue, St. Mark’s Church and the streets that led to Washington Square, New York University and Cooper Union, and the Greenwich Village section of the city. The two lived in that apartment until they died — Abe in January, 1982 and Ida in September, 1990.
Ida worked, as she had since she was about 12 years old, as a seamstress in the garment district on New York’s lower east side. And after the war Abe returned to his job as a house painter, supervising a crew in the endless task of painting and repainting a large apartment complex in Brooklyn.
My Aunt Ida’s late marriage, when she was about 46 years old, meant the couple had no children. So a large part of their lives after they married continued to be invested in their nieces and nephews. I first learned just how seriously they took that task when they brought a third person, Abe’s niece Etty, on their 1945 trip to Los Angeles — the trip that came closest to anything like a honeymoon for them.
Ida and Abe were careful substitute parents. Sometimes, I thought, too careful. If I was out, day or night, either Ida or Abe would spend part of the time sitting at at the window fronting 2nd Avenue watching for my return. If I looked too closely at the supply of alcoholic beverages they stored in a cupboard in the entry hall to their apartment I would receive a quiet lecture. My sister learned how seriously they took their parenting responsibilities in December, 1950, when she flew from California to visit me and Ida and Abe for a week during the winter college break. She happened, at that time, to have a boyfriend who lived in New York. A few times, for privacy, they left the apartment and sat in the hall stairwell to talk. At those times Ida always felt the need to “check up” on things every five or ten minutes.
My place, when I stayed with Ida and Abe, was a folding cot in the living room. That meant that, if I happened to visit on an evening when Abe and Ida entertained their friends, there was no place for me to sleep. I either had to find a friend who was free for an evening excursion somewhere in the city or try to study or read in the small dining area that divided the apartment entry hall from the small kitchen.
On those evenings Abe and his male friends usually played poker while Ida chatted quietly with the two or three women who came along. I recall that at age 17, and for several years afterward, I found the entire group elderly and boring. Now, in 2019, I am able to smile at my younger self: every one of them was 30 years or more younger than I am now.
I recall once even pulling out a school notebook and writing a little story about one of their frequent visitors - a lantzman from Orsha - who always showed up at those evenings in order to watch or, I thought, spy on her former partner. The two never exchanged a single word. But she watched, and he ostentatiously ignored her.
A Discovery
Very early in my stays with Ida and Abe I discovered that my aunt and uncle were no ordinary working people. Certainly, neither had formal schooling. But their home was full of well used books and Abe went out every evening and came home with an armload of Yiddish and English papers. Both Ida and Abe read them all. The apartment was full of art. Some of the frames that crowded their walls displayed not exactly great reproductions of masters and some held not very good originals they bought to help support friends who were aspiring artists.
Still, their knowledge, love and appreciation of art far outstripped mine. And their appreciation of music seemed bottomless.. So almost every weekend when I was free to come to New York, Ida and Abe escorted me to museums and to exhibits both permanent and new.
Better yet, the two maintained season tickets to the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and they purchased as many tickets for Broadway shows as they could manage.
Growing up in Los Angeles, my parents had taken my sister and me to ballet, opera and symphony for years. And my father made a point of frequently bringing home new classical recordings for us. Though it is certainly no longer the case, Los Angeles, in the 1930s and 1940s was a backwater when it came to musical quality as well as museum holdings.
New York was an eye opener, and ear opener for me. I still remember sitting next to Ida in Carnegie Hall and feeling — actually feeling — the sounds of a Beethoven symphony vibrate up from the floor through the soles of my shoes.
On those wonderful weekends when Ida and Abe were not at work, our routine was always the same, whether I had announced my trip beforehand or just called on my way from someplace on the East Coast. We would visit one of the new museum exhibits or a permanent exhibit I had yet to see on a Saturday afternoon and then, either Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, Abe would give up his ticket and there would be two seats for my aunt and for me to something wonderful. Abe was never left behind, even when performances were sold out (which was usually the case). He accompanied us and always managed to buy an extra ticket on the steps of the theater where people came to sell their tickets if they were unable to attend the event.
The routine was the same after the performance, as well. We would stop at a nearby delicatessen or at an Automat — one of those strange New York restaurants with walls covered by small doors one could peer through, and then place a coin in a slot to open the door and remove whatever food was being offered. Abe, who was diabetic, would be allowed by Ida to order something simple — perhaps half a bagel with a skimpy spread of cream cheese — while Ida drank a cup of unsweetened tea. I was allowed to gorge myself on whatever I wished.
The Workday Routine
The daily routine in apartment 15A was rarely as exciting as those weekend visits.
Workdays meant that both Ida and Abe were up early, showered and ready to leave — Abe by six a.m. when he walked to the nearby subway station and traveled to his job in Brooklyn; Ida by seven a.m. First she prepared the evening meal and then made her way on foot to the nearby garment district.
Ida stayed at her sewing machine for her entire working life, and as she and Abe aged, her concern about Abe’s diabetes grew. So preparing weekday dinners definitely did not depend on complicated recipes. Her goal was to keep meals healthy — or her interpretation of healthy. That meant keeping food preparation simple, without spices, thoroughly over-cooked, and available the minute Abe returned from work, which was usually a half hour or so after she arrived home.
Her culinary inventiveness was all channeled into finding ways for food to cook slowly, while she was at work. So preparing a weekday dinner went something like this: In the morning, she took a chicken purchased the day before and cut it into quarters. Then she placed the four pieces into a deep iron skillet. Next she added two or three cups of water, enough to generously cover the chicken and to last all day without boiling away. She added no salt and no pepper — after all, Abe was diabetic. The next step was simply to place the skillet on the stovetop, place a heavy lid over it and turn the gas to the lowest possible setting. Then Ida was ready to leave for work.
Ida was active in the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union — a union she had learned to appreciate since the days, before child labor laws were enforced, when she and my mother, as new and very young immigrants could only earn half the salary of their adult counterparts. So sometimes union meeting meant her workday extended an hour beyond normal. On the way home from work she would stop at the Korean owned fruit and vegetable store around the corner from 166 2nd Avenue and purchase a few pieces of seasonal fruit for dessert, plus a head of iceberg lettuce.
At home, she would check the chicken, add a bit of water if necessary and then wash and cut the lettuce into giant quarters. A teaspoon of mayonnaise from a grocery store jar would be placed on the table to garnish the lettuce. Then she — or the two of us, if I was visiting — would wait for Abe to come through the apartment door.
Without fail Abe, who had a long subway ride back from work, would show up within half hour or 45 minutes. And on many days he brought with him the wonderful smell of fresh baked bread he had picked up on his way home — a loaf of rye, or sometimes, if it was Friday, a lovely well browed challah — the final compliment to a satisfying workday meal.
But the fresh bread never made its way to the table in this thrifty household. It went, instead, straight into the oven. And of course the oven was never used to bake anything. It served, instead, as a giant breadbox. So the new, fragrant loaf would be safely stored away to stale and a half loaf or so of stale bread that had been sitting in the oven for two or perhaps three or four days, would be taken out and placed on the table.
Those weekday meals were unforgettable and they continued long after both Ida and Abe retired. Norm remembers them. And our children, who followed in our footsteps in their visits to Ida and Abe remember them.
A Year on the East Coast
In 1964 Norm spent a sabbatical year at Harvard. I spent the year working for the Time Magazine Boston News Bureau. Our children, then nine and eleven years old, spent most of their time experiencing Cambridge, Massachusetts public schools.
We visited New York often during that year, and our children had their first exposure to Ida and Abe. Mark and Carin took over my place, sleeping in the living room of Apartment 15A while we stayed at a hotel. Those visits gave our children their first exposure to their great aunt and uncle and their first taste of New York City. Ida and Abe had both retired by 1964 and eagerly handled the task of showing the city to our children.
Mark recalls that Ida often stayed home to cook while Abe became their principle tour guide, escorting them on their first subway rides, to museums and shows and to New York highlights like the top of the Empire State Building and Battery Park. He also remembers being taken to Rockefeller Center Music Hall — something I, too experienced with Ida and Abe.
The Automat was another stop our children remember: that same cafeteria where a decade earlier I was first introduced to this New York institution where you could search through various foods displayed in windows in little locked doors, put coins in a slot when you had found what you wanted, and withdraw the food when the door popped open.
Both the Automat and Rockette’s kitschy and dated performance at Radio City Music Hall were long lasting New York institutions At its peak, the Horn and Hardart Automats had 40 locations in the city — a boon to people who were in a hurry and not too fussy about what they ate. But in 1991, the automat’s closed. The Rockettes, however, are still performing their precision kicks at the Music Hall.
Mark also remembers time spent in Ida and Abe’s apartment, sometimes sitting precariously on the window sill and looking down through the open window at the activity on 2nd Avenue, fifteen floors below. He also remembers my cousin Myron — the silent cousin who met me at LaGuardia airport in 1950, on my first trip to New York. Myron was married by this time, but he always came alone. He had no children of his own and never bothered to interact with Mark and Carin. But despite his silence, or shyness, if that’s what it was, Myron was devoted to Ida and Abe and, as they aged, checked up on them often and took over their accounting and bill paying.
His routine from the time I stayed with Ida and Abe through the 1960s, was to come every few weeks for an evening meal, turn on the television set (which was new to the Riskin home sometime around 1964) and sit quietly until dinner was served.
And Mark remembers those dinners well — they remained unchanged from the meals Ida served when I was a student at Brandeis, though Ida had retired and no longer prepared them before leaving for work every weekday morning.
And so … the 2nd Avenue Deli
The 2nd Avenue Deli — a fleishig Kosher restaurant, meat and fish only, no milk products — opened in 1954 at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 10th Street.
Norm and I visited Ida and Abe often over the years, with and without our children. And when we spotted the deli we were intrigued and tempted to try it out. But we decided we could not chance eating there, just a block from Ida and Abe’s apartment, especially just before the time we were expected for dinner.
We did, eventually, get into the habit of stopping off for a quick snack on our way to Ida and Abe’s, but somewhere further away. Those quick meals enabled us to pick at our food and plead that we had eaten a large lunch and had no appetites, without (we hoped) insulting Ida.
Then we began to stop off at the deli and pick up something to bring to Ida and Abe — coleslaw or pickles to complement whatever Ida planned to serve for dinner or, later, corned beef or pastrami and fresh rye bread. Once in awhile we were even able to convince them to skip dinner preparation and walk with us the single short block to the deli.
In the 1980s, when Mark and his wife moved to New York, they fell into the same pattern, avoiding the deli at first, then bringing treats to Ida and Abe’s home and now and then tempting them to come out for a meal.
When Abe died in 1982, it was Mark and his wife who came and stayed with Ida for several weeks. They lived close by, then, and continued to stop by frequently. And over the months convincing Ida to leave her kitchen behind was no longer a difficult task.
All of us remember the 2nd Avenue Deli well. The quality (and quantity) of their standard fare — corned beef, pastrami, Kosher hot dogs, herring, lox, knishes, rugelach — was a given. All of us still recall that the 2nd Avenue Deli made and served the best mushroom and barley soup we have ever tasted — something not one of us has ever been able to replicate.
The heaps of coleslaw and pickles and baskets of fresh bread that were always served without charge are still remembered well. Mark recalls that when funds got low during the 1980s, he sometimes went to the deli, ordered something small, and filled up on all those extras.
The deli still exists and its menu remains largely the same. But it is no longer located at the corner of 2nd Avenue, a short block from the building where Ida and Abe no longer live in apartment 15A. But these days, that wonderful soup and everything else about the 2nd Avenue Deli remind us all of Ida and Abe.
