The peddlers have been out of the house since 4 a.m. They need to be at the farmers’ market when it opens. At the farmers’ market, they load their wagons with the best fruits and vegetables they can afford. Then they will fan out across the city, driving up and down streets and alleys trying to sell their produce at a markup of pennies, in order to eke out their meager living.

The peddlers park their wagons along 5th Street next to the shul. They put feedbags on the horses so that their animals will have full stomachs by the end of davening, when the day’s trek begins. Although Simchas Torah was just last week, steam rises from the nostrils of the horses. After all, this is Minneapolis. The peddlers know that much worse weather is on its way. After taking care of their horses, the men go in to daven.

As Shacharis nears its conclusion, tefillin are removed and returned to their drawstring bags. Worn, patched and repatched talleisim are gently folded. The oilem is about to leave when their exit is delayed by the gabbai, who mounts the bimah and gives a klop.

“Rabbosai,” he bellows out. “Nechten banacht der ferd fun Mordche Ber hot geshtorben — Last night Mordche Ber’s horse died. The Rav says no one is allowed to leave the shul until Mordche Ber has money to buy a new horse.”

Wordlessly, automatically, dutifully, all assembled form a line and begin to pass the bimah. Into the outstretched hand of the gabbai are placed quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Occasionally a 50-cent piece and even a dollar. After making their deposit, they move to the side. The shul is silent; no one leaves. Some time passes. Another klop. “Mordche Ber has enough money to buy a ferd. The Rav says everyone can leave.” Exchanging brachos of hatzlachah with each other, the peddlers exit the shul to begin their workday.

Minchah

The Mississippi River is quite majestic as it winds its way through the Twin Cities. From my vantage point on a bluff overlooking the river in Minneapolis just north of the Lowry Avenue Bridge the river is about two city blocks wide. The Lowry Avenue Bridge spans the river and connects North to Northeast Minneapolis. In the first half of the 20th century, North Minneapolis was very Jewish. Northeast Minneapolis was very not Jewish. Poles, Ukrainians, Slavs, and Lithuanians all had distinct neighborhoods in the northeast part of the city.

As a child, I spent my summers tagging along with my father wherever his business took him. My father had business in Northeast Minneapolis, so we would go there at least a few times a week. We would often cross the Lowry Avenue bridge which was made of steel grate. If you stuck your head out the window and looked down (no seatbelts, no air conditioning) you could see the river under the car. As a child, I was terrified as we crossed the bridge, but that didn’t stop me from sticking my head out and looking down.

One time as we came off the bridge on the North Minneapolis side (the Jewish side), my father pointed out a liquor store on the bluff overlooking the river. The name of the liquor store was The Pump. “Do you know why they call it The Pump?” he asked me. “No,” I answered with anticipation. My ears perked up, waiting for one of my father’s walks through time.

“When I was a kid,” my father said, “immigrants would arrive from the old country. Many times, all they had was the name of a relative or acquaintance from the alte heim. Upon arrival in the New World, the first rule of business was to seek out fellow Jews. This would invariably take them to the shul. There, already established immigrants embraced their responsibility to get “the greener” started, just as someone had done for them not too many years earlier. A quick interview in shul took place. “What did you do in the old country?” Depending on the answer the appropriate introductions would be made and a new life began.

In many cases, “the greener” didn’t have any skills that were transferable to the new country. In that case he would become a peddler. A collection was immediately taken up to buy the newcomer a pack of various items so he could start peddling. The community didn’t content itself to just buy the pack, though. They had to get him started. They’d teach him the currency and prices of the various items in the pack. Since the newcomer didn’t speak English, he would be asked which languages he did speak? One peddler answers, “Ah por verter Ukrainisch,” while another says, “ah bissell Poylish.” With that important information in hand, someone would then volunteer to show him the way to the Ukrainian or Polish neighborhood in northeast Minneapolis — and before you knew it, the peddler’s pack had become a horse and wagon.

Their route would take them across the river at the Plymouth Avenue Bridge. Plymouth Avenue was the main artery of the Jewish neighborhood, and from there, every peddler would fan out across Northeast Minneapolis — each one to “his” neighborhood.

Every day, as the sun began its descent to the west, the peddlers would turn toward home. This time, they would come back via the Lowry Avenue Bridge, the closest exit from foreign territory. Besides expediency, there was another reason they used this bridge to come back home.

On the bluff on the other side of the river was a tavern. Outside the tavern there was a hand pump that one could use to pump up water from underground streams next to the river below. As soon as they crossed the river, the peddlers would turn into the tavern and lead their horses to the trough of water filled by the pump. The peddlers still had nearly two more miles to go to get home, and by then, it would be dark. So while the horses were drinking, the peddlers would line up along the wall of the tavern and make a minyan for Minchah.

As my father told me this, I looked up at the liquor store and there they were. Sweat dripping from their brows in the summer, icicles from their beards in the winter. Some are shuckling, others leaning exhausted against the wall. The world they had grown up in is a memory, the new world they find themselves in is strange and terrifying, and they are exhausted from the struggle to feed a family. Simple Jews fighting a brave battle to survive the day while holding on to two thousand years of history.

Years later, I bring my own children to see where I grew up. The old steel grate crossing has been replaced with a modern cement bridge. The liquor store is gone and with it “The Pump” sign. We get out of the car and look at the mighty Mississippi. It’s a sunny day with a soft breeze. Joggers and cyclists fill the riverside paths below. But the peddlers? They’re only in my mind’s eye, and how can I even begin to describe a scene I myself only imagined? About fifty feet to my left, I notice a small brown brick building. I walk over to it. A sign reads, “Minneapolis City Water Works, Pumping Station #6.” I call my kids over. “Do you know what this is? Once upon a time there was a hand pump here….”

Maariv

I was around ten years old, walking down Plymouth Avenue, the main street near my home, when my father pulled up alongside me. “Hop in!” he said. I jumped into our almost new Chevy Caprice station wagon and my father told me, “Tomorrow they’re going to tear down the house on Aldrich. Let’s go see it before that happens.” He’d driven me past his childhood home on Aldrich Avenue many times, but this time as we pulled up, I saw yellow “condemned” signs pasted on the dark house and all of the others near it. The neighborhood was being cleared to make way for a light industrial park.

“Let’s go in,” he said. This was very scary, but also tremendously exciting. I’d heard so many stories that had taken place in this house, and now I was finally going to see it for myself. We walked up the three steps, across the narrow front porch, and one strong kick and the front door flew open. The room was dim, with only a bit of daylight coming in through the two narrow windows in the front of the house. All the utilities had been cut off. I scanned the scene. Everything was dilapidated and crumbling and small… so very small. A little sitting room where the wood stove used to sit. That’s the stove that glowed orange from all the wood Zeide crammed into it on Erev Shabbos so it would last as long as possible. A tiny dining room where the oil lantern hung from the ceiling on Shabbos because they wouldn’t waste money leaving a five-watt electric bulb to burn for an entire Shabbos.

Then there was the kitchen. It seemed to be the largest room in the house, until my father explained that one part of the room was the kitchen and the rest of the space was Bubbe and Zeide’s bedroom. It was separated from the rest of the kitchen by a sheet suspended from a rope that divided the room.

The immigrants lived in small homes in cramped neighborhoods, and while privacy was an unknown luxury, somehow tzniyus still governed all aspects of their lives, especially among the Litvaks like my grandparents. And it wasn’t just modest dress. Tzniyus governed frivolous or flashy expenditures. Even their speech was sparing. Praise was minimal, although expectations were excessive. Outward displays of affection were nearly nonexistent. Hard work and responsibility were the bedrock of life. All of the above is how the casual observer would describe it — a bland, hard life. No wonder the American-born children ran away from it.

Those with a discerning eye, however, would see something much more complex, nuanced and even sublime. My father was one of those who saw it differently.

While the husbands were out in the world eking out a living, the wives at home had it no easier. Everything had to be made from scratch. Food preparation, laundry and cleaning were all done by hand with no outside help. As the day waned and weariness set in, the women would take off their aprons and sit in front of their homes to catch their breath, schmooze with their neighbors and await the arrival of their husbands.

Although the conversations were light and pleasant, there was an underlying air of tension. Their men were off in a non-Jewish world haggling and trading. They were alone, far from home with no means of communication, with money on them from their day’s work. These women from the old country all knew of episodes where a Yid, having strayed too far from the protection of his home, met with disaster. “If something happened to my husband while he was in the Polish or Ukrainian neighborhood,” they worried to themselves, “he could disappear without a trace. What would you tell the police, and would they even care?”

So as the day drew to a close, the chatting ladies on the front porches began casting furtive glances down the block to see if their husbands had turned onto their street. Not a word of anxiety was expressed, but a sensitive child like my father sensed the tension and would relive the scene:

Suddenly, a glance down the block and a burst of silent joy envelops the waiting wife. She has sighted her husband’s wagon at the end of the street. Excusing herself, she jumps up and, with thanks to the Bashefer, hurries down the block to greet her husband as though he’s returned from overseas. By this time of day, the horse is so tired that the peddler has gotten off the wagon to lighten the load and is leading his horse on foot. As she approaches him, they look at each other. No words need to be exchanged. Then the wife reaches out and take the reins of the horse from her exhausted husband. A gesture of devotion, a subtle act of affection, even tenderness. The couple walks home together, sharing their few moments of privacy in the middle of the street before he washes up and goes off to Maariv.

Rabbi Binyomin Friedman, a native of Minneapolis, founder of the Atlanta Scholars Kollel, and longtime rabbi of Congregation Ariel in Dunwoody outside Atlanta, now serves as rabbi emeritus of the kehillah.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1076)