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Keywords: 1960s; City University of New York; college; CUNY; H. Leivick; H. Leyvik; Haim Leivick; Hayyim Nahman Bialik; higher education; Leon Feinberg; Leonard Landes; New York City; poets; Shalom Rabinovitz; Sholem Aleichem; Sholem Asch; theses; thesis; undergraduate studies; university; writers; Yiddish education; Yiddish in translation; Yiddish language; Yiddish literature; Yiddish poetry
Keywords: 1950s; Abba Edan; childhood; Coney Island; Eddie Cantor; Golda Meir; Holocaust; Itsik Manger; Itzik Manger; journalists; Kinderwelt; Maurice Schwartz; mental illness; Moishe Nadir; Molly Goldberg; Molly Picon; New York City; poets; social life; Unser Camp; writers; Yiddish language; Yiddish literature; Yiddish speakers; Yiddish theater; Yiddish theatre
NORMAN FEINBERG ORAL HISTORY
CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney, and today is October 28th, 2010. I am
here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Norman Feinberg, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Norman, do I have your permission to record this interview?NORMAN FEINBERG: Yes, you do.
CW:Thank you. So, I thought we could start with briefly overviewing what you
know about your family origins.NF:Well, I know that both my parents came from Russia. My father came from
Odessa. My mother came from a little town that -- frankly, it probably changed 1:00names a hundred times before. My father, I knew, was definitely from Russia, because he came over first to America when he was fourteen years old. Then, he went back to Russia. He came over initially to find his father. His father had emigrated from Russia roughly around 1910, just by himself. My grandfather, according to what I know -- although he passed away -- 'cause I'm actually named after him -- according to what I've been told, he was a chemistry professor in Russia. But when he came to America -- you know, at the turn of the century, when millions of Jewish people were coming, he wasn't obviously invited to teach at Yale. Although he should have been, but whatever. So, my father, who was left there with his mother, his older brother, and his sister, stayed there. And when 2:00my father was fourteen years old, he went on a trek. He got on a barge to come to America -- didn't speak a word of English -- and went to look for his father. Now the chances of him finding his father were, like, you know -- but he did. He found his father. From what I've been told, he found him somewhere in a little town in Ohio. And they stayed there for a while. And then my father -- this has never been really clear, because they probably both agreed that it was best for them to go back to Russia, because they had their family there, so they both went back to Russia. Now let me digress for a moment. The one thing about my father's trip that was always memorable to me -- when he came over here -- was, he was fourteen years old on a barge, with probably hundreds of sailors who were obviously much older than him, and unfortunately, that's where he picked up one 3:00of his major vices: he started to smoke. Which eventually, unfortunately, was his downfall. But he started at fourteen. So, they stayed here for a little while, and then they left, and they went back to Russia. Apparently, my grandparents were very well-to-do in Russia. So, my father went back with his father, roughly around 1912 or '13. And my father went back to school. And then, of course, in 1917 was the Russian Revolution, at which point my father was probably twenty-one or twenty-two years old. So, at that time, he joined the Russian Revolution, in which he became a captain in the army. He was shot, actually. And for most of his life, he actually walked with a cane -- not so much that he needed it, but I guess after a while, it was a sign of glamour -- 4:00you know, people in the '30s and '40s walked with canes. He wore spats, you know? He was a very debonair guy.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:He was in the Russian Revolution. And obviously, he thought that communism
was the big thing. He actually developed a -- sort of a friendship, if you'd call it -- acknowledgment, whatever you want to say -- with Lenin and Trotsky. He then went to Moscow University to complete his studies. He graduated from Moscow University sometime around 1921 -- maybe 1920, '21. Got a master's degree at Moscow University. And then, decided he and his mother and his father and his older brother -- and he -- decided that the Russian Revolution had been a 5:00mistake, so they all migrated to America. The only one who was left was his sister. He had a sister who, I believe, was right between the two boys. Her name was Rivka. And she was already married. I think she had one child. So, she stayed, and she never left Russia. And for years, between 1921 and probably the early '60s, they would correspond.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Every once in a while, we would get a letter from her, and my father would
write her a letter.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Her husband, unfortunately, was either killed or murdered by the Nazis during
the war.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:But she lived there with her two children. And as I said, my father used to
correspond with her all the time, until one day --[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:-- we never heard from her again. She might have died from natural causes;
she might have been -- this was, you know -- I would say this was in the early '60s. 6:00[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:But my father came here. And his parents actually lived very close to them.
And that was the beginning of his coming to America.CW:So, what was it like growing up with him?
NF:Growing up with him?
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:I was the youngest. And my father was fifty years old when I was born. So, he
was a very, very good man. He really was. Especially to his family. He was a great father. But we never had the bonding that even my sisters -- and my brother Gary, who was much older than I was. So, I didn't even -- I never knew my father at the age when -- he was more -- almost like a grandfather to me. He was a very, very good man. And later on, I'll tell you how good he was and how I found out how good he was. But growing up, he never took me to a baseball game. 7:00We never played catch. Because, I mean, there was a big difference. By the time I was ten, he was sixty. But he was always incredibly good, incredibly brilliant, and I learned a lot from him without even knowing that I was learning it. It took me a long time to realize. I always knew that he was a very, very bright guy.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:But to say that we had a really -- father-son personal relationship -- not
like my sisters, or certainly not like my brother. Because when my brother was born, he was still a young man. And by the way, he traveled all the time, so he would go away for weeks and months at a time. My mother really raised us all. She was the classic Jewish mother. But they had a great marriage. They were married for almost forty years. She knew what he needed; he knew what she needed to raise the kids. And they did pretty good for themselves, raising these five 8:00kids who were each in their own way an incredibly great family. I have only wonderful, wonderful -- absolutely wonderful -- recollections of my growing up.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:I've recently finished a book of poetry that took me forty years to write.
Five hundred and fifty poems -- of which I've brought one to you today, which I think you'll be very, very interested in -- in hearing about this story about my father. But to say that I grew up as "Leave It to Beaver" -- I didn't. I mean, maybe that was the best thing, because I grew up in an incredibly academically oriented -- people used to say to me, Were you pressured into becoming an academian? The answer is, No; that's just the way it was. We were surrounded by all these incredibly brilliant people, including my father -- and my sisters and 9:00my brother, who were actually raising me more than my father.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:My father was a poet and a writer. He wrote for the "Day Journal"; he
published all those books. His lifestyle was just the opposite of mine. He would get up at midday --[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:-- go down to his office, write, come back --
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:-- stay up all night, write. So, when I was up, he was sleeping, and when he
was sleeping, I was up.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:It wasn't something that I really held against him, because that was the way
it was. And it was a wonderful -- I mean, I wouldn't have traded my early upbringing with anybody.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:He knew exactly what his mission in life was. His family was paramount to
him. Unfortunately, the logistics of it were that we weren't able to really bond. And I even asked my brother Gary -- who, unfortunately, passed away eighteen years ago -- if he was that much different when Gary was growing up. 10:00And he said, "Well, he wasn't really the hands-on, Let's go to the baseball game, or, I want to go see you pitch in Little League."[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:There was this incredible awe between them that I saw very often. Because as
brilliant as my father was -- and he was a brilliant man in so many ways -- his first-born was Gary, and Gary turned out to be the once-in-a-million -- and I remember seeing them together, and you could almost see how each one of them was in awe of the other one. So, that's what I can tell you about the initial stages of his life.CW:So, can you describe to me the home -- if you just close your eyes and were
to take yourself back there --[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:The only thing that we were sort of instructed (laughs) to do was -- during
11:00the day -- was to sort of be soft and quiet, 'cause my father was sleeping.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:I used to have friends come in. And we lived in a big apartment, and there
were five kids and two parents -- seven people. When my friends would come in, we would go into my room, and I'd say -- and my father had his own study, and of course, the other room. I'd say, "Do me a favor -- don't yell, because my father is sleeping and we don't want to interrupt him." But it wasn't something that we were told, you know, Walk around on tiptoes. But it was a very warm relationship. I saw things that other people -- other kids my age didn't even know about. Besides the academian -- I mean, I met people.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:When I was in undergraduate school, I was in a program which was the second
12:00program introduced in the United States of America on Yiddish. The first one appeared in Brandeis University in 1968 -- or '67. And then, the second one was adopted from that, and it became part of the curriculum of the City University of New York, where I did my undergraduate work, and it was called Yiddish in Translation. And the professor who taught it was a man named Dr. Landes. And he knew my father. And the first day I went in, I introduced myself.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:And Landes said, "Yeah. Leon Feinberg is a very noted poet, a very great
writer. He's a very good friend of mine." So, we struck up this relationship. The first day I went into the class, there might have been twenty-five kids. And I think they're all -- they're sort of almost like, This is gonna be an eighth 13:00course, you know? Well, anyway, the course was very -- I had a background, of course, but I knew a lot about Yiddish and about poets and about the people -- more than maybe some of the other kids.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:It really is a small world. The course involved reading Yiddish in
translation. But knowing who these people were -- like Sholem Aleichem and Leivick and Hayim Nahman Bialik and all the great Yiddish poets of the early part of the twentieth century. Well, there was no formal examination -- you had to write a senior thesis. And the way you did it, you had pick out one famous Yiddish poet and write an annotated bibliography of all his works. Now this is 1968 -- or '69, it was -- so we're talking about -- there was no internet, there was no -- you had to really hustle. You know, you really had to go out and look -- you know, for card catalogs. I remember I spent hours at the Forty-Second 14:00Street Library. My father helped me, because he steered me to the kind of things I should look for. And the person who I had to do was a guy named Sholem Asch -- who I knew of him, but I certainly didn't know of him the way I knew about Sholem Aleichem. But my father told me that Sholem Asch was a very great Yiddish poet -- Yiddish writer -- and that he knew him. And so, he steered me to help. Well, I wrote this very long -- you had to have it Xeroxed in those days -- there was no computers. And I gave it in. And in fact, somewhere stored in one of my storage places, I still have it.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Many years later, probably -- and I always knew about Sholem Asch, but it
never really occurred to me that there was this very, very interesting concept. I myself became very involved in -- I'm a product of the '60s, and of course the 15:00'60s are the Doors and Bob Dylan and all that. And I read everything.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:I must have read a hundred books on Bob Dylan. He's my man. Bob Dylan and
Edgar Allan Poe are my two -- and Walt Whitman -- those are my three muses. They are the ones that inspired me to write my book -- my poetry. And I kept on reading all these years about Bob Dylan's coming to New York in 1961, going to Greenwich Village, and the first place he ever played was Gerdes Folk City, April 4th, 1961. And he would play in all these little coffeehouses. And one of the coffeehouses was run by a gentleman named Mose -- Moses Asch.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Bob Dylan wrote -- about six or seven years ago, he wrote the first
16:00installment of his autobiography, called "Chronicles: Volume One." And he talks about how he came to New York from Minnesota, looking for Woody Guthrie, ostensibly. But he started playing in these coffeehouses. And John Hammond picked him up and said that he was gonna be great. And everybody said, you know, You're crazy, because he was -- and one of the places he played in was this place called The Folklore, which was like a little bistro. And who ran it? A guy named Mose Asch. And I had read about Mose Asch, but it never occurred to me that there was a relationship -- except in Dylan's book, he writes, "Mose Asch" -- and then he writes in parentheses, "whose father was a Yiddish poet, Sholem Asch." And I said, Wow! That's what we call six degrees of separation! Here I had done a senior thesis on Mose Asch thirty-five years before. I got involved 17:00with Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan worked and actually recorded for a thing called Folkways Records, which was owned by Mose Asch, and here I am reading about Bob Dylan and Mose Asch, and we have this relationship.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:So, the course -- which initially started with, like, twenty-five people --
and then I graduated, and then I went to Columbia University graduate school. But I would always go back there to visit occasionally. So, sometime around 1972 or '73, I went back to visit, and this class, which had initially been a small, little class, was now a whole department -- with, like, ten different classes on Yiddish and Yiddish poetry and Yiddish writing. And Dr. Landes was still there. And it really made me feel good, because I was at the beginning. And that's when I realized that Yiddish was more than just, you know, this language of my 18:00father's and my forefathers' -- that there was a place for it in America, and that people like me who were children and grandchildren of people like these people wanted to know about this wonderful, beautiful language. I remember my father telling me at one point -- and he was so right -- you know, because for many years, especially right after the Holocaust -- when, of course, half of Europe's Jews were killed -- people said, Yiddish is dead. Because obviously, it was a dying language. Half the population who were speaking it were gone, and there was no real interest in it. My father said, "It'll never die. There are too many great writers -- like Sholem Aleichem, like Peretz, like Hayim Nahman Bialik, like Leivick. And those people are gonna be remembered long after the 19:00people who said it was a dying language are gone." And of course, now I think -- I sometimes read that half of the universities in America now have courses in Yiddish. So, my father was right.CW:Yeah. So, people came to your house when you were --
NF:Yeah.
CW:-- to visit your father, right?
NF:Yeah.
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Every Friday night, my mother would have this elaborate dinner -- for lack of
a better word -- dinner party, where some would come for dinner and some would come after dinner. And there would -- there were writers, they were -- my father was also not only a writer; he was very involved in Yiddish theater. So, he knew people like Eddie Cantor; he knew Molly Picon; he knew Maurice Schwartz. He knew Molly Goldberg -- when she came on TV as "The Goldbergs" -- we knew her! My 20:00father was a very good friend of hers. So, they used to come all the time. Now I was only maybe five, six years old. And they adored me, 'cause I was this little blond-haired little boy. They used to call me the "blonditshke," 'cause my hair was platinum blond. I was a cute little kid, you know? But the one person who I do remember most of all -- and it's a very also interesting story -- one of my father's very good friends was a great Yiddish poet whose name was Moishe Nadir. And he was married to a lady whose name was Genya. Now, Nadir died before I was born -- or maybe he died maybe just before I was born, so I never knew him. My father had a picture on his wall of all these great Yiddish writers. All of them autographed, because they were his friends.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Genya -- she was an angel. She used to come almost every single Friday night,
21:00'cause she was alone, and her and my father were very good friends. And every Friday night she would come for dinner. And she would always bring me a toy -- some of the great toys of all time. And she was just a lovely woman. And she loved me. She used to adore me -- I mean, she used to kiss me and hug me and -- 'cause she never had any children. Well, Genya would come. And other people would come also. The other people -- I don't really know specifically -- Harriet would know, and we were talking about this. She told me a couple of people who she remembered coming; I sort of don't. But I know there were always people -- I mean, after dinner, there must have been, like, thirty or forty people. And they would sit around and just talk: about world events, about Yiddish, about poetry, about other things. But Genya was always there. Now, Genya eventually got 22:00married again -- well, at least that's what we thought -- and this is, like, 1955, so she -- let's say she cohabited with a gentleman who was one of the great Yiddish writers of that time, Itzik Manger. Itzik Manger was a great writer. My father said he might have been one of the greatest, except that he unfortunately -- he suffered from -- and I didn't know this until many years later -- he was a full-fledged alcoholic. But he was the nicest guy. She lived in Sea Gate, which is right next to Coney Island. And they lived there together. And when I was about maybe ten or eleven years old, my mother, my father, and I went out to Sea Gate to visit them. It was in the summertime. And Manger loved me also.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:And one day, we went out there, and Manger said, "How would you like to go to
23:00Coney Island?" Now, you ask a kid of ten years old to go to Coney Island -- I said, "Sure, let's go." And you could walk -- Sea Gate was, like, this little town right near Coney Island -- so we walked maybe a half a mile. We were walking on the boardwalk. And he said, "Normitshke, yingele [Little Norm, little boy]" -- "Come on, come along with me!" So, I said, "Okay." So, we went over to one of -- you know, Coney Island has all these kind of things -- all these kind of places you can buy things and rides. And we went over to this gigantic candy store. And he bought me this gigantic -- that big -- all-day sucker. One of those giant -- you know. And I was in heaven. And from then on, Manger was my man. Unfortunately, I didn't see him that often, and then he passed away, because he died of -- you know. But my father and mother always said that his greatest writings were while he was inebriated. He had had a very tough life. I 24:00think he actually came over before the Holocaust. Because he was always very, very depressed. But when he wrote, my father said, he could have been one of the -- my father said he was one of the greats, but he could have been greater. So, that was the major person -- Genya Nadir -- Genya Nadir Manger. And she actually was in our lives up until maybe a year or two before my father passed away. I think she passed away before my father. But she was a lovely -- she must have been a beautiful woman when she was very young. I didn't know her when she was very young, but she had beautiful -- she was very tall, very, very statuesque, with beautiful blonde hair and eyes that could melt a heart. She was a beautiful -- and a very, very bright woman. As far as the other people who came, there 25:00were other people. And if you tell me -- if you ask me who they were, I could probably say to you, yes, I -- like, Molly Goldberg I remember meeting. Eddie Cantor used to come over all the time, especially just before Passover. The people who I remember meeting -- later on, when I was, let's say, maybe nine, ten, eleven, or twelve -- was when my father used to go downtown every Friday night to this place, and they used to -- all these writers used to meet at one of these people's houses. And my father used to either take me or I would go with my brother to a -- like, to a thing at Madison Square Garden, then we would go down, meet my father, and my father and I would take the train back to the house. And there were a lot of people -- there were people like -- let me see who I remember. There was -- well, people who probably weren't in the forefront 26:00of Yiddish -- but, for example, Harriet asked me on the way up how my parents met. And they met, actually, because my mother had a distant cousin, and she was married to a very, very great Yiddish writer who knew my father. His name was Benjamin Ressler -- Binyamin Ressler. And they were married. And one day, Sarah, who was my mother's distant cousin, invited my mother over. And she invited my father over. Binyamin invited my father over. And so, they met. This was in -- some time in 1931. And they hit it off. And within a year, they got married. And my father said Ressler also was a great writer, but Ressler's passion wasn't writing. Ressler was a great writer, but he viewed himself as the next Jascha 27:00Heifetz. He loved to play the violin -- always played the violin. And he really wasn't a great violinist, but he was a great writer. So, we used to see them all the time. They lived on 149th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, and I lived in the Bronx, so we used to go over there all the time. So, I was exposed to all these people. Later on, when I was growing up, then I began to meet people in other venues who my father knew. Like, one summer -- we used to spend our summers in this camp in Highland Mills, New York, which was a camp and also a place that people came as -- you know, to spend the summertime. It was called Unser Camp -- "Our Camp." And the camp was called Kinderwelt -- you know, 28:00"Children's World." And they used to attract these incredibly famous people. This is the early '50s, so Israel had just been born. I remember meeting Abba Eban -- him and my father were very close. Golda Meir. My sister even told me that my father, when he went to Israel for the first time in 1958, had a private audience with David Ben-Gurion -- they were friends. My father was very involved not only in the poetry; he was a political journalist. I mean, he told me things when I was very young that thirty years later, I realized how brilliant he was.CW:Like what?
NF:Well, he told me -- and this was almost like heresy -- he told me when I was
maybe fifteen, that although Hitler was the worst monster that ever lived, that Stalin was worse. 'Cause he knew about the pogroms in Russia -- that's why he 29:00left. He said, "Hitler was a megalomaniac who hated Jews and all that. Stalin hated everybody." According to my father -- and it's been verified in all the years since then -- Stalin killed between thirty and forty million of his own Russian people in those pogroms. And my father knew about it. And yet, if you had said that in 1955, they'd say, you know, Hitler was the worst to ever live. And maybe he was, but Stalin wasn't too far behind. My father was an incredibly perceptive person when it came -- he was a political author. He traveled the world. He met all these great people. So, he wasn't just a great poet. I mean, he was a great poet, but he was also -- I mean, he wrote these incredibly wonderful stories about what was going on in the world. I told you that today is 30:00the forty-eighth anniversary of the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Well, on October 22nd, 1962, six days before, is when Kennedy came on television and announced the Cuban Missile Crisis. And everybody in the world was freaking out -- we thought that this is the end. You know, when the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away. My father said, "Forget it. Khrushchev knows he can't win a war. He knows that if there's a war, everybody goes. They'll find a resolution." And within six days, they did. Even my brother, who was -- and you'll hear about my brother when I tell you about him. My brother -- I'll never forget this -- October 22nd, 1962, we were watching Kennedy, and my brother said, "We have to migrate to Australia." And my father said, "No." He said, "First of all, if 31:00there's a war, Australia won't" -- you know, 'cause they had done that movie in 1959, "On the Beach," where these people leave for Australia. My father said, "First of all, I'm not uprooting my family. Second of all, there's no need for it. And third of all, it's not gonna happen." He was right. He was a Renaissance man. He was a great writer; he was a great poet. His knowledge of history was unreal. His knowledge of world events was unreal. I mean, he was an incredibly brilliant man. And that's why he had all these brilliant children. It wasn't just a coincidence.CW:Can you tell me how you celebrated the holidays in your home?
NF:Okay. It's ironic. My father was a Yiddish poet, a Yiddish writer, a definite
32:00Zionist, but in the conventional way, he wasn't a religious man. The only time I ever saw my father actually in a temple was when he took me there for my bar mitzvah. But yet he lived the ideal of what religion was -- what religion is all about, which is basically, Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you. He lived by that rule. The only time he really celebrated a holiday was Passover, when we would have these seders -- one and two. He wouldn't go through the Orthodox -- you know, which takes ten hours -- but he would have, you know, the story and telling about the exodus. And I would ask -- originally, Harriet would ask the Four Questions. She asked them, actually, in Yiddish. I actually never went to formally a Yiddish school -- I went to a Hebrew school. By the time it 33:00was my turn, I would ask, you know, "Mah nishtanah halailah hazeh [Hebrew: What makes this night different]," whereas she would say it -- when I became the youngest. My father was a very, very -- what's the word -- he certainly believed in a higher power. He certainly believed in the tenets of Judaism. But to say that he observed Judaism as an Orthodox Jew -- we were not Orthodox. At best, we were Conservative. But we did observe. We did observe. Harriet became the most religious of all of us. Because she went to Yiddish school, and that really, you know, impressed upon her. Gary, on the other hand, who was the ultimate scientist -- he obviously didn't believe in that. But he never, ever, ever made it seem -- he attended the seders, he was bar mitzvahed. The fact that he was, 34:00you know, basically a nonbeliever was because of the fact that he was this incredibly brilliant scientist. But they never, ever, ever did they ever clash.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:One of the things that separated -- I told you my father had this older
brother, Louie -- Louie Feinberg, who lived in Brooklyn. And he married a woman who was an Orthodox Jew. And that's why we were never close, because they wouldn't travel on the weekends. So, Louie, who died -- I think he died fourteen years before my father. I think I met him once, maybe, when I was a very little boy. His wife lived a long time. He had two sons, who were very nice people. But there wasn't a closeness. First of all, in those days, you had to travel either on the train -- because until Gary got a car, we never had a car. And that was 35:00sort of -- although my father and him were very friendly, Louie became, in effect, an Orthodox Jew because of his family, and my father was not. So, that was basically our religious upbringing. But I believe that my father was in the truest sense as religious a person as what religion should really mean -- not just going to -- you know the famous line, you know, People go to church on Sunday and stab you in the back on Monday. My father wasn't like that. My father was a very, very, very honest -- to a fault. I mean, he gave everything to his kids: love, knowledge, money -- so that we could have a better life than he maybe had when he was very young. Although he did tell us, when he was very young -- before the Russian Revolution -- and he was still living in Russia -- 36:00(UNCLEAR) -- from the age of one to thirteen -- his parents were fabulously wealthy. And when the revolution came, the Bolsheviks came in and took all their money. So, obviously, he knew that there was a difference between being very wealthy and people who lived in the shtetls who were obviously living from day to day, like Tevye. So --CW:So, can you tell me a little bit about your Hebrew school education? Did you
like it?NF:(laughs) Well, actually, it's interesting. Because my sisters all went to
Yiddish school, I was expected to go to Yiddish school. But all my friends were going to Hebrew school. And when you're -- I started when I was, like, nine. And 37:00I wanted to be with my friends. So, my mother gave in and said I could go to Hebrew school. To say I liked it -- I went to school all day, came home, changed my clothes, and went over to -- I would rather be out playing baseball. The only thing that really kept me in Hebrew school was, when I was about ten, I met this young girl who was in Hebrew school -- my first love. And I stayed there for the next three years, and I got bar mitzvahed. But again, I firmly believe -- and this was because of my relationship with my father and Gary -- that you don't have to be a practicing Jew to be religious.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:You don't have to go to a temple every week, pray to God, whatever, and then
the next day do something that you would never have thought about saying that you did in Hebrew school or also in temple. 38:00CW:So, what do you think were the values that your father tried to pass on to you?
NF:Well, that's a story that I'd like to share with you maybe a little bit
later. Because for years, I didn't feel antagonism, but I did feel that there was some kind of a missing bond.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:It took me literally more than fifty years of my life, and certainly
thirty-five years after he passed away -- till one day, all of a sudden, (snaps) I realized it. I mean, my father was a really good man, as I said before. But one of the interesting things -- and I don't know why, I've never figured out why -- I never spoke to my father on the telephone. The reason was, when I would 39:00call home -- I mean, first of all, when you're young, you don't talk -- with your mother or your father or Gary or whatever. But then as I got older and I would -- you know, I would go to college or something, I would call home and my mother would answer, 'cause my father was sleeping. And I never realized that I never heard my father's voice on the telephone. Not that I'm saying that was such an outrageous -- but it just struck me as -- I never actually -- I heard him talk to other people on the tele-- 'cause he was always on the telephone. People would call him from all over the world. You know, telling him -- he'd get calls from Buenos Aires, he'd get calls from -- I mean, he traveled all over the world. My father once told me that in his life, he had been to, like, 135 different countries. He traveled all over the world. 40:00[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:There was not this, "Oh, hi, Dad! I'm playin' ball" -- 'cause when I would
call, my mother would answer, and she would say, "What can I do for" -- you know, if I called to say I'd be late or whatever, my father was either sleeping -- and plus, the fact that I was only twenty-one years old when he died, so we're talking about -- you know. But about five years ago, all of a sudden, I realized that I had never spoken to him on the phone. Now, that might not seem as a big thing, but it's an interesting idea. Because he did influence me in ways that -- when I'll talk to you about that -- might have been among the greatest influences that anybody ever gave me in my life. But it took me most of my life to realize it. So --CW:Do you want to tell me about that?
NF:Well, I have a whole bunch of things.
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:This story has been in my life since I was five years old. And when I used to
tell people this story -- before I wrote it -- they would say, My God, what a great story. 41:00[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:It's called "A Promise Unfulfilled, Yet Magical." A magical anecdote long ago
told reentered my conscious as I began to grow old. Wonderfully recounted by the man who gave me birth, the years that have elapsed have only enhanced its worth. Therefore I pass it along to the next generation of kin, so it will be embraced and held dearly within. Please keep this tale of family pride and lore, but do indeed share it with all forevermore. The story unfolds in the years before World War II and meanders through mazes until it has come down to you. Hence, I 42:00tell this tale from the only first-hand account; heretofore it will live like the Sermon on the Mount. My father, a noted journalist, a man with a gift for words -- his legacy sings like the songs of the first spring birds. Once upon a time, in the winter of 1939, the United Jewish Appeal honored Albert Einstein with a testimonial dinner in the city of New York. Despite a raging blizzard, my father would attend -- even if he had to walk. Before he left that evening, my father was approached by his six-year-old son, like a player seeking out his coach, with a request that to the boy must have seemed immense: quote, "Dad," he inquired, "if you see Dr. Einstein, could you please ask him to make some sense 43:00of this little equation and the picture that I have included? If anyone knows the solution, it will be from him that the answer is rooted." With that, the little lad handed my father a gift -- the thoughts of a young genius, upon whose spirits the outcome would lift. Although he made no promises, my father said he would try to talk to the great physicist for the apple of his eye. If by chance, he could secure a moment of Dr. Einstein's time, he would certainly show the numbers and ask for a response sublime. The night was raw, the hotel packed in like sardines, as my father sought out to speak to Professor Einstein. Providential intervention smiled on our family that night when my father caught 44:00a glimpse of Einstein clearly in his sight. The great relativist was walking from his seat in a line so straight and narrow that he and my dad would meet. Introducing himself as a member of the fourth estate, the two men began to converse in a language from their heart came straight: Yiddish. The language of the plain folk these two academic giants spoke -- introductions, small talk, and even an idiomatic joke. By the time the conversation began to wane, my father remembered the papers, which now had a small stain. He carefully removed them from the inner pocket of his jacket and asked the noted scientist for a moment more before the oncoming racket. Obligingly curious, Einstein asked what he 45:00could do. When my father explained the scenario, Einstein seemed genuinely interested in truth. Examining the papers, Dr. Einstein seemed intrigued. Finally, he looked at my father, as if to form an exclusive league whose two members both were bonded by the thoughts of a six-year-old boy -- one who was dear to my father's heart, the other enraptured in a new-found joy. Quote, "What university does your son attend?" Einstein asked my dad. "My son is but six years old," the proud father spoke of the lad. A look of puzzlement engulfed the face of the most brilliant of all twentieth-century men, but without missing a beat, he invited my father to give a message to my brother, sleeping peacefully 46:00in our den. Quote, "I would very much like to work with your son when he finishes his schooling some day. Perhaps he could come to my home in Princeton and we will discuss the events of the nature of ways." That night remained forever in the stories of my dad. It found its way to my world when I was a mere young lad. My brother, perhaps encouraged by the warmth of Einstein's words, grew up to be a brilliant scientist whose lasting contributions have yet been fully heard. In the 1950s, he would speak of working with Einstein. When he graduated in 1953, he thought that this was the time. But he continued working at Columbia University, the second home where he spent all of his life. And in 47:00springtime 1955, Dr. Einstein passed away, surrounded by children and his adoring wife. The tale, however, does not abruptly end at this road. Within a year and a half at Princeton did my brother unload all his worldly possessions -- most notably, his mind -- seeking out the future and universality of mankind. Although he missed Dr. Einstein in the flesh, the two great minds, I'm sure, met in spirit so fresh. For the next fifty years, the six-year-old lad took joy and contentment in all that he had. Not the least of which was a promise unfulfilled and a magical moment more than a half a century ago that could never be killed. As I write down this tale, I am really quite sure that somewhere in the universe are two minds, oh so pure, discussing a stained-up paper by that six-year-old 48:00lad and laughing while talking with my oh-so-proud dad.CW:That's wonderful.
NF:It's a true story. Amazing, huh? If I had never written another poem --
that's the poem. And we used to talk about this. Obviously, I wasn't there, but this was a story that my father would tell again and again. And when Gary, my brother, would hear about this -- Gary was the most modest human being that ever walked this planet. He didn't want to know about anything -- how great he was. And believe me -- if you talked about Gary, anybody who knew Gary said he was as close to being the perfect human being as God ever put on this earth. 49:00Unfortunately, he passed away at a very young age -- fifty-eight -- died of lung cancer having never smoked a cigar or cigarette. And it's funny, because I just recently heard a story about him that even I didn't know.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:When Gary was two and a half years old, my parents lived in Manhattan. And my
grandmother and their family lived in the Bronx. But Gary was already, you know this -- he was the first grandchild. So, occasionally, my mother would come up and visit and leave Gary for a couple of days with my grandmother. And she and my father would go -- my father would travel (UNCLEAR). So, one day -- it must have been 1936 or '35 -- sometime -- my grandmother had the obligation of taking Gary back to Manhattan on the train. So, they're sitting on the train -- my 50:00grandmother and this little two-and-a-half-year-old kid, who by that time was reading the "New York Times." And this is a story almost as good as that one -- maybe even, in some ways, better. And my grandmother was the only witness, but she told the story. They were sitting on this train. And in those days, trains were like -- you know, you had two seats here and then two seats here. And she was here; Gary was sitting here -- reading the "New York Times." And there were these two elderly ladies sitting catty-corner. And my grandmother said, all of a sudden, one lady said to the other, "Look at that little boy! He's reading the 'New York Times'!" And the other lady said, "You're foolish! That isn't a little boy -- that's a midget!" She couldn't comprehend that this little boy was reading the "New York Times." That says -- and yet, for all his incredible 51:00brilliance, I used to say that about people -- 'cause Gary was my soul and inspiration. And he was also like a surrogate father to me. When people used to ask me about Gary, I would tell them this: I would say, "If you say that Gary is the most brilliant person you ever met, that was true, but that wasn't the best thing about him. If you said he was the most handsome person, he had movie star's looks -- I mean, he looked like Louis Jourdan, if you want to hear -- incredibly handsome guy. Girls would swoon over him. If you said he was the handsomest guy you ever saw, that wasn't the best thing about him. If you said he was the kind, most decent, most generous person you ever saw -- knew -- that was true but --" So, they said, So what was the best thing about him? I said, 52:00"The best thing about him was that all of the things that I just told you were true, and it didn't matter to him." He was so completely -- almost oblivious to it. If you told him how wonderful and brilliant he was -- he was the most modest human being I've ever met. And for somebody who really didn't have to be modest --[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:In 1958, Gary gave in this theory, 'cause he was a theoretical physicist --
saying that he had discovered -- he was theorizing that in nature, there was a thing called a neutrino. And since the days of Newton, they had always said that there were two neutrinos in the world -- or in the universe. Gary hypothesized that there were three. And he gave a theory. So, then you have to go and you 53:00have to get, you know, these professors and these people who look for it and find it. Well, three of his best friends, who I knew very well -- they were all neighborhood kids, they were all very smart -- but they weren't Gary. They all went into science -- and they eventually found that Gary was right. And they won the Nobel Prize in Physics. And they came to Gary and said, This is your theory. We want you to share it. And Gary said, "No. I'm not interested." Gary was not interested in anything that had to do with accolades and everything. So, they said, Okay. Gary actually won the Nobel Prize in Physics and turned it down. Another really interesting story: when my father left Russia -- not the first time, but the second time -- actually, he probably (UNCLEAR). My father was born in Odessa, but not actually in the city -- probably in one of the suburbs -- if 54:00they had suburbs, you know. And two of his best friends were Marc Chagall and Paul Muni. And they said that when -- especially Muni -- when Muni and him walked down the street, they were like twin brothers. And Muni, of course, became a great actor. And Chagall, of course, became the great artist. When they left, Muni and my father came to America. Muni -- he developed into a great, Academy Award actor. But Chagall went to France. But he was a poor, struggling artist. And my father and him corresponded. And apparently, before he went, my father helped him with some money. And then, of course, Chagall became, you know, Chagall. So, years later, when Chagall came to America, they used to meet all the time -- they were, you know, three best friends. 55:00[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:One day -- my mother told me this story -- that Chagall came and visited my
father. And he was already becoming famous -- his paintings were selling, and he was, you know, a legendary artist. And one day they met, and he said to him -- he called him Leonid, 'cause that was his name in Russian. "Leonid," he said. "You've helped me a lot of times. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't eat." He said, "I'd like to do somethin' for you." My father said, "Forget it." He said, "No, I want to give you something." My father said, "What do you want to give me?" He said, "I want you to take one of my paintings." And my father said, "No! You could sell that painting!" And it was a private joke in the family.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Why didn't you just take one? One! We could have lived (laughs) the rest of
our lives on that one painting. And Muni and my father used to correspond all 56:00the time. When Muni did -- he did those great -- he did "I Was a Fugitive from the Chain Gang," he did "Emile Zola" -- I mean, he really became one of the great actors of the '30s and '40s. And he died in '59. But my father was talking to him all the time. They were very good friends. The three of them -- they all came from the same little town in Russia.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Getting back to Gary and my father. When Gary graduated from Columbia, he
became the youngest full professor in the history of Columbia University -- in theoretical physics, which is not exactly, you know, gymnastics. But, as you know, academians don't make a lot of money. This is in 1957. He graduated -- Ph.D., top of his class. And 1957 was the beginning of the space race. The 57:00Russians sent up Sputnik. So, the Americans, in order to facilitate that, went looking for the best and the brightest. So, Westinghouse, which is a major company, sought out my brother. And they called him up at Columbia and said, We'd like to interview you for a job. My brother said, "I have a job." They said, Well, come in and just talk to us. So, my brother said, "Okay." So, they made arrangements to have him come and interview. And my father told my brother about it. And my father said, "Look, hear what they have to say." So, he went for this interview -- 1957, don't forget. Gary, as a full professor, was making -- maybe he was making ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year. They offered him a hundred thousand dollars a year to start, which is a lot of money then -- 58:00today, God knows. And he came home and he talked it over with my father. And my father said, "Well, what did they say?" And he told him. My father was also a practical man. "Well, what do you think?" Gary said to my father. He said, "Look." He said, "A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money, you know." But Gary said, "But it's not what I wanna do." My father tried to persuade him. He said, "Look, the president of the United States isn't making a hundred thousand dollars." Well, in spite of my father's persuading him, and in spite of the fact that Gary really loved my father a great deal and respected him, he turned it down. The money was of no issue. Gary could have been a multi-multi-millionaire a hundred times over. He once told me one of the most profound things that I ever (UNCLEAR) when I was a young man. He said, "Money is interesting, but it's 59:00only good for one thing: to spend. You can't eat it. You can't drink it. It doesn't bring you happiness. It might bring you a certain amount of comfort, but the real comfort is in doing what you want to do." And that was the story about how Gary turned down Westinghouse and stayed at Columbia for the rest of his life.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:The next story is one of the only stories in the whole history of my family
that I will actually say was a very negative story. In fact, it almost was a tragic story. Okay. It was also 1957 -- I guess it was a bad year. Okay. As I told you, we used to have seders. And this was right around Passover. And Gary, by that time, was living right outside Columbia, but he would come home for, 60:00like -- he would come to visit us on the weekends, and if we had a seder, which we were having, he'd come -- out of deference to my -- you know, out of respect for my father. So, he'd come for the weekend -- he'd come on Friday and he'd stay till Sunday and go back to his apartment near Columbia. Well, this happened -- that it was a Friday. And Gary, in those days -- you know, it was a different world. It wasn't this disposable world, where you bought a razor blade and threw it out. Gary used an electric shaver. And he came over that morning and he wanted to shave. And something was wrong with the electric shaver. So, my father knew somebody who had a fix-it shop on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. So, he called the fellow up and said -- in Yiddish, he spoke to the guy -- he said, "My 61:00son has this electric shaver. It's not working. Do you think you could fix it?" He said, "Well, have him come down and I'll look at it." So, Gary left at nine o'clock in the morning, got on the train, and went down. Okay. I told you before, my father was always getting telegrams and special -- there was no FedEx in those days. He would get telegrams from -- he had a lot of contacts in South America, because a lot of the Jews who left Europe went to South America. So, he would always get telegrams. And of course, his sister would send him letters all over the -- and this, for some day, I guess it was -- my father used to get up every day, like clockwork, at twelve. But for some reason, that day -- maybe in preparation for the holiday -- he got up about eleven. And all of a sudden, the doorbell rang. We lived on a private street entrance. It was the mailman. And he 62:00said, "Telegram." So, we were used to getting telegrams. It wasn't like you see on television, you know, when you send somebody a telegram, everybody goes crazy. So, my father said, "Okay." Opened the telegram. My father was a very, very strong-minded person. Nothing really fazed him -- you know, he had gone through war; I told you he came here when he was fourteen. But his face turned, to quote a very famous song from the '60s, a whiter shade of pale. I never saw him that -- not even upset, but almost like -- as if he had seen a ghost. And my mother ran over and said, "Leon, what's wrong?" And he gave her the telegram. And she became hysterical. And we were kids -- I mean, I was nine; Harriet was, 63:00like, sixteen or seventeen; Rita was, like, eighteen; Bibi was, like, twenty. And kids, when they see their parents getting upset -- especially -- my mother, okay. My mother, you know, was a woman, and, you know, she got upset occasionally. My father never got upset. Nothing fazed him. And I became hysterical, 'cause I had never seen him like this. And my sisters ran over, and they read it, and all of a sudden they just started crying like Niagara Falls. And I said, "What happened? What happened?" And finally, my father composed himself. But you could see he was really -- I mean, his face was like that. And he read the telegram. And the telegram said, "Condolences on the death of your 64:00son." And you can imagine -- there were no cell phones those days. And Gary had left two hours before. And we didn't know what to do. We ran outside -- I told you, we lived in a private entrance, but we knew everybody who lived in the area. My grandparents lived across the street. And within a few minutes, there were, like, thirty or forty people trying to console us. Well, it seemed like days -- you know, you can imagine. So, my father finally got his wits about him. He said, "Let me call this fellow who Gary went down to see to see if he ever got there." He calls the guy on the phone -- it's now maybe 12:30 -- and he says, "Moishe, this is Lamed Feinberg. Did my son ever get to you?" He said, 65:00"Yes." He said, "He came down here. I fixed" -- you know, the razor had something -- I don't know, maybe it was a faulty whatever. He said, "What's wrong?" He said, "When did he leave?" He said, "He left about an hour ago." He said, "Was he okay?" He said, "Yes." Well, that's good. He got there, but you don't know what happened to him on the way back. Well, as I said, what seemed like an eternity -- we were still overwhelmed. And we're out on the street and we're talking to -- my grandmother came down, my uncles came down, my aunts came down -- I mean, the people in the building. And Gary was the most adored person in the world. All of a sudden -- and it must have been a fairly short time 66:00later, but it seemed like, you know, a thousand years. We lived on a street where you walked up to the street and then there was a corner and you had to turn the corner, and to get from the subway, you had to go from there and then turn the corner. All of a sudden, at the top of the street, walking down, is Gary. Well, I ran up the street and I jumped into his arms, hysterical. And he said, "Norm, what's wrong?" And I couldn't talk. My mother ran up, my father ran up. And he said, "What happened? What's wrong?" Well, we didn't want to -- you know, make this -- I mean, everybody on the street was really happy to see him. My grandmother was -- we went inside. He said, "What happened? Why are you so upset? I've only been gone about three hours. It takes an hour to get down 67:00there, an hour to get back, and the guy had to work on it." So, my father said, "This is what's wrong." And he showed him the telegram. And Gary said, "Wait a minute." He said, "First of all, look who this telegram is addressed to." So, we automatically thought that it was addressed to my father -- so therefore, "condolences on the death of your son" would have meant Gary. But it wasn't addressed to my father, it was addressed to Gary. But Gary didn't have any children. So, my father said, "What does this mean?" So, Gary said, "Well, dad, I'm sorry to tell you -- it's somebody's idea of a practical joke." So, my father said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Dad, what day is today?" He said, 68:00"It's Friday. It's Good Friday." What happened on Good Friday? Jesus was crucified. Therefore, if this was addressed to Gary as "condolences on the death of your son," it meant that Jesus was Gary's son, and therefore Gary must be God. So, my father said, "Who could have sent this to you?" So, Gary said, "I know who sent it." And he called up one of his friends. And he said, "Did you send a telegram to my house?" And he said, "Yeah. We thought it would be a great thing, since everybody thinks you're God, that today we would have condolence on the death of your son." He said, "You don't know what you've done to my family." And the only time I ever saw Gary actually raise his voice -- he said, "What you 69:00did is unconscionable. Don't you ever, ever do anything like that again." And they were good friends -- this guy's name was Eliot; he had been a student with Gary in junior high school, high school, college. He said, "If you ever do anything like this again, you can forget about me. I will never speak to you again." And their relationship never, ever, ever, ever returned to what it was. That's some story, huh? Where else could anybody tell you a story like that? But that was the story. Only time in my life I saw my father really shaken. I mean, he just assumed that the telegram was for him, because he got so many telegrams. And I guess all's well that turns out well, but -- that was the only time I ever saw him really shaken up. So, that's another one of my stories. 70:00[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:My father had a working correspondence for many years with Boris Pasternak.
Pasternak never left -- you know. I don't know if they actually knew each other, 'cause Pasternak was older than my father. But over the years, when they were both writers, they developed this -- I mean, Pasternak used to write my father; my father would write him -- they had this whole correspondence going. And Pasternak was a very noted writer. In the beginning, he was pro-communist -- you know, the way they all were until they saw what was happening -- you know, with the pogroms and the -- you know, and Stalinists. So, then he wrote "Doctor Zhivago." And first of all, it took years for it to be even translated out of Russian. They smuggled it out of Russia, and then it became this worldwide 71:00phenomenon. But of course, the Russians -- and especially the people who were not painted in the best light in Russia, you know, all condemned him, saying, This is not the way it is. He's telling different stories. My father knew it was all true. So, he wrote a series of articles in 1959 defending Pasternak. He was the only American Yiddish writer who defended Pasternak when Pasternak was being condemned. Until, you know, later on, when Pasternak became the glory boy of Russia and "Doctor Zhivago" became this worldwide bestseller and a great book, a great movie. But my father was the only writer of his time who defended Pasternak, saying, "Yes, what he's saying is absolutely true, and the Russians don't want anybody to know it, and that's why they condemned him." And when he 72:00was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959, they made him turn it down. And they wouldn't let him out of Russia. And then he died in 1960. But my father was the only journalist in America who defended Pasternak and "Doctor Zhivago." On the other hand, now you have the yin, now you have the yang. My father was a very good friend for a long time of the very noted Yiddish writer -- I'm sure you have his work here -- Isaac Bashevis Singer. They were basically colleagues. They were very good friends. He might have even come to my house a few times when I was very young. And my father always said -- you know, there were two Singers -- there was I.B. Singer and then there was the other one, I.J. Singer, who wrote "The Brothers Ashkenazi." But Singer himself -- I.B. Singer -- my 73:00father said he was a very great writer. But suddenly, in the early 1960s, Singer decided that he was not getting -- maybe he was jealous of his brother or maybe he had -- you know, there were various reasons, you know what --[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:He would write about the shtetl a lot, which he obviously had lived in. But
he started writing these very flamboyant stories about terrible things that were happening in the shtetl -- including, you know, murder and thieves and sex and the whole thing like that. And my father took terrible exception to that, 'cause my father had lived in the shtetl -- he was writing about the same shtetls. And my father said, "No. He's exaggerating it because he wants the notoriety." And he got the notoriety. He eventually won a Nobel Prize -- the first Yiddish 74:00writer to ever get a Nobel Prize in literature. But my father wrote a series of searing articles just lambasting Singer, saying that he had sold out, that what he was talking about -- I mean, Singer would write things about them having these, like, sacrifices to human life. And really, my father took exception to it. He wrote a series of articles that really put Singer in his place. But Singer, of course, had become this very notorious writer. So, they became really bitter enemies. The people who knew about the shtetl but maybe didn't want to alienate Singer -- because he had become, you know, this very famous writer -- didn't exactly condone what my father was writing. My father wrote it anyway. He 75:00wrote a series -- over a period of a year or two -- editorials in the "Tog," on his own, saying that Singer was just amplifying what was happening to the nth degree. And they became really, really -- I'm not saying violent enemies, but they just completely separated. They had nothing to do with each other.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:They gave him a testimonial dinner -- I think it was at the Plaza or one of
the big hotels in New York -- and my father was obligated to cover it for his newspaper. And he felt a little funny about it, because he knew that him and Singer had not been speaking to each other for years. Well, this is what my father told us that night. He said he came into the thing, and they had a line -- you know, a greeting line. And all the people came one way, and Singer was standing there, and they would shake hands. And there was a woman who would say, 76:00you know, "Khaver [Comrade] -- or Mr. Feinberg, this is who," you know, or whatever. And then, he and Singer came face to face, like you and I are. And this woman said, "Mr. Feinberg, this is Mr. Singer." And my father said, "Yes. We've met." In a very, very sardonic way. And they didn't shake hands. And my father just walked right by. My father never gave up his feeling that this guy had done something that was really -- not only injurious to the Jews, but was really just a lie. And I don't think they ever spoke again.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:I told you that my father and I -- we had what I call a very amiable
77:00relationship, but it wasn't your conventional father-son relationship, for a number of reasons that I expounded upon. But there was one time that I saw a side of my father that I wish I would have seen -- and it happened, actually, during a very difficult time. It was on my birthday in 1968, which is actually seven months before he died. My mother and my niece had gone out -- it was in the middle of the summer, and they had gone out on vacation to Rockaway Beach, where my grandmother and the family always had a house. So, they went out there. And that summer, I had to go to summer school, because my whole life was changing. I was on my way to go to law school, but that was the height of the 78:00Vietnam War, and if I would have graduated from college, they would have drafted me -- and I wasn't going to the war. So, all of a sudden, I had to become a teacher. I didn't have any credits. So, that summer, I took twelve credits so that the following year I could apply for a deferment as a teacher. So, my father was home that summer, and I was home. All the girls were gone -- Harriet had just gotten married, like, three weeks before; my other two sisters were married. Gary was already gone. So, it was just me and my father. And in my youth, I was a very, very athletic person. We used to play football, baseball, basketball -- everything. So, we were playing football -- it's ironic -- we were playing football in what used to be a public park. It's now where the new Yankee 79:00Stadium is located -- right across the street from the old Yankee Stadium, 'cause that's where I grew up. But in those days, it was a public park.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:We were playing touch football. Now, touch football means you touch. So, I
was playing the position of quarterback. I'll try to explain it to you. There's somebody guarding you. Everybody goes out -- run, pass. And there's one fellow who's guarding you. He counts to five, and at five, he can rush you, and you either have to throw the ball or run around. So, he rushed me, and I ran around him, ran down the sideline, ran across the field, and was going to score a touchdown. This is touch football, not tackle. Well, one of my so-called friends was between me and the goal line, and he didn't want me to score. So, rather than just touch me, I got by him, and he lunged at me. And I was wearing a sweatshirt. And he grabbed the back of the sweatshirt and he pulled on it. And I 80:00went down to the ground and I fell -- like this -- and hurt my wrist -- the same wrist that I just broke last year. But, I mean, I was twenty years old, you know? I went home that night. And I thought, Tomorrow, I'll get up, it'll be okay. But during the night, I got up, and I was in agony. And my father was there, and he said, "What's wrong?" And I told him what happened, and he said -- it was almost morning -- he said, "Well, let's go over to the local hospital." There was a hospital maybe half a mile from my house. So, we went over to the hospital. And they took -- you know, they didn't have MRIs or anything -- they took an X-ray, and they said, Well, it might be what we call a hairline fracture of your wrist. And we'll give you something if you want, if you're really in 81:00pain. And they bandaged it up with an Ace bandage.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:And that was about as close to a one-on-one relationship with my father that
I ever had. And of course, within a couple of months, it was better -- although when I broke it last year, they claimed that forty years before when I broke, it never healed properly, and that's why this time it really broke. Which I don't believe, 'cause in those forty years, I did a lot of things, and it didn't bother me. But that's the most profound -- you know, the one moment when my father and I really bonded. 'Cause he took me over and he stayed with me and he tried to console me and he said, "You'll be okay." And that's really a lovely story. 'Cause it's really the only time in my life that I really felt that we really bonded under adverse conditions. And again, I want to reiterate -- we did have a good relationship. It just wasn't your conventional father -- I'll take 82:00you to the ballgame, I'll take you -- you know, we'll go outside and play catch. And that wasn't his fault. It was just timing.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:For many years, as I said, it wasn't an antagonism. Long after he died, while
he was alive -- but I always felt that he hadn't really given me anything that I could really grab onto, until -- in fact, when I started writing this book of poetry, which was 1970, occasionally I would mention him, but most of the poems were not about him.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:Although my father wasn't there to play ball with me and he wasn't there to
come for my Little League games or whatever, he did leave me a legacy. His 83:00legacy was that it wasn't a coincidence that I became this -- the proudest thing I am: a poet. And I obviously got that from him.[BREAK IN RECORDING]
NF:So, I am my father's son. That's his legacy. He didn't play ball with me; he
didn't take me to ballgames; but he gave me this incredible ability to write poetry.[END OF INTERVIEW]