Bubbe's Place: Stories

Yussel Derkleyner

"Yussel Derkleyner is a funny name. Can you tell me about him?" I asked Mama.

"Oh. That wasn't his real name, Flo. That's just the name they gave him at Ellis Island. When he arrived, he didn't know English very well. The immigration officer didn't ask him what his name was, but instead said, 'So, what do they call you?' Yussel answered, 'Oh, they call me Yussel, der kleiner, Joey, the little guy. That was his nickname, see, because he was such a shrimp. The immigration official understood none of this and just wrote down what he heard: Yussel Derkleyner."

"So why didn't he correct it when he got his citizenship papers?"

Mama explained, "He was afraid to make trouble for an official. Like many immigrants, he thought a mistake on an official paper would give some bureacrat an excuse to send him back to Europe. And that is the truth. That's how Yussel got his American name. "

"What else?" I asked.

Mama continued her story. Yussel was an orphan. Distant relatives took turns caring for him. He spent one year with the first family. Then he spent three months with another family, six months somewhere else...When I met him he was living with an old lady, also a cousin. She treated him like you would treat a stray dog. No one really loved him, no one was interested in talking to him. Everyone just fed him and dressed him in schmattes, rags. They were not intentionally cruel. They were just too poor and too tired to waste energy on a skinny, sickly orphan. They weren't bad people, Flo. Life was hard for everyone in Koshovato.

When he started cheder, school, Yussel was already shorter and skinnier than the other children. He never stood up straight. He was always bent over, always looking down at his feet. Your father went to cheder with Yussel and thought that he was a hunchback.

His first year at cheder, he seemed painfully shy. But by year two he had become a regular little papaguy, parrot. When he was in the third year, Yussel became the class clown. If it had been 1985 instead of 1905, the teachers would have said that they had a stand-up comedian on their hands, and laughed along with him. But in 1905 they said, "Shaaa..." and punctuated this with a schmass, slap.

When he was thirteen, Yussel went to synagogue with his lehrer, teacher, and the old lady cousin. He was called up to read from the Torah. After- wards, everyone said, "Mazel tov, congratulations, you are a man, now get a job and support yourself!"

Yussel knew what he wanted to do for a living~to be an entertainer and make people laugh. But Koshovoto already had one entertainer, and was too tiny and too poor to support another. As it was, the established performer barely scraped out a living by performing at weddings. "Apprentice yourself to a klezmer band," he advisedYussel. (Klezmer bands played the Jewish popular music of Eastern Europe). "Travel with the band. Sharpen your routines. The batsooler, the one who pays, who hires the band, he will give you a few kopecks. And they will feed you. That's how I learned and built my audience. You go do the same."

It was a good suggestion. The problem was, no klezmer band would take Yussel on. Times, as always, were rotten. There wasn't enough money to go around.

Yussel would have been satisfied to be an actor, instead, but unfortunately little Koshovato had no theatre. That gave Yussel his big idea. America, he heard, had many theaters! He would go to America! Now his only problem was how to get there.

Other men from Koshovato had worked along the road as day laborers, supporting themselves till they reached the cold North Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean. They even managed to save enough money to buy a ship's carta, ticket, for the crossing. But Yussel was so short, skinny and frail that employers always passed over him when they chose workers.

He needed a sponsor in America who would send him a ticket. But he had no relatives in America: so he began writing begging letters to total fremders, strangers, from Koshovato. Where he got these addresses no one knows. And further, the Koshovaters he wrote to were very poor. If they were generous and had put away an extra dollar, that was in order to bring over their own relatives. Still, they were moved by his letters and wanted to help Yussel. And they all knew where to go for help. Only one organization could or would help a poor orphan from Koshovato, and that was the Koshovater Beneficial Association, K.B.A. for short. This was an association of landsmen, fellow villagers, who had banded together to help old friends and neighbors who were new to America.

The Board of the K.B.A. met on Sunday mornings and people brought Yussel's letters to the Board. The members knew how to solve most problems that new immigrants faced. For example, they helped newcomers to read and fill out official papers. And they provided interest-free loans.If an immigrant needed money to feed his family or bring over a relative, he couldn't go to a bank. The guards wouldn't even let these shabby "beggars"through the door. They learned to appeal instead to the K.B.A. Board for financial help. In those days, there was no welfare, no food stamps, no social security. If the big boss laid you off on Sunday morning-you went to the Board. If you died- the K.B.A. owned plots where a good Jew could rest until the coming of the moschiach, Messiah.

Anyway, after reading Yussel's letters, the Board had rachmones, pity, on the poor orphan. They voted to sponsor him. It would be a mitzvah, good deed, to bring Yussel to America. So it seemed at the time...

When Yussel Derkleyner finally arrived in America the Board gave him a big "Welcome to America" party. They rented him a room with a glatt kosher, strictly kosher, family. They even lined up a job for him in a shirt factory!

Yussel thanked them tearfully for bringing him to America and finding him a room with a good Jewish family, but then he dropped his bombshell. He could not, would not work in a shirt factory. He was an entertainer, an actor.

Everyone was stunned. Never before had a poor immigrant said, no, thank you very much, to a job. The Board President's wife gave a geschrei, scream, and dropped her teacup. A few people muttered, "What? What did he say?" Others hollered, "You must go to work!" Still others began shrayen, shouting, "Everyone works!"

Yussel tried, as reasonably as he could, to explain. "Yes, of course I want to work. I agree completely. Only, I want to work as an entertainer. I can tell you wonderful jokes and stories. Or give me a part in a play. I am a skillful actor, as well."

Groans filled the air. "We brought an aktyor, actor, to America? He wants us to buy him a teatehr, theater, too, perhaps?"

The wife of the Treasurer cried, "Oi vey, good grief! He thinks he is a Maurice Schwartz, a Jacob Adler! Who will support him? Will we? Oi vey!"

The glatt kosher family (who now had a boarder unable to pay for his room or board) surrounded him, for his own protection, and hurried him out of the hall.

No one bought Yussel a theater. And no theater would hire the skinny, little, hunchbacked actor. The unfortunate Board continued to dole out money for trolley rides and newspapers to Yussel. And Yussel continued to search for work suitable to a famous thespian from Koshovato.

The wife of the Secretary volunteered a solution. "We will find him a rich widow, or a widow, at least-with a rich son! When they marry, the widow can support the actor." The idea was brilliant. But either the widow wanted a man with more flesh on his bones, or Yusselk balked because the widow was too old, too fat or, worst of all, not interested in the theater.

Wherever two or three landsmen came together, the talk soon turned to~ Yussel Derkleyner. Almost all agreed that he was a schnorrer, beggar, and a nemer, taker. One or two, more tolerant than the others, suggested that in America, the land of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, an actor had a right to follow a dream. But even they agreed enough was enough. Perhaps he should get a new dream? It was such a dilemma! Meanwhile, Yussel was polishing his routines. He had already memorized six books of Yiddish jokes and stories in order to be ready the moment a paying job turned up. Finally, the Board of the K.B.A. announced a cash reward to the man or woman who found a job Yussel would take.

Molly found the solution. And she wouldn't take a penny of the reward. It was so simple! she explained. When the men heard the idea they slapped their foreheads and chuckled, "Of course!" Molly's shevegerin, sister-in-law, had vacationed in the Catskills at one of the big Jewish hotels. In these hotels they served kosher food all day, and in the evening presented fancy shows with Yiddish and American entertainers. Molly and the sister-in-law were convinced the management at one of the hotels would hire the orphan Yussel Derkleyner.

The Board went right to work. They called every hotel and finally one agreed to hire Yussel for room and board. In return he would have to work as a bus boy on the breakfast shift, and he could keep his tips. This pleased the Board. Yussel would have an income. And this satisfied Yussel too, because the management promised Yussel would be the headliner at the breakfast show. In fact, he would be the whole breakfast show.

The Board relaxed. Everything had turned out well. Yussel Derkleyner was gainfully employed for many years, until one by one the big hotels began to close in the second half of the twentieth century. He was an old man by now. And then, suddenly, Yussel became a hot topic again. Everywhere, Koshovaters were talking.

"Did you hear? Yussel Derkleyner has a part in a big American Movie by Woody Allen!..the big New York subway scene. ..I always knew he had talent..Me?...I never said a bad word against him...We're having a movie party...We'll all go...Imagine...someone from Koshovato in a Woody Allen movie!"

"Your father and I went to see the movie," said Mama.

"Nu...so tell me about it."

"What's to tell? He never said a word." Papa interjected, "Never mind speak. If you blinked for a second you missed the great actor at work in this movie! Enough about Yussel! I am getting hungry."

We three put pebbles on the granite headstone and moved on.