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Sonia Pressman Fuentes
"If You Speak His Language"
From
Eat
First -- You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter
by Sonia Pressman Fuentes |
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Contact Ms. Fuentes at: spfuentes@comcast.net |
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If You Speak His Language
"Howja like
dot?" asked my father.
"Not dot," corrected Mother, unperturbed by Father's twenty-year
resistance to the niceties of English pronunciation. "Not dot. Dat. T - h
- a - t. Dat." For some inexplicable reason, Mother's tutorial method with
a man who had never mastered the alphabet was premised on spelling. I
suspected this technique owed its application not so much to Mother's
belief in its validity as a teaching tool but to her desire to demonstrate
her own superior grasp of the language. "All right," said Father, in his
I-stand-corrected tone. "Dat. Howja like dat?" And, then he said, in
astonishment and delight, "`Herry' Belafonte turns out to be a Jew!"
No amount of refutation from Mother and me had the slightest effect on
him. "Herry" Belafonte sang in Hebrew. Who else but a Jew would do that?
He was obviously one of those Black Jews, like those of Ethiopia.
Strictly speaking, Hebrew wasn't my father's language. Yiddish was. But
Hebrew was the language of the Bible, the other sacred texts and, in
recent times, the language of Israel. That was good enough for Dad.
From then on, "Herry" was a favorite in our house. On those notable
occasions when he made a TV appearance, the family would gather before the
set and sit in hushed and grateful silence. One of our own was on.
Accordingly, it came as no surprise to Father when "Herry" divorced
Marguerite, his African American wife, and married Julie Robinson, a young
Jewish dancer with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe. "Nu," said Father,
with that know-it-all sparkle in his eyes. "What did I tell you? A Jewish
fellah. First, he's got to marry a shikse [a gentile girl or woman]. And
then he finds a nice Jewish girl."
The acid test of reality never had a chance with my father. He had the
exasperating ability to conform reality to his own vision of it.
©1996 by Sonia Pressman Fuentes
This piece was published in Tzum Punkt (Nov.-Dec. 1999, Vol. 1, No. 2) p. 5, the newsletter of Yiddish of Greater Washington, and in the premier issue of Cafe Ami, an e-zine dedicated to Jewish diversity at yachadbshalom.com.
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Fuentes -- Photographs |
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Germany, 1931
Berlin Shop, 1931
Germany, 1932
Belgium, 1934
Cornell, 1950
University of Miami, 1956
Washington, DC, 1966
Washington, DC, 1993
Coral Gables, 1990s
Sarasota, 1990s
Plainfield, 1998
Women's Hall of Fame
At the Capitol, 2000
Meadows Players, 2001
Piltz Library, 2001
Piltz, Poland, 2001
Sarasota, March 2002
Sarasota, April 2002
Lewin Studio, 2003
Alice Award, 2003
Book Signing, 2003
Teaching English, 2003
Book Bag Replica, 2004
AILF Awards, 2005
Foremothers Awards, 2005
IAYC Conference, 2005
Alice Paul Award, 2005
National Woman's Party, 2006
Potomac, MD, 2006
Bozeman, MT, 2007
CLEA Course, 2007
Cornell University, 2008
Cornell University, 2009
Close shot at Cornel, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Rockville, MD, 2009
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