Sunday, March 3, 2013

Two tragic deaths in Brooklyn

Raizy and Nathan Glauber on their wedding day
photos - NY Times
The reports of the tragic deaths of Raizy and Nathan Glauber a young "ultra orthodox" couple whose unborn boy survived the collision on Kent Avenue in Brooklyn reminded me of my school days there. We passed each other without acknowledgement every day on Nostrand Avenue - Satmar Jewish boys with long dangling curls and yarmulkes.  
We were from different tribes - the Catholic school boys at Brooklyn Prep on Carroll Street and the Jewish boys who went to the kosher butcher and baker and grocer.  It was a mixed neighborhood of the kind remembered by Pete Hamill in Snow in August.  Mike Devlin, an altar boy, becomes  a shabbos goy - helping a white bearded rabbi on the sabbath.  He befriends the boy for whom  a chance to make a little money becomes a chance to learn about a world he would otherwise never have glimpsed, passing anonymously on the streets as we did in Crown Heights, Catholic and Jewish boys.- gwc
the funeral

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