Jewish Taxonomy

Buenos Aires, the 1950s.

In this blog, I will try to explain the meaning of two terms of Jewish taxonomy: Yekke Jews and shtetl Jews. The terms roughly describe two very different stereotypes and temperaments. Yekkes—like my Dad—are punctual, play by the rules, and are driven by obligations, be they real or imaginary.  A good part of me is like Dad. Yet I also come from a shtetl grandmother who taught me her shrewdness, a gift of the gab, and her joie de vivre. Another part of me is like her. With a bit from each, I am my own melting pot and, for good measure, carry a fair amount of Latin-American gloss.

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I told you in my last blog that in addition to Mom, there were two women who were central to my upbringing in Buenos Aires: my grandma Rachel, my Omi, and our live-in maid Nilda.  Omi was born and raised in Rohatyn in 1884. Her birthplace was then a small Jewish village—a shtetl—in Galizia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Galizia roughly overlaps with today’s Western Ukraine. Nilda, who was much younger, was a criolla of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry. Nilda had come from the provinces and, to earn her keep, moved in, and took care of us day and night. Nilda and I were the only native Argentinians in our household.

Omi was plump and short, built like the compact peasant that she had once been. Her bosom extended from her body straight down to her waist. She had sharp eyes that sparkled with wit, and lips that easily grinned. Her skin was weathered and wrinkled. Nilda was also petite and had the olive skin of a Latin American criolla, dark eyes, and short black hair. Nilda was illiterate and, as I was learning to read and write at the Urquiza Day School, I eventually taught her to add, subtract, and sign her name.

Mom, Omi, and Nilda governed our home. Dad came and went, pretty much staying on the sidelines. Nilda was in charge of household chores, especially cooking, at which she excelled. She learned new dishes quickly and ran a cosmopolitan cuisine out of our tiny kitchen. Mom taught her how to make Austro-Hungarian dishes like Schnitzel and Goulash. Omi taught her how to make rustic Jewish food from the Galizianer shtetl whence she had come: stuff like beet borscht or chicken giblets and rice. Omi was also famous to all the neighbors in our building and beyond for her sweet and sour cabbage soup with onions. I could tell what was for lunch from a block away, since her cabbage soup smelled up the Coghlan neighborhood for hours. All those Old-World dishes plus the juicy—and in Argentina, inexpensive—filet mignons that Nilda had ready for me every day when I came to lunch from UDS are my comfort food to this day.

Nilda and La Omi—as Nilda called my grandma—shared a wonderful sense of humor; I could frequently hear them joke and laugh around the apartment. My shtetl grandmother and our criolla Nilda communicated the best they could in a linguistic jumble of Yiddish, German, and Spanish. It was in that mishmash that Omi taught Nilda how to cook dishes from Omi’s youth in Galizia, while I played interpreter. The smells and sounds of Nilda and La Omi, side by side in the kitchen preparing chicken giblets with rice, remain a jewel of my childhood.

With Nilda watching over her, La Omi would sauté onions, gizzards, hearts, and livers with some schmaltz, rendered chicken fat.

“According to kosher laws,” La Omi would instruct in German, “the liver should be broiled, not sautéed, but I'm not kosher, so tell her to sauté it.” I would translate.

La Omi would adjust salt and pepper, add precooked rice into the pan, and stir-fry the mixture until it turned brown and crispy. At the end she would add a touch of paprika, and voilà! Giblets à la Omi.

“Jorgito,” Nilda would ask in Spanish, “preguntale a La Omi que más le agrega a los menuditos de posho (what else does she add to the giblets)? Cebosha (onion)?”

“Cebosha, ja, ja,” La Omi would say, catching the words pollo and cebolla, pronounced in Buenos Aires Spanish, as posho and cebosha. Turning to me, she’d reply in Yiddish-German, “Sug Ihr, schmaltz.”

“Schmaltz,” I’d say to Nilda in Yiddish-Spanish. “Hay que ponerle schmaltz.”

“Esmals? Qué es esmals?”

“Schmaltz, schmaltz!” I’d correct her. “Se pronuncia con sh. . .sh. . .” and, placing my index finger vertically across my lips, I would add, “es como shhhh. . .silencio…! El schmaltz es como grasa de pollo (schmaltz is like chicken fat).”

“Shhhh-esmals. . . shhh-esmals,” would repeat our criolla, practicing her Yiddish. She would soon start giggling. “Y se le pone shhhh-esmals y manteca o solamente shhhh-esmals?”

By this time, Omi would also catch the giggles. But understanding the Spanish word manteca, for butter, she would turn to me and say in Yiddish, “Sug ihr, keine manteca. . .nur schmaltz, verstehst?”

This Tower of Babel went on for hours. The Marx brothers couldn’t have done it any better. In the middle of these chaotic dialogues, we would all burst out laughing. It stopped only when one of us had no more energy, our sides hurting.

An even sweeter culinary remembrance of Grandma comes from our weekends at our rental cottage on stilts by the river. The line of émigré bungalows was surrounded by luscious orchards. The isleños, our island landlords, planted and harvested plums, apples, pears, and peaches. Omi would buy sugar from the grocery boat and make fresh jam from a few plums that she surreptitiously—and freely—picked out of the orchard. The isleños grumbled that, since plums were meant to be harvested and sold in the fruit markets, they were off limits to the tenants. But Omi just shrugged, gave them a jar, and invited them in Yiddish-Spanish to come up the steps and join her for toast and coffee at the veranda. They usually did so and loved her jam.  

Omi and Nilda were as similar in temperament as Omi and Dad were different. The disparity between my father and his mother-in-law was nothing less than a clash of civilizations. In order for you to understand their cultural dissonance, I need to introduce you to some basic Jewish taxonomy. As I told you in previous Blog 21, A Postcard from Constantinople, the two big branches of European Jewry are the Ashkenazim derived from the Rhineland and the Sephardim derived from Spain. But things don’t stop there. Ashkenazi Jews have long split themselves in two further varieties: German Jews and Ostjuden, East European Jews. In the 20th century, the first came from the big cities, such as Berlin or Vienna, and the second from the small shtetls of Galizia and further East.

For ages, the Yiddish term for German Jews used by themselves and by the Ostjuden, is Yekke. Yekke has German origins; it comes from Jacke, meaning jacket. The word was used in Vienna or Berlin as a badge of distinction by urbane German Jews who wore short jackets as a way to indicate their difference from their hoi polloi East European relatives, who wore calf-length black coats. Yekkes wanted to make sure that, whatever people thought of German Jews, god forbid no one should confuse them with being Ostjuden. The latter, in turn, used Yekke—and still do—as a put-down of their city relatives’ airs.

But far deeper than a term of couture, Yekke is a term of Kultur, the German concept of being better educated—or just plain better—than the Ostjuden. For Yekkes, the term denotes less religion and more sophistication. For Ostjuden it denotes lack of devotion and snobbishness. The term also carries deeper meanings. Yekkes are punctual, organized, follow the rules, and are attentive to their responsibilities. Shtetl Jews are shrewd, less saddled by rules and obligations, and deal with life in a less burdened manner. Dad was a Yekke and Omi was a shtetl Jew. Think Mayer Rothschild, a classic Yekke from the Frankfurt banking family, versus Tevye, the pious milkman from Anatevka, the main shtetl in Fiddler on the Roof.

The difference between a Yekke and a shtetl Jew is best illuminated by how Dad and Omi dealt with finances. The events come from a time after Mom’s death, when my cocooned childhood had cracked. It was a time when my upbringing was under Dad’s tutelage, although with frequent intrusions by Omi and Nilda. When I reached adolescence Dad started giving me an allowance. At the end of each month, he would sit with me to review the income and expense ledgers. I had to account for all the money he gave me and all the expenses, such as pencils, candy, and magazines. Dad was an accountant, a Yekke accountant to boot, and so the books had better balance. If they didn't, he scolded me.

Throughout the month, Omi always had loose cash lying around. With a wink, she would pass me a few pesos here and a few pesos there. “He doesn't give you enough money, your father,” she would whisper. In the first month or two of this drill I, honest little Yekke that I was becoming, showed up at accounting time with more money left in my pockets than I was supposed to. Dad immediately figured out what was going on and dug into Omi for undermining his efforts ". . .to teach the boy financial responsibility." Omi took me aside and, using a crudity that refers to the male appendage, asked, "What are you, a schmuck?" After that reprimand, she taught me how to cook the books.

The next month the books balanced. Dad, however, was no dummy, and asked me point blank, "Did your grandmother give you money?" After I turned red he went back to her, complaining that now she was corrupting me, an even worse sin. At the end, they reached a Solomonic compromise: I would enter his, as well as any and all monies she gave me, into the income column. I would show what I had spent, all of it, in the expense column. That way Omi could give me all the money she wanted, but the books would be honest. Their shtetl and Yekke temperaments clashed but their compromise was as sweet as a slice of Apfel Strudel.

The culture clash between Omi and Dad was fertile ground for the long-term collision between them that, years after Mom had died, led Omi to leave Argentina for good. Years later, as I better understood Mom, I recognized that she was a perfect hybrid between a shtetl Jew from Galizia and an urbane and sophisticated Viennese lady. During her lifetime, Mom had kept the peace between her husband and her mother. But once she was gone, the peace quickly evaporated and life in our household became trying. I have told you some of that in Blog  13, Two Portraits of Mom.

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I have inherited both temperaments: Yekke and shtetl. I am sometimes one, sometimes the other. For many years—with Dad’s ghost at my side—I ran my law firm as a good Yekke. We grew, we were profitable, and our books were clean and balanced. When, in 2007, I transferred the managing partnership to Michael, my younger successor, I did so with a song and dance routine to the tune of Randy Newman’s “Oh. . .It’s Lonely at the Top.” This musical rite of passage would never have been part of Dad’s repertoire. But I could definitely feel Omi’s ghost at the ceremony. And my comfort with public dancing is the gloss I picked up from having been raised in Latin America.