Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Religious Life in America
Um, you said your fatherbecame religious when he came to the States.
Yeah, then he had an opportunity to meet-well, ofcourse he had more time too-a group called Gemilut Chesed, which was a GermanJewish group. And in fact they had uh, they conducted all their business inGerman. They even had a rabbi who spoke German until somebody pointed out tothem that that was improper. And so, then they converted to English, althoughtheir English was atrocious on the whole.
They would never speakYiddish.
Oh no, no. But my father didn't know how. And too,years for someone who has spoken German, Yiddish sounds distorted. And then itwas also associated with being a lower class, so it had a stigma of some kindattached, which it doesn't have here. And then he, of course when we got to theUnited States all my mother's relatives spoke Yiddish. My father coming youknow, hat in hand was in no position to do anything. And they would say, "Wiegleichen Sie America?" ???. How do you like? You know, a literal translation ofa like. And so that, that was quite a thing for him to have to put up with.Because he was very-he liked dignity. He, he was formal. Not only conservative,but formal. He didn't like to be called by the first name. That was hard forhim working because they all wanted to call him Joe and of course, he couldn'tsay anything because he wanted the job. But that-he missed that of Austria. Andhe found a friend whom he met when he was burning garbage in the alley. Andthis man is from Austria. And each night when they burned garbage together andthey said, "good evening Mr. Glaser, good evening Mr. Burger." This man waswith him 'til he died and he never called him by his first name. It wasunthinkable. So he was steeped in the culture. Truly.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn