Ricardo Rosenberg: Salvadoran Bar Mitzvahs and Skiing in Vermont

In this excerpt, Ricardo remembers his adolescence both in El Salvador and in the wilds of rural Vermont.
*******************
(Was your grandfather very involved in the Jewish community?)

Regretfully, the Jewish Community has generally overlooked or has not recognized my grandfather’s tenure and it is something that has always puzzled me, because he seemed to well-like and respected, as I said before. While I have not lived in El Salvador since I left for school in the US, retrospectives I have seen about the Jewish Community’s past or collections of photographs which have been assembled for some reason rarely, if ever, include him despite his long tenure and what he contributed to the Community as its President during those many critical years—World War II, its growth with the arrival of many Jewish refugees and immigrants and the significant transition from a group of Jews in the 30s to an organized and structured Community which occurred during that period. I know my grandfather was a pretty hands-on kind of person, so it seems to be pretty difficult to overlook someone who was President for 25 years of the relatively short history of the Community, but that seems to happen with some regularity.

(What about your bar mitzvah? Did you have a bar mitzvah?)

Yes, I did. It was a cram course bar mitzvah! I guess this gets you into the type of religious education I had My memory is that at the American school there was religious education after school, I remember that there were priests waiting towards the exit just about every day, and occasionally the rabbi waiting for their students. But my recollection is it was very ad hoc, very stop-and-go. During the period that was important to me, the first rabbi, Alex Freund, was I think on his way out. And then another rabbi came that if I remember correctly, and maybe you can confirm it with somebody else, didn’t really work out. He was there only a couple years. And then came Alexander Granat, who was there for many years. Actually, I was the first to study with Rabbi Granat for a bar mitzvah. Granat taught me enough Hebrew to learn my bar mitzvah portion, and I had my bar mitzvah. It was very different from what you have in the US now in the sense that the only celebration was something at our house a gathering of maybe 50 people, but no dancing, no music, just something in the late afternoon to celebrate and that was that.


Well, I always identified, but I am not sure how much that added to the experience at that particular time—maybe later.

(How was being young and Jewish in a Catholic country? Was that difficult at times? Did you think about it?)

You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that as a child you mostly don’t know anything else except what you experience, and I think it was good because you understand that there are differences and you don’t develop the over-sensitivities in that area that perhaps some people may have here, particularly now that very often here in the US there’s a lot of political correctness, in the sense that people are so afraid to be offended by one thing or another. So you grow up and everybody else is Catholic and you’re Jewish and a lot of things happens that maybe give you momentarily discomfort, but that’s the way it is. I don’t think it’s anything that created any pressures in my mind.

(Do you have any distinct memories of anti-Semitism or comments that—?)

Yeah, I do, I remember little snippets and things, but only that things that sort of take you back for a moment, but nothing that created a very deep kind of sense of being disliked or unwelcome in the country. I mean, I remember going to a procession somewhere—down there they have processions for various religious holidays—and I remember hearing, “Look what the Jews did to Christ.” Or, “The Jews killed Christ.” This was before the Pope announced officially that the Jews were not at fault for the crucifixion of Jesus. So that was really important in these countries, when the Pope issued the directive, because there was that kind of undercurrent every so often. And there was a little bit of a feeling of being—“left out” is maybe too strong, but everybody else was having a First Communion and you weren’t. But later on you had a bar mitzvah.

(And how would you say overall—?)

And actually, the other thing that I remember is that you do feel a little left out because there’s some things that you don’t participate in. I mean, we would play soccer in all kinds of competitions, and of course everybody before jumping in the pool would take a little water and cross themselves, or take a little dirt from the soccer field and cross themselves, and these are are rituals that are kind of cool, especially for boys. And so you weren’t participating in that. But it not—it was almost trivial, but it was things that you observed as a young boy.

(Little things.)

Yeah.

(When did you leave Salvador for the first time for an extended amount of time?)

I left just a couple months after my bar mitzvah. My bar mitzvah was in June, and in September I was in boarding school at Putney—with your mother

(How did you feel prior to going? Were you excited about it?)

Oh, I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t wait, in part because I was the youngest and I’d seen my siblings go off, and now it was my turn. I thought it was pretty exciting. I looked forward to it.

(So you went to Putney, Vermont?)

Yeah.

(How was that adjustment? It’s quite a difference.)

Well, you know, adjusting wasn’t too hard. The first couple times when I came home, I really liked being home, so it was a little harder going back, a little lonely going back. But it wa not only was my brother there and your mother, but also Marion Liebes, so there was a little kind of familial group there. The other thing, it was just so much fun to go up and down—I mean, the plane, it was like a charter plane. Everybody went to school and came back more or less about the same time, so there were two or three or four days in January where everybody left. It was practically our plane, just a plane full of kids, thirteen to eighteen or so and it was great fun.

(Was there a part of you that felt more comfortable in one place, or was it just a totally different experience in the States and in Salvador?)

It was a completely different experience in each place. It was—I mean, it’s just two different worlds altogether.

(Were there certain things that were hard to get used to in the US that you found culturally difficult in the beginning?)

I don’t remember. I think probably being at the American school made me familiar with things I Putney being basically a working farm would be very different. As a starting freshman I ended up on the farm work job, which meant that two afternoons or so a week you’d work on the farm. So I arrived there over the weekend and by Tuesday I got to work on the farm for the first time. The first task that I was involved with was being on the assembly line of killing chickens which were to be served as meals in the dining room. It was an assembly line kind of thing, where some older student, probably junior or senior, sixteen or seventeen, got a hold of the poor chicken and axed its head off, and it got thrown into a barrel. It sort of fluttered for a while before it finally died. Our job was to make sure that it was completely clean, after others had done a preliminary cleaning. So that was different and unusual. That was also dinner a day or so later!The travel was actually very different. First of all, there were no jets. Second of all, the number of flights was far fewer.

And so what we ended up doing is, we flew from Salvador to Miami. I think often we overnighted in Miami and then went on to New York. Later on, we would go directly to New York and arrive late at night. We would overnight at the famous Salisbury Hotel and then take the train to Putney, which was another six hours or so. So it was quite a long trip, because it was much slower on the prop flights in the early years it took longer. And then the train was fun, because half or three-quarters of the school was on the train. The others came from Boston, which was a different line. Then once we got to Putney, which had a train station about as big as this room, there was a truck waiting for us. Even if it was early January, we’d just throw our bag on the truck and go up, about a ten-minute drive in the open truck, whether it was sixty degrees or ten degrees. So it was a shock in terms of leaving Salvador, that long trip, particularly in the winter, and then arriving at Putney. But I think one of my best memories of Vermont is the winter. I loved the winter there, and I still do. There’s a lot of pretty places with green grass and green trees, but in my mind I just have really good memories of Vermont in the winter, in the woods, skiing.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.