by Robert M. Katzman © September 28, 2017
Witching hour approaches
As Yom Kippur
The Heavier than Plutonium
Jewish Day of Atonement
Looms like a shadow
Over a year of decisions
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(Read on …)by Robert M. Katzman © September 20, 2021
A burning moment of humiliation with an unexpected resolution, which occurred in a Chicago playground nearly sixty years ago. Both parties were twelve, and no, it is unlikely you have read this before.
In 1962, in the Autumn when I was twelve and it was becoming cool and crisp outside, the leaves still on the trees surrounding my South Side of Chicago Grammar School were turning scarlet and gold, the mounds of dead brown ones next to the curb, ready for burning, crackling as I walked over them.
(Read on …)By Robert M. Katzman September 13, 2021
I am the grandson of Jacob Katzman, an immigrant from Megilev on the Dneper River in Byelorussia. A socialist and skilled carpenter who felt all religion was bunk, his son–my Father Israel–told me. He was thin, strong and about five-foot-eight, like me. My father told me he came home with bloody shirts from fighting at a Chicago Carpenter’s Hall, where there were battles about creating the first unions. He was a warm man, nice to me, had a strong Yiddish accent which I can evoke at any time.
He mysteriously influenced me, spiritually, even after his death, and though he then had five children and seven grandchildren, for reasons I don’t know, I inherited his incredibly heavy handmade wooden toolbox. Jacob was the first of my immigrant Grandparents to die, at 78 in 1961 when I was eleven. What will I do with it, in the future, I wonder: Who will care?
(Read on …)