A Tribute to My Great-Aunt Helen
A story of her enthusiasm for life, her eccentricities, and her kindness.
Judah Menashe Moscowitz, known as Julius, was the founder of our tribe, born in about 1824 in Austro-Hungary. He married Rebecca Schwartz, and they had a slew of children, one of whom was Wolf Moscowitz, my great-great grandfather, born in 1855 in Vranov, Slovakia, and died in 1917 in the Bronx, NY.
Wolf Moscowitz married Fannie Grossman of Dobra, a nearby village, in 1877. They lived in Vranov for much of their married life. When they left, it was with six of their children; three had died in childhood, and the two oldest girls, Celia and Molly, were already in New York. Fannie was pregnant with my Great-Aunt Helen, and she was born in New York in 1899, their twelfth and last child, my grandmother Esther's little sister.
It's unusual for Jewish families to have recorded history, but my tribe members took great pains to uncover and verify our roots.
Fannie developed a fatal disease and could not care for her precious daughter, Helen, so Helen came to live with her much older sister, Esther, and Uncle Jake, my Grandparents. They had two daughters close in age to Aunt Helen, my mother, and her sister.
These three women formed a triumvirate that lasted for their lifetimes. We all lived in the same neighborhood in Washington Heights, and they spoke to each other every day. They were BFFs and shared their secrets.
I knew my mother loved her Aunt Helen because she would bring her a gift from wherever she went. I rarely made it to that list.
Aunt Helen was a very talented lady. She was a coloratura soprano and had studied voice and acting for many years. As the story goes, as a young girl, she ran away from home to join a traveling theater company because she desperately wanted to perform in front of an audience. Her parents wouldn't let her stay with the group, so they fetched her home. Her singing voice was exquisite.
For many years, she sang in our Temple's choir, and hearing her sing made my participation in the Temple palatable. Her voice was commanding in the choir. It was rich with nuances, connecting her to ancient Jewish sounds of joy and pain. She sang opera, too.
Her choices of clothing, however, were truly unique. She often dressed in a palette of colors, matching her stockings to her jewelry or not matching anything. She would mix plaid tops with flowered pattern skirts and wear many unmatched strings of beads, gypsy-like, with aqua stockings. I never remembered her ever wearing slacks. She wouldn't allow herself to have gray hair and kept dying it until she died in her late nineties. (She didn't lack an ego.) Despite her outrageous clothing and dyed hair, she was religious and kept a kosher home.
It saddened me to see the remaining two triumvirates, my mother and Aunt Helen (Aunt Lily had died way before them), together at a family gathering at different ends of the room, both in their nineties. In former years, they would have snuggled together, chattering away. They needed more energy, things to discuss, and time had run out.
Aunt Helen was kinder to me than my mother. I often heard my mother complaining to her about my behavior. My mother would say, "She's not going to get away with that"! I knew that Aunt Helen was defending me. Punishment would follow if I committed some infraction of my mother's rule book without Aunt Helen's intervention.
When I started studying piano, I went to her apartment to practice. We still needed to buy our baby grand. If she was at home when I was practicing, she complimented me. But, this rarely happened as she was always away someplace.
Uncle Paul, her husband, worked with Barnum and Bailey's Circus, and he was out of town for six months every year. She frequently visited him. That left their daughter alone with their maid, Maude, most of the time. We formed our triumvirate, including my cousin, but it had less glue than our mother's.
Whenever Aunt Helen and I were together, she would hug me and tell me I was pretty.
She and Uncle Paul took me to the Metropolitan Opera on New Year's Eve one year. Their daughter had a date, and they had season tickets for their family, so a ticket was available. We saw Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana. I had never been to the opera before, and I was excited. I cherished every moment of its costuming and set design during the performance, along with the singer's glorious voices and the music.
After it was over, I remember we walked to Times Square to watch the ball drop and welcome the new year. It was a clear night, stars twinkling, and the streets were empty, nowhere near the same event in today's world. I felt treasured and unique being with them.
In later years, I had some surgery and was in a hospital near her apartment. She visited me each day of my recovery and was in no hurry to leave. My mother, who lived out of state, saw me once — she stayed about ten minutes. The contrast was profound. However, Mom did call me every day for a quick hello.
I felt Aunt Helen's love and respect whenever I was with her. She lifted me from my normal at-home feelings of being insignificant. In some ways, she introduced and supported me into a more authentic sense of who I grew into.