Russ & Daughters by Mark Russ Federman

Author:Mark Russ Federman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780805243116
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

The Daughter of Tanenbaum the Baker,

the Wife of Leo the Butcher

One day about a year ago, Ruth Tanenbaum Shapiro appeared in the store and introduced herself to Niki. She was, she said, “the daughter of Tanenbaum the baker” (181 East Houston Street) and “the wife of Leo the butcher” (175 East Houston Street). She hadn’t been to the old neighborhood for years. Realizing that Ruth might be a gold mine of Lower East Side history and information, Niki got me on the phone, and Ruth and I set up a date to talk so she could fill in some of the blanks in my research for this book.

On the appointed day, the store was filled with customers, but eighty-seven-year-old Ruth Tanenbaum Shapiro (“Call me Ruthie”) was easy to pick out of the crowd. When I offered to pay Ruthie back for her cab ride from her apartment on the Upper West Side, she said, “What cab? I came by subway.” When asked if she’d like to sit down and have something to eat, her response was “Maybe later.”

Thirty minutes into our conversation, I needed to sit down and have something to eat. I opened two folding chairs in the front of the store near the herring showcase. We noshed a bissel halvah while she reminisced about life on the Lower East Side from the 1920s to the 1950s.

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