Bel Kaufman Captivates Audience at Marymount Manhattan College
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose–the more things change, the more they stay the same. She repeats the well known expression in playful, dusky tones, and it’s hard to believe that Bel Kaufman, author, teacher, raconteur, is 91. Though it’s been a couple of years since her last visit to Marymount and a lot has happened in her life and in the world, what has stayed the same is her joie de vie. Soon after she finishes her talk on her writing life as the granddaughter of the famous Yiddish writer Sholom (“Fiddler on the Roof”) Aleichem, she will take off for her usual downtown date with tango dancing. She’s wearing high heels.

It is early evening, and the golden chandeliers shine with burnished beauty in Marymount Manhattan College’s newly refurbished mezzaine, a subtle-toned, elegant parlor that suits Bel Kaufman perfectly. She positions herself casually, confidently, at the dais, and will soon dismiss the “unnecessary and intrusive” microphone, preferring instead direct, informal, unmediated conversation with her audience. The room is full. Her voice is strong, deep, unwavering. She smiles, makes eye contact. It is impossible not to smile back. She is sincere, she is a pro. She looks at least 20 years younger. But it’s that voice that immediately commands attention. At once she displays the warm humor and comedic irony that readers first met in her hilarious and poignant memoir of teaching English in an inner-city high school, Up The Down Staircase (1965), the book that made her reputation. Time Magazine called it “easily the most popular novel about U.S. public schools in history.”

A magna cum laude graduate of Hunter College, Bel Kaufman went on to win numerous awards for short stories, fiction and nonfiction, and for a moving tribute to her famous Papa, “Memories of My Grandfather,” from which she takes nuggets here and there on this October night. She chooses to attribute her sense of humor to genes–to “Papa” Aleichem. She’s brought a photograph to show–little Belushka, five years old, on her famous grandfather’s lap. Of course, no one sees the resemblance, concentrating as they are on the sophisticated woman at the dais, marveling at her cultured intelligence and easy graciousness. “She hasn’t missed a beat,” a woman in the front row whispers to her friend, not exactly sotto voce.

The talk is forty minutes of studied but effortless charm–stories, anecdotes, jokes about and by Sholom Aleichem that reveal the teller as much as the subject of her tales. She clearly has her audience in thrall. The occasion is the Marymount Manhattan College Writing Center’s 2nd Jack Burstyn Memorial Lecture, a series named in honor of the father of Marymount friend, Sharon (Mrs. Peter) Green. She thanks the members of the audience for their warm welcome, then adds with wicked glee, “I deserve it.” She moves to the microphone, but not without shooting a mock glance of petulance at Lewis Frumkes, director of The Writing Center, for having announced her age to the world, but she’s clearly proud of her nonagenerian triumphs, and for sure she’s in great form–pleased, she says, that she’s “more or less vertical.” She enjoys the audience’s laughter and encourages more. As Sholom Aleichem would say, she points out, “laughter is the sound of survival,” one should indulge, one should “laugh on credit.” She goes on to identify this view as intrinsically Jewish, the laughter that is dead serious at the core, gallows humor that comes from adversity but turns on hope, ethnic humor that is also universal.

She concludes by noting that once a year, on Sholom Aleichem’s birthday, May 12A (he was superstitious, she says, and avoided the number 13) his deathbed wish is honored: to have gathered together people who will tell stories and laugh. Everyone, she declares, is invited next year to the Brotherhood Synagogue to honor that tradition. Meanwhile, she will be writing her own memoirs and when not so engaged, slithering around doing the tango. “I’m too busy to grow older.” #

For information about The Marymount Manhattan Writing Center’s series of talks, seminars, and courses call: (212) 774-4811.

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