1905, outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine

By Jay D. Homnick

I knew violent kids. My family moved a lot when I was young, including from New York to Montreal for two years and then back, so I attended a few different elementary schools. In each school, in each class, there was always at least one violent kid.

Sometimes it expressed itself only against inanimate targets: breaking windows, scrawling graffiti, bending, twisting, folding, spindling, mutilating all sorts of objects. There were kids who pulled wings off flies or relished stepping on different parts of the earthworm, killing it in installments. Finally, there were kids who enjoyed hitting people, either as bullies or in fair fights. They lived for the feel of knuckle against flesh and bone.

But I never partook of their gruesome pastimes. What rage I bore against life I delivered in full to my kid brother. Beyond that natural expression of the fraternal bond I never raised a hand in anger. I had every sort of interaction with my classmates through my school years except one: never a fist fight. A lover, not a fighter. Just a nice guy, and not the kind that finishes last, either.

Then my mother died shortly after I turned 10. It is hard to maintain equanimity when you lose equilibrium. I was hulking around in a pugilistic crouch, spoiling for a battle.

The payoff came one day in a basketball game. A guy was taking me a little too close on defense, pushing off constantly, fouling me when I tried to shoot, and I gave him a warning. Or two. Then he pushed me one time too many. I hauled off and slugged him, right fist to left temple. The left side of his head was swollen for a week, hurting when he tried to chew. My hand was injured too, with the rightmost bone on the top of my hand becoming marginally misshapen to this day. But I felt a surge of pride to have delivered such a mighty blow.

My father, as both a psychologist and a recent widower, was more disposed to shrug it off and rely on the pain in my hand as the prime force for dissuasion. He was not around much those days, desperately trying to make a living and regain some sense of normalcy. His father, my grandpa, would come by most afternoons to keep an eye on us until Dad got home. That only lasted six months before Grandpa himself was beset by a cancer that killed him after my 11th birthday. For those six months, though, I did have a chance to be especially close to my 75-year-old grandfather, Aaron Homnick.

After the fighting incident, he waited for a moment when the two of us could talk privately. It came one afternoon, and he sat me down, asking: “Remember I told you the story of my father coming to America in 1905?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” I said, and to impress him about how much attention I was paying, I reviewed the tale.

“Your father, Israel Homnick, lived in the Ukraine, in a small town not far from Kiev. He got a job as a salesman for the Singer sewing machine company. He would travel from town to town, but instead of knocking on doors he would go to the synagogue. There he would win people over with his engaging conversational style, sometimes even get to lead the prayers with his beautiful voice. Then the people, charmed, would eventually ask what he did for a living. He would shrug his shoulders and say he sells these American machines. They work very nicely, save the wives from hard work. He became their top overseas salesman.

“They figured that if he could do so well among Jews in Eastern Europe, who had very little money, he would certainly do better among the Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, who were congregating in New York City in large numbers and starting to make some real money. They sent him a ticket and he came over. Unfortunately, his homespun folksy style did not translate to the American scene. The Jews were not hanging around the synagogues and he was at a loss how to break through. So he wound up unemployed and he had to live off your paycheck when you came over in 1908.”

“Very good,” Grandpa confirmed. “But there is another part to the story that I kept to myself. Now I think it would be better for you to know.”

And that is how I came to find out the family secret. It seems my great-grandfather was himself unsure if his minstrel-man showmanship/salesmanship would transplant smoothly into American soil. So when Singer first offered free passage to the States, he demurred. Didn’t close the door, but didn’t jump at the offer. Not ready just yet, maybe later. He kept doing his thing, making road trips, making friends, making sales, making a living.

Then he killed a man with his bare hands.

My grandfather wasn’t there, but he gave me his father’s version. In Czarist Russia, which encompassed the Ukraine, the police generally did not protect the Jews. This often led to mass attacks against Jewish communities, with beating and looting – and sometimes killing. These assaults were known as pogroms. Apart from such organized depredation, occasionally an inebriated local Gentile or a roving Cossack on horseback would show up to wreak havoc. The police would come afterwards to supervise the clean-up and write an official report.

One day, Israel turned onto a street in the Jewish area and happened upon a Jewish man being beaten within an inch of his life by a drunkard. He stepped forward and socked the hitter, one hard one to the jaw; the man went down hard and never got up.

When he realized the man was not breathing, Israel went into a panic. He and the Jew he saved dragged the corpse behind a building. Then they ran to the rabbi of Rachmistrivsk, one of the famed Twersky family of rabbis who led congregations across the Russian map. The rabbi advised the two to walk the dead man out of town between them, acting as if they were assisting a sleepy drunk. Once out of sight of the town, they should get off the road and bury the corpse in a wooded area.

They followed the plan and it worked. In fact, they were convinced that miraculously the dead man’s feet actually walked of their own volition. In any case, the body had been disposed of and they had escaped detection.

The problem was there was sure to be an extensive investigation as police searched for the missing man. The body might well be unearthed before long and someone might talk. Better, said Rabbi Twersky, that Israel should take advantage of the offer by Singer Sewing Machines to relocate him to New York. This was how my paternal family came to be in the United States a full century ago and was spared the ravages of the Holocaust.

“Now,” my grandfather concluded. “You can see why we must never strike people with our fists. The Homnicks are blessed with great physical strength, and there is a danger of doing serious harm to a person.”

There is no way for me to ever know the exact truth. If I trust the story my great-grandfather passed on, I don’t need to feel any shame. On the contrary, I can take pride in his fierce advocacy for the powerless and his courage in facing confrontation. It parallels the story of Moses in Exodus who defended the Jew being whipped and killed the Egyptian, then left the country as a wanted man. Or maybe the narratives are just too similar. And maybe the aw-shucks one-blow didn’t-know-my-own-strength yarn feels a tad too tightly spun.

So what can I do? I guess it comes down to the old Jewish joke about the husband and wife arguing what to name their baby. The husband wants to name him Saul after his uncle, Saul the butcher. The wife wants to name him Saul after her uncle, the scholar. The rabbi hears the two positions and issues a decision: Name him Saul without designating which uncle is the namesake. Then wait and see if he becomes a butcher or a scholar, which will determine your answer.

Am I genetically a vicious street fighter or a noble warrior? Only my life can yield that solution. I will say this: Since slugging that boy on the basketball court, I have never hit another person with my fist.

Jay D. Homnick is a well-known commentator and humorist. He writes weekly columns on politics and culture in The American Spectator and Human Events.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, April 6th, 2007 | Email This Post

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