Alan Zeitlin
Elliot Rosen, 82, has heard many eulogies.
The Penn Valley resident has been the director of funeral home Joseph Levine & Sons for the past 40 years. While his job entails comforting those who deal with tragedy in sadness, knowing about the good deeds people do can also be inspiring.
“I find out about people who I did not know listening to the eulogies and understanding how ordinary people do extraordinary things,” Rosen said. “I’m humbled listening to the family and the clergy. I marvel and I pray that I can only do a tenth of the mitzvot as the people did. It’s uplifting to hear the stories of amazing people who are just like you and me who do things beyond what you imagine they could do.”
He has vague memories of his grandfather, or Zayda, who taught him The Four Questions or “Ma Nishtana” chanted at the Passover seder in Yiddish. It was in that same language that he saw his grandfather write in a book with a fountain pen. The manuscript would change hands, and Rosen got a push from his wife Maxine.
“During COVID, she said, ‘You’re sitting around watching CNN; why don’t you put it into the computer?’” Rosen recalled, adding that it was translated to English by scholar William Glicksman, and he then decided to make a few edits to his grandfather’s work, leaving in the incorrect grammar.
“The Inheritance” (Yerusha) by Israel Rosen is a story of financial failure and one of overcoming pneumonia, other sicknesses and hardships to make it to America, despite being told he would never do so. The man who sold eggs landed in New York, peddled rags during The Depression and ended up in Philadelphia.
The book reveals frazzled thoughts, maddening circumstances and some humor as when he notes a proposed wife was ugly. There is hope mixed with depression, fear mixed with courage and helplessness fused with the realization that one must help oneself no matter the obstacles. There is a striking honesty and insight into his shortcomings. Was the author too hard on himself? It’s hard to say but there is a steadfast belief in God and some positive precepts.
“If somebody did to me something wrong, I tried to do something good,” he wrote in one chapter.
Rosen said the book is relevant, in part, due to the struggle of immigrants today.
“My Zayda’s autobiography made me realize that he lived the kind of life where I don’t know if I would have had the strength to do what he did,” Rosen said. “He never made any money. In his will, there were debts the family had to pay. But the fact is he was amazing coming from the shtetl of the Pale of Settlement with antisemitism and poverty and journeyed to this country and bringing over his family. Reading his autobiography inspires me to know I have to do more.”
In the afterword, Rosen writes that had his grandfather not made that courageous decision “in all likelihood, we would have all been victims of the Holocaust.”
Rosen attended the recent March for Israel in Washington, D.C., against antisemitism and in support of freeing the hostages kidnapped by Hamas. He also attended the rally to free Soviet Jewry in 1987.
“I heard Natan Sharansky speak back then and now as an elder statesman,” Rosen said. “He is a world-class leader for human rights. I went to the rally because showing up is what life is about. I only hope that we have as much impact as we did in 1987.”
Noting a recent mob outside Goldie, a Philadelphia Israeli falafel restaurant, he said he did not expect the levels of antisemitism to get this high. But the co-president of Har Zion Temple said he has no fears about wearing his yarmulke outside. Rosen who has several grandchildren, said he is troubled to hear about antisemitic incidents at colleges, including the University of Pennsylvania.
Before getting into the funeral home profession, Rosen said he worked in his family business in the distribution of arcade games and phonographs. There he became friendly with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, known as Steve and Eydie, and on several occasions spoke with “American Bandstand” host Dick Clark.
“He was a good guy and what you saw was what you got,” Rosen said in praise of Clark. “But I never went on the dance floor.”
He was going to take a job with United Jewish Appeal but was asked if he’d be interested in running the funeral home. He said he took chemistry and anatomy classes at night at Penn State University and then got a certificate in funeral service from Mercer County Community College.
He said there are times at funerals or at shivas when people are shaken and, despite good intentions, may say things that come out the wrong way in talking to friends or family members.
“I tell people if they don’t know what to say, to tell them, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’” he said, adding that there is a specific line in Hebrew that translates to “May God comfort you, together with all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”
He said he was a young child when he went to summer camp with his brother and cousin and came home to a shiva house with word that his grandfather died.
Rosen said he takes great pride in being Jewish and said his father worked for Tastykake and was fired when it was discovered he was Jewish. He said his father also as a kid got into an argument about Judaism with a gentile youth who threatened him with a knife and, in the process, was stabbed, perhaps by accident.
Rosen said the book project proved fruitful, and while his grandfather did not leave money, the book was a greater gift.
“It took a long time to get this to the public,” Rosen said. “What I think everyone can learn from it is that — even in the worst of times — you can make the best of things.” T
Alan Zeitlin is a freelance writer.
