By all outward appearance Bob Mankowitz marched to music he alone was privileged to hear. Apparently harmless, he was, nonetheless, at least eccentric, at most slightly crazy.

Miriam, Bob’s wife, or, as labeled by the colony women, “Poor Miriam,” was a plain looking woman a few years Bob’s senior, who was either unacquainted or else indifferent to fashion and style in clothing, coiffure and makeup. Miriam’s total existence seemed to rest in her focusing rapt attention on her three children-two boys and a girl, in order-and deciphering, translating and striving to make sense of the incessant stream of verbiage that each day emitted from her husband’s mouth.

Bob Mankowitz took pleasure in talking to himself. Or, more specifically, amongst himself, because there were occasions when I’d pass him, strolling near the pool, or to and from the concession, once along the narrow winding road the bisecting the colony, and from a brief snippet of overheard dialogue I’d have sworn three or four people were engaged in a heated discussion. Of course, I’d have been wrong. It was just Bob.

Aside from talking to himself, Bob dressed against the grain. Not that there was anything particularly shabby or unkempt in his appearance-he was always clean shaven (until, one summer, he resolved to emulate the neighboring Chasidim, but we’ll get to that shortly), his clothing was always clean and wrinkle free, and if not always a dedicated follower of fashion, certainly there were a few dozen men on our colony whose appearance was far shoddier than Bob’s. What distinguished Bob’s choice of attire was his predilection for heavy, oppressive clothing in the very height of summer.

Came a Saturday in July, the Monticello thermometer topping out at 95 degrees, and Bob would emerge from his poolside bungalow resplendent in wool slacks, a bulky sweater, a baseball cap, and, at times, a winter coat as well. After a brief constitutional around the colony grounds, where he’d no doubt conducted a full Talmudic deliberation, settled several issues from the Koran, and sung three complete verses of Rocky Raccoon, Bob joined his neighbors at poolside. There, stretching his six foot frame on a strapped chaise lounge chair, halfway through the New York Times magazine section, he drifted into seamless sleep, nasally snoring in perfect cadence to the tapping of his right foot, which, incredibly, continued to post the beat to his otherwise silent world, even as he slumbered.

One August evening, while my wife and her friends played mah-jongg in an adjacent bungalow, I was delegated baby-sitting duty. As my children dreamt their toddler dreams, I sat on the deck that was a recently erected appendage to our roomy, three bedroom bungalow, listening to the sweet sounds of Van Morrison moving through the tender Catskill night. Then I detected a figure moving near the pool. It was well past eleven o’clock, and the night air held sufficient chill to have twice chased me inside for additional layers of clothing-first a sweatshirt, then a windbreaker. I walked to the chain link fence surrounding the pool area. The few halogens lamps glowed with an eerie pinkish yellow light, but two of the three bulbs needed replacement, and the moonlight was inadequate for discerning just exactly who was the unmistakably male figure now perched at full attention at the edge of the diving board. Worried that it might be one of the colony teens emboldened by too many Heinekens, and apparently about to risk breaking his neck in answer a drunken challenge, I shouted out, “Hey, kid, the pool is closed.”

 

There was no immediate response. The figure shrugged his shoulders and slightly stretched.

“There’s no lifeguard,” I shouted. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
By this time several of my neighbors, drawn by my voice, had assembled where I was standing.

“What’s going on?” Betty asked.

“Some kids are in by the pool,” said Marcia.

“Are they crazy? It must be fifty degrees out.”

“Hey,” I shouted again. “How about coming out of there before you get hurt?”
The figure inched closer to the edge of the board and appeared to slightly bend at the knees, as if considering the dark, murky water.

“I regret,” said the man, in a loud, firm voice. “That I have but one life to give for my colony.”

“Omigod!” Screeched Suzanne, as if she’d just confronted the Loch Ness Monster. “It’s that imbecile Bob Mankowitz!”
Suddenly, Bob made an abrupt about face and walked to the rear of the diving board.

“If I don’t survive,” he announced. “Let me just say it’s been real swell sharing the summer with all you fine people.”

Then, just as suddenly, he ran forward and leapt into the night. His body was caught in the beams of a half dozen flashlights as he hit the water in a magnificent belly-flop. Then, after a few long moments, he emerged in the middle of the deepest end of the pool, splashing and flailing like a man fending off a shark attack.

“I made it!” He exclaimed. “I’m alive!”

“Oy,” muttered one of the older women. “Es zey a putz.”

“Poor Miriam,” observed another.

“What’s to eat?”

“Come on to my bungalow,” said the first woman. “A beautiful babka I got.”

At the beginning of his fourth summer at our colony, Bob Mankowitz and family arrived on a Sunday morning, circumventing the traditional Friday evening or Saturday morning arrival. That small variation foreshadowed a greater, more significant change for Bob, his family, and the colony at large. Apparently, at some juncture during his ten month hiatus from the colony, Bob had elected to become a Chasid. Now, its not as if anyone at the colony was dazed by the presence of a Chasid-in the Catskills, in the 1980’s and 1990’s we less observant Jews were virtually surrounded by multitudes of Chasidim. Yet, here, for the first time, was by all appearances a genuine, if recently dedicated Chasid right in our immediate presence. He was there, a heartbeat away…not strolling on a country road, seven across the lane, daring a driver to squeeze by in the small section of blacktop they’d somehow neglected to cover…not in ShopRite, waiting at the register with three cases of seltzer water…not lining the main drag of Woodbourne or South Fallsburg, lingering by Chol Yisroel Pizza and Falafel…not on the Quikway, piloting a dented Buick station wagon crammed full of belongings, strollers and mattresses strapped to the roof…not in Walmart or Jamesway, buying Pampers by the truckload…not in a quaint watercolor depicting Chasidim davening at the Wailing Wall…not on a neighboring colony that had been appropriated by one or another Chasidic sect, who’d immediately erected a fiberglass wall around the pool, hung enough laundry to clothe barren multitudes, and brought along the kinder-approximately 9.7 children per family…..It was one thing for the residents of the colony-predominantly non or semi-observant Jews-to be respectful of the devout Chasidim on occasion and at arms length, but to share a pool, a lawn, a colony? That was another matter.

Early one Saturday evening, I was dutifully grilling steaks, chicken and ribs for my family and several guests. Slathering the meat with a sweet and tangy bar-b-queue sauce I’d first concocted while still in college had created a wide plume of nasty smoke, producing tears sufficient to make seeing clearly an impossibility. I wiped my eyes with an apron, and found I was face to face with Bob Mankowitz.

“Treyfe,” he said.

“What?”

“Treyfe!!” He bellowed, pointing at my grill. “You’ll pay for this in the olom abah.”

“Bob?”

“Oy!” He murmured, swiftly taking leave of my presence. “Es a shotzim, es a goy…”
Incidents such as this were to occur frequently throughout the remainder of the season. One time Bob chastised a group of teen girls for wearing two piece bathing suits, on another occasion he endeavored to convince colony wives to kosher their bungalow kitchens, complete with the use of two sets of dishes.

“I do use two sets,” one of the women said, mocking him. “One for kosher, and one for treyfe.”

There was the time when his wife, needing to open a can of tuna and unable to locate her can opener, borrowed an opener from her neighbor. The magnificence of Bob’s wrath could be heard at all corners of the colony.

“From a treyfe kitchen?” He yelled. “From goyim you take into your kitchen!!”

That summer, as all others, passed too quickly, and after the ensuing ten months fell from the calendar, we returned to the mountains. We’d heard scuttlebutt that the Mankowitz family would not be returning, and when we arrived for the summer we discovered the rumor was true. They’d transferred their allegiance to a colony in Woodbourne, mostly populated by Chasidim of the Bobov sect. The grounds would be quieter, and certainly I was convinced there would not be a repeat scolding for cooking and serving non-kosher flesh. Yet, somehow I privately lamented Bob’s absence. We’d one less curious character, one less topic for discussion in various coffee klatches, one less distraction from all things pedestrian and mundane.

Several years passed, and most traces of Bob Mankowitz had slipped from my memory. Then, one afternoon, as I raced through the Long Island Railroad level at Penn Station in a futile attempt to corral the 4:22 to Bayside, a vaguely familiar voice called my name. Behind me, from where the voice had emanated, was a small cluster of Hari-Krishnas, banging tambourines and hustling spare change.

“Yes?” I said.

“Arthur,” spoke the tallest of the four men, cleanly shaven, face and scalp, and adorned in what appeared to be a smart beige shower liner. He smiled. He was in dire need of a periodontal once-over.

“It’s me,” he said.

“You?” I replied.

“Bob,” he said, giggling. “Bob Mankowitz.”

Now, I’ve spent a good deal of my life on the streets of a city that never sleeps, and I’ve traveled some, and seen a bit, but I assure you that at that very instant I was completely astonished, and likewise speechless. I was, and remain, slightly less conversant with the permissible dietary regiment of a Hari-Krishna than I had been with the rules of Kashruth, as when I’d last seen him Bob was a fervent Jew. I clumsily suggested we sit for a while over a Coke.

“Buy you a Smoothie,” he offered.

We garnered several curious glances from commuters as we strolled through the LIRR concourse, me in a blue Hugo Boss pinstripe and Bally loafers, he in his speckled shower liner and strap sandals, talking and sipping our Smoothies, mine banana, his Berry Blast.

After leaving our bungalow colony years before, Bob and his family spent several years at the colony in Woodbourne, and his wife had become a bal-tshuva-a returnee-adopting the devout and pious ways of an ultra-orthodox Jewish wife. His children had adapted as best they could, with mixed results. The eldest boy, Eric, at 20, had dropped out of college and was, even as we spoke, hitch-hiking somewhere across middle-America, accompanied by his Korean fiancée. Last heard from, Eric was in Wisconsin. Following some preliminary resistance, Bob’s younger son and daughter had conformed to the ways of the tribe, assimilating into the Chasidic life. In fact, despite a late start, his son Michael had emerged as a promising Talmudic scholar, who was no doubt on the fast track to the Rabbinate. For his part, he explained to me as we ambled through Penn Station, aside from Kabbalah he’d grown disillusioned with Orthodox Judaism. He had separated from Miriam, who was either too captivated by her new way of life, or simply too exhausted to follow her odd and unusual partner thorough yet another fresh grappling with life’s metaphysical mysteries. She had been absorbed into the greater community in Boro Park, and he knew that once he granted her a “get”, the Jewish divorce, she had intentions of remarrying, a rabbi ten years her senior who was already seven times a grandfather. His children, as well, had forsaken him, immediately after his infatuation with Eastern religions culminated in his transformation from Bob Mankowitz to Baba Rham Rab.

The next train to Bayside was boarding on track 19. As we parted, I held out my hand and he took it, shaking vigorously. I considered him, and I felt both bemused and amazed at the path this strange man had followed in search of his god. “Each day,” he said. “I am fascinated and enriched by the great wonder and piety of all my new life has to offer - the fabulous mysticism, the astonishing spirituality. And, you know,” he said, as we parted, “On a good day at the airport, I take in five hundred bucks.”

 

Aunt Shirley || Tony M. || Bob Mankowitz || Rose || Sy Seltzer

 

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