With Ink-Stained Hands

By the end of my summer internship, I had learned to love the red ink that my editor had slathered on my first stories with his editing comments.

It felt like a victory as the flow of red ink receded to light accents by the time I turned in my final articles. My stories were getting picked up, and I was invited to become a student member of the board of directors of the press service. All this would have been more than satisfying, but the icing on the cake was discovering an opportunity to advance my fledgling career at the beginning of the fall quarter, when I had transferred to UC Berkeley.

The previous school quarter, I had gone up to the Bay Area to visit my good friend Miriam, who was already a junior at Cal. It was my first visit up north and I was charmed by the beauty of the area and tempted by the idea of attending a different school. As Miriam saw me gazing out of her apartment window, clearly taking great pleasure at the aspect of clear blue skies and leafy trees swaying in the breeze, she said, “Why don’t you transfer up here?” I needed no further encouragement. And why not? I was already wearing Birkenstocks, was committed to recycling, and I was willing to eat tofu and miso soup, which Miriam liked to cook. Aside from my summer in New York and another summer in Israel, I had never lived away from Los Angeles. Expanding my vistas in every way seemed like a smart move.

I needed no further encouragement. And why not? I was already wearing Birkenstocks, was committed to recycling, and I was willing to eat tofu and miso soup.

Miriam and I shared a spacious house with two other women just a few blocks from campus. We were nestled between a Seventh Day Adventist church and another old house where an Irish expat couple lived with their young children. The husband, Patrick, was an old-school bookbinder with a home-based studio, and it was a treat when he invited us to watch him at work. Unlike Westwood, the trendy college neighborhood of UCLA, Berkeley resolutely and proudly maintained its 1960s persona, from the dimly lit, slightly shabby coffee houses and popular t-shirts emblazoned with the town’s nickname, “Bezerkeley” to the hippie holdovers for whom time had stopped around 1970. There was the graying, diminutive woman known only as “the dog lady,” walking up and down Telegraph Avenue every day with little chihuahuas poking their tiny faces out from numerous pockets of her strange vest; the “Orange man,” aptly named because he stood in front of the campus, stock still and seemingly frozen in time, holding oranges in each hand; and a cast of other psychedelic characters. Some anti-drug literature might have gone a long way if they had only gotten to these folks in time.

My career opportunity presented itself through my friend Ben, who had also transferred from UCLA. This is the same Ben whose invitation for me to have dinner with him at his apartment in lower Manhattan had led my becoming almost irretrievably lost in the Bowery (discussed at length in Episode 1). We were both English majors and had taken some classes together, and among my happiest memories of that time were when Ben and I read Shakespeare to each other in the living room of the Jewish student co-op where we both lived. Oh, we had so much fun being theatrical and dramatic, and probably annoying our housemates in the process. Ben already had a girlfriend whom he adored, which may—or may not—explain why he failed to notice that I had a crush on him.

I decided I wanted more from him than the mere friendship he offered me so far—much more .

Arriving in Berkeley, I quickly learned that Ben was the new editor of the Jewish student newspaper on campus. That’s when I decided I wanted more from him than the mere friendship he offered me so far—much more . He had no assistant editor, so at the first opportunity I bolted up the two flights of stairs to the newspaper’s minuscule office in the student union building and knocked on the door. I entered when Ben shouted, “Come on in!” and saw him sitting at a desk, planning the content of the first of the three quarterly issues of the paper.

“What brings you here?” he asked.

“I’m your new assistant editor!” I announced. If Ben considered this to be presumptuous and intrusive, he would have been completely justified. Fortunately, as I anticipated, he just smiled broadly, threw his arms open wide and said, “Great!” Then we got to work.

I was thrilled to be Ben’s assistant and to have a job on Ha’Etgar (“The Challenge” in Hebrew). After my internship, I felt that I could do a creditable job in writing, editing, and whatever else was needed. That turned out to be a lot of things: selling advertising, recruiting writers, crafting ads that begged readers for donations to keep our humble enterprise afloat, helping edit articles, designing the paper, proofing all the typeset copy, and physically laying out every inch of text, artwork, and ads on large worktables in a little printer’s studio in a sketchy area of Oakland. I developed a good eye and a mighty steady hand, which was helpful when overlaying single lines of corrected type over copy with typos. Individual lines were only 1/16th of an inch high.

We published an engaging variety of material: features about Jewish life—not only focused locally in the Bay Area, but in pockets of Europe, including an update on the plight of Soviet Jewry; an article highlighting four Berkeley alumni who explained why they went to live in Israel after graduation; book reviews, poetry, short fiction, essays, artwork and interviews with the artists, and a calendar of community events.

My first reporting assignment was covering a conference of Jewish feminists in San Francisco focused on the problem of anti-Semitism within the movement. (How little has changed since then!) Several feminists had chosen to be more dedicated to Jewish practice, particularly after being on the receiving end of nasty questions such as, “What’s a smart feminist like you doing wearing a Jewish star?” This became the title of my article, which was also picked up through the Jewish Student Press Service.

I don’t think there was a drop of nail polish within 100 miles of this event.

While I found the overall goal of this gathering valuable and positive, I was shocked that many participants were proclaimed “separatists,” women who did not associate with men in any way. Frankly, many of the women talked and dressed like stereotypes, with butch haircuts, mannish mannerisms, and seething anger at just about anyone who wasn’t female and feminist. I don’t think there was a drop of nail polish within 100 miles of this event. There was a close call with hysteria when a man accidentally opened one of the doors to the hall where this confab was taking place. A woman actually screamed, “A MAN!” There were some immediate shouts and some women got to their feet to chase him away, but he had run for his life, and I hoped he had been built for speed.

I wrote a sympathetic article and did not mention this wild episode, but though I still considered myself a feminist (how could I not in 1981, wearing Birkenstocks and with a subscription to Ms. Magazine?), these San Fran fems revealed the danger of political philosophies taken not to their logical limits but to extreme conclusions. I could not understand a blanket hostility to men in general and hoped that this sort of fringy behavior would soon die a natural death. I admit that after that day, I also seriously considered letting my own very short hair grow a lot longer.

Strong political opinions seemed to be the organic mother’s milk of the entire Berkeley-San Francisco area, and I felt it on campus. For example, the Jewish Student Union’s table on Sproul Plaza was set up across the way from the table of the pro-Arab student group. Naturally, I hung out and sometimes helped “person” the JSU table, and I could literally feel the hostility, perhaps even hatred, radiating from a few among the pro-Arab group, who were heatedly and vociferously critical of Israel as “an apartheid” and illegitimate state. The situation felt both scary and sad.

At my suggestion, Ben also allowed a regular feature on Yiddish, which I was taking as a foreign language. My professor, Dr. Leonard Talmy, joked that its placement in the German department might have been a form of reparations. The column, “A Bisl Yiddish,” at first introduced readers to some of the robust curses and slanders for which Yiddish is famous. These included the much-beloved Er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd! (“May you grow like an onion with your head in the ground”), and, in a column devoted to expressions of exasperation, the vivid expression Ikh nem de gederen! (“I’m removing my viscera!”) With such an abundance of colorful deprecations, defamations, and other terms of abuse, it was impossible to pick a favorite. However, I was fond of A mise-meshune zol im khapn! (“May an unnatural death seize him!”), especially when thinking about the evildoers who still abounded in the world. Professor Talmy also explained how to substitute the word for woman, ir, for the male pronoun im or zayn, because Yiddish is an equal opportunity vilifier of the worst in the human condition.

I loved the heady smell of fresh newsprint and ink and inhaled deeply. To me, at that moment, it even smelled better than coffee—and possibly even dark chocolate.

On the day that our first issue was ready for pick-up at the printer, Ben requisitioned a station wagon from the university and we drove to the San Francisco printing plant to pick up 5,000 copies of Ha’Etgar. Ben parked at the mouth of the cavernous facility, and we both fairly leaped out, dashing excitedly toward the massive piles of print jobs, all stacked and securely held together with thick plastic bands. We instantly spied the black-and-white illustration on the cover and rushed toward our “baby.” I loved the heady smell of fresh newsprint and ink and inhaled deeply. To me, at that moment, it even smelled better than coffee–and possibly even dark chocolate.

Ben and I were practically jumping up and down with excitement and hugged each other. One of the workers sliced open a stack and we each greedily grabbed a paper, turning the pages rapidly and marveling at all sixteen pages of our handiwork. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. A sentence here and there had been unceremoniously severed mid-line during the bleary-eyed hours of the final layout. The headline fonts were arbitrary, to put it kindly. Some text ended up askew, as if slightly inebriated. But this was no time for self-flagellation. This was a time for two Jews to kvell in exultation. We had done it. We had made a newspaper.

We loaded the stacks into the wagon, and I worried about the weight on the now-sagging vehicle as Ben navigated San Francisco’s steep, nearly vertical streets. We lightened our load as quickly as we could, delivering copies at bookstores, coffee houses, the Hillel house, and throughout campus. With ink-stained hands we eagerly waited for praise from our readership and then began work on the next issue.

As editors of the paper, Ben and I were well connected with the other Jewish students who were energetically involved with Jewish organizations on campus and beyond. We all helped each other, and creating the paper did “take a village.” One night at the Hillel House, a tall, pretty, brunette smiled at me, gently grasped my arm, and asked me if I would help her with a project she was organizing for the United Jewish Appeal.

“Sure!” I said. “And will you help me with the newspaper?” We both laughed, and Marcia and I quickly became best friends. Ben had modestly called himself “managing editor” in the masthead, without even using capital letters. I would be “Editor-in-Chief.” I thought it had a nice ring to it.

Ben would graduate in June, but I had another year to go at Cal, and I was pleased that, having appointed myself as his assistant editor, I had also set myself up to slide into his role as managing editor the following year. I had many changes planned, including a redesign of the logo and layout, and an expansion of pages if I could sell enough ads. Ben had modestly called himself “managing editor” in the masthead, without even using capital letters. I would be “Editor-in-Chief.” I thought it had a nice ring to it.