My Grandpa: an Economic History

I don't have facts here, I just have family stories. My great grandparents, Masha and David Shoshkes, emigrated to Newark, NJ from a small town in Poland as adults. David went into the produce business, starting off with a pushcart. Through hard work and sacrifice, the story goes, he saved enough money to establish a store on South Orange Avenue. Later, he became a distributor, driving his truck to delis in the suburbs with their produce orders. One of his clients was the Town Hall Deli in South Orange, which still exists.

As he accumulated some capital, David invested in real estate. These ventures were risky, and due to one financial setback, the family had to pack up and move into an investment property of his, for a number of years. This house was in an Italian neighborhood of nearby East Orange with few Jewish residents. It seems that my grandpa was bullied in school while they lived there.

My grandpa Milton was a smart kid. He liked sports but violin made a more lasting impression, and he did well in school. One time, his father brought him out to show him the business, presumably when he was a teenager. They woke up in the middle of the night and went to the wholesale produce market. It was a rough, chaotic place with yelling and screaming and overwhelming activity. This nocturnal, blue collar lifestyle made a bad impression on my grandpa. Instead, as his parents hoped for him, he worked hard at the academically excellent Weequahic High School, and went on to attend Cornell. He was the first Jewish graduate of his high school to be accepted there.

As David got older and had an accident in his delivery truck, he hired an assistant. Albert, whose last name has not been preserved in my family stories, was Black and also from Newark. He drove the truck to make deliveries, and learned Yiddish in order to better communicate with his boss. My great grandparents later hired Albert's wife Mary as a cook and housekeeper, so that Masha could work in the store. The way my grandpa explained it to me, Albert expected to inherit the business when David retired, but the suburban deli owners were racist and wouldn't do business with a black-owned distributor, and so things didn't work out for him. I hope I am able to find out more about these incomplete pieces of the story.

My grandpa's family owned a house in the Weequahic neighborhood when he was in high school. Their next door neighbors were the Zwillmans, a family heavily involved in organized crime in Newark. My great aunt Molly married Irving Zwillman, whose job was to collect money from bars and restaurants around the city, ostensibly from the juke boxes there. Molly apparently was responsible for holding and keeping track of those earnings. Their daughter was what you might describe as an early goth or hipster, as a teenager in the 60's, who would wear all black and played the drum kit. We're unfortunately not in touch with this side of the family.

My grandpa went to medical school during WWII, served in the army, and went on to start a successful medical practice in Millburn, NJ. He and my grandma Lila settled in a nice suburban house in South Orange, NJ. Lila, an artist and designer from Brooklyn, had a business designing corporate office interiors (I'll have to write another article about her). They hired a live-in cook and housekeeper, Delia Doyle, who was a black Newarker.

Top row L-R:  Elliot Fabricant, David Shoshkes, Michael Fabricant, Irving Zwillman, Milton Shoshkes

Middle row L-R:  Molly Zwillman, Lila Shoshkes, Edel Rivka Masur, Masha Shoshkes, Barbara Zwillman

Bottom row: L-R: Ann Shoshkes, Ellen Shoshkes, Deena Shoshkes, Carol Shoshkes, Arlene Zwillman

And so my grandparents joined the educated professional class, what you might call the bourgeois, rather than the earthier, more Jersey-like options around them. Their choices were in line with, and largely motivated by, my great grandparents' ideas of success and aspirations for their son.