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Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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*The Yiddish words for pocket watch are"tashen zeyger"
Somewhere in your jewelry case or bank vault do you have a "tashen zeyger"--a pocket watch? If so, "trog es gezunterhait!" (Wear it in good health).
I recently had the pleasure of reading Arthur Hertzberg's wonderful book, "A Jew In America." Hertzberg writes abut being installed as a rabbi at Ahavath Torah in Philadelphia. The main address was given by his father, Zvi Elimelech Herzberg, in Yiddish. "He spoke with great emotion about entrusting his son to this community. He asked the congregation to welcome me, to sustain me, and to protect me against my bad habits. He then turned to defining the role of the rabbi. My father used a parable.
In Eastern Europe in a small town from which most of our families came,people were poor, and very few could afford pocket watches. Everyone told time by looking toward the clock tower, usually placed on top of city hall, which could be seen from every part of town. In Europe, everyone had the same time; in America, the time varies from person to person. What is the difference? In America each of us twiddles with his own watch, to suit himself; in Europe, people look toward the clock tower, which they cannot control or maneuver.
A rabbi, so my father concluded, should not be a pocket watch, in anyone's hands; he should be a clock tower giving everyone the same, principled answer..." I was sure that I would never be a pocket watch to be wound up, or wound down, in someone else's pocket. My errors would be my own."
A second story was told by Wade Bradford (About.com) and is titled, "The Pocket Watch Story":
"When my old drama professor was in his early twenties, he landed a supporting role in his first Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. The director was a kind, soft-spoken man, and since the cast was young and relatively unprofessional, rehearsals began to get out of hand. People were forgetting their blocking, dropping lines here and there. It wasn't horrible, but it was starting to get sloppy.
About two and a half weeks into rehearsal, the director arrived, cheerful as usual. He was showing several of the cast members a newly restored watch, one that had been given to him by his father, a great actor in his own time. The watch had not worked for years, but he had finally found an expert watchmaker to get the golden timekeeper running again. And the director was anxious to use it during today's rehearsal to see how long the show was running.
Well, the actors were still on a downward slope--unfocused and low on energy. The director had watched, saying nothing. Then, suddenly, in the middle of Act Three, the director yelled: "Stop! Stop! Stop! Why can't you people get these scenes right? I try to be nice. I try to be encouraging! But you still won't listen. What do I have to do?!" And then, in a sudden fit of rage, he threw his father's watch on the floor and smashed it with his foot. He left the theater, leaving the shattered pocket watch on the floor.
The cast was stunned. In fact, they were scared. They spent the rest of the rehearsal without a director, but they quickly got their act together. So, by the next day, the cast was running like clockwork. And the director returned to his gentle ways and never brought up the incident again.
Except one day, when the show had already opened, a couple of the cast members (including my professor) checked the director's schedule to count how many matinees they would be doing. They noticed that the director had written a note on March 12th, the day of his tumultuous outburst. In small penciled letters were the initials: P.W.
That's right: PW = "pocket watch." The director had planned the outburst all along. In fact, he had scheduled the exact day he would smash the watch with his foot, and he had purchased a cheap, imitation pocket watch to destroy, just as he had done during every show that he had ever directed."
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Marjorie Wolfe's favorite pocket watch
joke was told by Woody Allen: "I'm very
proud of my gold pocket watch My
grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this
watch."
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