by Judith R. Robinson (June 2026)
New Pittsburgh Airport Hosts a Chabad Wedding
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I spent most of today, March 18, 2026, struggling to remember the name for the clinging cloth hat women sometimes wear and I wore because I feared being seen bareheaded at the Orthodox Jewish wedding of the Rabbi’s daughter at the new Pittsburgh Airport.
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It was quite a lot, that event: spectacular: an outdoor canopy (chuppah) shaking in the high winds, a bride and groom who may (or may not have) met before, squeezed together with every relative possible under that chuppah, planes taking off above whenever the snow-whipping winds died down.
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I could barely see any of this as there were at least five hundred people there, most of them huddled in front of me at a freezing picture window. But such joy! Such cheer! Mushka and Yisroel, and the repetition of a blessed ancient tradition! The world beginning again! An unlikely but wonderful story to tell the grandchildren someday!
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And now, twenty-two hours later, it came to me: I wore a turban.
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Jew Hill
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My father was born in 1914, the second youngest child of Harry and Dora Ruttenberg, a Jewish immigrant couple. There were six children, three boys and three girls. My father, Milton, was the youngest son, and I think, his mother’s favorite, a blessing my grandmother extended into the next generation as well. I was her favorite grandchild, hands down.
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Anyway, this story concerns Harry, my father’s father, my grandfather, who I remember as an old fellow sitting in a chair across the room from my grandmother, smoking cigars and spitting into a green spittoon. He had very little to say to me or to her. She, however, liked to whisper to me about what a mean man he was. Nonetheless, they were married for 50 + years, and there were the six children.
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One day when I was about twelve my father took me for a ride to see the place he was born and lived the early years of his life. This was in Greene County, the most southwestern part of Pennsylvania, a coal mining area that borders West Virginia. My grandfather had picked this spot to settle and open a general store, after walking about four hundred miles from Ellis Island/New York, peddling matches to farm wives.
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Did I mention that on his long trek Grandfather made a stop in Altoona, Pennsylvania, because he had been informed that there were some landsmen living there? Yes, there were, and in addition there was a young woman of marriageable age, a recent arrival from Lithuania herself, who was rather plain but sweet-natured and possessed her own wagon. Grandfather negotiated a deal that somehow included a horse as well, and was able to proceed to Greene County no longer on foot but with a wife, a sturdy horse and a brand new wagon.
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This story—the clever, hard-working immigrant peddler who settles down and opens a store—was quite common, in fact became the history of retail business in America. Think of Sears-Roebuck, Gimbels, Neiman-Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Macy’s, to name a few. My Grandfather did the same thing but he did not become a merchant king doing it. He did, however, establish a certain notoriety, a certain distinction, even.
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The store, Ruttenberg’s, opened in competition to the mining company’s store. Ruttenberg’s beat them out by selling better dry goods, tools, and fresh farm foods at lower prices. Grandfather made money by the fistful. His customers knew him and liked him. Without any rancor, just as an honest shorthand moniker, he was called the Jew. True!
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My father assured me this was only because Grandfather was, in fact, Jewish.
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It was another time, an era when political correctness could never have been imagined.
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Also to my amusement, and the point of this little historical piece, is some geography. Greene County is mountainous. Ruttenberg’s stood at the top of considerable elevation.
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Take a look, my father said to us on that day we visited. A dusty inclined plane, nothing there but greenery.
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What is left is a road sign, and a designation on local maps.[*]
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“Jew Hill,” (elevation 1,864 ft) is all that remains.
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After October 7, 2023
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Layer upon layer___waiting ’til
the pump that beats
falls still and____stops.
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Give me ground___a stone__a stalk
a place__firm__enough
_____to__stack
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hard Grief
that swallows wild
splits the rib cage
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open__raw__red
blood blackens__crusts over the soft core
where Tikvah used to sit.
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Witless Tikvah__spread
her naiveté___eagerly__+as a child
butters bread.
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Hashem__if you__can hear___help me.
It is hard______to stay____where
land____blood & eyes____are so weary
so scrutable.
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This may be about having had enough.
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This may be about wanting
the world to come.
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Ah, Faith!
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Orphee’s agony coincides
in mystery__=in irony__=in truth
with the Satmar and Lubovitch—
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breathless Jews in black frock coats
twisting through the hot-baked
streets of Crown Heights,
their wives running behind
dripping sweat under fashion wigs—
pulling gaggles of kinder
past the Kundalini Yogis of Soho
whose gleaming eyes flicker
whose breath comes
in deep gasps of ecstasy
rocking chanting davening swaying
all of them rooted to the earth
like ancient conifers
certain as rain in spring
that every human hair is counted
every snowflake a blessed original
as the glorious universe spins on
palpably innocent__a throb__=unfolding
exactly as it is meant to.
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Some Folks
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Some folks enjoy
Taping mice to fireworks
Constructing planks with nails
For the roadways.
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At the Music of Eurovision
Some folks don’t wish to allow
The Israeli’s to sing.
One very small swipe
Since the October massacre
That unleashed & legitimized
The gluttonous devour of flesh.
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Not enough headless corpses
To feed the gnawing lust hunger
For some folks
From the Netherlands from Ireland
From Spain from Slovenia
From Tlaib from Tucker
They must condemn defiance—
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That stubborn resistance to erasure by
Those partisans in tatters
From the ghettos, from Sobibor, Warsaw, Bialystok.
From Netanya, Kiryat Shmona, Haifa.
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For some folks
The Jew is most despised
when fighting back.
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[*] https://peakery.com/jew-hill-pennsylvania/
Table of Contents
Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. Her most recent poetry/art collection is The Painted Poem (Forest Woods Media, 2026).
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
