It All Started With a Deli. M. Hirsh Goldberg

the youngest of the brothers, Leonard remained at the Talmudical Academy as the school eventually expanded its Hebrew and secular classes, adding a junior high and then a high school. At first, classes were taught in Yiddish since many of the teachers, themselves immigrants knowing little English, translated from the Hebrew into Yiddish. Later, instruction was in English and instructors of secular classes were both Jewish and non-Jewish, with many teachers experienced public school instructors. While Edward and Seymour went on to graduate from public high schools, Leonard graduated in one of Talmudical Academy’s earliest 12th grades.

      Says Leonard about his Jewish education, “That gave me the values that I live with today and probably have been the most help to me in my business, my social life and attaining what success I have been able to achieve.”

      The family belonged to Shomrei Mishmeres, an Orthodox synagogue now referred to as the Lloyd Street Shul, which was down the street from where the Jewish Museum of Maryland now stands. The building featured a balcony for the women worshippers and a downstairs mikvah, frequented at separate times by women and men. Before Passover, matzoh was baked on the basement level. All three Attman boys had their Bar Mitzvahs in this shul. Ida cooked and baked the food for the Bar Mitzvah kiddush held after Sabbath services in the synagogue’s reception hall, making her own honey cake, mandel bread and chickpeas mixture (called nahit). As with most Bar Mitzvahs of the day, no additional parties or festivities were held, but Ida arranged for that Sunday for the Jewish Education Alliance’s orchestra, in which Ed was a member, to entertain at the Levindale nursing home, along with serving ice cream and cake, all as a way to tie in a Bar Mitzvah celebration with an act of visiting the sick and elderly. Leonard’s was the last Bar Mitzvah to be celebrated in the Lloyd Street synagogue before it closed.

      The memory that lingers for the Attman boys is how their parents took interest and pride in them. Every Friday night, at the Sabbath table, after Harry made Kiddush, he had each of the boys make Kiddush. During the meal, Harry would ask them what they had learned that week in Hebrew school and, recalls Leonard, “how we are supposed to act in a traditional way.” Following the benching (Grace After Meals), Harry and the children would sing zemiros, the songs associated with the Sabbath. Leonard still remembers fondly that on the walks to and from synagogue on Saturday morning, holding his father’s hand, his father would question him about that week’s Torah portion.

      Ida was always the mother, advising them on ways to dress and act in public, helping them plan for their future, caring about their needs. One example stands out. After Ed was drafted into the army in 1941, the family worried about his safety. This concern increased when they did not receive any mail or hear from him for a month. One day, an individual came into the store and told Harry that he thought he saw Eddie on a newsreel being shown at a movie house on Lexington Street. It was a brief segment, he said, but it looked like Eddie was among a group of soldiers exercising on a ship somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean heading for North Africa. When she heard this, Ida immediately took a streetcar to see the newsreel.

      “I went with her and recall it vividly,” Leonard recounted in a taped interview for the Jewish Americans series. “Whatever the movie was wasn’t important. We waited for the newsreel. And sure enough, when the newsreel came on, there were a group of guys standing on a ship, exercising in their shorts and shirts, and we saw my brother.”

      Ida was enthralled, alternately cheerful and tearful. She stayed and waited through the repeat of the movie until the newsreel came on again. And she then stayed to see the newsreel a third time.

      “My mother stayed and saw the newsreel until midnight, until after the movies closed,” said Leonard.

      In coming days, Ida went back “day after day” until the newsreel showing Eddie was deleted from that part of the news.

      By the end of World War II, Attman’s Delicatessen was a well-known fixture on Lombard Street. As the oldest of the Attman boys, Ed, on his return from military service, was looking to start a career and a family. Harry and Ida could now turn their attention to helping Ed—and later, Seymour and Leonard—launch the next phase of their lives. The Attman brothers would have a special foundation on which to start. Their parents had already set a memorable example, showing each of them how to build a successful business while raising a family with lasting, meaningful values.

      Chapter Four

      “MUCH MORE THAN PAPER”: EDWARD CREATES A

      MULTI-STATE ENTERPRISE

      “Ed has such a positive attitude. He has a dogged determination

      and works very hard for his customers. He also has high integrity,

      a man of his word. When you combine those traits, you have the ingredients for success.”

       — Jim Alexy, CEO, Network Services Co., a $7 billion global distribution organization to which Acme Paper & Supply belongs as one of only 82 members in the U.S.