Stars of David (17 page)

I ask if the rift with her parents had lasted. “Yes,” she replies. “I don't think things were ever the same, because things can't be. You love and need each other too much not to resume relations, but once you've gone through something like this, it's the end of innocence in a way. I know that they're not exactly what I thought they were and they realize that I wasn't quite the ever-compliant, eager-to-please daughter who was just almost entirely invested in making them happy and proud. This was my first real act of rebellion. I was claiming my own right to something which was not in their interest. And that was a first. They were not used to me being particularly feisty.”

She says she's been calmed by time passing and by her continuing probe into events that in many ways defined her parents' experience. “I have since spent so much time reading and studying and talking about this whole issue, that I am infinitely more understanding and tolerant of them. Because the Hungarian Holocaust was unique, and it was uniquely terrible.”

Her relationship with her parents has shifted in the last few years because of their age and infirmity. “It's fine now. Because I'm looking after them. I'm the caretaker. They depend on me for many things now.” (Ilona Marton died six months after we spoke—at age ninety-two.)

I find myself asking her if her parents ever said they erred in withholding the truth. “Yes,” she replies. “My mother has. She said, ‘We were wrong. Our motives were good. But we were wrong.' You see, when my family came here in the late fifties, people couldn't imagine that decades later, you'd go to Budapest for the weekend. The world was really divided then and we got out by the skin of our teeth. And they never wanted to look back.”

But she learned lessons from their choices that she vows not to repeat with her own children. Just the same way that her novel's Anna doesn't want her daughter “
to fall between cultures, the way she had
,” Marton has made sure her children understand theirs. They were raised as Christians— “When the kids were little and Peter cared more than I did, we used to go to the Episcopal Church”—but they know every corner of her past. “I didn't want there to be any mysteries,” she says. “Because it's very damaging to children to learn things late. I have taken both my children to Budapest and shown them all the sort of stations of my cross: where I lived, where my sister and I lived when my parents were arrested, where we hid during the revolution, which was the American Embassy.” (It's where she and her husband, Richard Holbrooke, were later wed.)

I assume that when Marton hears or reads about Auschwitz, there's a special resonance now. “It feels personal,” she affirms. “I tried watching
The Pianist
the other night and I just couldn't. It's beautiful, but it's very, very painful in a very personal way because I'm always thinking, ‘At what point did they know what was happening to them?' And my grandparents did push one of those postcards out from the train, which my mother got.” She's describing one of the desperate acts Jews made in the attempt to contact family as they were deported in cattle cars. “My mother's younger sister still lives in Budapest and she told me that they got this postcard saying, ‘We're on our way, and the important thing is that you are safe.'”

I wonder if, when she first learned of her true bloodlines, she suddenly looked at her then-small children and thought—Marton finishes my question: “‘They're half-Jewish'? Yes. And you know, Peter was really great about that. He thought it was wonderful and exotic. He'd not only married this Hungarian refugee, but he'd married a child of the Holocaust. I remember he went to the Middle East shortly thereafter and brought me back a ring, which I still have. It's a coin that was minted by the first Jewish state.”

Marton did not focus her career entirely on subjects surrounding her heritage. She went on to write
The Polk Conspiracy—Murder and Cover-up
in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, A Death in Jerusalem:
The Assassination by Jewish Extremists of the First Arab/Israeli Peacemaker
, and
Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History
. She hosted a weekly broadcast on international affairs on National Public Radio and became chairperson of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

But the fixation still lingers. As recently as the summer of 2002, she went to visit her grandparents' hometown of Miskolc, and wrote a forceful op-ed piece in the
New York Times
.
“I have come to this place in search of
the grandparents I never knew—or some memory of their world,”
she wrote, going on to describe her frustration at not meeting any townspeople who could direct her to the old synagogue—even those who worked across the street. Finally she manages to find it.

The interior wall of the courtyard is crowded with marble plaques honoring “the innocent people” who were “deported in the most brutal and dehumanizing manner.” The language is strong, even moving. But who sees these plaques behind locked gates? Not the people in the pub across the street, not those at the McDonald's a few blocks away, certainly not young Hungarians.

As I walk the bleak streets of Miskolc, I scan the faces of passersby. Where were you, where were your parents, what did you do before, during or after the disappearance of one quarter of your town's population? Were your parents my grandparents' neighbors? I feel slightly ashamed for thinking that these people share a collective guilt. But I cannot help it. The town of Miskolc has buried its past and so cannot expect redemption.

“I'm wondering if my parents wouldn't sleep better if we would have dealt with it early,” says Marton. “But they are sort of pre-Freudian, pre-analysis; their way of dealing with pain is not to touch it. And of course we always have to remind ourselves that being who they were was life-threatening. And therefore I am much less pious and judgmental today than I was twenty years ago.”

Part of the credit for that, she says, goes to her husband, Holbrooke, whom she married in 1994. “Richard was very calming when he came into my life,” says Marton. “I was still somewhat distanced from my parents and he was then—and is now—extraordinarily respectful of them and what they stand for, and always appeals to my most generous nature in forming judgments about them. Because he thinks they're such remarkable people who lived through the worst nightmares of the twentieth century and who emerged with grace and dignity and started new lives here. He just thought I was being too tough on them. In some ways, he's a much less judgmental person than I am.”

I remark that it's ironic, in a way, that she and Holbrooke are actually technically a Jewish couple. “Yes,” she says, as if the thought had never occurred to her. “Yes. If there's such a thing as Jewish genes, we have them.”

Does she feel Jewish now? “I certainly feel that who I am has definitely been shaped by these historic experiences; I'm only one generation from that. I see things in myself: my drive, my need to keep doing good works, the fact that I can never relax. I'm very happy, I love my life, but I can never say, ‘Okay, I'll take a year off now and have lunch with my friends and go skiing.' I'll never be able to do that. I think that was born of these genes. And the need to eternally prove myself worthy of my good fortune. I'm so damn lucky, and I want to—without sounding pious—I think I have a need to earn that good fortune. And whenever something really great happens to me—a good book review, or getting on the
New York Times
best-seller list with the last book—there's always a little voice in me that says”—she whispers—“‘That's for you, Grandma.'”

Joan Rivers

I HEAR JOAN RIVERS before I see her. “I'm coming! I'm coming!” she bellows from the elevator as she rides up to her private floor, where I'm waiting in her showily ornate Upper East Side town house. She's running late, but her assistant, Jocelyn, a friendly, no-nonsense type, has made me feel at home in an extremely formal parlor. It is stuffed with fancy things that hover between chic and gaudy: leopard carpet, dog statues flanking a fireplace, large tufted leather sofa, and embroidered pillow emblazoned with the adage, “
I need a man to spoil me or I don't need a man at all
.”

A butler—an actual white-jacketed
butler
named Kevin—has already brought me mineral water and pastel-colored cookies on a silver tray. I could get used to this. Jocelyn explains that her boss is rushing back from the annual Central Park Conservancy luncheon, which is known for its attendees' extravagant hats. “I hope she's still wearing hers,” I tell Jocelyn. “Oh, she'll keep it on,” she assures me, “because you don't want to see her hair underneath.”

Soon Rivers, seventy-two, appears in all her riotous finery—a hot pink satin suit with ruffled black chiffon blouse, black hose and matching fuchsia hat whose brim barely gets through the door. It's a loud entrance befitting the arbiter of awards show taste. “I'm sorry I'm late,” Rivers apologizes, as her three dogs—Veronica, Yorky, and Max—yap at her arrival.

She doesn't take the time to change into something more comfortable, and I worry that she can barely sit down in that tight pink skirt. Despite the surfeit of inviting furniture in the parlor, Rivers perches on a tiny ottoman opposite me (Jocelyn set it up ahead of time, knowing, I suppose, that's her preferred interview seat), and takes off her hat. “Please excuse my hair,” she says, “this is
really
hat hair.”

She actually seems human all of a sudden, despite her getup, despite the surgically taut face, despite decades of studied celebrity. And I'm surprised, frankly, at how bluntly, tribally Jewish she is. “The Jews take care of everything and everyone hates the Jews,” she says. “The blacks hate the Jews. You fools! Who marched with you?
Who marched with you?
Not the WASPS. Trust me; not the WASPS.”

She's fanatically watchful of anti-Semitism being more barefaced recently. “Oh, it definitely is. Look around,” she insists. “Queen Noor's book is number one on the
New York Times
best-seller list!” She's referring to the former first lady of Jordan, an American-born, half-Lebanese Princeton graduate who married King Hussein and wrote a book about her life in the Arab world. “Jewish people—Jewish
friends of mine
—went to her book signing!” Rivers moans. “Her book has
overt
anti-Semitism! I had a Jewish doctor of mine say, ‘No, no, no; she's my patient; she's not anti-Semitic.' I got so upset on the examination table. ‘Read the fucking book!' I yelled at him. ‘Read the
New York Times
review—you don't even have to
buy
the fucking book!'

“I did something at a dinner party.” Rivers isn't done with Noor. “I got her back. For the Jews. She was on one side of this host, who is a very famous person—I don't want to give names—and I was on the other side. And the host was supposed to talk to me for the hors d'oeuvres because I was the lesser guest, and then talk to her for the main course. And the gentleman spoke to me for the first course, and then I thought, ‘I'm going to keep him so amused, he's not going to talk to that bitch for the main course.' And I kept him talking to me for the
whole dinner
. And I thought to myself, ‘
That's for the Jews
.' I'll fix you, Queen Noor, you anti-Semite! Number one on the best-seller list! And who buys the books? Jews!”

Her loyalty is rabid and Israel has become her litmus test. “Let me tell you something: I left Clinton because he left Israel, and if Bush is in there defending Israel, I'll defend Bush. That's where my allegiance is. I'm the reverse of the Dixie Chicks.” She laughs. “Because Israel is not going to go down the tubes with Bush—we hope.” She thinks the Holy Land is truly in peril. “I worry that they're going to wipe it off the earth. I only hope that they'll take us all with them. Because Jews shouldn't go quietly this time. If they're going to kill us, we'll kill you right back.”

Rivers—formerly Joan Molinsky—grew up in Brooklyn on a street known as “Doctors' Row,” since so many physicians lived there. She remembers that during the war children were being sent from Europe to safety in New York. “There was always some doctor who had a niece or a cousin from Prague coming to live with them. And that's because these were kids that were being snuck out. I remember we lost relatives in France. I was old enough, in 1945, to hear all the Holocaust stories. The one that stays with me was one of the good Holocaust stories: An uncle was hidden through the whole war in one of his patient's cellars. And we had another uncle whom my mother was sending clothes to, who wrote us about a jacket he received: ‘When I put my hand in the pocket and I found gloves, I felt like a gentleman again.'”

When the Molinskys moved from Brooklyn to Larchmont—a New York City suburb—Rivers's father founded the temple there. The congregation met in the firehouse in its early days “because there were so few Jewish families,” Rivers explains, and her dad was the cantor until they found a professional. She is still proud of her father's gifted voice. “He sang to the end,” she says wistfully.

Two anti-Semitic incidents stand out from childhood. “I was having my teeth cleaned at our dentist, and he said, ‘You'll never make a good college because you're a Jew.' I was twelve. But see, that was good for me, because even then I thought, ‘Oh yeah? Want to bet?' It was almost like an impetus: ‘I'll show you, Doctor.'

“The second one was when I got a summer job in the junior department at Wanamaker's; I was fifteen and I worked all summer with another girl. And the last week she turned to me and looked at something on the clothing rack and said, ‘Ech, only Jews would buy this.' And I was in shock. We'd worked all summer together.”

Rivers attributes much of her moxie to her ethnic constitution: “Maybe it's that Jewish immigrant ethic of ‘I will do it' that I still have to this day.” Her fists go up. “Don't you dare tell me I can't do it. I always say to [daughter] Melissa, ‘Jews are smarter, we're brighter, and we can do it better.'”

We discuss Jews' reluctance to be viewed as
too Jewish
. “That's about class,” she asserts. “It goes back to all of us who are now a little more educated, polished, assimilated; you don't want to be that stereotyped, big-mouthed lady with too many diamonds.” (This is said without any discernible self-irony.) “There are certain clubs I know I can't get into even now. All my friends belong. I don't even want to be in them. No matter what—I could stand on my head—I'll never be in the Everglades Club. Across the street,” she gestures outside, “if there's ever a problem, I can never go into the Metropolitan Club.”

Did she ever feel she looked too Jewish? “Oh, I know I do!” She laughs heartily. “I look at pictures of myself and I look like what I am: a middle-aged or old Jewish matron. There it is. You are what you are. But I'm also so proud when it's a Jew that wins the Pulitzer Prize or the Nobel Prize. And conversely, I'm always so glad when the serial killer isn't Jewish.”

She concedes there are times she wishes she had a different religion: “Every time I see a good-looking German guy in leather.” She laughs again. “Show me a blond blue-eyed guy in leather and I'll say, ‘Oh, what a pity I'm Jewish!'”

But her parents instilled an unshakable self-respect and urged her to marry within the faith. “It was important to me, too,” she adds. “First of all we're the chosen people, and I like that we're continuing; I don't want it to stop. If these people have struggled thousands and thousands of years, it should not stop with me. Who am I to say, ‘You buried your candles during the Inquisition and now I've decided not to continue'? And I love going to temple—I love Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah. And then when Hanukkah's over, I do the biggest Christmas tree you can imagine! But I love the Jewish tradition. On Passover, I look forward to doing my meal. I love when you break the fast on Yom Kippur.” She fasts? “No. Never have. I don't think God cares.”

She says she feels moved in temple when she hears prayers like the Shema. “At those moments, I'm in the right place and I'm doing something I've done every year of my life and it's a tremendous landmark for me. And if I don't go to synagogue on Yom Kippur night, I'm devastated. I missed
one
once.” It was eighteen years ago, Kol Nidre night, when she and Melissa walked into their usual synagogue on Fifth Avenue, Temple Emanu-El. “My husband, Edgar, had just killed himself in August, and we went into the service here in New York and it was pouring rain and we were ten minutes late—
with tickets!—assigned seats!
And some smart-ass said, ‘You can't come in.' And we said, ‘We'll sit in the back.' And he said, ‘You can't come in.'”

Distraught, she decided to salvage the holiest day of the year by going shopping. “I took Melissa and we went to Ralph Lauren. Polo. And we
bought
. I said, ‘We're going to do something to make this better.' And then the next year on Yom Kippur, we were walking into temple, and that bastard came to me and said, ‘Surprise! I'm the one that didn't let you in last year.' And I said to him, ‘I only hope it happens to your family.' And he said to me, ‘It's Yom Kippur! How can you say a thing like that?' And I said, ‘Look what you did to
me
on Yom Kippur!'”

When Edgar Rosenberg died, Rivers found the Jewish ritual of sitting shivah for a week—receiving friends and family at home—to be curative. “Oh, I think it's wonderful,” she says. “It makes sense! Seven days of eating and talking and laughing and crying and being in the house is so great because you're so happy to be quiet finally when everybody goes home. It's so brilliant: Then you're so happy to be able to go out of your house again. And meanwhile they've kept you going. Shivah's wonderful.”

She says she also drew strength from a heritage of pluck and perseverance. “It's all about survival. My husband's
entire
family was killed in the Holocaust; I have a little pillbox upstairs that's all that's left of his German family. So I'm not here to fall apart.”

The Holocaust seems to be at the forefront of her consciousness. Even when she watched Melissa costar in the ludicrous ABC reality show
I'm a
Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!
(2003), she connected it to Auschwitz: “When Melissa came back, I said to her, ‘I watched you on that program and thought to myself, ‘You could have survived the death camps.' That's where the mind of the Jew goes, watching someone go through what Melissa was doing. I said to her, ‘You were strong enough; maybe you would have gotten through.'”

After her husband's suicide in 1987, she eventually started dating again. “I was going out for a while with a man who was very Jewish. And I loved that; he lit the candles and cut the challah, and I loved that. I loved everything but this man.”

Was it important to her that Melissa marry someone Jewish? “Not as important,” Rivers says as she shakes her head. “Because I could see the handwriting on the wall, and I don't know why.” In other words, she could see Melissa gravitated toward non-Jewish men, despite her upbringing. “She came from a Jewish family, we had the traditions, she went to Sunday school, but she's never connected with Jewish boys. And it makes me terribly sad, because I still believe all the clichés: They still make the best husbands.” How so? “I think they're more for home and hearth. I think they're really into their work. They don't drink as much. Everything they laugh about is absolutely true. And so I was quite disappointed.