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I grew up in one of the most
enchanted places on earth:
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Brooklyn, New York of the 1950s
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I lived in an apartment above a
toy store
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on Coney Island Avenue in
Brooklyn.
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And if you went down the
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little staircase onto Coney
Island Avenue,
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you would encounter people
from—literally—from all over
the world.
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I remember my father would
sit down at the table and
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give us the account of who
moved into the neighborhood.
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We have some Polish people who
moved into the neighborhood.
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Some French people moved into
the neighborhood.
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Some refugees moved into the
neighborhood.
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I thought refugees were from
the country of refuge.
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We were all crammed into this
little apartment.
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We didn't know we were poor.
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We just, we just knew we had to
hustle.
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And my parents did.
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They were hard workers.
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My mom had two part time jobs
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at any given time, but she was
always home to make dinner for us.
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And we had a little bitty kitchen,
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and what was interesting is that
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right across from our window lived
Mr. and Mrs. Schneider.
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And I recall, on a spring day—
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it was a beautiful bright spring day
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I was standing at the
windowsill in my kitchen
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looking in to Mrs. Schneider's Kitchen
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And Mrs. Schneider was
making something.
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And she had a kind of very
1950s
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colored dress on with short
sleeves, and
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she had an apron on, and she
was stirring
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and she was adding things to it.
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Turned out she was making what
are called rugala.
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I can best describe them as a
kind of Eastern European
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pastry; very flaky and
delectable.
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And it's made, the ingredients are,
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oh, walnuts, and raisins,
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and cinnamon, and sugar, and
a little bit of flour. And
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she'd be mixing this in this
bowl with some butter. And
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then she was rolling out some
dough.
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And then she would cut the
dough into triangles.
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Then she'd begin dropping
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some of the ingredients and
rolling
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them into crescents
, effectively,
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and placing them on a cookie
sheet, which she
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then slid into her Wedgwood
oven.
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And pretty soon the fragrance
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was wafting from her window
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into my window, and I was
frankly mesmerized
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by the undulating motions of
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back and forth, inside the
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oven and outside.
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And during this whole period of
time
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Mrs Schneider didn't look at
me once.
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She was busy about making the
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rugala, until the end.
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And that's when she pulled out
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this tray of rugala, and then
she looked
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directly at me and she said,
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"You'll come; I'll give you to eat."
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And so I scampered up over my
windowsill,
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and walked the two or three
steps to her
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windowsill, and held out my
greedy little hands. And
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she placed the napkin on my
hands, and she proceeded
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to place these warm luscious
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rugala into the napkin.
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And I could smell them, and
feel the warmth of them.
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And as Mrs. Schneider did this,
I noticed
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on her bare arm
there were a series
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of blue tattooed numbers that
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were on her forearm.
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And I didn't know what that meant.
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I'm kind of confused and to be
honest with you I was really
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concentrating on the rugala.
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I thanked her and went back
into my kitchen and
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immediately wrapped them up
nicely,
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and moved the bread
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box just a little bit so I
could slide them
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in the back of the bread box,
and
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kind of put the bread box back
into position
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so that my siblings wouldn't
know that they were there.
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You know, the Sirico's raised
no dumb children.
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And I remember my mother was
working around
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the house that day, and
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she was half paying attention
to me in the kitchen.
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And I told her that Mrs.
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Schneider had given me these
goodies.
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And I said "but mom, why does
Mrs.
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Schneider have blue numbers on
her arm?"
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Mrs. Schneider gave me some rugala!
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Oh, okay good.
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Can I ask you something?
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Sure, what's that?
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Why does she have these
numbers on her arm?
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Well, let's talk.
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And she sat me down at our
kitchen table
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and she said, you know when
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you watch the Western movies
on television
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on Saturday morning?
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And I said, Yeah.
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And she said you know how the
Cowboys will
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catch a calf? I said Yeah.
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They lasso them, and they
turn them upside down.
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She said then what do they do?
I said, well
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then they brand them.
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And she said, why do they brand
them?
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And I said well, so that all
the other cowboys
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will know who owns this calf.
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And she said, that's what some
people did
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to Mr. and Mrs. Schneider.
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They thought they owned them
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and they could do that to them.
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That's what those numbers are.
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They're branded
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And I was horrified.
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I don't remember if my mother
elaborated on that,
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but I do remember my initial,
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visceral, instinctual
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repulsion that anyone
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would treat another human
being like an animal.
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You know that conversation I
had with my mother
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that day formed the way
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I viewed everything else that
unfolded.
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It caused me to see the civil
rights movement
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in a whole new way, when
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I saw kids being beaten up,
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or had dogs sicked on them,
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or hosed down with fire hoses
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because they wanted to eat at
a Woolworth's;
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when I saw the unfolding of
what happened in Cuba,
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or in the Vietnam War, or in China.
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As I began to observe the world
around me,
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I observed all of it from
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the lens of who human beings are
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and their dignity, their
inherent dignity.
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Now for a number of those
years, especially for me
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in the 70s, I was very much
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about activism, and defending
human rights,
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and defending the justice of people.
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I can't say from my perspective
now that I
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understood it all as well as I
understood it now.
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But the primary motivator
of all of that
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was this anthropological vision,
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that unless we understand
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who human beings are
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unless we get the anthropology right
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no matter what political or
economic systems
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we put in place—
unless we get that right
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we don't get anything else right.
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Right in that whole experience
and what I learned
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became the seed of
what I would later found
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in the Acton Institute.
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But really, it became the
grounding
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of my whole understanding of
human relationships.
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Namely that human beings have a
dignity
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beyond their utility;
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that human beings have
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an inherent dignity that's part and parcel
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of who they are, because they are.
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And what this lesson in
anthropology
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taught me about economics
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is that to have any kind of
economic system
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that could be called just,
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could be worthy of the human person,
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it has to have the human being
at the center.
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So that human beings are not
instrumental for someone else,
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and for their use and
their utility.
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But economics is the action
that human beings take
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on behalf ofthemselves,
and upon behalf of their families
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for human betterment, for
human flourishing.
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So really this whole
encounter that I have
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the whole memory
contained the seeds
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of what I understand to
be
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an authentic understanding
of economics as well.
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You know my mother didn't have
an eighth grade education,
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but in that moment she
communicated
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to me the most profound
lesson in moral
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theology and moral philosophy
that I have ever had
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from that day to this day.
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And it really all goes back
that dish of rugala
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that Mrs. Schneider gave me
that spring day.
