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A Holocaust survivor and her family saw ‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway play told their story.
(New York Jewish Week) — On a Wednesday evening last month, three generations of a Jewish family made their way to their seats at the Longacre Theater to see “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic Broadway play about the tragedies that befall an extended Jewish family in the first half of the 20th century in Vienna.
The date of the family gathering was a significant one: Nov. 9, the 84th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms known as Kristallnacht. And in the audience was Fini Konstat, 96, who lived in the once thriving Jewish neighborhood after which the play is named, and witnessed the horrors it portrays first-hand. Alongside her were her daughter and her son-in-law, Renee and James Akers, and her oldest great-grandchild, Lexi Levin, 23.
When Konstat was a child, she lived in a “nice apartment” in Leopoldstadt. But exactly 84 years to the day of their theater date, “I was running with my father, seeing all the Jewish stores with all their windows broken,” she told Levin in a short video her great-granddaughter filmed before the curtain rose.
“It’s such a blessing for me to be here with you,” Levin said to her great-grandmother in response. “Ninety-six years old, survived a pandemic, at a Broadway show in New York City.”
Left: Fini as a child on the balcony of her apartment in Leopoldstadt. Right: Fini with her three children in front of the very same building, pictured in 2015. (Courtesy)
Since the beginning of its Broadway run in mid-September, “Leopoldstadt,” with its depiction of a prosperous Viennese family on the brink of destruction, has moved audiences to tears and inspired deep reflections on the Holocaust. Based on the celebrated playwright’s own family history — of which he was barely aware while growing up in England — it has provided a stark counterpoint to news about rising antisemitism and the celebrities who have been purveying it.
But for Konstat, the play was much more personal. “When I heard the word ‘Leopoldstadt,’ this alone gave me lots of thrills and memories,” Konstat, who is known in her family as Mimi, told the New York Jewish Week in accented English. She recalled how Levin, who recently moved to the city, invited her to fly to New York to see one of Broadway’s hottest tickets.
“Leopoldstadt,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “The second district. That’s where we lived.”
At the end of Stoppard’s five-act play, audiences learn that most of the Jewish characters had perished under the Nazis — of the four generations in the show, just three cousins survive to carry on the family’s legacy.
For Konstat too, she and her parents were among the very few in their extended family to survive the Holocaust. “Almost all of them went to Auschwitz or other camps,” Konstat said. “My mother was a twin and only the twins remained alive. [My mother’s] five other siblings and my grandmother perished.”
L-R: Renee Akers, James Akers, Lexi Levin and Fini Konstat at the Longacre Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt on Broadway,’ Nov. 9, 2022. (Courtesy)
In a Zoom conversation held over Thanksgiving weekend, Konstat, surrounded by two of her daughters, two of her granddaughters and three of her great-granddaughters, shared what the play meant to her — and how her family has restored what she lost.
In the months after Kristallnacht in 1938, Konstat and her parents hid in a neighbor’s apartment; Konstat recalls hiding under the duvet when German soldiers showed up. Eventually the family fled to Turkey, and then to India, before settling down in Mexico City. There, the teenage Fini met her husband David, also a survivor who escaped Poland. The two of them began to write the rest of their story — starting with the birth of the first of their three children in 1948.
Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Fini and David Konstat were open about their experiences during the war, instilling a sense of pride and duty to remember in their children — something that eventually extended to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“They were proud to speak about how they survived this,” said the Konstats’ middle child, Renee Konstat Akers. “Their life was an odyssey. They had the courage to do things that you would never think were possible. We grew up grateful knowing how our family survived in that incredible way.”
Each child moved to different places as they grew up and got married. Manuel, the oldest, stayed in Mexico. Renee married an American and moved to the Midwest, and Denise, the youngest, to Houston. Each became deeply involved in their Jewish communities, sending their children (Konstat’s grandchildren) to Jewish day schools, celebrating Jewish holidays and participating in synagogue life.
“The word ‘miracle’ really does not feel like an understatement in this scenario,” said Sherry Levin, one of Konstat’s grandchildren. “When we think about what it took for my grandmother and grandfather to survive and how they were able to intersect in Mexico, and such an amazing multi-generational family has come to fruition, it feels miraculous.”
Pictured here on their 40th anniversary, Fini and her husband David met in Mexico City after both had fled Europe. They were married 54 years before David died in 2001. (Courtesy)
Reviews of the show have ranged from rhapsodic to resistant, with some critics suggesting the play is simplistic and obvious in its story-telling or that it is less a well-crafted play than a well-meaning lesson on the Holocaust.
But just as the Merz family clashes and argues about everything from antisemitism to intermarriage to socialism in “Leopoldstadt,” each generation of the Konstat family that saw “Leopoldstadt” that night came away with something different — a reaction influenced by their age, their Jewish identity, their nationality and their relationship with their family.
For Konstat, the arc of “Leopoldstadt” was so familiar that it hardly stirred her. “It was just very happy watching it and enjoying it and enjoying my children with me, “ she told the New York Jewish Week. “I didn’t think about anybody else.”
Akers, too, felt an intense familiarity with the story, and, perhaps toughened by her own family history, didn’t experience an intense emotional reaction. Her own parents’ lives gave Akers a sense of purpose in her life — for example, in the 1990s, she was passionate about helping resettle Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union. With her own children, she instilled in them a strong sense of Jewish purpose in their work, their education and their family.
“I was a sandwich in between seeing my mother and my granddaughter,” she said of her “Leopoldstadt” experience. “I was emotional thinking of my mom who went through it, but I was more emotional about seeing my granddaughter be so moved. It really hit her at her core.”
Indeed, it was the youngest member of the family present that night who was most shaken by the play.
“It really felt like a gift to my family and to me, specifically, to be able to see what Mimi’s life looked like before the war,” Lexi Levin said, surmising that, as a fourth-generation survivor, she is among the first in her family to be able to start processing the loss on a grander scale.
“For the first time in my life, I really felt the magnitude of her loss,” she added. “I’ve known her story and I’ve been inspired by her story to be involved with my own Jewish causes, but I have never been able to access and truly empathize with her grief and what it meant that she lost the entire family she had before this one that she created.”
Turning to her great-grandmother, as if trying to make her understand the exact precision of the show, Levin explained, “It’s a play about generations and the family was large and then it was small.”
“You made it large again,” she said, referring to the generations of family that had assembled — in the Broadway theater and again over Thanksgiving weekend. “Look at this room.”
Pictured on her 90th birthday in 2017, Fini Konstat now has three children, ten grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. (Courtesy)
There was a coda for the family after the curtain went down. The day after the show, the family wanted to see the 1907 “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings, which currently hangs at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. A version of the portrait’s true story — how a painting of a socialite from a prominent Viennese Jewish family was looted by the Nazis and the family’s efforts to get it back — features in the plot of “Leopoldstadt.”
The gallery, however, was closed on the only day the family could visit. After a call to the management at the gallery, which showcases the German and Austrian art collections of Jewish philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, the gallery’s director arranged a private tour.
“It felt like we were in a puzzle and everything was finally coming together,” said Akers. “It was an emotional, emotional time.”
When the week was over and the emotions were spent, Konstat and the Akers returned home with a reignited passion for their family story. But there was yet another twist: In addition to the whirlwind trip Levin planned for her grandparents and for Mimi, she had been undergoing the laborious process of applying for Austrian citizenship. Six members in Konstat’s large family have undertaken the process over the last two years.
“Part of the motivation was knowing Mimi’s story, and knowing that she survived because her mother had citizenship in Turkey,” Levin said. “That story was just inspirational to me, knowing that dual citizenship was what saved our family.” She convinced her brother and mother to apply for Austrian citizenship as well.
The day after her grandmother and great-grandmother left New York, Levin called them with news from her small apartment in Manhattan: An Austrian passport had arrived in the mail. The curtain was rising on another act.
Konstat was surprised at how interested her family was in getting Austrian citizenship. “I feel very good,” she said. “I’m very happy.”
“Does it make you emotional?” Levin asked her during the Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.
“It does — of course it does. I used to love Austria,” she said. “I was sad to leave. I was disappointed. We never thought of coming back. I was happy to be able to escape. Thank God we made it out of hell.”
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Clavicular cuts a path across Tel Aviv, dividing pro-Israel influencers over his record of antisemitism
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — When Israeli influencer Aaron Morali realized that the celebrity drawing a crowd at the Loullie beach club on Saturday night was Braden Peters — better known as Clavicular — he alerted staff.
He knew that in addition to being a prominent “looksmaxxing” influencer, Peters had appeared alongside the white supremacist Nick Fuentes singing Ye’s “Heil Hitler” and otherwise consorted with antisemites.
“We thought maybe he was a big influencer supporting Israel,” Morali told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But we very quickly understood that he wasn’t.”
Peters was soon asked to leave the club. But elsewhere along the beach in Tel Aviv, Clavicular has gotten a warm reception. Even though he is closely associated with an online ecosystem steeped in antisemitism, a number of pro-Israel and Jewish influencers have enthusiastically filmed content with him in Israel, and crowds of young Israelis have gathered around him as he livestreams from beaches and nightclubs.
The welcome has bewildered many of Peters’ own followers. His livestreams from Israel have been filled with comments accusing him of selling out, urging him to “kiss the wall” — a reference to the Western Wall that has become a taunt in some far-right online circles — and mocking him for embracing Israel.
In addition to becoming well known for his efforts to optimize his physical appearance, Peters drew attention in January when he was part of a group at Miami’s Vendôme nightclub — including Fuentes and the manosphere influencers Sneako and Andrew Tate — singing along to ‘Heil Hitler,’ the Ye song that samples a speech by Adolf Hitler.
Amid a backlash, Peters doubled down. “I am not sorry. I don’t apologize for what I did,” he said at the time. “I would do it again today.”
Now, Clavicular’s visit to Tel Aviv has raised questions about why he was admitted to Israel given the country’s recent record of denying entry to right- and left-wing figures with records of antisemitic and anti-Israel activity. The Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism declined to comment about Clavicular’s entry into Israel.
It has also exposed a divide in the pro-Israel influencer community. Some influencers have sought to partner with Clavicular to film content, attempting to springboard into his vast audience and taking pride in presence at a time when Israel is widely seen as a pariah. Others have decried his presence, his content objectifying Israeli women and the readiness of fellow Jews to overlook his antisemitic activity.
Orthodox Jewish influencer Golda Daphna posted a series of Instagram videos criticizing Peters during his visit. In one video, she played a recording in which Peters, after being shown a photo of an Israeli woman, says, “Does she want to have sex? Just tell the girls I’m looking to have sex in a bathroom.” In another post, Daphna criticized fellow pro-Israel influencers who collaborated with him, writing, “Whoever gives this behavior a platform, in my opinion, has ended their career.”
Eden Sisson, another influencer involved in hasbara, or public diplomacy on Israel’s behalf, similarly urged Israeli women not to appear in Peters’ videos. “Don’t give him the attention he’s looking for. If he approaches you with a camera, think twice before participating,” she wrote. Referring to his past use of Nazi slogans and symbols, she added, “Someone who has chosen to use Nazi slogans and symbols in the past does not deserve your trust.”
The influencer Hallel Abramowitz-Silverman, writing in the Jerusalem Post, denounced what she said was “a growing culture within parts of Israel’s advocacy and creator community that mistakes influence for integrity.” She added, “Somewhere along the way, we started believing that if someone has enough followers, we should be grateful they’re willing to talk to us at all — even if they have spent years platforming hatred, extremism, or misogyny.”
Peters could not be reached for comment via multiple channels and multiple attempts by JTA. He told The Free Press that he had come to Israel because it was “unexplored territory” for major influencers, few of whom have broadcast from the country, which he said was “viral.”
Among those willing to engage with Peters was Rabbi Yossi Farro, who has built a large social media following by wrapping tefillin on celebrities and what he calls “powerful Jews.”
Farro met Peters for lunch at the Royal Beach Hotel in Tel Aviv and later posted a video presenting him with a necklace combining the OpenAI logo and a Star of David, joking that it amounted to “ChatGPT mogging David,” using internet slang meaning to outshine or dominate someone. Farro later wrote that Peters was “loving Israel and Israel is loving him.”
Farro did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Meanwhile Shira Braun, an influencer whose bio says she is “representing Jewish & Israeli women,” appeared in videos with Clavicular in which she was presented as his girlfriend. She said she had received death threats as a result.
Their collaborations with Peters drew swift criticism from other pro-Israel creators, who argued that collaborating with someone associated with antisemitism risked legitimizing him while exposing Israelis to manipulation.
“If he approaches you with a camera, think twice before participating,” Channel 12 personality Hagar Amgar warned on Instagram. “A few seconds of footage can be edited, taken out of context, and shared with millions of people.”
Some prominent advocates went further. Yoseph Haddad, the Arab Israeli activist and influencer, called for Peters to be deported.
Peters also briefly crossed paths with Topaz Luk, a longtime adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the Tel Aviv nightclub Shlavata. Peters has said he hopes to film a “collab” with Netanyahu himself, whom he calls “The Big Yahu.”
Luk described the encounter as coincidental in an interview with the Israeli outlet Walla. He said Peters “asked to express regret over his antisemitic statement,” and said the influencer told him he was in Israel to show the truth about the country and planned to meet Holocaust survivors and issue a public apology. Luk was skeptical: “We’ll wait and see,” he told the outlet.
Peters’ connection to online antisemites continued during his Israel visit. He shared a post by Fuentes during his trip. And his stream chat has been filled with antisemitic and anti-Israel comments, with viewers deriding him as a sellout, hurling slurs and mocking the trip; his former friend, the streamer Sneako, who has espoused Islamist views, publicly lamented the visit, while an AI-generated image of Peters kissing the Western Wall circulated on X.
Peters has also commented repeatedly on stream about Israeli women, calling them “Stacys,” looksmaxxing slang for attractive women.
In response to backlash from his fans over the visit to Israel, Peters told The Free Press that he is “not a political guy” and that the trip was not about wading into the Israeli-Palestinian debate.
Peters’ presence in Israel has puzzled many of his critics.
The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has recently urged the Population and Immigration Authority, which has the power to permit or deny entry to Israel, to bar prominent figures on both the right and left who have drawn allegations antisemitism and anti-Israel activity.
In May, Israel denied entry to the streamer Tyler Oliveira, who had made the Hasidic community in Kiryas Joel, New York, and the Orthodox community of Lakewood, New Jersey, the targets of his content. He was deported back to the United States after landing at Ben Gurion Airport, and Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli confirmed the decision on X, resurfacing a month-old post in which Oliveira had asked whether Israel would let him into the country and replying with one word: ‘No.’”
Peters has a lengthy record of run-ins with the law in the United States, one standard by which those who seek to visit Israel are sometimes denied. He was charged with unlawfully discharging a firearm in Florida after appearing to shoot a dead alligator in the Everglades on a livestream, resolving the case in May through a plea deal that carried six months of probation and 20 hours of community service.
He was arrested earlier this year in Arizona on suspicion of drug possession and using a fake ID. Maricopa County prosecutors subsequently dropped the charges, citing no reasonable likelihood of conviction. He is also being sued in civil court by an influencer who alleges he sexually assaulted her when she was 16. His lawyer has denied the claims, calling them unproven.
Morali, who rose to fame as a cast member on “Love Island Israel,” has joined the growing chorus asking why Peters was allowed to enter Israel in the first place. “Obviously we welcome everybody to Israel, but whoever is posting content against us or doing something controversial, that’s a bit more tricky,” he told JTA.
Morali said he was at the club for a night out with friends when he spotted Peters standing outside. The video he filmed of Peters standing outside the nightclub, which he captioned, “We don’t need any antisemites here. Am Israel Chai,” quickly went viral.
According to Morali, after Peters entered the beach club with his security detail and began approaching patrons and trying to film content, security began to take notice. Loullie did not respond to a JTA request for comment but confirmed the account to Israeli media.
“We decided to tell the right people about it so something could be done, because we didn’t feel comfortable having someone with his camera in everyone’s face, filming something that could potentially harm our country,” Morali said. “They removed him right away. And I must say, I’m proud of them for doing that.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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How Shabbat bound Lindsey Graham to Joe Lieberman
Lindsey Graham did not always know what time Shabbat started, but he always knew when it ended. That was the joke the South Carolina Republican made while remembering his close friend, the late Sen. Joe Lieberman, at a memorial service in Washington in 2024.
In his remarks, Graham said that while traveling around the world with his Senate colleague, Lieberman, an observant Jew and author of a book about Shabbat, always knew exactly when sundown arrived on Friday, no matter where they were. After years of traveling together, Graham joked, he learned to recognize when Shabbat ended on Saturday “so we didn’t have to do this anymore.”
This past Saturday evening, almost exactly as Shabbat came to a close, Graham died after suffering an apparent heart attack at his Capitol Hill townhouse. Emergency dispatch audio indicates first responders were called to his home at around 8:30 p.m. after a report of chest pains.
The two politicians from different sides of the aisle first became close when Graham joined the Senate in 2003, joining an already close friendship between Lieberman and Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018. Despite disagreeing on many domestic issues, Graham and Lieberman bonded over shared views about American leadership abroad, traveling together to the world’s most dangerous conflict zones in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The three senators, who became known as the “Three Amigos,” also made repeated trips to Israel.
At Lieberman’s memorial, Graham recalled one of their more memorable trips together, accompanying McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Graham said he was pinned against the ancient stones by photographers scrambling for the perfect shot and injured his knee. “They crushed me against the wall, and I began to wail,” Graham joked, referencing the site’s English name, the Wailing Wall. Lieberman, he recalled, helped pull him back to his feet.
Months later, during a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Colorado, Lieberman brought the Tibetan spiritual leader over to Graham and asked if he could heal his injured knee. The Dalai Lama placed a hand on it and asked if it felt any better. “No,” Graham replied.
“I didn’t think so,” the Dalai Lama quipped.
A strong ally of Israel
Israel occupied a central place in Graham’s political career. He was one of Congress’ strongest supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance, pushed for a tough approach toward Iran and backed efforts to expand peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Axios reported Sunday that Graham spent his final weeks working on a renewed push aimed at normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that he and Graham disagreed over Israel’s recent proposal to phase out U.S. military assistance in the coming years, amid growing criticism of aid to Israel from both parties. Graham “went ballistic,” Netanyahu said. “He said, ‘No way. You can’t do that.’ He was so concerned with our security, which he believed was your security, that he actually fought the prime minister of Israel on keeping America’s aid – or actually increasing it.”
As news of Graham’s death spread Saturday night, Jewish organizations and leaders mourned his passing and reflected on the legacy he leaves as one of the Senate’s strongest advocates for Israel and Jewish causes.
In his farewell to Lieberman two years ago, Graham concluded: “One of the best things that ever happened to Lindsey Graham was to meet Joe Lieberman. So until we meet again, my amigo, God bless.”
For those who watched their friendship over the years, it is hard not to imagine that somewhere beyond this world, McCain, Lieberman and Graham have found each other once again.
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I was there when the lights went out and New York was plunged into darkness
I’m the lifelong resident of a vast and complicated metropolis that smugly prides itself on never stopping. Subways, buses and cabs running day and night, bodegas and diners open 24/7, hundreds of thousands of people at work or out partying somewhere, bike couriers and truck drivers making deliveries — all in a town with a million moving parts, where the show always goes on — until, suddenly, it doesn’t.
I was reminded of that one evening not long ago in a drab Chinese restaurant uptown on Broadway, clutching a pair of wooden chopsticks poised to shovel another mound of chicken and walnuts into my mouth.
Music was playing softly over the house PA system. The melody suddenly sounded strangely familiar, but oddly out of place in those surroundings. I froze mid-bite, trying to place what I was hearing. Then it hit me. I glanced at my dinner companion Ann Aptaker, author of the Cantor Gold noir crime novels.
“Wow,” I said. “Do you hear that?”
She paused, tilted her head slightly, then raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s Threepenny Opera!”
Sure enough, the song drifting through the room was Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s wickedly jaunty tango, “Ballad of Immoral Earnings.” Even stranger, it was a track from my favorite production of the show: the Lincoln Center revival from decades ago, starring the late, great Raul Julia as Mack the Knife and Ellen Greene as his favorite prostitute, Jenny Diver.
“Of all things! What a weird song to play while people are eating,” I mused.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in a restaurant before,” she agreed. “And certainly not a Chinese place.”
“They must have good taste in musicals.”
Shrugging, we resumed picking away at our dinner. A minute later another song from the same show began to play. We gaped at each other.
“They’re playing the whole album!” I sputtered. “What are the odds?”
Ann frowned and paused. then suddenly whirled to reach into the pocket of her denim jacket hanging behind her chair. She pulled out her phone, and the music instantly grew louder. We both laughed. She must have leaned back against her jacket and set off her music app. Whew — mystery solved!
But hearing those distinctive strains of Weill’s score transported me back to one of the hottest summers New York City had ever endured.
It was 1977, the year I attended an outdoor performance of Threepenny Opera at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. My mother and a roommate from Pratt had joined me that night.
The Delacorte sits beneath the stone towers of Belvedere Castle, lit by floodlamps like a fairytale illustration, open to the sky and the sounds of the city beyond the trees. On a good night it can feel magical. On this particularly sweltering night, the air hung over us in the audience like a damp blanket as Philip Bosco, who had replaced Raul Julia for this summer staging, swaggered across the stage as Mack the Knife, and Ellen Greene reprised her role as Jenny.
And then — just as she was belting out her furious solo number, Pirate Jenny — all the lights shut off. Greene’s mic abruptly went dead, and the band lurched sourly out of tune before grinding to a halt.
We were plunged into pitch darkness. For a moment, there was silence.
Then the crowd began to buzz nervously. Was this part of the show? I’d seen the play several times before, and knew that it most definitely was not.
A few awkward minutes later, some of the cast reappeared wielding flashlights. While the tech crew worked on the electricity, the band filled the darkness with some lively jazz. Rubber-limbed dancer Tony Azito pranced around jovially in the flickering beams, easing the mood for a spell. But that age-old theater adage, the show must go on, was about to bite the dust.
The house manager finally stepped up on stage to make an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we just learned that there’s been a massive power failure at Con Edison. It’s not just us; the whole city is dark!”
We didn’t know it yet, but this was the Big Blackout of July 13, 1977, and there we were, thousands of us stranded smack in the middle of Central Park. There wasn’t even much of a moon out that night, so it was really, really dark.
“Well, this is some pickle,” Mom said.
We wondered how the hell we were going to get out of there.
I vividly recalled the last big blackout in New York City, the one in 1965. I was just a young kid back then and safely at home, so it had actually been fun. While my mother lit a few Sabbath candles, my little sister and I roamed from room to room pretending we were in a haunted house. Meanwhile, our poor Dad had to trudge back to Brooklyn from midtown Manhattan — a five-hour hike in hot leather shoes.
But this time felt very different. I was far from the safety of home, trapped in the middle of what might as well have been a forest at night. Central Park is beautiful when you can see it. In pitch darkness it’s downright hazardous.
“Guess we’ll all just have to sleep in the park tonight,” I cracked. Neither Mom nor my Pratt roomie were laughing.
Thankfully, a phalanx of city cops eventually arrived to help guide us out. Audience members, cast and crew all joined hands as we carefully made our way along the park’s winding paths, stepping over roots and curbs, catching one another when someone stumbled. Our only illumination came from a few scattered police car headlights.
A walk that normally takes ten minutes took forever, but eventually we emerged onto Central Park West.
The scene was eerie. Streetlamps were dark. Traffic lights were out. Cars sat frozen in the intersections. Not a single apartment window was lit. For a city that never sleeps, it felt as if someone had suddenly flipped off the master switch.
Then I spotted something: “Look, the buses are still running!”
A city bus was rumbling slowly toward us, brightly lit inside. With the subways dead, getting back to my dorm in Brooklyn would have been impossible, so Mom’s place on the Upper East Side looked like the safest destination. She had temporarily split with my Dad and was living there with a roommate at the time.
The three of us squeezed aboard along with what felt like half the audience, and somehow made it across town to First Avenue. As we approached my mother’s high-rise, a dreadful thought suddenly hit me.
“Mom, what floor are you on again?”
“Twenty-five,” she replied grimly.
Of course both elevators were dead. We trudged up 25 flights of stairs in complete darkness, arriving exhausted and panting. My mother fumbled with her key, finally opening the door to reveal Sylvia, her gravel-voiced, seen-it-all Long Island roommate, standing there with her ever-present cigarette tip glowing in the dark.
“Come on in, darlings,” she rasped dryly. “Join the party.”
Sylvia had lit a few candles around the apartment, the only light we’d see that night.
Outside, the city was far from peaceful. While we tried to sleep on sofa cushions on the floor, one of the worst nights of unrest in New York history was unfolding in the streets below. Store windows were smashed. Shops were looted. Garbage cans were set on fire.
Lying there in the dim glow of flickering candlelight, hearing distant sirens punctuated by the sudden crash of breaking glass somewhere in the darkness below, I felt a growing sense of dread. An evening that had begun with music and theater had improbably ended with Manhattan plunged into darkness, its fragile machinery suddenly exposed.
By morning the city looked as though it had survived a world war.
This resilient burg has been battered and bruised over the years, enduring terrorist attacks, blackouts, blizzards, hurricanes, floods, garbage strikes, transit strikes, and the occasional collapse of its aging infrastructure. Yet somehow it manages to reset and lurch forward each time, improvising solutions the way Tony Azito danced in the dark that night at the Delacorte.
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