Aunt Miriam, Diva

My beautiful and glamorous great-aunt Miriam Elias lived a rather scandalous life,  or so goes the family legend!

Miriam was born in 1897 in Kamenets Podolski, Ukraine, a small village near Odessa.  Her village, she once told us,  was very much like the fictional shtetl Anatevka immortalized in Fiddler on the Roof.  

In fact her father was the village rabbi and like Tevya in Fiddler   he had five daughters.  Miriam was the adored youngest of those five Elias sisters,  and my paternal grandmother Esther was the eldest.  Years later,  after emigrating to the States,  Esther and her husband Sam eventually ran a small hotel in the Catskills.   (See also My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel,  My Game Mother,  Our Special Guests, Hotel Kittens and Rowboat)

But it was in Ukraine when my great-aunt Miriam was a very young girl  that her talent for singing and acting was evident.  She  began performing with a Yiddish-speaking drama club and later joined a professional Russian troupe.   And in 1916 at age 19 Miriam went to Moscow to join the Hebrew-language Habima Theatre where she first performed in the classic drama The Dybbuk.  She played the title role of Chanan,  the poor male student whose spirit, or dybbuk,  possesses the body of his beloved after his death.

There Miriam studied at the Moscow Art Theatre with the famous Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski,  and she told us,  had a love affair with a young Jewish  artist named Marc Chagall, and then married another young artist in that circle named Boris Aronson.

In 1923 the couple moved to the States where Miriam toured with a Yiddish troupe,  and Boris began designing sets for the theatre.   Their young marriage ended in divorce,  but Boris Aronson went on to great success winning six Tony awards and nominations in set design for shows including Fiddler on the Roof,  Cabaret,  Zorba, and Follies.

Throughout the 1930s and 40s Miriam acted regularly in theatre in the States and abroad,  but by the 1950s her career had peaked.  She then settled in Far Rockaway living next door to her sister,  my grandmother Esther,  and near two other Elias sisters who had also emigrated while their fifth sister remained in Ukraine.  With no children of her own Miriam doted on her nieces and nephews – my father Arthur among them – and later on her adored great-nieces and nephews  – I among that flock.

Miriam lived with uncle Meyer,  a kind and rather portly older Russian gentleman who obviously adored her.  Meyer was a candy importer,  and I remember crystal candy dishes full of halvah and other sweet treats in their living room,  and a large baby grand piano holding dozens of photos of Miriam in her many roles.

Although I called him uncle Meyer,  apparently he and Miriam weren’t legally husband and wife,  but when Meyer became quite ill they realized a marriage would avoid legal and financial complications after his death.  At that time to obtain a marriage license in New York couples were required to take blood tests called Wassermanns that detected syphilis.  But Meyer was too ill to have his blood drawn,  and so my physician-father drew his aunt’s blood and divided it into two vials!

Over the years that close-knit Elias family dispersed as marriage and work took my father,  his siblings,  and his cousins their separate ways.  After  the death of Meyer,  and later the death of her sisters,  Miriam sold her Rockaway house and moved to an apartment on Central Park West in mid-town Manhattan.

And so my aunt was living there on November 9, 1965 – the date of the great Northeast blackout – when New York City went dark.  By chance that afternoon I was shopping in mid-town  with my friend Stephanie.

As the city was in chaos with no trains or buses running,  neither Stephanie nor I could get home.   The phones were also out but I assumed at the late hour my aunt Miriam would be home,  and so we I walked to her apartment building.

Delighted to see us, Miriam set out cake and tea and several large candles,  and then regaled her two visitors with stories of her life and career.  She showed us scrapbooks of clippings and photographs – some of Miriam with Stanislavski,  with Marc Chagall,  and to our amazement even one with Albert Einstein – all  of whom had possibly been her lovers!

Over the next few years Miriam had occasional acting roles in New York,  but when those opportunities ceased,  and with age advancing,  she gave  up that lovely Central Park West apartment and moved into the Barbizon Hotel on Lexington Ave,  then an elegant residence for single women.

Busy with my own life – I was a working mom by then – I didn’t see Miriam very often although we both now lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  But I do remember once we had plans to see a Broadway show together and  I was to pick her up.

I had some chores to do in midtown first,  but was finished sooner than expected,  although too early to meet Miriam.   I had a good book with me and decided to spend an hour waiting in the comfortable Barbizon lobby before ringing up to tell Miriam I was there.

But when I got to the hotel well before the appointed hour,  Miriam was already downstairs waiting for me.  Impeccably groomed as always and wearing one of her long,  dramatic capes,  Miriam had come down early,  she said,  to be sure we wouldn’t miss the curtain.

Passionate about theatre,  Miriam certainly didn’t want to be late,  but I realized there was more at play.  My glamorous aunt,  once a grand dame on the international stage,  had out-lived sisters, husbands,  and lovers, and age had taken a toll on her beauty.  Behind the carefully made-up face and the elegant clothing was a frail,  elderly lady now living a somewhat lonely life.  Our theatre plan may have been her only outing for days.

I vowed then to see my aunt more often,  and to listen more attentively to the stories of her journey from that small Ukrainian village to some of the world’s great theatres and concert halls.  That I did,  and after she died I kept one of her lovely capes.

Rest in peace aunt Miriam,  my beautiful and beloved diva.

– Dana Susan Lehrman