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A funny thing happened on the way to age 102
By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL GULFPORT -- The day humorist Jacob Adler turned one century old, he proved he hadn't lost a step. "It's better to be alive for 100 years than to be dead one week," Adler said in 1972 when friends and family honored him. When asked how one gets to be 100, he replied: "Just wait. Just wait." Before moving to Gulfport in the mid 1930s, Adler had published more than 30 years of hilarity in the largest Yiddish publication in the world. He would write another three decades using 15 pen names, eliciting laughs in a dozen books, 18,000 poems and more than 30,000 columns. "Adler is living proof that old columnists never die, they just keep on writing," journalist Dick Bothwell said. "He is one of the best-known humorists in the Jewish literary world." Adler was born in Dynov, Austria, in 1873. At 17, he traveled 19 days and 19 nights on an ocean liner to live with his aunt and uncle in New Haven, Conn. After his uncle's counsel, Adler became a tailor like his father, who was also a cantor. "Here in America," Adler's uncle said, "a craftsman is far more esteemed than a rabbi, a cantor or any kind of clergy for that matter." As a tailor's apprentice, Adler labored sometimes 18 hours a day in a sweatshop. Half a loaf of unbuttered bread and a tomato made lunch. He suffered a nervous breakdown. After experimenting with poetry in 1895, Adler began writing with the labor-socialist Daily Forward in New York City for $35 a week. He married at age 23 and gave up tailoring. "He wrote and wrote. I was his inspiration," said Celia, Adler's wife of 74 years. Adler's salary ballooned to $120 a week, and his poems earned him $15 each. He was sought nationwide as a speaker. When asked how much credit his wife deserved for his success, Adler joked: "Credit is something you get at Maas Brothers." By 1919, Adler had written his first book, Poems and Reminiscences From the Old Country, and had published several magazines. In the Forward under his pseudonym B. Kovner, he was still entertaining readers from Argentina to New York, from Europe to South Africa. In 1924, Adler left New York for Lakewood, N.J., and befriended scientist Albert Einstein. "Sundays, my father would drive over and he and Einstein would sit and talk," said Bertha Klausner, one of Adler's five children. "He in Yiddish, Einstein in German. They had a fine time." About 1937, after stays in Miami and St. Petersburg, the Adlers moved to Gulfport. Adler continued with the Forward, which had a readership of 275,000 and was the world's largest Yiddish-language publication. Adler's characters became common vernacular in Yiddish communities worldwide. Irksome women were known as Yente Telebende, a nagging wife in Adler's column; cantankerous men were labeled Moishe Kapoir, whom Adler also featured in a best-selling book. "People used to read his column every day," said Sam Einstein, 81, former president of Congregation Beth Sholom in Gulfport. Adler began his days at 5 a.m. Breakfast was oatmeal, an egg and coffee. He then would write in Yiddish for an hour. "Laughter makes one young," Adler wrote in his book Cheerful Moments. "It makes the blood circulate faster, the heart dance and the spirit soar. If I were a doctor, I would advise my patients to resort to laughter. But what doctor would undermine the source of his income?" From 11 a.m. until lunch, Adler read Jewish newspapers. Guests at his home on 57th Street S would highlight his day. "He had a kindly, warm smile," said Bunny Katz, 75, who met the humorist as a teen. "Everyone would say, "Oh, we got a celebrity in our midst.' " In 1953, Adler helped start Congregation Beth Sholom. "One of the founders and first presidents 1953-1958," reads a plaque dedicated Dec. 12, 1970 at the synagogue. "In tribute to his untiring devotion for the betterment of Jewish life in our community." Meyer Possick, 90, who built the temple, said: "He wanted to speak only Yiddish." Adler also spoke Polish, German, English and Hebrew, and had a bird that spoke Yiddish. "Adler had a brilliant mind, full of wit and smart sayings. He had a good heart and a clear mind when he was better than 90 years old." Adler stopped writing at age 99 in 1972, the year Celia died. His column continued in the Forward after his death in 1975 at age 102, however. Bothwell explained: "He has written about 500 (columns) in advance." -- Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com.
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