As the first Spanish speakers when our Cuban family moved into Brooklyn’s Williamsburg section, we fit easily into that multicultural neighborhood. We picked up a little Italian, a few Greek and Polish words, lots of Yiddish and some heavily accented English.

I first heard the expression “Shabbes” when my mother sent me with a dime to buy a pair of black socks, but Mr. Rosenthal refused to open his Bedford Avenue dry goods store. He stood behind the locked door, glaring at me through the thick glass while snow and darkness began to fall on a Friday evening. "We're closed,” Mr. Rosenthal shook his head, “Can't you see it’s Shabbes?" The cold wetness covering my head made me think that “Shabbes” was Jewish for snow.

My “Shabbes” misperception didn't last long, as the area's dominant culture welcomed “Shabbes” each week with a palpable and pleasant tranquility. It was then that a family with an urgent need would dispatch a child to “get the Spanish boy.” That was me.

So began my “Shabbes Goy” career, lighting stoves, stoking coal furnaces, putting lights on or out, clearing snow and ice from slippery sidewalks and stoops, what the devout were forbidden by their religion on their holy day.

Friday afternoons I'd walk home from school sniffing the rich aroma from kitchens preparing that evening's special menu. I thought of the warm home-baked treats I'd bring home after my “Shabbes” rounds. My family became Jewish pastry junkies. I'm still addicted to checkerboard cake, halvah and Egg Creams (made only with Fox's U-bet chocolate syrup).

In our household we all loved the ends of bread loaves and, to keep peace, my father always decided who’d get them. One winter night I was rewarded for my “Shabbes” ministrations with a warm “challah” (we pronounced it "holly"). This was genius- a bread with crusted ends all over-- enough for everyone in a large family!

During the Depression, a nickel was a lot of “mazuma” and its economic power could buy a brand new Spaldeen, the pink-colored rubber ball produced by the Spalding Company - central to our endless street games: stickball or stoopball. On balmy summer evenings we converted South Tenth Street into Ebbets Field with the Dodgers' Dolph Camilli swinging a broom handle at a viciously curving Spaldeen thrown by the Giant's great lefty, Carl Hubbell. Our neighbors, magically transformed into spectators “kibitzing” from brownstone stoops and windows, were treated to a unique version of major league baseball.

My “Shabbes Goy” tenure ended after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. I withdrew from Brooklyn College the next day and joined the Army. In June 1944, the Army Air Corps shipped me home after flying sixty combat missions over Italy and the Balkans– to find that my Jewish neighbors had set a place for me at their supper tables every “Shabbes” throughout my absence, including me in their prayers. My homecoming was highlighted by wonderful invitations to dinner – after twenty-two months of Army field rations!

Thanks to my Jewish association, I learned the meaning of friendship, loyalty, honor and respect. I discovered obedience without subservience, and caring about all living things became as natural as breathing. A strong work ethic and purposeful dedication was manifest. Love of learning blossomed and I set higher standards for my loftier goals and dreams. No formal instruction; my “yeshiva” was the neighborhood. I absorbed these values by association and curious inquiry in the crucible of pre-World War II Williamsburg.

While my parents' Cuban home sheltered me with warm, intimate affection and provided for my well-being and self esteem, the Jewish families I came to know were a surrogate tribe that abetted my rite of passage to adulthood - a unique “Bar Mitzvah.”

In these twilight years when my good wife is occasionally told, "Your husband is a funny man," I'm aware that my humor has its roots in the Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, entertainers at Catskill resorts, and their imitators. And when I argue issues of human rights and am cautioned about showing too much zeal, I recall the “chutzpah” on Williamsburg sidewalks.

Along the way I played chess and one-wall handball, learned to fence, listened to Rimsky-Korsakov, ate roasted chestnuts, read Maimonides and studied Saul Alinsky. I am ever grateful for having had the opportunity to be a “Shabbes Goy.” Shalom!