In the mid-1920s, a group of Jewish woodworking students in Warsaw made two elaborate desks as centerpieces of traveling exhibits to show off their skills and seek more funding. The Jewish community in Poland, a nation newly independent in the wake of World War I, was extremely poor, so a group called the Organization for Rehabilitation Through Training (ORT) had opened technical schools in Warsaw (among other programs) to teach skilled trades to Polish Jews. Although ORT is a European organization, much of its funding came from prosperous American Jewish communities. They shipped one desk, part of a “suite for a man’s study,” to ORT headquarters in Berlin, and it is now in London, where the organization is currently based.
They sent the other one on tour to New York. And on a cold day in late March, two long-haired guys from Nebraska carried that second desk from their U-Haul through my front door and installed it in my living room.
It’s new to my house, but it’s always been part of my life, a landmark in my mental map of all the homes I lived in as a kid. When I was 7 or 8 and I wanted to pretend I was in some mysterious castle or wizard’s cave, especially if the winter meant I was stuck inside, I’d crawl under what we always called “the Belle desk.” It’s a grand wooden contraption, with intricate carvings of scrolls, grapevines and for some reason palm trees, a modesty screen (so you can’t see legs from the other side) shaped somewhat like a menorah in the middle, and a center drawer full of foreign coins, letter openers and other treasures. My mom and dad used the desk to handle the household bills. When my sister and I were young, my mother told me later, she would sit at the desk and cry as she tried to balance the checkbook. It was only after Mom died in 2018 that its contents became our generation’s business, a place to store bills and a checkbook, to build a support structure to preserve Dad’s independence for as long as possible.