Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

MR. MONDAY

UR NEIGHBOURHOOD COBBLERS NAME was Monday. Mr. Monday we all called him. That was not his real name, but no one ever called him anything else. His real name sounded somewhat like Mozejekofsky or Moskofsky or Moshekofsky or something equally unpronounceable.

Mr. Monday was not what you'd call a real Dutchman, either. His father and mother came to Holland from Poland or Russia when he was about six years old, because a bloody pogrom was raging in their home country. Originally it had been the intention of the family to move on to America, but there were many such Jews as themselves in Amsterdam, so they decided to stay there.

The family rented a back room on the third floor of a house in Manege Street in the Jewish quarter. Because Dutch people sprained their tongues on their outlandish name, they took unto themselves the name of "Maandag" (Monday)... just to make it easy.

Why Monday and not Tuesday or Wednesday? Perhaps because they wanted an easy sounding name starting with the letter "M" like in their real name, and that it just happened to be a Monday that day.

When they had lived there for a couple of years, they rented the front room too. With it they got a kitchen and a