One especially torrid day in May 1966, my father, trapped in the steamy confines of a New York City subway car, swore to himself that this was the last year he would suffer through such an unbearable commute. He flew to Los Angeles and made a deal with Harelick, who was happy to sell the store to his young friend.
By August, we had moved to the West Coast.
Michael Harelick was in his late eighties when he sold the store to my father. He became very ill the very next year, 1967. But my father still kept Harelick's name on the store out of respect for a bookman of the fading Yiddish literary scene. He changed it, finally, in 1970, and only by adding his name to Harelick's.
The last time I was in Los Angeles I made a point of driving by 9427 West Pico Boulevard, the location of my father’s Jewish bookstore from 1979 to 1990.
Entering the store, you faced the checkout counter directly ahead. Behind it was my father's desk, and behind him was his rare and fine bookcase; thus if you had a question or request, or were in search of something hard to find, the answer could be found here in the heart of the store.
Rightward from the entrance, at the far end of the new-book table, was a large support column on which hung a sepia-tone photograph of a bearded old Jew in an old-fashioned, wide-brim biberhit, a beaver hat. He is leaning on a shtender, a lectern, in front of a Torah ark and looking straight into the camera. That was my great-great-grandfather, Dovid Roth.
Facing new challenges, my father moved to larger quarters in Beverly Hills, adjacent to Beth Jacob Congregation and Hillel Hebrew Academy, thinking to mimic the book superstore model. The new location was modern, box-like, and cold.
By the spring of 1994, the shelves and tables of J. Roth/Bookseller were thinned out and filled with gaps, and both Jewish and non-Jewish publishers began refusing my father's orders. In June, he sold what stock remained to another Jewish bookstore that took over his lease, and though he could have declared bankruptcy, he instead worked out repayment schedules with his many creditors. He paid the last of them off in 2004.
