After their honeymoon, Max Gass and Adele Korff moved into the home of Max's parents at 27 County Road in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Adele’s father Grand Rabbi Jacob Korff foresaw conflicts from this living arrangement, which threw two exceptionally strong-willed people together—Adele and her father-in-law, Samuel Gass. According to Adele:

“My father was a very wise man and he said, My child, take a room, but by yourself with your husband. However, my father-in-law wanted Max and me to live in his home. Always a good conniver, Sam said, Even a criminal gets a chance. Try it. If you don't like it you can move out.”

So the newlyweds joined Sam’s household, which included his wife Lena, their unmarried daughters Anna (age 22), Minnie (age 20), and Patty (age 15), as well as their married daughter Ida (age 25) and her husband Jonas Ullian, a pharmacist. Ida, who had wed nearly 2 years earlier, was pregnant with her first child.

Although Sam was extremely generous and effective in dealing with his extended family and the Jewish community, he had difficulty translating this spirit of generosity to his own immediate family. He ruled with an iron hand and had encountered little resistance from the members of his household until Adele came along. In Adele, he had finally met his match and he respected her feisty spirit. However, his vocal admiration for his daughter-in-law set Adele apart from his daughters and so Adele’s relationship with her sisters-in-law, especially Minnie and Ida, was not harmonious. Adele explained:

“Sam tried to ingratiate himself with me and in the process he fostered animosity between his daughters and me. He praised me, bragging that I could do anything, and if anything needed to be done they should ask me for help. Now, if I was one of his daughters I would have been resentful. He created a lot of hard feelings.”

Adele thought that in addition to her father-in-law’s favor, the gifts she received from Max—a 2½-caret marquis engagement ring and a Persian lamb coat—also made her sisters-in-law jealous, but Adele's son Paul had a different opinion:

“The tension between my mother and her sisters-in-law probably arose from differences in outlook and lack of maturity. My mother's personality and background were extremely different from theirs. She was raised in the strict Hasidic tradition of service and sacrifice for the greater good of the community. Her sisters-in-law had experienced a more typical American middle-class upbringing. The friction was more a clash of culture than anything else. In addition, all of them, including my mother, were relatively young when my mother joined the family. They lacked the maturity to deal with their differences.”

The tense living arrangement led Max and Adele to move from 27 Country Road after only a couple of months. Adele explained why Sam fought hard to keep them in his home:

“My father-in- law tried to put obstacles in my way to prevent Max and me from moving out because my husband was the rent collector, the garbage collector, the chauffeur, everything. At that time my husband worked for Sam in the shoe factory and didn't draw his salary. Sam collected Max's salary and gave Max an allowance.”

Nevertheless, the couple moved to a spacious, top-floor apartment on Murray Street in Chelsea, and that is where they began their family.

Children

Adele was so young and protected when she married she actually was ignorant of the facts of life. One month after her wedding, she became pregnant but didn’t know it. Adele explained how she discovered she was pregnant:

“I didn't know much about sex and I was so naive that I thought that you got pregnant if you were unwell and got kissed. Max had kissed me when we had a shower and I wasn't feeling good. I came home, to my father's house, and I kept punching my stomach. I walked around like death warmed over. And my father said to me, What's the matter?

“Nothing, I answered. I was so ashamed. I couldn't be pregnant in his eyes. I was really very ignorant of the facts of life.

I had cramps and my brother Samuel came to visit me. I was in bed and he wanted to know what was wrong. So I told him I hadn't had my period in more than a month. He called the doctor and the doctor told me I was pregnant and had to stay in bed for a couple of weeks to prevent a miscarriage. My friend, Eva Quacher, came and took care of me. She told me the facts of life.

Paul Gass was born in 1938, the first grandson on both sides of the family. Eight days after his birth, the family had a bris (ritual circumcision), and at that time Paul received his Hebrew name, Pesach, after Sam's father.[1] A month after Paul's birth, the family observed another ritual in their home: the redemption, or buying back, of the firstborn son.[2]

Paul Gass's early years

Two years later, Adele was pregnant again and the family moved to 33 Fremont Avenue in Chelsea. Adele loved her new surroundings:

“Our Chelsea home was a big house and I loved to garden in the yard. We had a beautiful rose garden with a white trellis through it and around it. I loved to cut the roses and bring them inside. We also grew grapes on another trellis and Max tried to make wine from them in the basement. The grapes would always rot and Max would dump them in the rose garden. We had the reddest wine-colored roses!”

The Gasses second child, Janet was born in the spring of 1940, and the family held a naming ceremony for her at the synagogue, where she was given the name Gittel for Adele’s martyred mother.

Max, Paul, and Janet

Max and Adele’s third child, Jay Marshall Gass was born in August 1944. At the bris he was given the name Mordechai for Adele’s paternal grandfather.

Click here to read about Adele’s first haircut.
 

     
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