G-d September 21,2022

Writing the title without the vowel shows my hypocrisy right away. The orthodox tradition requires that the name of the diety not be spelled out, lest the paper or parchment on which it is written, must never be discarded improperly. Why do I uphold that tradition when I have rejected so many others?

It is quite appropriate that I write about this subject now, as we approach the High Holidays and what I have decided to do a month  after they have passed. 

My understanding of Judaism has of course changed during my long lifetime. My father was my initial guide to religion; my mother to ritual, mostly food, practices. As a child, we lit candles on Friday evening, ate challah which we purchased and had chicken soup and chicken to eat. We were not poor; it was however, wartime, when I was a child and I was eight, in third grade and in my first year of Hebrew School when my mother's parents, my Oma and Opa arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey on  the first troop ship to be converted to carrying refugees from Europe to the United States.

I was there, at harborside, with my parents, my mother's brother Willie and his wife, my Aunt Lisa, plus Auunt Lillie, my grandmother's brother Benno's wife. Uncle Benno had to work and couldn't join us in the long drive, the wait and the drive home. My four year-old sister held my hand the whole time! To keep me safe or was I protecting her?

I am thinking about that now, as I finished watching the PBS documentary, Part one , the United States and the Holocaust which describes events in Germany from 1933-1938. My parents and grandparents lived through all of those humiliations.

I also just saw Tom Stoppard's new play Leoppoldstadt which so subtley portrays the tension the Jewish people felt during those years.

This was the tension between life and death, between beatings, and being made to scrub the floors, or to sign away all of one's lifelong earnings and possessions to flee with nothing, but their lives to begin again somewhere else.

G-d was nowhere in that equation.

My father told me quite plainly that I had to learn all about my religion because, as Jews we were never safe anywhere in the world, even in the United States of America which had held all of his hopes. I had to learn all about my religion because he wanted me to be accepted and able to attend services in any country in which I may someday live, among my own people. G-d was not there, either.

So I did. I was a decent student, when I applied myself, but I faced ostracism in my Hebrew School. I was treated less than, because I am female and becuse my father kept his furniture store open on Saturdays.

Meanwhile, none of my studies mentioned G-d either. .We learned to read Hebrew and to write the letters in script, we studied the prayers to read them quickly and without error. We studied the ritual of the Saturday morning service and were excused from any sermons, or from the memorial prayers on the High Holidays.

I was disrespected  as a woman all the way up to 1976 when my father died and I was not counted as part of the ten people needed to recite the memorial prayers during the first seven days of shiva.

At those services, the small books included the twenty-third psalm, the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.

I am now learning what the words in Hebrew in the Torah mean. It is of utmost importance for me to do that now.. And I am learning how to chant two sections of one week's chapter so I can finally read from that holy scroll.

I love the stories and the moral lessons we can relate to even today, from stories and explanations from so long ago, but sadly, I have not found G-d.

Legacies August 22, 2022

My heart and my head are full as I wake up leisurely this morning. We have death anniiversaries this week of our father, who died in 1976 and of our grandmother, who died during this week in 1968.  I have written much about each of these towering figures in our family's life. How my father at the end of his life, at 64, opted for additional surgery which his heart could not tolerate, because he refused to live life as a dependent person. I was quite angry with him for many years, after he shared that information with me. I actually told him he was depriving all of us of him by his choice. I understand it better now. And my grandmother hung onto life so strongly as she became weaker and weaker. Our grandfather had died the previous June 12, just twelve weeks earlier and our Oma wanted and waited to see my sister's second son be born and named after his great grandfather. He was born on July 17, was named eight days later.

Yesterday I met a young family in the park. I can''t quite believe the mom , Stephanie, is already  fifty years old. She is the daughter of my dear friend, Bernice, one of us four women who  supported each other while pursuing our graduate degrees at NYU in the  early 1980's. Bernice, who never smoked, died of lung cancer in 2002, never having met her son-in-law, nor this adorable four year old grandson.

Stephanie's dad died soon after, leaving a lovely house with a huge yard in a cozy town outside the city. Everyone advised her to sell it. She was determined to keep it and to move back into it, one day. In November, they moved back from California, where she had been living all this time. She had found renters, she had paid off the mortgage and they are now modernizing this contemporary style ranch house.

So much strength of character.

Do we All Necessarily Become our Mothers? August 2, 2022

Until now, I think I have created a life very unlike my mother's. My mom, I will have to be careful, as I was never permitted to use the pronoun "she" when speaking of her, was very handy. She cooked, she sewed, she knit, she collected and saved anything that could be used for arts and crafts in her nursery school class. When I was an only child, until age 4, my mom also painted in oils on an easel set up next to her baby grand piano, which she also played.

During the war, coupons were used to ration food. After the war, S&H Green Stamps were awarded for certain purchases. The stamps were pasted in a folder and could be redeemed. So mom collected and used coupons. When she moved to the suburbs and learned to drive,, she had several super markets from which to choose. They printed circulars. Mom cut out the coupons for items we used regularly and went to each supermarket to get the items . We adult kids made fun of her for doing that as the gasoline expended cost more than the savings.

Actually, one of the initial signs of dementia I noted were 2 liter bottles of Doctor Pepper I found in her refrigerator. By then, she lived alone and none of us ever drank soda, let alone Dr. Pepper. When the family was together, before the grandparents died, we had selzer delivered and my dad and grandfather would make spritzzers, Manishewitz wine and selzer with dinner.

Fast forward to today. I had been awarded a five dollar coupon, the first I have ever received, from Gristedes. It is Tuesday when seniors get ten percent off on their orders. I buy very few things at Gristedes, as I also have choices and this market is more expensive than others, but they carry some products the others don't, like Hebrew National salami, which  they seldom have in stock. So I enter the store, look for the salami and almost immediately put plan B into action. I choose a package of frozen strawberries, at five ninety-nine, head to the cashier where she deducts my ten percent and accepts the coupon and I leave so happy I spent only 36 cents for my purchase!

Bucket List July 22, 2022

My number one bucket list goal has always been to live to 100, with brain intact and walking upright.

Will I someday have a serious problem with my knee? I tore the meniscus climbing down the rocky outcroppings at Zion National Park when I was 75. I wore a brace for six weeks, getting wanded at the airport before  x ray surveillance was in place. But the pain subsided and I've been able to walk amazingly well since then. Every once in a while, I have a flare-up. A few years ago, I had a cortizone shot into the knee, but from then until this morning, I have been fine.

Wednesday evening, after dinner and a theater performance of Chains w ith my friend Carol D., we walked home from 42nd St , me to 86 and she to 90 and Riverside.

Yesterday, I rested, not attending my NIA class and this morning I woke up to a really sharp pain, which has by now subsided.

This event has not however, put a damper on my great news of the week. After my successful yearly physical, I have been kvelling over my height measurement. After years of diminishing height plus covid restrictions and months of inaction left over from my bout  of pneumonia, I have now measured 154 centimeters on the height scale.

Having reached my tallest at 5'1 1/2", my height had been diminishing yearly . The conversion makes me 5 feet tall once more, thanks I think, to my hiring Domni in February in Arizona to work with me and returning to the JCC since the end of May.

I had been worried that I've been "slowing down." My recall for names and faces, even for the main idea of books I've read or movies I've seen when asked by others at the spur of the moment, has definitely declined. I now understand a bit better what I have known all along. As we develop from infancy, each at different rates and to differing ability levels, we continue into old age, growing and developing, but also diminishing, each at different rates. Acceptance,  resistance and resilience are key.

My Father's Birthday July 15, 2022

My father was born 109 years ago in Brzozov Poland, in German speaking Galicia. He was the fourth child, the youngest, in awe of his older sister and brother 9 and 11 years his senior and a bit contemptuous, even as a child , of his father's favorite, his next brother Julius, two years older than he. Everyone coddled my father since he was four and survived scarlet fever and a pogrom, in which he had been placed on the bed covered in quilts and bolts of cloth as the Cossacks ransacked his parents' fabric store and the rooms behind it. When they went to uncover him, the boy was blue and had to be revived.

His sister had been hidden under the bed as the maurauders raped nubile girls and were known to kidnap young boys.

A few years later, the family experienced another pogrom, Polish youth the perpetrators then and Wolf, the oldest boy had gone into the street to protect the neighborhood with a group of Jewish youth. It was 1918 and his grandfather had recently died, leaving the family an inheritance and a larger fabrics business, which gave them the capital they needed to move from Poland.

Where did they go? As they spoke German, it was reasonable to expect them to move to Germany. Why Frankfurt?

I have only surmises. In Poland, Krakow was a center for textiles. My grandfather began to specialize in suit lining materials which were made of silk. These were delivered to Frankfurt from the east. Perhaps the shipping costs were less and the arrival of the goods was more dependable.

By age seven, German children began school which was free until age fourteen. I know nothing of their public school years, but I do know, as soon as Jewish fathers were successful, even modestly, in business, they opted to choose a Jewish private school for their children's secondary school experience.

Since  the oldest son was fourteen and was graduated from primary school, he was involved with politics in Frankfurt as he had been in Poland.  He was also studying the violin.When Hitler came to power in 1933, Wolf had to flee Frankfurt. He went to Paris, ostensibly to continue his violin lessons. He had a job playing violin in a cabaret.He may still have been working to prevent the brown shirts, or the Nazi party, from gaining power.

Friedl, the only daughter went to Vienna, lived with extended family members and pursued training as an actress, achieving a level of success and acclaim, playing on stages all over Europe with a travelling performance troupe.

By then, only Julius and my father, Max, were at home. Julius began to help his father in business and in politics. Only Max applied, and was granted admission to the Philantropin, the prestigious Jewish Lyceum, or secondary school. It was by then 1927. From what I can piece together, my father had several peaceful years from then until 1933, enjoying high school and college , already deeply connected to his one and only girlfriend, our mom.

Atachment Theory and Children of Holocaust survivors July 4 2022

Two disparate events set me to thinking this morning about memory and attachment. The first is my continued reading of Philip Roth's Operation Shylock and a poem by Nancy Ludmerer about missing her deceased cat.

I happened on another Philip Roth novel after many years. I read his contemporary novels. This is one set in 1988  and published in 1993. I found this one through a series of talks by JTS, the Jewish Theological Assn webinars on Stories and Storytelling. I watched  the last one entitled Not All about Eve, about Genesis and I started the series because of my studies about the Noah chapter in Genesis for my talk in October. One thing leads to another. 

The remorse poem about the cat's death was on Facebook this morning.

By the time I set the stage for this story, I am afraid I'll forget why I am writing it. I am getting texts from Linda intermittently and she is so unhappy.

Philip Roth grew up in Newark, living on Leslie Street where my Grandma Rosa rented a room and I went to visit her in the afternoons when I had no Hebrew school or on the weekend, from like ages 10 to 15. Then we moved to Millburn and I saw her less often and never alone.

Philip Roth went to Chancellor Avenue School as I did,, which is also mentioned in this book. He had Mrs. Duchin for fourth grade. So did I, seven years later! In another of his books, he mentions the gym teacher whom he calls Mr. Kantor, but his name was Mr. Keniwoth. H e was also my gym teacher during the years when I had terrible nighmares of Nazi soldiers in jodphers , carrying whips as they marched us around the gym and made us climb the ropes and the horses and the parallel bars.

Of course I was unable to tell anyone about my Nazi nightmares because my parent s and grandparents did not know I understood all the horrid stories the grandparents told over and over again to their friends and relatives who had survived the war, safe in the US as I had. I guess I felt guilty about that, too.

I also know that my mother told me so many stories of her dog Toddie, whom she had to leave behind in Germany when my parents emigrated in 1937. She missed him so much during the war years when she walked us to the park in the afternoon. Rita was in the stroller and,  as I often quote, my mother wanted me to hold on to the stroller when I wanted to walk alongside her without holding on.

We children always wanted a pet, but I was 15 before we moved into our own house and we got Friskie, a wire-haired fox terrier. I left home for college soon after Friskie entered our lives. I remember he ate Sharyn's unwanted food from the floor where she secretly gave it to him, but I do not remember being especially attached to him. We had a parakeet, who my Oma tried to teach to say "Pretty blue boy" unsuccessfully and chicks at springtime one year  who were sent "to the farm" when they became chickens or ducks, whatever they were destined to be. 

I soon married, had children and pets of all kinds..I loved them, cared for them, but I don't remember any of the strong feelings my contemporaries have for their current and lost pets.

Why?

My cousin Carol once described me dismissively, as a "specist." She said I put people above plants and other animals. Indeed I do, although I never understood that as a flaw before she kind of accused me with it.

And I think that, too, is a result of my being the daughter of the Holocaust. Although surely Toddie died in Germany, my  mother was so much more distraught over the imminent loss of her parents during the years when she knew not where they were or if they lived, she could not give equal weight to the dog she left behind. Her gratitude when HIAS informed her that her parents had contacted the agency and were once again in Frankfurt, Germany was overwhelming.

The idea, when a pet died, that it was "only a pet" was born then. A pet could be replaced. Family members could not.

Mood Lifters July 1,2022

After watching the House Internal Committtee on  the January 6 attempted coup on our government plus the outrageous rulings by a 6-3 Supreme Court, it was difficult to rejoice in our first female Black Justice taking the oath yesterday. It is difficult each day , even with the sunshine and warm weather to rejoice in nature, to feel the gratitude for good health and increasing stamina, to enjoy the studying I am doing in researchhing Noah and getting lost in the commentaries of the the first part of Genesis, Barashit.

My daughter's stepmother who had been sick for many years, causing Linda so much divided loyalty feelings added to her grief at losing another parent, died this week. My feelings were complicated. I want to be supportive of my daughter, but there is so little she can accept from me. I settled for sending a long email about how she needed to act as Power of Attorney and spoke only words of love .

I could only focus on getting to the gym, adding a yoga class each week to my two dance classes, and almost getting my 7500 steps in every day.

I, who have so much, drowned for a while in self pity, upset that my old friends are less available to go and do and my new friends have other, younger companions to spend time with. My peers with whom I volunteered last Friday packing food for the poor, bickered with each other which was not pleasant. One woman who was not there, told me by email afterward that she broke her back and was staying out of the city for a while to recover. I ws upset that I had not inviited Steve to come to the city to share my birthday and to share my reminiscences of Bob on today, his Yahrzeit, the death aniversary I commemorate each year. Seven years ago today and Steve was by his side, not me.

I thought I was past the stages of grief and mourning, but my mood  reflected my memories of the wonderful times we had, overwhelmed by his suffering and mine through his many years of Alzheimer's.

Where did the mood lifters come from? One friend invited me to dinner tonight. Another accepted my invite to spend time tomorrow. I purchased tickets to a play for next week and Naomi will have dinner and see another play with me on my birthday. I will not be alone.