Part Three The Final Words of my High HOlidays Musings September 30, 2022

Yom Kippur is called The day of Repentance or the Day of Return. Rabbi Pilchik of Temple B'nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, NJ, called this Day of Atonement the Day of at-one-ment, where we all come together as one and say the words of all the inequities we have uttered in the name of the diety to be abolished, whether we have said them willingly or under duress, in public or in private, under whatever stress we have found ourselves during the past year.

I generally see this confession as our way of forgiving ourselves and the diety for all of our losses, failures and disappointments which prompt us to take the name of the diety in vain.

For me, when I drop the eggshell into the matzo ball mixture with the eggs, I often say " Oh shit!"

I am reminded of that epithet when I remember my first-born son saying just those words at age 18 months as he mistakenly hit his thumb with his toy hammer and wooden pegs.

"Oh sugar," said I, the contrite mother. "No, Mommy," he replied sweetly, "Oh shit."

It is actually a very good epithat. It is a universal activity which occurs internally and is only observed by the senses when it is expelled and completed. It is a necessary and important part of our digestive systems and of little importance when it occurs regularly with no effort, but which takes on immeasurable importance when it occurs at an inopportune moment or place or when encountered by someone or something else in an inappropriate place.

So much for being extremely literal. Getting rid of our negative feelings from the past year is therapeutic. We can then be grateful for our smaller successes, both individually and as a society and work to be available to try once more, to follow the rule adoped by AA . To accept what cannot be changed, to change what can be changed and to learn to know the difference.

More God Discussion September 30, 2022

A being or spirit that is worshipped, shown reverence and adoration,  and is beieved to have created the universe.

That''s the Oxford Dictionary definition of God. .

The pushback to someone like me who finds reverence and beauty in nature is called a pan-theist. Someone who clearly states they believe in no god is an atheist and a doubter is called an agnostic. 

When things go well for me, I sometimes say "Thank God"

I have heard believers curse "God damn it" asking for someone they dislike or an action to be cursed. When someone sneezes, I say "God bless you."

Who am I calling out to?

In Judaism, it is said that "God does not want to be believed in, God wants us to be inspired to choose the right path, to be kind to others, to leave this earth a bit better than we found it."

However, if I say " OK< I can do that,." the answer I get is "What kind of audacity do you have, to think you alone are responsible for the successes of your studies, good works, happy outcomes of your wishes and desires?

No one, me included of course, wants to be seen as a narcissist, the center of all actions, wishes and desires. But when we make good  choices and our goals are reached, why isn't it enough to feel proud of our accomplishments, always knowing there is more to be learned and done to make the world a better place.

I have no big powers, like washing away the causeway to one of my favorite places, Sanibel Island , yesterday. The Hurricane did that. Did God cause the hurricane? Were the combinations of wind and water and temperature enough to explain the huge natural disaster? Did some being or spirit determine whose house shall remain standing and whose business be demolished?

I do have a bit of audacity, "chutzpah" in Yiddish, to believe God resides in each of us and as we realize our potential, as we listen and learn and help others and appreciate our gifts while acceptinng our defeats, we replicate in ourselves and each other the spirit of a larger community objective, we are all Godlike and worthy of reverence and adoration.

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.