Category Archives: American Jewry

May 18, 2015 · 9:05 am

Beginning to Understand

by Sheldon P. Hersh (Lawrence, NY)

A number of years ago, my wife and I joined a small group of fellow New Yorkers on a journey back in time. It was a trip that had all the earmarks of a solemn pilgrimage. A sacred mission of sorts to a place awash in tragedy and tears and the subject of countless discussions and heated arguments. We were about to land in a corner of the world where fleeting shadows have taken on human form and the ground, overcome with sorrow and tormented by unspeakable memories, yearns to reveal its secrets. Looking out the plane’s window, I began to make out the outlines of the airport below. Our jet was about to land in Warsaw, Poland.

We were all children of Holocaust survivors and wanted to see firsthand what the country was like and to appreciate how Poland, the country of our parents’ birth, had so influenced and shaped their lives. Each of us had heard the stories, the tearful recollections of a time and place that is no more. We were eager to visit the oft-mentioned towns and cities and step foot within the few existing synagogues that at one time boasted of overflowing crowds but that now stand silent, forlorn and empty.

There was much to see and experience but what remains with me above and beyond all else was a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp. This notorious extermination center is located only a short distance from the city of Lublin. Much of the camp remains remarkably intact and reminds one of a well-maintained museum. Glass enclosed exhibits contain some of the possessions that were taken from the victims upon their arrival. Eyeglasses, clothing, shoes and suitcases are all that remain of the many souls who entered this evil place.

Foot paths lead from one heart wrenching exhibit to the next and while traversing one particular path, we noticed that the path was paved with odd-shaped stones that looked strangely out of place. Upon closer examination, it became quite clear that some of the stones were actually broken sections of Jewish headstones that were likely scavenged from a nearby cemetery. Some of the stones had their inscriptions pushed face down into the soil below while others had lettering facing the heavens above.

Names of frail saintly elders, mothers who died in childbirth and children taken by illness could be easily identified. It was almost as though the stones, now severely beaten and dispirited, were directing their prayers to the blue skies overhead. They wanted nothing more than to be left in peace. “Why must the evil doers continue to harass us?” I thought I heard them whimper as nearby trees, sensing their anguish, nodded in agreement.

Some in our party began to weep while others raised their voices demanding an explanation. After all that happened here, one would have expected at least a semblance of compassion and good will. A number of workers were only a short distance away unloading headstones from the back of an old truck. Catching sight of this group of distraught Jews, they suddenly began to chuckle and laugh for, after all, this is how it was and continues to be. And for the very first time, I began to understand.

Sheldon P. Hersh, an Ear, Nose and Throat Physician with a practice in the New York metropolitan area, is the author of Our Frozen Tears (http://tinyurl.com/kuzlscb), as well as the co-author of The Bugs Are Burning, a book on the Holocaust.

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May 11, 2015 · 6:24 am

I Changed My Mind

by Helga Harris (Sarasota, FL)

I hated you.

I didn’t hate you at the beginning.

When I was a little girl … I guess you were pretty. I didn’t notice. I took you for granted.

Every Friday night, from the time I was old enough to sit with my family at the dinner table, which looked the same each week—white linen, matching china, glistening silverware and sparkling glasses—there you were in all your splendor, the two and a half foot silver candelabra in the center of the table. With your graceful four ornate sculptured arms and the eagle at your center reaching to the heavens, you looked ready to soar. That was you. I was too young to appreciate you or your age.

You were conceived, hand crafted, circa 1860, in Austria-Hungry. My father, the youngest of five children, inherited you. He brought you into his marriage and treasured you, his only family memento. You were old the first time I saw you but what did I know?

Before sunset each Friday, my Papa came home with a bouquet of flowers. My older brother and I washed our hands and sat at the Shabbat table. Mutti lit the candles, said a prayer; Papa followed, cutting the chalah and chanting the appropriate blessing. After the amen, we ate the customary meal: gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup and of course … the roasted chicken. The vegetables varied from week to week and so did the dessert; usually it was stewed fruit compote, apple cake, cookies and tea. Cold seltzer in a spritzer bottle (it was fun to pump) and wine for the adults was always on the table.

I didn’t hate you when I was little. You were just there … like a piece of furniture or a painting on our dining room wall. I had no personal relationship with you then. That changed when I became a teenager.

The chore my mother gave me, from the time I was thirteen, was to polish you every Thursday afternoon so that you would shine on Friday night when the four candles on your winged arms were lit. By then I was old enough to see how grand you were. But polishing you was another story.

It was not fun. Did you realize that the candles dripped on you and hardened? Your body had over a dozen pieces that fit into each other. Polishing you took over an hour. I wanted to do other things … even homework. But my job was not negotiable. I had to keep you shining for the Shabbat. And I did; until I got married, left my childhood home and you. One of my wedding presents was a beautiful, contemporary candelabra.

Of course I saw you whenever I visited my parents. By then I was an adult and admired your beauty. You were and still are stunning. Who polished you after I left? It was no longer my concern. I was free.

But nothing is forever. Many years later, after my mother died and my father remarried, he presented me with his family heirloom. Papa wanted you to remain in our family. I was overcome by the gift. At that time I was in my fifties and lived in an apartment in Miami, facing Biscayne Bay. The view was breathtaking. I displayed you in my living room on a beautiful oak cabinet that my son, Jeffrey, had built for me. You stood out like a prized possession, which you still are. People took notice of you the moment they stepped into my home. You were gorgeous.

My freedom didn’t last. I was back to polishing you. However, the feeling was different; I was older, smarter and loved you. But … there is a big “but.” After two years, the salt air from Biscayne Bay damaged your silver. It pitted you like a skin rash. You looked sad. I wasn’t going to ignore your condition. I was your caretaker. Through research and recommendation I found an expert who came to my aid. In 1975, I paid $400 to have you re-silvered and treated. The maven promised that I would never have to polish you again. That sounded like beautiful music.

Decades passed. I became irreligious and didn’t light your candles weekly. But you retained the place of honor in my home. I always loved Jewish traditions and on each holiday you glowed. My favorite simcha is the Passover Seder when I invite eighteen people to dinner. (The number signifies life in Hebrew.)

When my daughter, Susie, realized your monetary worth, she recommended that I store you in the attic in case of theft. I wouldn’t hear of it. What is the point of having something so beautiful and not being able to enjoy it?

This week I polished you. On Saturday I will again have eighteen people at my Seder table. All the food and desserts are homemade … with love.

I took a serious look at you while I was sprucing you up. I, almost half your age, am of advanced age. You’re an antique and I, an octogenarian. We have a common bond … we’ve aged. Your arms are shaky and my legs wobbly. You, newly polished and shiny, and I, with makeup and extra mascara, are still good looking.

I love you.

Helga Harris was born in Berlin, Germany, and moved with her family to New York City in 1938. She attended Brooklyn College and graduated from Pratt Institute and worked as fashion designer for forty years.

A writer as well as an artist and designer, Helga has published a memoir, Dear Helga, Dear Ruth, as well as articles in The St. Petersburg Times, The Sarasota Herald Tribune and The Tampa Tribune. She has also contributed stories to anthologies, including Dolls Remembered, Doorways and various magazines. The most recent collection, We Were There, was published by the St.Petersburg Holocaust Museum. Her latest memoir is Susie … WAIT! and her first collection of nonfiction short stories is Nothing Is Forever.

She is currently co-leader of a writing program at The Lifelong Learning Academy (offered at the University of South Florida’s Sarasota campus).

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April 20, 2015 · 8:44 am

A Song for My Father

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

It’s been a while, Dad,
since I’ve spoken to you.
For far too many years
I have boiled in anger,
still smarting from
the scalding scars of your indifference.
Rumor has it you loved me as a child,
and then kind of lost interest,
the search for your celebrity,
to be known in the Jewish community,
claimed your undivided attention.
You learned your religion
in the shetls of Lithuania,
and brought your tightly-held beliefs
to this new country.
I tried hard to be your son,
but all I learned was
singing in a different language
had little to do with me.
You studied medicine in Europe,
escaped the Nazis by a hair,
but healing proved secondary
to your reading of the Torah.
If I never sang for you,
you never sang for me.
For others you sang
the wisdom of the Law,
the miracle of modern medicine.
You wrote articles for the Forward,
and gave medical advice over the airways.
I suppose I must be grateful
for the gifts you have strewn my way.
What gifts? Writing, for one.
I doubt I could ever pen these lines
if I hadn’t typed your columns,
corrected your grammar.
Your gift was not in the giving;
it was imparted by your presence.
So thank you, anyway, I guess, though
it’s too late for you to understand my song.
I do wish, even now, your largess
could have been more personally delivered.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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April 15, 2015 · 7:30 am

Remembering The Shoah Through Words and Action

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

As the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Germany, I grew up with stories of the Shoah. I was recently asked if I recalled the exact moment I learned about what happened to my family. I answered no, there was no exact moment. It was always there. The knowledge seemed to have come through my mother’s milk.

I was that curious kid who asked about the kinds of foods my parents ate in Germany, what school was like, what clothing they wore, what life was like before Hitler came to power. I also began to ask questions about what happened to our family. As I got older, the questions became more serious. I asked my father to tell me about how he and his family hid in the basement of their home during the rioting of Kristallnacht in 1938, of what it felt like to be sixteen years old and be ordered to report to Town Hall the next morning and to be arrested and sent to Dachau.

There was the night my mother and I sat at the kitchen table and she told me about the kids in her kindergarten class who backed her up against a wall at school and threw rocks at her because she refused to say “Heil Hitler.” She told me how her parents got her out to a Jewish girls’ orphanage, The Israelitisch Meijesweishaus, in Amsterdam. We talked about her father’s nine brothers and sisters, of how only he and one brother and sister survived. My father and I spoke about his family, those who survived and those who did not. His mother, father, older sister who was twenty-two and his younger brother who was eleven. They got out of Germany to Maastricht, Holland and in August 1942 were deported to Westerbork and in November 1942 to Auschwitz and murdered upon arrival.

I had so many stories inside of me and poetry became the way to tell them. After writing and writing for almost fifteen years, in 2007 my book “How to Spot One of Us” was published.

Since publication, I have been speaking in public and private schools and for various organizations. I have told my family’s stories of life before the Holocaust, of trying to escape, of failing, of succeeding, of coming to America and learning a new language, becoming American citizens and of beginning, again. In my poetry, it is my goal to give voice to the dead. In my teaching, my goal is to encourage students to remember and study about the Holocaust and our world today, a world that is still rife with genocide.

Over the last two years I have become involved in other ways to remember the Shoah. I’m working with Emmy Award-winning director Richard Kroehling on BE•HOLD, a cinematic documentary that explores poetry, written by Jews and non-Jews, about the Holocaust from the rise of Nazism to the present. Poems are showcased by poets, survivors and their descendents. I am also part of a multi-media exhibit about children of survivors with photographer Aliza Augustine showing at The Kean University Human Rights Institute Gallery, consisting of my poetry and film and her portraits and photography.

I believe that the past is not simply in the past, but rather a vital part of the present and future. Seventy years ago, WWII ended. The last survivors of the Holocaust are aging and passing away. I feel it is my responsibility to remember and continue to tell the stories of my family before, during and after the Shoah in the hopes it will never happen again to anyone.

Jewish wisdom teaches that remembrance must include action. As a child, I was taught by my parents that every human being is created in God’s image and that is the way I should treat each person I meet. Our actions, small or large can help change the world. Whether it is treating the stranger with dignity or being active in causes to stop genocide, we each can remember the Shoah in our own way thus honoring the murdered and the survivors.

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007).  She is currently producing BE•HOLD, a cinematic poetry performance film. https://www.facebook.com/BeholdAPerformanceFilm.  Her work has appeared in journals and on line in such publications as Atlanta Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Lilith, Natural Bridge and on beliefnet.com.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and received Honorable Mention in the String Poet Prize 2014. 

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April 13, 2015 · 6:04 am

My Father’s Family

by Suzanna Eibuszyc (Calabasas, CA)

My parents both grew up in a large, closely knit family. My father’s loyalty and love of his family was one of the things that attracted my mother to him. The thought of going home to Poland, back to their families, was what kept them alive during their six years in Russia. Family represented a place of safety and a source of strength.

There is one story that resonates with me to this very day. My father’s family had a tradition. My mother had told me how for generations, his extended family gathered in a small house, in the woods, for two months every summer outside of the city of Łódź. Adults and children came together to exchange ideas, enjoy each other’s company, and share good food. To me, this was like a picture taken out of a romantic, Victorian novel. I could see them dressed in their best white linens, entertaining each other. Lounging, talking, laughing, and playing loudly among the trees and green grass.

Abram Ejbuszyc was silent about his past. He never uttered a word about what happened to him during the war or about what his life had been like before the war. From my mother’s stories, I know that he did not want to die in a Russian jail after he was arrested for not wanting to give up his Polish citizenship. His only wish was to stay alive in order to come back home to Poland. He made it back only to find his entire family had been murdered. He was the sole survivor. This knowledge pushed him into a dark despair from which he never recovered. He became silent. I cannot help but wonder if his silence was a form of self-imposed punishment.

Studies have shown that there are two kinds of parents among survivors—those who cannot connect and those who cannot separate from their children. My mother could not separate herself from her two daughters. It was as if she was afraid she would lose us at any moment. To live, my father had forsaken his family and consciously or unconsciously, he chose to suffer the consequences alone. He was tormented by survivor’s guilt; the terror was visible, inscribed on his stern face and in his sad eyes. The shock of finding out about the Holocaust and not knowing how his loved ones died resulted in nightmares, anxieties, and depression. My father detached himself from us, as if he was afraid to make a close connection and lose his loved ones all over again. By not talking, he contained the trauma he lived with, hoping not to pass it on to his children. He became a stranger to the new family he created after the war and we were deprived of a loving father. To this day, I know only that my father fled Łódź. The Germans were rounding up Jewish men and deporting them to labor camps. He ran, and in so doing, he saved his own life, abandoning his mother, father and two sisters. He was never able to forgive himself.

My father’s family came from Jews of Włoszczowa, a small town not far from the city of Łódź, they settled there in the second half of the nineteenth century. Father’s extended large family in Łódź was religious, prosperous, and well-known in the community. He came from philanthropists who supported the arts and gave money toward education. They all died in the Łódź Ghetto and in Auschwitz.

After the war, he returned to Łódź to find that his large family was decimated. My father never learned the details: that his father, Icek Dawid Ejbuszyc, his mother, Ita Mariem Grinszpanholc, and his older sister, Sura Blima, were deported from the Łódź Ghetto to Auschwitz in September of 1942. A hospital record shows that his younger sister Dwojra died of Unterernährung, of malnutrition, in June of 1942. She was thirty years old. I was able to uncover this information about my father’s family in recent years. When those records became available through documentation centers, however, this information was not accessible in the first few decades after the war when my father was still alive.

A document survived the war proving that my father’s family did in fact exist and prospered in the city of Łódź. A deed to real estate made my father the owner of two homes that before the war belonged to his parents. These properties were both plundered by the Germans during the war and then taken over by Polish Communists after the war. Because survivors from Russia were forced to settle in the southwestern part of Poland as part of repatriation, my father was not allowed to return to the city of his birth. After the war, property that was not destroyed ended up in the hands of ethnic Poles. Many Poles did not expect that their Jewish neighbors survived and will be returning home. They falsified papers and claimed real estate property as theirs.

My father discovered in the courthouse records unfamiliar names on the titles of his family properties. While he was alive, he traveled regularly to the courthouse in the city of Łódź and fought to reclaim his parents’ two houses. As the Communist regime took over, it took control of all private properties. People like my father lost all rights to what belonged to them. After the collapse of Communism, the Polish government estimated that the value of all the property belonging to the survivors and their descendants to be in the billions. At the same time, and to this day, Poland has not recognized property restitution or compensation for any of the survivors, Jewish or non-Jewish.

My father endured an impoverished exile with only one hope, to return to his homeland. His mind was forever haunted by memories of never saying good-bye to his family. He spent years trying to find traces to his family’s summer house. There was no closure for my father; he never was able to reunite with any of the physical remnants of his family’s happy past as if to tell him those happy days never took place. He survived Russia, and died alone on a very cold December day in 1961, far from his new home in a hospital in Klodzko. My mother, my sister, and I, while very much alive, were shadows in his life after the war. It was not that he did not deserve us, but that he was unable to emerge from his despair. He simply could not recover from what he had lost.

Born in Poland, Suzanna Eibuszyc graduated from CCNY where she took classes in the department of Jewish studies with Professor Elie Wiesel, who encouraged her to translate her mother’s memoir into English. This piece is from her new book, Memory Is Our Home, published by ibid-Verlag, in which she attempts to “shed light on how the Holocaust trauma is transmitted to the next generation, the price my family paid when we said good-bye to the old world, and the challenges we faced in America.”

This excerpt is from Memory Is Our Home by Suzanna Eibuszyc, (c) 2015 ibidem Press/ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany. ISBN 978-3-8382-0712-4 (US paperback); ISBN 978-3-8382-0682-0 (EU paperback); 978-3-8382-9732-2 (Hardback). Pages 145-147, reprinted with the kind permission of the author and her publisher.

If you’d like to order a copy of the book, visit: 

US: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/memory-is-our-home/9783838207124

http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207122/ref=sr_1_1/183-8888061-1272939?ie=UTF8&qid=1427124207&sr=8-1&keywords=Eibuszyc

EU: http://www.ibidemverlag.de/product_info.php?language=en&gm_boosted_product=Memory-is-our-Home&XTCsid=6063e8185eac56a71ac51cd3104518e7&Edition-No-ma=Memory-is-our-Home.html&products_id=1715&=&XTCsid=6063e8185eac56a71ac51cd3104518e7

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April 2, 2015 · 6:19 am

To My Children Who Know Nothing About Passover

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

Your grandpa passed away some twenty years ago
and so have his Passover Seders.  Every year, he used
two chairs.  As I write this, I am there.  Time stops
like a turtle on its back, legs flaying wildly in the air.

The house is scrubbed, the windows cleaned.  Two sets
of pots and pans, dishes and dinnerware are retrieved
from boxes and paper bags stored in the cellar.
The dining room table is set, wine glasses filled red.
Your grandmother places the Seder Plate on the table
while Grandpa says a blessing and washes his hands
at the kitchen sink.  Grandpa holds the Seder Plate
for all to see and explains each item.

“…because we were slaves in Egypt…,” he would say.
He breaks the middle matzah in its covered plate, wraps
half in a napkin and places it under the tablecloth by his chair.
As we turn our attention to the Haggadah, he moves
the wrapped matzah under the pillow on his second chair.

At the table sits Grandpa’s sister, Aunt Rose, always first
to disapprove of something said or done but with a grand smile
and poised in exemplary posture. There’s cousin Lilly, gray haired,
too thin, always wary of an un-approving look from her pal, Aunt Rose.

There is usually a guest (a boarder or family friend), my brother,
home from the Navy;  my sister and her husband (a cross  between
Kojack and Yul Brynner) and their three pre-teen daughters. Sitting
closest to the kitchen is my mother, always with a pleasant smile.

Our dog watches from the edge of the kitchen as we begin
the Four Questions.  My sister recites in Yiddish, her daughters
recite in Hebrew.  I ask permission as an Ashkenaz and after
a nod I sing each question as smooth and faultless as I can.

We listen to the tale of the Four Sons (the wise, the wicked, the simple,
and the one who doesn’t know enough to ask).  I am satisfied in not
knowing which role I am cast.  The Haggadah reminds us Moses was given
up at the river’s edge to save his life and he came to live as a palace prince.

We tip our wine glasses ten times as we recall each plague cast upon the land
and our escape through the Red Sea.  We eat scallions dipped in saltwater
(to remind us of spring and life’s sorrows); a hardboiled egg in saltwater
(I always plead more); home-made gefilte fish with horseradish, grated
the night before; matzah ball soup; brisket, crowned with onion
and an obedient audience of  browned potatoes; and four glasses
of  sweet, red wine, each with a blessing before and after the meal.

I open the front door to welcome Elijah. The red goblet at the center
of the table is filled just for him.  As I stand in the cold night air, I scan
the sky for a winged angel on horseback with a long black sword dripping
with blood and edged in flame.

Back inside we remind the young to barter with Grandpa for
the afikoman they stole.  (It  must be redeemed to complete
the meal.) We end a long evening with bellies too full and we
open our books to find Chad Gadya.

In these days, Grandpa is just a word and Passover is something
you may have once heard.  Both flow  warm in my blood
and give strength to bone.  If I were a sunflower, I’d bow
my head low.  For too soon, there will be no one left to remember.

Richard Epstein lives in the Washington DC area and is active in the Warrior Poets sponsored by Walter Reed Medical Center, the Veterans Writing Project and he hosts an open mic venue for veterans and friends of veterans on the National Mall 

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March 23, 2015 · 7:00 am

Anniversary

by Jacqueline Jules (Arlington, VA)

Eight years after
the seven-day candle in the tall red glass,
I light a small candle
and consider your existence
in a realm beyond my knowledge.
If life on earth is only one stage in a series,
you could be safe in an ethereal cocoon,
preparing to emerge with splendid wings in Eden.
I’m ashamed to say
your transformation into something better
brought little comfort to me in the beginning,
as I decried my status as a caterpillar,
a frightened worm, vulnerable to a large and hungry bird.

Living without you
was never as difficult
as living with your death.
The burial of a face
that still smiles at me in photographs
seemed, at times, slightly less credible
than spaceships landing on my lawn.
If I believed in death before,
it was the same way I believed in another universe
and other life forms—somewhere out there—
I wasn’t prepared . . . .

To light a candle every year in place of going out to dinner,
seeing a play or planning a party. This summer
would have marked twenty-five years together.
Would we have gone dancing? A little circle
of light flickers on the ceiling, waltzing with the shadows.
I smile. You are dancing for me,
whirling in the endless light of memory.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of many Jewish children’s books including Never Say a Mean Word Again, The Hardest Word, Once Upon a Shabbos, Sarah Laughs, Miriam in the Desert, and Goodnight Sh’ma. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com

“Anniversary” appears in Stronger Than Cleopatra, a collection of poems about going forward in the face of loss. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author. For more about the book, visit ELJ Publishing at http://www.booknook-eljpublications.com/store/p4/Stronger_Than_Cleopatra.html

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February 9, 2015 · 7:10 am

Healing Service, Working?

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Families come
to pray, to heal.
God, I am asking you for help.
Please hear me now.
Cries heavenward,
cast on a rising tide.
Will they be received?
“My friend has cancer.”
“My sister has Lyme Disease.”
“My mother’s at the beginning of Alzheimer’s”
“My brother just discovered a lump.”
“My husband just died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
“My brother is not well.”
Everyone’s equal in the eyes of God,
equal in pain and loss.
Human beings join hands today,
hoping with renewed fervor,
that their prayers will fall
on welcoming ears,
and their suffering will be eased.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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January 26, 2015 · 8:37 am

The Language of Poetry and Cinema Meets the Language of Grant Writing

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

Writer and child survivor Aharon Appelfeld stated, “After the death of the last witnesses, the remembrance of the Holocaust must not be entrusted to historians alone. Now comes the hour of artistic creation.” I am producing BE•HOLD, a cinematic performance film that explores poetry written about the Holocaust, with director Richard Kroehling. The film showcases poetry written by survivors, their descendants and modern poets, both Jews and non-Jews, grappling with the Shoah and its aftereffects. The poems are presented by poets, survivors, actors and people from all walks of life, along with music and interviews, to create a deep well of voices responding to evil.

My parents were born in Germany. In 1936, my mother was six years old when she was backed up against a wall at school, and kids threw rocks at her because she refused to say “Heil Hitler.” Her parents got her out to a Jewish girls’ orphanage in Amsterdam, the Israelitisch Meijesweishaus. There were one hundred and four girls. Four survived. My mother came to America with her parents and an older sister. When my father was sixteen, he was arrested on Kristallnacht (two days of rioting sanctioned by the Nazi government on November 9 and 10, 1938) and sent to Dachau. My father’s parents, his older sister and younger brother were murdered in Auschwitz. My parents lost over ninety-five percent of their extended families in concentration camps. I want to make BE•HOLD to honor my family, those who survived and those who did not, and to honor all the murdered, all the survivors, their descendants and those who fought against the Nazis.

The team making BE•HOLD is Richard Kroehling, a two-time Emmy Award winning director who filmed “A. Einstein: How I See the World” with William Hurt for PBS, and Lisa Rinzler, a multi-award winning cinematographer who has worked with Wim Wenders and Martin Scorcese. I met Richard at a conference less than three months after my father died, and we discussed our mutual love of poetry. Two weeks later, we decided to make a film. We talked for almost a year about BE•HOLD, discussing our vision for it, poems and poets we wished to film and ways to raise funds. I was observing the traditional Jewish year of mourning for my father, and many times this film felt as if it were a gift from him. It gave me a goal, something to focus on.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti said, “Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.” Richard and I are driven by the possibilities of expanding the limits of what is purely literary and purely visual, and we believe that the language of poetry and the language of cinema can be brought together for profound and powerful results. We watched them collide and were there to capture on film what happened. During each filming, a poetic moment took over and the results were different than what we had planned for and always more than we expected.

Grant writing is new for me, and I am trying to wrap my head around the idea of quantifying art. I’m still not sure I know what funders are asking for after writing grant proposals this past year. I understand that funders need to know where their money is going and that a project they fund will be a success. It’s different than creative writing. In a poem, if I know where I’m going, know everything I want to say, there’s nothing left to discover or surprise me in my writing. This is what I’d like to do: meet with a potential funder and say, “I can’t give you a pitch. I’m not a fundraiser. I’m a poet, teacher and filmmaker, and here’s why I’m passionate about BE•HOLD and why the film matters.”

On grant applications, I complete sections such as: log line, short and long description of the film, summary of content and objectives, narrative treatment, timeline, director’s vision, then upload a producer, director and cinematographer bio and filmography, upload the progress reel, fill out the budget form, list monies raised, funding sources and describe marketing and distribution plans. The next question asks what kind of metrics will be used to show that the film is a success. I understand why most of my artist friends don’t apply for grants.

Trying to make a film that is doing something new is difficult. There are so many people applying for grants from the few organizations that give them to filmmakers. But, I continue to fill out proposals and raise funds. Richard and I believe in BE•HOLD and that it offers a new approach to Holocaust remembrance. We also believe that the film imparts the ongoing relevance of the Shoah: that the past is not simply in the past, but rather a vital part of the present and future.

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007).  She is currently producing BE•HOLD, a cinematic poetry performance film. https://www.facebook.com/BeholdAPerformanceFilm.  Her work has appeared in journals and on line in such publications as Atlanta Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Lilith, Natural Bridge and on beliefnet.com.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and received Honorable Mention in the String Poet Prize 2014. 

This essay is reprinted here with the kind permission of  The Best American Poetry Blog http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/ where it first appeared.  

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January 12, 2015 · 9:00 am

What Happens to a Hebrew School Dropout?

by Beth Leibson (New York, NY)

My 11-year-old son, Ari, is now a Hebrew-school dropout.I am aware that that’s the name of a comedy act and a line of T-shirts. But, for me, the phrase is not a punch line, but a punch in the gut.

I imagine my response was just like parents whose kids drop out of high school: disbelief, sadness and helplessness followed quickly by a healthy dose of Jewish guilt. “Where did I go wrong?” “What did I do to cause him to reject my contribution to his heritage?”

I realize the situations aren’t exactly comparable. My son, Ari, won’t face difficulties getting into college or landing a good job—at least as a result of this decision. He won’t be walking the streets of New York stopping strangers and saying, “Dude, can you spare a kippah so I can cover my head in synagogue?” On the flip side, there’s no GED equivalent for the bar mitzvah (though an adult bar mitzvah is an option).

My goals for the after-school Hebrew-school program were modest: I knew he wouldn’t become a Judaic scholar, conversant in Jewish history or fluent in Hebrew. I just hoped he’d have fun being Jewish, make a couple of friends in the tribe, and possibly gain enough of a sense of Judaism that he could accept it—or reject it—with some knowledge base.

I suppose I could force Ari to go to Hebrew school. But I worry that it would backfire, that he would end up resenting his Jewish heritage.

When I was growing up, my household changed when my mother married her second husband. My mother was agnostic, her new hubby Orthodox, which made for an interesting combination. The family that had been only loosely affiliated with Judaism started to keep kosher and attend synagogue weekly. And my sister and I ended up at a Jewish high school. I felt like I was being force-fed Judaism as a result of my mother’s second marriage—and it gave me heartburn.

Of course, the effort backfired the minute I moved out of my mother’s house. While I retained a strong sense of Jewish identity, you would never know it if you watched my behavior when I was in college and my early 20s. I avoided synagogue and any Jewish event where my grandparents weren’t in attendance. I ate on Yom Kippur, a traditional fast day, and enjoyed sandwiches during Passover, the week when most Jews eschew leavening. In my late 20s, I married a non-Jew and did not ask him to even consider converting. Although I did warn him that any kids I might have—purely theoretical, mind you—would be Jewish.

My sister has stayed away from all things Jewish. To the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t set foot in a synagogue in the past decade, aside from my daughter’s bat mitzvah. This year, when I invited her to our very low-key seder, she told me it was “too Jewish” for her and her non-Jewish husband.

Eventually, in my 30s, I came back to the fold, drop by drop. I added elements as the whim struck, taking a deli-line approach; I picked what was fun or meaningful. I ventured back to synagogue on the High Holy Days, then branched into very occasional Friday night services. My then-husband and I took a trip to Israel and upon our return, he began—of his own accord—the process of converting to Judaism. And once we had children, the process accelerated. The kids thought challah was yummy, so we started to eat it every Friday night. I liked the notion of celebrating freedom, so we had seders at Passover. Of course, we did it in our own style, sitting on the living room floor with bowls of leavening-free chili in our laps.

Then my daughter, who has always identified herself strongly as Jewish, learned the Sabbath prayers at Tot Shabbat and asked that we say them—and provide grape juice—every Friday night. She’s still at it—and now lights the candles for Ari and me every Friday night.

Do I worry too much about Ari and Hebrew school? My daughter says yes; it is his life, she avers. I don’t disagree. It is his life—but I am his mom.

I want to send him into the world with a well-stocked box of life tools. That includes certain skills, such as the ability to tie shoes, use a pair of scissors, design and prepare an assortment of nutritious meals, balance a checkbook and, these days, safely traverse the Internet. It includes some basic habits, such as twice-daily tooth brushing, regular use of “please” and “thank you,” and proper tipping. I also want my children, my son, to have certain psychological tools, such as confidence, hobbies, a sense of humor, an ability to find joy in life—and a sense of who he is and where he comes from. I worry that Ari won’t have a clear sense of who he is and where he comes from as a Jew. It’s as though he’s missing the Phillips-head screwdriver in his toolbox.

What we do, the little steps that we take—or don’t take—every day contribute to our identity. Is Ari denying who he is? After all, renouncing religions is much simpler than “passing” for a different race; it is eminently doable and sadly common.

I’m not giving up on Ari. He will continue to have challah and grape juice every Friday night—and to watch his older sister light the candles. He will continue to celebrate freedom on Passover, throw sponges at the rabbi at the Purim carnival and seek forgiveness around the High Holy Days.

I know my kids are getting mixed messages about being Jewish since their father and I divorced. In my home, we celebrate the holidays, march in the Israel Day parade and generally identify ourselves as Hebes.

My kids say that they are often asked, “Are you half-Jewish?” I know that choosing Judaism means, at least to some extent, picking Mom over Dad—a position neither child (nor I, on most days) relishes.

Judaism is a journey, and everyone takes an individual path. My daughter is taking what seems like a pretty straight line thus far, sticking to the major highways. I took my own spiral approach to identifying as a Jew, pulling away and then cycling back. And Ari will take his own path, though I do worry that he’s wandered off into a field for a nap.

The good news is that he asked to attend the synagogue’s Purim carnival this year—and then put in a plug for a chocolate seder, negotiating the details with his acne-phobic older sister. I am hopeful that this means Ari will wake up from his Hebrew-school nap, grab his well-stocked toolbox, and make a life for himself that includes the joy and pride of being Jewish.

Beth Leibson is a New York-based writer and editor, and author of the book I’m Too Young to Have Breast Cancer (Lifeline, 2004).

This article originally appeared in the Jewish Journal and on Jewishjournal.com. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the Jewish Journal and the author.

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