Category Archives: Family history

December 1, 2025 · 7:30 am

History

by Hamutal Bar-Yosef, translated by Esther Cameron (Jerusalem, Israel)

In the year 1939 my mother,

who lived on a socialist kibbutz,

got a letter from her bourgeois mother

asking whether, in her opinion,

it would be worthwhile to move to Palestine.

Not worthwhile, my mother wrote back with roughened fingers.

Here you would not have servants.

Even jewelry, which you love so much,

even your wedding ring, would be frowned on here.

In the year 1949 my mother,

recently bereaved of her only son,

volunteered to help in a transit camp for immigrants.

What kind of help do you need? my mother asked

the woman from Iraq.

Can you polish my nails? asked the woman

and held out to my mother

long, delicate fingers adorned with rings.

Hamutal Bar-Yosef was born in 1940 on Kibbutz Tel Yosef. She studied comparative literature, philosophy and Hebrew literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is professor emerita at Ben-Gurion University. Bar-Yosef has published 17 collections of poetry, besides books of literary scholarship, essays, fiction, and translations from Russian, French, English and Yiddish. She has received numerous prizes, including the Israel President’s Prize for Poetry and the Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry.  Her poems have been translated into 16 languages. 

Esther Cameron is an American-born poet, essayist, editor and translator living in Jerusalem.  She translated Bar-Yosef’s previous collection, The Ladder, and novel, The Wealthy.  Her own poems have appeared in various periodicals in Israel and America; a monograph, Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan, appeared with Lexington Books in 2014.  Her Collected Works are available on Amazon. She is founding editor of The Deronda Review.  

Editor’s Note: The poems are from Bar-Yosef’s and Cameron’s book The Miraculous Mistake, forthcoming from Sheep Meadow Press.

1 Comment

Filed under Family history, history, Israel Jewry, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

November 24, 2025 · 7:30 am

Chana and Rafa

by Helene Berton (Centereach, NY)

Flipping over the tape, I clicked the play button and smiled when “Modern Love” came through my headphones. David Bowie was the best flying music, I decided. 

After finding the pack of gum in my overstuffed bag, I offered a stick to my mother and then unwrapped one for myself. While chewing exuberantly, I waited for my ears to snap, crackle and pop as we started our descent. Reluctantly, I clicked the stop button as the Sony Walkman couldn’t compete with the noise of the plane. “China Girl” would have to wait. China, my thoughts wandered, was the other side of the world. But then again, so was Israel, and that’s where we landed.

I looked at my mother. Even after the overnight flight, she was brimming with excitement. Why was this trip so important to her? 

*  *  * 

The girls with their machine guns slung across their backs startled me, gave me pause. I snapped a picture of them, lost in thought, winding to advance the film before taking another. 

Like a tourist, I was gaping at them as if an attraction. “Are they in the army?” I whispered to my mother.

“Yes, the IDF,” she replied as we walked down the bustling Tel Aviv street.

“I’m surprised so many girls want to join.”

“It’s mandatory. Everyone goes directly from high school into the military,” she explained to me.

Mandatory? I thought of myself after high school graduation planning my great escape to college. All the stress and drama of roommates, meal plans, and boyfriends dominated my life that summer before I left. I heard my voice complaining that I had to take the bus when most of my friends had cars of their own. Meanwhile, these girls were nonchalantly strolling along with their machine guns, chatting in the sunshine with their cups of coffee. I suddenly felt small.

*  *  * 

“Tell me again who they are?” I asked my mother as we sat down at the round table. The ceiling fan above us did little to cool the restaurant.

“My cousins.”

“How are they related to us?”

My mother looked at me for a moment longer than necessary. Maybe she had explained it already or assumed that I knew. “Your grandfather came to the United States from Latvia when the war broke out. His brother, Uncle Max, went to Israel. These are his daughters.”

I digested this information, trying to form the family tree in my mind. Having no first cousins of my own, I couldn’t relate very well. I felt disconnected, distracted by the heat. I squirmed in my seat, tempted to ask the waiter to turn up the AC. Looking around at the open windows and archways leading into the garden, I realized there was no air conditioning at all.

“That must be them.” My mother stood up as two older women entered the restaurant. 

I was surprised by their age, having pictured them younger. How were these women my mother’s cousins? Realizing that my grandparents had my mother late in life, I put it together. It was as if a generation was missing, but it did add up.

The introductions were made, complete with hugs and kisses which left me feeling awkward, bringing out the shyness I had battled since childhood. I did not know these women, after all. 

I sat quietly as the conversation swirled around me, looking at the food that the cousins had ordered for us. I picked at the unfamiliar meat and sauces presented to me, wishing for a slice of pizza and chips. My mind drifted to the shops we had passed in Tel Aviv as I made my mental list of who would be getting which souvenir. Maybe I would indulge in the boots I saw in the window display or even the leather jacket. I had some money saved from my new job.

Noticing my mother’s sudden look of sadness, I listened in, hoping to catch onto the conversation without embarrassment. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said, as I tried to pull up the dialogue that might still be hanging in the air or my recent memory. 

“Yes, he was killed in the war,” Chana said, looking serious. “He was my youngest.”

Her son? Killed in the war? I brushed aside all thoughts of shopping and started listening. I felt like I should say something.

“I’m so sorry,” I quietly offered condolences to my cousin. 

She looked at me then, and I couldn’t quite figure out the expression. Was it distaste or was I taking on a feeling of inadequacy? I felt like a spoiled child, and I didn’t like it.

After lunch we stepped out to the garden to take some photographs under the archways. I placed my hands on the cool limestone, letting my sense of touch help me file away the moment into my memory. My mother wrapped up the conversation with more hugs and kisses while I took in the views of the rolling countryside. It was quite beautiful just a short drive from Tel Aviv. I hadn’t expected such green lushness. But then again, I didn’t know what to expect, as I really hadn’t done any of the research.

*  *  * 

“Did you enjoy meeting the cousins?” my mother asked me in the cab as we rode back to the hotel.

“I did,” I forced out, with an overly high pitch to my voice. I hoped my mother didn’t notice. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the get together other than it gave me a lot to think about. I was ignorant on too many topics, falling short on contributing to the conversation. 

Looking down at my brightly polished nails and fringed boots despite the heat, I felt foolish. I looked at my mother who carried on a one-sided conversation with me and I started listening. For real.

*  *  * 

Present day…

I bring the photo album and carefully balance it on my mother’s lap as she sits in her wheelchair. My two sons sit on either side of her, their cell phones on their laps but remaining untouched for the moment. I see a glimpse into the future, the day when they both have children, possibly daughters, who would be cousins. How heartbreaking if they never know each other. I finally understand the dynamic of cousins.

They look onto the photos covered in sheets of plastic with their undivided attention. 

My mother points from face to face, announcing names questioningly. 

“Cousin Chana?” she asks. 

“Yes,” I smile encouragingly. 

“And Rafa?” 

“Yes, Rafa.” 

“And this lady?” She places a long fingernail on her own image. “Who is she?”

“That’s you,” I say, not for the first time that day.

Native New Yorker Helene Berton has returned to her love of writing after a long hiatus.  She has two short story collections, Away from Home ( https://a.co/d/czXOPef) and Beyond the Parallel (https://a.co/d/1SViCZj), available on Amazon. Currently, Helene is working on her first novella, Red Means Stop, and a children’s picture book, The Big Race. If you’d like to learn more about Helene and her work, visit https://heleneberton.wordpress.com .

Author’s Note: My story explores the dynamics between mother and daughter, a common theme in my writing.  It was inspired by and takes place during my first trip to Israel in 1987.  There is a bit of a naivety portrayed, which is how I felt as a young American girl visiting Israel (somewhat immature and self centered), but it was a wake-up call.  The trip changed my outlook, inspiring me to fall in love with the country.  I was fortunate enough to visit a second time several years later, and both my sons experienced Israel through Birthright.  It is my hope to return once again.

Leave a comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, Israel Jewry, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

November 17, 2025 · 7:30 am

Matchmakers

by Steve Pollack (Woxall, PA)

“I met your mechuteneste today,” my mom’s father stated, as if a simple matter-of-fact. All of us recognized that Yiddish word, but something wasn’t translating. Poppy’s eyes announced a playful intent and he unfolded the story like a riddle. Soon, we learned that Poppy had visited the mother of his grandson’s girlfriend. 

I was dating 16-year-old Linda Donecoff for about a month, when I offered her my mezuzah, originally a bar-mitzvah gift. Linda tied a “lover’s knot” in the sterling chain, which made it way cooler. We tied up our parents’ phone lines, discussing nothing more substantial than what to do that week-end. We were discovering our relationship, not contemplating marriage, not ready to be intimate. Linda’s senior prom was not penciled on our calendar.

A girlfriend is not a partner blessed by sacred vows, not a betrothed—her mother not really a mechuteneste! Yet, Poppy was confident in a destiny no one else around our kitchen table could foresee. Life experience and the faith he wore, comfortable as a vest, taught him patient optimism. Linda and I were “going steady” for three, maybe four months, when he decided to meet my other half in the person of her mother.

Attired in sports jacket with buttoned vest, creased hat atop silver white hair, Reuben Mazer carried himself in a posture that fooled a diminutive stature. Stretching his legs, greeting neighbors on his way, he was known as “the Mayor of Oakland Street”, not because he won an election or had political ambitions. Words of this humble tailor soothed us at stressful moments: “Don’t worry, everything will press-ach-oyes!” 

At that kitchen-table-moment in 1964, Mom collected her thoughts and inquired further, “Did you just go to her front door, uninvited—knock like a peddler?”

Poppy volunteered that he had approached her house the previous week, but “her gotkes were hanging out”. That word less familiar, but Poppy clarified, “it was her cleaning day”. He observed a bathroom rug airing out a second story window, and postponed meeting the woman who he predicted would be his daughter’s mechuteneste. 

Seated around the faux-marble table, we all begged in accidental unison: “PLEASE, Poppy— tell us the whole story!” We savored his news of the day like the evening meal. Poppy revealed he had walked to the Donecoff’s home at 7275 Rutland Street, a handful of streets away. Observing no gotkes, he considered it a good day to knock, and introduced himself as Steven’s grandfather. Miriam Donecoff had no hesitation inviting a well-dressed elderly gentleman into her home, even though her husband was away at work.

How Poppy knew the exact address we didn’t ask. I don’t recall that detail during our frequent nighttime chats. Our relationship was close as twin beds. Had I confided the nearest corner—the block —the family name? I imagine Poppy politely stopping a stranger: “Can you tell me in which house the Donecoff family lives?” 

To my Mom and Dad, each born in America, his bold pilgrimage was unthinkable and intriguing. Perhaps, Mom was envious of his initiative. She had been asking me about Linda for weeks, hinting that I invite her for Shabbat dinner, but tiptoed a nuanced ballet on that subject.

To Poppy, informed by old-world se’khel, an intuition to push things forward, this was a normal call of the family patriarch. He was no peddler selling rags. This was the sociable way of checking the household where his grandson’s girlfriend lived. He noted only positive impressions, and believed our attraction was bashert.

In Miriam, he discovered a gregarious hostess whose infectious laughter could vibrate a room. She was delighted to sit with him in her velvet, forest-green living room. Poppy liked this woman, a balabusta in charge of her neat household—a woman who also arrived by boat to America and found his visit not at all bold. Miriam welcomed the opportunity to share a glezel tei and discuss the kinder. Since first meeting her daughter at a Sweet Sixteen party across narrow Rutland Street, she placed me at the top—a respectful college bokher, a nice Jewish boy with a charming Jewish grandfather! Reuben Mazer’s visit, no doubt, enhanced her evaluation of me. 

Miriam and Poppy had each suffered loss that could not heal. They trusted neither bitterness nor fairy tales, but believed in happy endings. They understood the meaning of bashert. Throughout history, difficult circumstances often compelled decisions. Poppy made us believe that everything will iron out; that meant to be will find a way. We make choices. We change our minds. Call it random chance or coincidence, if you prefer. Fate is a gem of many facets. 

Linda & I, and the generations before (or after) us, would never be born, but for a perfectly aligned sequence of disconnected events—necessary one to the next. We regret not knowing folks who never boarded a boat, those before our immigrant grandparents. From bleached beginnings, people identified only by names passed forward, or those in Biblical narratives—their experience somehow inhabits my bones and my psyche. Blessings most fine sift through an intricate mesh. 

  ***

Poppy passed away the following Spring, within weeks after witnessing Linda & I off to her high school formal, dressed as if atop a tiered buttercream cake. He did not see us four years later, at my college graduation or under the chupah. Miriam lived another ten years, enough to count toes of her first grandchild.She and Poppy had adapted the art of shtetl matchmaking to a modern American model.

Linda still keeps the mezuzah, my first gift for her, in a jewelry box filled with precious gems, none as bashert. I recognize meant to be only in hindsight. Now, we have new names, Bubbe & Zayde, old names we choose to honor. Though our lives are profoundly different than parents and grandparents, we celebrate many flowering branches. We kvell with ancestors, and call upon Poppy’s satin chutzpah, Miriam’s bottomless laughter, as our grandchildren search their destinies.

Editor’s Note: A much longer version of this story appeared under a different title in The Jewish Literary Journal in April 2022. It’s reprinted here with the permission of the author.

Steve Pollack hit half-balls with broomsticks, rode the Frankford El to Drexel University, sailed the equator on the USS Enterprise. He advised governments, directed an affordable housing co-op, built hospitals, science labs and public schools. His poetry has recently appeared in  Schuylkill Valley Journal, Jewish Poets Collective, and Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. His chapbook, L’dor Vador–From Generation to Generation, was published by Finishing Line Press. He was named the 2025 Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate. He volunteers on the One Book One Jewish Community team sponsored by Gratz College and sings bass with Nashirah: the Jewish Chorale of Greater Philadelphia. He and Linda live in suburban Philly, where they celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary on November 2, 2025. 

To read more and Steve Pollack and his work, visit: Steve Pollack Montgomery County poet laureate and From generation to generation: l’dor v’dor

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

November 10, 2025 · 7:30 am

Collecting Languages

After White Squares by Lee Krasner (USA) 1948 *

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

I won a Hebrew contest once,

not because I understood

the text blocks reading right to left,

            although I knew zeh meant “this”

            and ha meant “the”

but because I understood the random

algorithm of standardized testing

and that I couldn’t color in

too many D choices with my No. 2 pencil.

I won Honorable Mention

in a German Declamation contest once playing

a Hausfrau in Wolfgang Borchert’s “Die Küchenuhr,”

my hair in pink curlers, wearing my mother’s housecoat

on the Rutgers stage, the only top contestant

who did not speak German at home.

As a teen, I performed “Tri Medvedya,”

the “Three Bears,” to get eighth graders

interested in taking Russian classes

at the high school.

            Odna devoshka poshlya v lecu i zablyudilas.

            A girl went into the forest and sat down.

I took Greek classes from a Rutgers professor,

            So much based on the aleph bais of Hebrew

            Even the Russian kukla for doll

Czech lessons in Prague,

            Where I recognized from Russian

            Infinitives k’ pti to drink and plakat to cry

tried French with Rosetta Stone.

            L’éléphante est dans l’avion

The elephant is on the airplane

But it was my frustration with not knowing

my grandparents’ Yiddish that led me

to formal classes, to confront what little

I knew, what little I had absorbed,

robbed of linguistic heritage

by immigrant grandparents

who died too soon.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

* Editor’s note: This poem–an ekphrastic poem–was inspired by Lee Krasner’s work, White Squares. To view Krasner’s artwork, visit: https://whitney.org/collection/works/504

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, European Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 3, 2025 · 7:30 am

Two Yahrzeit Candles

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

February 17th, my mother’s Yahrzeit.

I realized I had forgotten to light 

the candle for my father on February 11th.

They died years apart, my father at 62,

several months before his early retirement,

my mother at 92, a mainstay in my world. 

My father and I remained estranged.

He missed so many chances to be part 

of my life—never came to my wedding, 

my college graduation, or celebrated

the birth of our daughter, his only grandchild.

February 17th, I lit two candles chanted

the Kaddish for both parents, holy words 

in Aramaic that are deeply etched 

in every synagogue service. This ritual 

binds me to my ancestors, sends shivers 

down my spine as I reckon with shame 

at the growing distance from my father. 

There’s no accounting for the candles’ 

wax or for the duration of their burning. 

One candle with barely a flicker, 

while the other still flares two days later.

Who’s to say for which parent the candle 

burns brighter?

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Borderless, 3 Elements Review, and The Jewish Writing Project. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129 project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times.

2 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 20, 2025 · 7:30 am

Daffodils and Nuns (1957)

By Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

Daffodils, ridiculous, happy flowers with
small pinched faces in yellow or orange
gaze innocently at the world haloed
by petals like the yellow habits of nuns.

A day off first grade, I was dusting wine bottles
in Pop’s liquor store when black-cloaked nuns
with pinched white faces and fleshy foreheads 
pressed into white bands shuffled into Pop’s store.

The bells over the door chimed their welcome,
but I didn’t see heaven, only over-sized
penguins with huge silver crosses blazing
like lightening across broad chests.

I remembered my mother’s warning
never to enter a church where nuns 
might steal a Jewish child and
a story foraged from the forests

of Poland that told me of priests 
inciting pogroms at Easter from 
their pulpits, and I ran up the stairs
to Pop in the backroom, screaming,

“Nuns, Nuns, here in our store!”
Pop touched a finger to my lips,
held me close in his arms, said,
“They’re only here collecting charity,
money for Saint Mary’s down the street.”

No matter where my fears first blossomed,
I know I would have preferred nuns in yellow
and orange habits. Maybe I would have even 
given them the quarter I had buried deep in 
the pocket of my red overalls.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.


1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry, Polish Jewry

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 13, 2025 · 7:30 am

Our stories forever intertwined

by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Santa Monica, CA)

How many more tears

do I have left for a home

I’ve never been?

Longing to see where my mother

played when she was just

a daughter.

The other boys left as my father,

named after Elyahu, ventured into the water, 

seen as dirty, I’m afraid, his name a tricky thing to hide.

And where my grandfather took a routine beating

on the way to school for being a Jew

in Tehran.

How many more tears

do I have left for Palestine?

They say thirty percent of the deaths are children alone.

Aid distribution a catastrophe,

a needlessly fatal obstacle course for the hungry.

How can the extremists live with themselves?

I hear the stories, read the poems,

and feel changed. Please don’t look away

for too long.

We must know

the horror

to alter it.

Suddenly, reservoirs of tears

I thought had emptied

appear replenished.

How many more tears do I have left to cry

for the hostages– their families, the honorable peace builders–

even that poor dog, killed.

From Be’eri to DC, followed by chants of “Free Palestine!”

This–this is not how you liberate,

though I myself have no answers beyond love.

That is the antidote I hold onto tightly

mistakenly thinking I could leave it

to the political experts.

How many tears do I possibly have left

listening to one of the survivors

after all she has lived through on her kibbutz lately.

Vehemently stating how unwelcome the PM is

like a bad word, I do not wish to give his name

the time nor the space.

Of course the last thing on earth she would want to do

is pose with him. What— for optics?

You really want to discuss the optics right now?

How much longer will I be chained to the news

eagerly awaiting the latest episode of Amanpour?

This is my least favorite addiction.

But who else can I trust?

Am I supposed to go about as normal?

The whole of it has been tossed upside down, to be reductive.

Trying to gather a morsel of control:

listen, dialogue, donate, organize, protest, build peace.

Rinse, Repeat.

While my family and my love hide in the mamads.

Bombs where there should be falling stars

over your home and mine.

Giving way to a day when we share

the bounty of olives,

laugh over Turkish coffee, the irony.

Together in the shuk

bound, our stories

forever intertwined.

Lillian Farzan-Kashani is an Iranian American and Jewish therapist, poet, and speaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Much of her work is rooted in being a child of immigrants and is reflective of her intersectionality. Read more about her professional and creative pursuits at https://www.lillianfarzan.com/

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, Israel Jewry, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

September 22, 2025 · 7:30 am

Braiding the challah

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)


            for Rachel


I watched as your hands melted

into soft dough, the dome of it,

puffed and swollen, and how naturally

your fingers formed and divided it

into four roughly equal parts,

then each of those into snakes,

the kind I remembered creating

in kindergarten with clay.

 
I watched as you designed four

round Challahs as Rosh Hashanah

gifts for friends. You said it was easy, 

and I wanted to believe that, as I observed

you, the snake charmer, plaiting the strands. 

You alone knew the rhythm, the form 

of what would soon become four fragrant crowns.

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Between the Lines, PoetsWest Literary Journal, and 3 Elements Review. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129, a project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times beyond Covid.

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 19, 2025 · 7:30 am

T’shuvah

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

It was just before the high holy days. 
My brother traveled from Hawaii to the east coast
to spend the holidays attending my father’s shul. 

He was invited to have lunch with an orthodox family,
members of a local Chabad.

I found the location of the house and decided
to surprise him. I knocked on the door, entered
the house, and asked for my brother by name.     

I was not dressed as an orthodox Jew. 
Nor was my brother. No beard, no white shirt,
no black fedora, no black jacket, no tzitzits. 

“Jack! Is this your brother?”  I heard someone call out.  
“Yes…  T’shuvah!” my brother announced with a sly smile.  
We greet with a hug. I’m vaguely familiar with the word. 

Like a password: it explains my appearance, my presence.  
Ahhh, T’shuvah! They shouted the word as if it was a toast;
their faces alive with smiles

Richard Epstein, a long-time resident of the Washington, DC area, was brought up in the Orthodox and Conservative temples of Scranton, PA. He has also spent some time as a student of Buddhism. Richard often examines and questions his religion through poetry. He has been a featured reader at the Silver Spring Civic Center, Kensington Day of the Book festival, Philadelphia Ethical Society, U.S. Navy Memorial, The Vietnam Woman’s Memorial, the Memorial Day Writers Project, and Walter Reed National Medical Center. He is the editor of two veteran anthologies and his poetry has appeared in The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Jewish Writing Project, Poetica, and others.

Author’s Note: T’shuvah — One who returns.  Being that all definitions are inadequate, t’shuvah involves repentance. 

Leave a comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , ,

September 15, 2025 · 7:30 am

The Letter Home

by Milt Zolotow (z”l)

(with his daughter, Nina Zolotow)

Note from Nina Zolotow: My father enlisted in the Army during World War II when he was told that they needed mapmakers in New Jersey and that with his background in commercial art the map making division would want his skills. Instead, the day he enlisted, he and the other recruits were put aboard a train whose destination was Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, for basic training to be a member of an elite force of soldiers in a tank battalion under General George Patton. 

After completing basic training, he was shipped to North Africa—he never said where—and from there he wrote his family a long letter about a very interesting Rosh Hashanah that he spent with members of the Jewish community who lived in a big city there. He also sent home a small portfolio of drawings he made of people he saw there. 

The letter is typed, so it’s very legible, but the paper on which he typed the words is old and crumbling. The drawings aren’t in the best condition either. Many of us face the same kind of situation when we go through our parent’s things. I decided to transcribe the letter and scan some of the drawings as the best way of preserving them and sharing them with family members. 

But I really think the letter is so fascinating and raises a lot of important issues about the Jewish diaspora and the state of the world back then that I thought I’d share the letter with you, dear readers. 

Dear Folks:

Spent Rosh Hashanah in a big African town and it is a day I shall never forget. I had been learning to know these people from the outside, but before that day, I had never come so close to understanding their lives. 

I went to the largest synagogue and after a few minutes rushed outside to sketch some of the wonderful things I had seen. The boys approached me and asked if I were Jewish. I was then handed a copy of a G.I. Siddur and asked to read from it. I stumbled through a couple of words and the littlest kid picked up and rattled off about three minutes of minhah from memory.

The kids invited me to dinner at their home and introduced themselves. The small one was named Maurice. I dubbed him Moish; he was six and smart as a whip.

On the way to their home he recited his lessons in French, Hebrew, and sang Moroccan songs for me. The home was in the “off limits” area, the vilest slum I have ever seen. I stumbled through a dark alley and found myself led into a dark room with a table inside. I was in the quarters of a family of six, and the size of the room was like the one Eleanore [ed. note: his sister] used to use.

I shook hands with the mother and father and felt very ill at ease. The mother hid in the corner behind the bed, occasionally covering herself in the manner of the Moslems.  

They were Moroccan Jews and spoke poor French, no Yiddish, and though the father was a Hebrew scholar, I couldn’t even recognize the few remaining words in my Hebrew vocabulary because the vowel sounds were distorted and he always stressed the last syllable in the manner of the French.

We spoke little till the arrival of the daughter, son-in-law, their baby, and an audience of neighbors, who gathered in the courtyard causing great excitement amongst the chickens.

When the younger generation arrived, we sat down to the meal and conversation picked up. Son-in-law and myself in French, kids helping with English, and all translating into Moroccan for the benefit of the parents. Kiddush was said and we went through the ceremonial washing of the hands and brochos for each course. After some more anisette, Moish and I sang Au Claire de la Lune, Hinai Matov in all three traditional melodies, and Frére Jacques. Everybody was gay and we toasted the brotherhood of the Jewish race, the liberation of all people, the end of the war, and my return to America.

We all ate, including the baby who was nursed at the table, and I got the lion’s share, doing my best to swallow the miserable food. 

Here’s the menu: Pimento, etc. The main course was a tiny piece of meat which I could not eat despite my good intentions. For dessert there were grapes and pomegranates (poor ones, not like the delicious red ones from Palestine). To drink, much wine and anisette. 

We talked of big buildings, freedom, the Moroccan antecedents of the family, and we all shared a dream of America and the good life. 

I rose to go and they asked me if I were not pleased; I said I was very happy and would return after a walk with the boys.

I got a pass to the restricted area from the Chaplain and we went on a tour through the streets.

Every step I took, people grabbed me and shouted, “Jew?” and when I answered they said, “Sholom Aleichem” and called me brother. They brought me some Jewish girls, lovely faces like Hadassah F. [ed. note: possibly one of Milt’s friends] and rich black hair, but incredibly dirty.

The streets were full of soldiers mingling with the populace. From the balcony, I heard Pistol Packin’ Mama, and saw a couple of G.I.’s celebrating and dancing.

I spoke to many people, poor diseased people with glazed eyes and infections. All of them expressed their great love for America. We mean food and life to them. They all told stories of starvation at the hands of the Germans.

After a long discussion with several amusing salesgirls, I finally managed to buy the boys some un-rationed wooden shoes, and in this small way expressed my gratitude.

All the neighbors heard about the shoes and came to see. We went out again and met a cousin of the boys, and I was invited to his house for some more wine. He and his young wife lived in an apartment house of modern construction, with tasteful furnishings and a gramophone. We drank and listened to Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, and Arabic music.

The Moroccan music was Spanish in origin and its basic rhythm was tango. Some resembled the music of the Yemenites. Ali ali, and Zum Gali. I really regret not having learned to sight-read for I really wanted to have a record of the songs we played and they sang. They were well informed and quite cultured. The father had been a classical scholar and the young man and his wife were alert to young people.

We discussed freedom and they asked about antisemitism. I could not say our country was free from it and had a hard time explaining in my poor French its subtle manifestations in the U.S.

When I left, he made a little speech over a glass of wine and looked forward to the victory of the allies, days of peace and plenty, and, of course, my eventual return home. A La Victoire! 

Moish almost cried when I left him, and I promised to come back. We walked hand in hand to the place where I took my truck back to camp. 

I have hardly touched the reality of their painful existence. I tried to record shapes and colors of the environment in my mind and by rapidly sketching what I remember. To tell the truth of this poor yet dignified life would take a Zola or Rembrandt.

The disease and pain is written onto the faces, and some of them stayed with me so that I have had to draw them several times.

It’s a strange mixture, this complex picture I discovered, with roots in our ancient traditions and existing side by side with the businesses, like brothels, of the French; it makes cultural polyglots out of the children.

Moish could be a great man, a man of intellect but someone else will have to throw off the shackles that confine him to memorizing the phrases of a dead culture. 

If only we could or would realize the meaning we Americans have to these poor people in terms of their survival as a people. We are their dream embodied and the facts of our lives, however unsatisfactory to us, are the meat and some of the future they want.

I told Moish to always go to school and added to the tremendous store of his memorized knowledge two words, the “Glory Hallelujah” which he sings to Hinai Ma Tov. 

He already knew the Star-Spangled Banner. 

Milt

3 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism

Tagged as , , , , ,