Category Archives: Family history

December 16, 2013 · 9:22 am

An Unexpected Discovery

by Laurie Rappeport (Safed, Israel)

Several years ago I became involved in guiding a group of students who were studying the history of the American Jewish Experience through music. The kids were examining Jewish America of the 21st century.

Toward this end they explored the traditional liturgy and music of successive waves of immigrants who made their way to America’s shores over the past 400 years. It was probably one of the most interesting subjects that I’ve ever tackled with a group of students.

The project first brought me into contact with the Milken Archives of American Jewish Music, which provided the students with a significant percentage of our research material. Much of the Milken material relates to the first Jewish immigrants who arrived in South Carolina from Brazil in the mid-1600s. These people were refugees from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions and, after fleeing to South America, were forced to run again when the Inquisition reached South America.

The students had a wonderful time and I put the experience in the back of my mind until recently when I suddenly discovered that the history of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain and forced to wander the world, looking for sanctuary, was, in fact, my own history.

Until that time, as far as I knew, I was a bona fide gefilte fish and kreplach Jew with roots in Poland, Belerus and Lithuania. However, it turns out that one of my grandfathers, who hailed from England, was the descendent of Dutch Jews who were almost certainly of Spanish origin.

In 2008 I received an email from a man in New Zealand. Geoff had been born in Birmingham England and immigrated to New Zealand in the ’50s with his father and brother. However, recent documents had come to light that indicated that Geoff had, in fact, been adopted, and that his biological father had been Jewish.

In following through the family history that my family knew, as well as the history that Geoff had been able to determine, we were able to ascertain that Geoff and my mother were second cousins. A subsequent DNA test with my mother’s brother confirmed the relationship.

Throughout the following year Geoff showed great interest in his Jewish ancestry. Still living in New Zealand, he read voraciously about Judaism and Israel and contacted me on Skype several times a week to find out my take on the things that he was reading. In 2009 Geoff and his wife, Jenny, came to Israel to meet the family and attend my son’s wedding.

Geoff and Jenny continued to research our family’s history but they were also fascinated by Judaism. They returned to Israel the following year to celebrate Rosh Hashana with us and in February 2011, under Israel’s Law of Return, made aliyah. To say that no one was more surprised than I was is an understatement!

Geoff and Jenny joined an ulpan course to learn Hebrew and completed a formal conversion program in February 2012 with a giur and a Jewish wedding celebration as a new Jewish couple. The story of their return to Judaism was featured as a Friday spread in Israel’s largest newspaper. They bought a home and now live a 20-minute walk from my house in Safed in northern Israel.

Geoff has continued to explore our common genealogy and discovered a number of interesting details of our family’s life in England. The majority of England’s Jews are, like America’s Jews, descended from Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (One interesting note: many of these immigrants had intended to make their way to America but, when the ships docked on the eastern shore of Scotland or England, were tricked by the sea captains into thinking that they had arrived in America and never completed the train ride that would have taken them to the western shore and their second boat to America.)

What Geoff discovered was that, in at least two lines of our family, our lineage can be traced back to Dutch Jews who were welcomed to England by Oliver Cromwell in the late 1600s. (Jews were expelled from England in 1266 and were not allowed back into the country until Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, invited them to return.)  The majority of the Jews in Amsterdam during that period were descendants of Jews who had fled Spain in 1492.

Suddenly, my students’ project took on a whole new meaning as I realized that the art, music, traditions and customs of the Mediterranean and Sephardic world comprised my own heritage as well.

There’s still much left to determine about our family’s history, but access to the increasing availability of both English and Dutch records may open the door to new discoveries. One far-flung cousin was able to find her ancestor’s ketubah in Italy while another break-away branch of the family has been located in Australia and New Zealand. It turns out that one of their descendants lives up the road from me in the Golan Heights!

In the meantime, Geoff and Jenny have become core members of our local synagogue. (Geoff arrives every Shabbat morning at 8:00 am. I told him that, in my entire life, I’d never made it to shul before 10:00 am.) Their latest project is wine-making, which they undertook so that, when they spend time in Italy (which they do every summer), they’ll have plenty of kosher wine.

Laurie Rappeport is originally from Detroit. She is an online educator who works with Jewish day school and afternoon school students to teach them about Judaism and Israel. She frequently uses the Milken Archives as a resource for historical studies about Judaism. 

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November 18, 2013 · 9:28 am

Bearing Witness

 by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

I never knew my grandmother.
I never knew why she left her Polish shtetl.
I never knew why she was Austro-Hungarian and Polish at the same time.
I never tasted her stuffed cabbage with raisins in white sauce.
I never ladled the cholent she left on the stove all day for her boys.
I never ate her boiled hot dogs on a bun on Market Day.
I never went by two buses with her to the Prince Street Market.
I never sat on her knee while she kibbitzed with neighbors by the front window radiator.
I never appreciated her generosity as she doled out clothing after the celluloid explosion of ’33.
I never rang her cash register.
I never witnessed her haggling with New York City wholesalers.
I never saw her hold fabrics between her fingers to decide what to sell in her store.
I never scolded her for wearing such thin flowered dresses.
I never noticed the flash in her eyes before a belly laugh.
I never beheld her penetrating gaze or fell victim to her caustic words.
I never addressed envelopes in English to her sisters in Europe.
I never spotted worry lines on her face with three sons in the U.S. Armed Forces.
I never accompanied her to the Joint to sponsor her only surviving relative to America.
I never visited her, wracked with cancer in the hospital.
I never felt her joy when her brother arrived from the DP camp.
She never knew me.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Poetica Magazine, Jewishfiction.net, Nimrod,Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Minerva Rising, The Copperfield Review and others. She teaches creative writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey. She is the author of Discovering Your Jewish Ancestors (Heritage Quest, 2001) and the forthcoming Goldie Takes a Stand! (Kar-Ben, Fall 2014), a tale of young Golda Meir. You can read more about her at her website www.barbarakrasner.com and her blog The Whole Megillah – The Writer’s Resource for Jewish Story.

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September 30, 2013 · 6:00 am

The Letter

by Ellen Norman Stern (Willow Grove, PA)

The knock on the door of our Berlin apartment came around five o’clock one dark May morning in 1938.

It was the Gestapo’s favorite time of day to make house calls. Their victims were usually asleep and not many other people saw them at such an hour.

When my mother opened the door two men in dark raincoats stood outside. One of them muttered “Geheime Staatspolizei”, pushed the door open and let himself and his partner in. Their clothing was as anonymous as their faces. Perhaps secret agents are picked for their faces. Only members of a Secret Service look like this, no matter what their country. No one ever remembers their faces afterwards.

It was a time of constant rumors, all of them threatening. Even I, a child, had recently heard of an impending roundup of Jewish men in our Berlin community. There would be a mass raid, a Razzia. Why and what was to happen later no one knew. A pre-dawn knock on the door was dreaded, almost expected that summer. The only speculation was when that knock would come and for whom.

Yet when it came for us, it surprised my father and mother.

Inside the apartment the agents confronted my father in the foyer and announced their orders for his arrest. My father asked permission to take a little of their time: he needed to shave and dress. There was no way of resisting.

Permission granted, one agent remained in the bathroom with him and took up a position by the window facing into the room. The other man stayed in the foyer with his back against the slightly open bathroom door.

I tried to be unobtrusive. From my spot in the small entrance hall I peeked into the bathroom. Inside I saw my father’s face in the mirror over the sink. I thought him calm and accepting. But I noticed how his hands shook while he freshened up.

My father had suffered several recent gall bladder attacks. My mother said it was bad nerves. Conditions in Berlin were more than favorable to nervous tensions that spring in 1938, especially if you were Jewish and in a prosperous business.

My mother went into the kitchen and got ready a dose of his medication. When she came out she held a small bag in her hand and said he must be sure to take it with him. One of the agents remarked drily that there would be little chance for using it.

I saw my mother’s eyes starting to blaze. I cowered as she turned on those the two Gestapo agents. Fearlessly she chastise them for barging in on our peaceful household at such an hour, for taking away an innocent man when everyone knew how wrong that was. How could they face their consciences performing such a mission?

I like to think the Gestapo men remembered that scene. I did, all of my life. It took incredible guts to speak out the way Mimi (my pet name for my mother) did. Mimi remained ladylike, even in her scolding. But she certainly exploded that morning. She had good reason. The Gestapo men knew that, too.

In later years when her health and mental strength failed she was often afraid of things that seemed childish.. But I remembered Mimi’s courage and I recalled how she stood in the hallway of our fashionable apartment, wagging her finger under the nose of one of the Gestapo men, backing him against our bathroom door. Would I have such guts were I put to the test?

That dark morning the man at the door just shrugged his shoulder, while the other one inside the bathroom ignored her. None of that deterred her.

“Where are you taking my husband?” she asked repeatedly until the second man finally answered.

“To the police station.”

The landing outside our apartment door was still dark when they took my father out. My father, wedged between both agents, turned to Mimi.

“I have a cousin in America. His name is Karl Nussbaum, he lives in Louisville (he pronounced it Lewisville), in the state of Kentucky. Try to contact him and see if he can help.”

Mimi dressed quickly, then she helped me with my clothes. We began the rapid walk to the police station a few short blocks away. Just as we arrived breathlessly at the precinct, several police vans pulled out. All the vans were fully loaded. Therazzia had already produced results…

Inside the station Mimi asked again and again about the destination of those departing vehicles.

“Alexanderplatz,” was the desk sergeant’s brusque reply.

She decided we would follow them. My mother held my hand during the long taxi ride that brought us to the center of Berlin. The driver stopped at a large dark, gray forbidding-looking building. Threatening, just like the mood of everything else that morning.

Many years later I saw the dreaded headquarters of the Gestapo in a television newsreel. Even after many decades that view crystalized into the special and horrible aura I once felt. I could not know what went on in that building, what unspeakable and excruciatingly painful acts people experienced there. What I sensed at age ten was that it was an evil place.

The day I entered it with Mimi I saw a warren of dark corridors filled on either side with windowless small brown cubicles. In one such sparse hole in the wall I waited quietly at her side while Mimi faced a heavy-set official behind a desk. The chubby man rustled some papers, pretending to look up my father’s name.

The prisoner Leopold Nussbaum, he informed us, was on his way to an interrogation center, but the family would probably have some news from him within a few days.

Not encouraging information, yet the official was a shade kinder than others we had encountered on our way in. Why that was I couldn’t tell. The way he looked at Mimi was definitely less insolent and arrogant.

On our return trip we stood waiting for the streetcar at its Alexanderplatz stop. Buildings just as dismal and forbidding as the one we had just left surrounded the traffic-filled square. I glanced across the street at another evil-looking dark tall structure. I felt Mimi shudder as she too, looked at it.

“The Volksgerichtshof, ” she volunteered without my asking.

In later years I learned more about the People’s Court and its use by the Nazi regime. Mimi might have known even then what kind of place it was. Few prisoners left it without an order for their execution, if they left the building alive at all.

The long ride home on the streetcar was bleak. Mimi looked discouraged and fearful and did not let go of my hand. My feelings, of course, were a reflection of hers. She was quiet and sad, and barely spoke. It was May, yet everything around us was still gray and cold. It started to drizzle. Times were suddenly desperate. I had a dreadful sense of foreboding.

In the days following my father’s arrest Mimi searched for the address of the cousin she was supposed to contact. There was a problem. Nowhere in my father’s papers could she find the address. But she did what had to be done. She wrote the letter and explained carefully and discreetly the urgent need for my father to leave Germany quickly. To accomplish that a relative in the United States of America had to grant him an affidavit. This document had to declare that my father would not become a financial burden to the state, but, if necessary, would be supported by his relative. The affidavit listing the sponsor’s assets was one of the requirements of the American consulate in Germany before it granted the desired visa that allowed exit from Germany and entry into the United States.

When she finished her appeal Mimi simply addressed the envelope to Mr. Karl Nussbaum, in care of His Excellency the Mayor of the City of Louisville in Kentucky, The United States of America.

It was a summer hotter than most Berliners remembered. The usually moderate climate had reversed itself. I suffered a heat stroke by just playing in the schoolyard. I lay on my bed in the dark with cold compresses on my forehead and hoped the room would stop spinning.

I thought of my father constantly. My throat tightened with fear when I did. We had not the slightest knowledge of his location or the circumstances of his whereabouts. I did not dare to talk about him to Mimi. She did not let on how worried she was. Perhaps we both hoped that by avoiding a discussion it would not -could not- possibly be as bad as we feared.

After two long dreadful weeks a postcard arrived. “I am healthy. Do not worry.”

Eight more weeks of silence followed. But there were rumors. My God, what dreadful rumors.

Some of them were uttered by the men who came to our apartment every night. Their presence was another baffling phenomenon that summer. No one explained it to me. Children were silent observers of a time which most adults did not understand. Perhaps it was assumed the less children knew, the safer were the grownups around them. Who knew what dangerous information could be leaked by a child who overheard conversations he was not meant to hear? I already knew, that Jewish people did not venture out in daylight unless they had to.

The strangers, different ones every night, came to sleep in our apartment. They slept on pillows, spare mattresses, and blankets, on the grey-carpeted Chippendale dining room floor, under the grand piano in the fruit-wood music room, or just on the carpet in the front hall. By sleeping away from their own homes and spending their nights in strange places these Jewish men felt secure. Our apartment was “safe”. Safe because its family head had already been “visited” and was now in the clutches of the Gestapo. Why would the authorities return and strike for a second time?

The feeling of being watched was constant and ominous. One afternoon the telephone rang. Mimi took the call. She said nothing, but her face showed great concentration as she listened to the caller.

Suddenly she spoke into the telephone with sharp, clipped tones.

“Herr Schmidt, I recognize your voice. Don’t dare to threaten me again. And if you attempt to show your face near me I will report you to the police precinct.”

When she hung up I saw that she trembled.

“It was that lout, the son of the concierge downstairs. That vulture. He thought he could frighten me. ”

The unemployed, sharp-eyed young man apparently surmised that we might be leaving the country before long. He had done odd jobs in our apartment and knew we had unusual and beautiful furniture. With a disguised voice he had claimed to be a government official and told Mimi that it was against the law to sell or remove any of it and that we would be prosecuted if we tried. He stated that every piece had to be left in place were we to move away.

At another time during those difficult days our doorbell rang for the delivery of a large and fancy food basket. It contained delicacies that had been hard to find in the strictly-rationed Berlin food markets for some time. A note in the basket read, “To Frau Trude, from your admirer, Herr Z.”

I did not know any “Mr.Z”, nor did I think Mimi did. And why would he send us such a splendid gift? There was never a definite revelation, yet I felt Mimi strongly suspected who the donor was. In later years she confided that it must have been the fat man behind the desk at Gestapo headquarters. “He felt sorry for me,” she said. “But he also appreciated my situation. Perhaps he even liked it when I spoke back to him and told him what I really thought.”

In Louisville, Karl Nussbaum met with his buddies every Thursday evening for a night of cold cuts and beer, and a round of their beloved “Skat” card game at Cunningham’s, the popular delicatessen restaurant that catered to the “heimatlich” tastes of its German-born clientele.

Karl Nussbaum was a wealthy businessman. During the long years since his arrival in Kentucky as a penniless escapee from World War I German military service his original scrap iron yard had expanded into a big business. His other ventures included the purchase of a whiskey distillery. He and his Gentile wife, Marie Louise, had raised a family of three sons and a daughter. All the sons and the husband of his daughter were engaged in the father’s enterprises. All were stalwart pillars of their Christian church communities. Karl himself, though he never officially left his Judaism behind, took pride in being the donor of substantial gifts to many Christian endeavors.

Among the “regulars” at Cunninghams were several men who had known Karl for many years. One of them was Louisville’s current mayor, Joseph Scholtz.

One Thursday evening during that summer of 1938 the mayor was greeting his friends before sitting down to supper. Seeing Karl Nussbaum suddenly reminded him of something. He pulled out an envelope from the pocket of his seersucker jacket.

“Oh, Karl,” he said, “here is something for you. It arrived at my City Hall office this week.”

Mimi’s letter had reached its destination.

That letter to Louisville bore fruit. Some time during that summer an amazing document arrived at our house. It was an affidavit of many pages vouching for the financial security of Leopold Nussbaum, his spouse and child once they had reached American shores.

After thanking God and the American relatives, Mimi paid numerous highly frustrating visits to the American consulate near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. I went along because as a Jewish child I was no longer allowed to go to school and was too young to be left at home alone.

The daily lines of applicants seeking quota numbers for American visas were incredibly long. It was obvious that the staff members of the consulate enjoyed feeling superior to all the pathetic souls seeking admission to the U.S. They made incredible difficulties for them.

Mimi had to apply for my father who was still in the concentration camp. This caused more obstacles. The person seeking a visa had to apply in person or his case would be deferred. In desperation Mimi hired an immigration lawyer to handle the situation. His enormous fee must have included an “inducement” to his personal connection at the consulate.

My father was incarcerated at Buchenwald for eleven weeks. Upon his release he came home to us in Berlin. He was allowed to stay exactly forty-eight hours.

My father was a different man after he came home. He looked so sad, defeated, and distant, I hesitated to go near him. Not the warm, affectionate father I had known before. No longer the man who took me, his only child, with him on Sunday mornings to meet his male friends at Berlin’s famous coffeehouses and treated me to special puff pastry delicacies at Kempinsky or the Cafe Dobrin. Now he was tired and for his two days and nights at home sat in our apartment silent, smoking and thinking.

He was so tired. “It’s from hacking out all those rocks,” he murmured to Mimi, speaking softly so I would not hear. He had worked in the stone quarries while at Buchenwald, had been forced to cut, move and carry heavy stones and rubble. He was a businessman and not used to such hard physical work. The food he had been given was minimal. At that time I did not understand why the camp authorities demanded such tasks from him, why he was treated the way he was.

What he had really endured he never told us.

During his time in Buchenwald he had relinquished the ownership of his business to the state. He told Mimi he was released from camp because he had signed a statement that he would leave Germany within forty-eight hours. But his captors had a departing message for him: “Don’t for a moment think you will ever escape us. No matter where you end up, we will find you. Then we will finish the job we started here.”

During his last day at home my father sat in his favorite chair in the dining room smoking one cigarette after another as he watched the man from the shipping firm pack his personal belongings. Several suitcases stood open on the thick grey carpeting where unfamiliar visitors had slept only a few nights before. On the dining table neat stacks of shirts, pajamas, and underwear lay next to my father’s papers, photographs, and medications. As he distributed the clothing neatly among the cases the mover glanced at the silver-covered porcelain coffee and tea set on the buffet. He picked up one of the silver pitchers and carefully wrapped some heavy underwear around it. Then he positioned it inside one of the suitcases.

“No, no, that set isn’t going,” I heard Mimi protest.

“Might as well send it along while I have the room here, Madame,” the burly man replied. He paid no further attention to her and continued to wrap the rest of the pieces and place them in the baggage. When he was done with the packing, he secured all the suitcases with the moving firm’s official seal. “Ready to go,” he announced. “They’ll travel on the ship with him and no one will bother to open them.”

Within only a few weeks after that a government order came through forbidding emigrating “non-Aryans” from taking gold or silver possessions out of Germany. To this day Mimi’s tea set has kept its special place in our family. When I married my parents gave it to me. When I look at it (and whenever I polish it) I remember the packer who must have known something we did not when he wrapped up my father’s winter underwear. And now, so many years later, I am still grateful to him.

At the end of his 48-hours with us my father left Germany thanks to a train ticket to Antwerp Mimi had been fortunate to obtain. From there he embarked on the S.S. Europa for the trans-Atlantic crossing and a new life.

It was only many, many years later that I understood how close he and Mimi and I had come to the destruction that so tragically annihilated the rest of our family.

And sometimes when I think about the way fate turned out for us I remember the letter Mimi wrote in those dark days. There is no doubt in my mind that letter was “beshert.” It saved our lives.

Born in Germany, Ellen Stern came to the United States as a young girl and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She’s the author of numerous books for young adult readers, including biographies of Louis D. Brandeis, Nelson Glueck, and Elie Wiesel. Her most recent publication is The French Physician’s Boy, a novel about Philadelphia’s 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic.

“The Letter” is an excerpt from Ellen Stern’s unpublished memoir, Surviving: A Family Journal, and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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September 9, 2013 · 8:32 am

Building Community with Soul

by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)

I can no longer live a meaningful life without my Jewish community. My teenage son calls it an addiction. But my love for my community does not stem from mere habit, nor am I guided by compulsive need or blind infatuation. On the contrary, it has taken years of soul searching and trial and error to find the appropriate community where my family has been able to take root, grow and contribute.

Since ancient times, philosophers like Aristotle (Politics, 1.1253a) and more recently, Spinoza (Ethics, IV, prop 35) have argued that we are social animals. As Rabbi Hillel famously said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?” (Ethics of Our Fathers 1:14) In other words, “All Israel are responsible for one another” (Babylonian Talmud, Shevuot 39A, Sifra Bechukotai 7:5).

The Talmud actually defined the type of society where scholars were allowed to live: The chosen city had to include a beit din (law court), an honest charity fund, a synagogue, public baths and toilet facilities, a mohel (circumciser) and a surgeon, a notary, a shochet (ritual slaughterer) and a teacher (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 17b). As Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, has explained, “in order to be a suitable place to live, a community must provide for all its members’ spiritual and physical needs” (www.myjewishlearning.com).

Yet, it was not until my own father’s death ten years ago that my longing for such community became so urgent. I had once asked him whether he would wish to be buried in the same cemetery as his parents and extended family in Toronto, Canada. “We should be buried within the community where we live,” was my father’s reply. By that time, he had been residing in Melbourne, Australia, for more than 30 years.

He was espousing the teachings of both Rabbis Hillel and Tzaddok, who urged us not to separate ourselves from the community (Ethics of the Fathers 2:5, 4:7). Indeed, Judaism teaches that those who are not prepared to feel their community’s pain and help out when the going gets tough, will not enjoy comfort in the good times either. As the Talmud warns, “The man who secludes himself from the community, which is in distress, shall not see the prosperity of the community” (Ta’anit, chapter 1).

A midrash goes even further, maintaining that removing yourself from the community is like overthrowing the world. It tells the story of the dying Rabbi Assi, who was depressed because although he had been a great scholar and kind and generous man, he had not been involved in communal matters or disputes. As he told his nephew, “I might perhaps have been able to render some service, had I not kept to myself but taken upon me the burden of communal affairs” (Midrash Tanhuma, Mishpatim 2).

When my father died, I did not know where to turn. Although we had belonged to various Orthodox synagogues in the past, my husband and I had not been able to find a spiritual home since moving to a new city some years earlier. As a result, we had flitted from one synagogue to the next, sampling a different one on each Jewish holiday but not feeling “at home” in any of them.

Nevertheless, I was touched when one of the rabbis, whom I had met in the course of my search, rang several times to see how I was faring. When upon my father’s first yahrzeit (anniversary after death), the same rabbi offered me his synagogue for a memorial service, we finally made up our minds to join his congregation – after such generosity on his part, we believed it was the least we could do.

That sense of welcome, warmth and support through both tough and good times remain major factors in why we renew our membership each year. Judaism ensures that mourners do not grieve alone, stipulating that Kaddish, the prayer for the dead in which God’s name is sanctified, only be recited publicly in the presence of a minyan (ten Jewish adults – the minimum number required for community). Celebrations also become more meaningful when enjoyed together in community.

As our sons have grown older and undertaken preparation for their Bar Mitzvah, our family has come to attend synagogue every Shabbat. Our shule of choice is Conservative (Masorti): Integrating tradition with modernity, it allows us to sit together as a family instead of banishing me behind a mechitza (partition to separate men and women).

This egalitarian ethos is particularly important to me as I do not have any daughters and would otherwise be sitting apart from my husband and sons. Nevertheless, it was several years before I felt comfortable being counted in a minyan and agreed to be called up to the Torah. Not that there was ever any pressure on me to do so – our synagogue accepts a certain variety of Jewish practice.

It also gives us the freedom to question and acknowledges our right to consider different interpretations and viewpoints. As Robert Gordis, chairman of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, has explained: “Pluralism is a characteristic not only of Judaism as a whole, but of every Jewish school of thought that is nurtured by the spirit of freedom” (JTS: Emet Ve’Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, 1988, Introduction p14).

In addition to my synagogue, the Jewish day school my children attend is another pillar of my community. Pluralistic and egalitarian too, it welcomes students of all backgrounds, who come together in mutual respect and are encouraged to work for tikkun olam, making the world a better place. So committed have I become to this philosophy that I decided to volunteer for the School Board when my oldest son was in first grade and have remained actively involved ever since.

According to Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Judah HaNassi, “Those who work for the community should do so for the sake of heaven” (Ethics of Our Fathers 2:2). In other words, the early rabbis were urging us to be ethical when we undertake communal work. As Rabbi Yehudah Prero explains, “We must act with pure intentions, with no ulterior motives” (“Community – Then, Now, and Forever, www.torah.org/learning/yomtov/holocaust/no3.html).

Humility is also an important factor: The Talmud not only regards leaders as the “servants” of the community (Horayot 10a), but also stresses that they should always carry “a basket of reptiles” on their back so that if they “became arrogant”, they could be told to “Turn around!” (Yoma 22b). In other words, never forget that family skeleton hidden in your closet!

Recognizing the frailties of human nature, the ancient rabbis resorted to divine reward and punishment as a means of encouraging ethical communal leadership: those who cause others to do wrong will not be “given the opportunity to repent”, while those who lead others to do good will be credited with their community’s merit (Ethics of Our Fathers, 5:18).

Sure, as Rabbi Yitzchak Blau has pointed out, the rabbis did not think it fair that communal leaders should enjoy heaven while their followers rotted in hell, but is there really no hope of redemption for those who lead others down the wrong path? Here scholars disagreed, with some arguing that while God would not help the wrongdoers, they were still free to repent on their own. In contrast, the medieval scholar and physician Moses Maimonides is much more damning in his assessment: for him, there is truly no hope of salvation for such wicked leaders (Hilchot Teshuva 4:1, http://blog.webyeshiva.org/teshuva/inights-in-pirkei-avot-the-implications-of-causing-others-to-sin).

Admittedly, such threats have little effect in this day and age when many of us don’t even know whether we believe in God. Nevertheless, it is still possible to contribute altruistically to and derive meaning from community based on religious civilization. Conservative (Masorti) Judaism recognizes this position as valid: “One can live fully and authentically as a Jew without having a single satisfactory answer to such doubts; one cannot, however, live a thoughtful Jewish life without having asked the questions” (Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, p17).

My oldest son has commented that without faith, a prayer service is just “a group of strangers singing together”. Yet, I have certainly discovered a sense of inner peace, spiritual uplift and intellectual stimulation through regular attendance at synagogue services and communal celebrations like the Pesach Seder.

To quote the writer Alain de Botton: The “relevance” of such religions as Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism “to the problems of community are arguably never greater than when they … remind us that there is also value to be had in standing in a hall with a hundred acquaintances and singing a hymn together … or in sitting at a table with neighbors and partaking of lamb stew and conversation, the kinds of rituals which, as much as the deliberations inside parliaments and law courts, are what help to hold our fractious and fragile societies together” (2012, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, London: Penguin Books, p50).

De Botton – who was born Jewish but describes himself as a committed atheist – argues for the removal of religion’s “supernatural structure” before it can help solve “many of the problems of the modern soul” (pp311-312).

My soul, however, does not need to be quarantined from the full gamut of my religion in order to thrive. Indeed, I am quite happy to keep on exploring the laws and customs of my heritage and culture, practicing rituals and contemplating ideas from within Judaism. All I need is my community.

Shira Sebban, a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, worked as a journalist for the Australian Jewish News. She previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She also serves as vice-president on the board of  Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. You can read more of her work at: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/category/australian-jewry/ http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13636  and at http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/

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March 25, 2013 · 6:11 am

Passover Reminiscence

by Janice L. Booker (Malibu, CA)

We bought spring clothes for Passover and fall clothes for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the high holidays.  The weather seemed always too cold for the new Passover clothes and too hot for the new fall clothes.  It took a long time and a lot of explanation for me to understand that the dates of the holidays didn’t change but the relationship between the Gregorian calendar and the Hebrew calendar did.

Holidays punctuated the sameness of days, the continuing emphasis on getting things done, going to school, shopping, playing; in general, our daily routine.  Preparation for the holiday of Passover was frenzied.

I don’t know how our grandmothers and mothers did it.   No dishwashers, no prepared foods, certainly no outside help – and yet, somehow it got done.  I hope it wasn’t the holiday that contributed to a shortened life span for that generation of women.   Yet, the expectation of repetition of the preparations, and the ceremony of the seder, were comforting in their continuity.  Before so many contemporary creative Haggadahs  with their inventive writings and improvisations were popular, we used the old Maxwell House Haggadah, a text familiar to me since early childhood.  Maybe the company’s distribution of these brand name Haggadahs was to give the subtle suggestion that Maxwell House coffee was kosher.  When my grandfather was alive, my parents, little brother and I went to their house on Wharton Street for the ritual meal.  I can still see my grandfather, imposing in a white kimono-like caftan, leaning on pillows as prescribed in the Haggadah, intoning the familiar story of the exodus.  My brother was too young to participate in the ceremony, but I, a Hebrew school student, asked the centuries- old Four Questions.

We learned to say them in Hebrew School in two languages, Hebrew and Yiddish, and I dutifully asked them in both languages, intoning the singsong liturgy learned in Hebrew School.  I remember being given sips of the sweet Passover wine, feeling indoctrinated in a world of grownups.  I also felt very important, with all attention focused on me; also, nervous, fearful I would make a mistake.  I didn’t realize that family indulgence was part of the game and all would smile gently if I slipped up.  Passover was  celebrated for its full eight days with ritual foods.  On the eighth day I was sent to the nearest bakery to buy the first bread.  My mother always grumbled that the bakery opened too soon which elicited a discussion of whether the holiday was over before lunch or before dinner, an argument still unresolved.  When we children came home for lunch in elementary school and junior high, Passover foods awaited us.

We all had two Seders on two successive nights and spent the next part of the holiday eating fried matzoh, gefilte fish and the special holiday dishes which, for some unexplained reason, certainly not sacred, we never prepared the rest of the year.  Nuts were a part of the Passover table, walnuts and almonds and particularly filberts.  These were the perfect shape for marbles, and we could be seen, in our new Passover clothes,  kneeling on the sidewalk using those  nuts for a game of marbles

Janice L. Booker is the author of The Jewish American Princess and Other Myths, Philly Firsts, and Across from the Alley Next Door to the Pool Room, from which this reminiscence is excerpted with permission of the author. For more information about her work, visit: http://www.amazon.com/Janice-L.-Booker/e/B001KCCS8E

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February 11, 2013 · 9:03 am

Shabbat in the House on Saturn Street

by  Bonnie Widerman (Irvine, CA)

When I was very young, my parents would drop me off on a Friday night at my Auntie Ann’s house in the heart of the very Jewish Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles and go off to the movies. Auntie Ann was a petite, gray-haired woman in her 60s who was not my aunt at all — she was my father’s second cousin by marriage. But for all practical purposes, this strong-minded woman, poet, and Orthodox Jew was my West Coast grandmother. And in her home, I had my first exposure to observant Judaism.

Auntie Ann lived in a yellow stucco house on Saturn Street with her beloved terrier, Penny. It was a fascinating house for a young child, with rounded ceilings and doorways thick with mint green textured plaster that made me feel as if I was stepping inside a birthday cake. “Come, let’s bench,” she’d say as the sun began to set. I’d stand beside her in the muted dining room as she lit two thick, white candles in a simple, multi-branched candelabra and recited a blessing over them. The flames made shadows dance on the walls and I remember feeling safe and peaceful there.

Auntie Ann and I would eat Shabbat dinner together in her spacious kitchen where the sink was always full of plants, the oven doubled as a breadbox, and the light bulb in the refrigerator was loosened to avoid turning on a light on Shabbat. When it was bedtime, I’d crawl under the crisp white sheets of a pull-out bed in the brown warmth of her study.

In the morning, we’d walk to Mrs. Van Gelder’s house for “Shabbos Group.”Peeking over the edge of the serving table, I’d marvel at plates loaded with pickles and sweets and other delicious-looking foods I’d have to wait for while the women talked in the living room. I’m not sure what they talked about–the week’s Torah portion or the Vietnam War or Israel–but I will always remember the way my Auntie Ann spoke. Although she had emigrated from Russia to Philadelphia when she was a toddler and spoke English like any other American, her speech was peppered with enough “Jewish” (Yiddish) that it sounded like secret code to me.

Late in the afternoon, we’d walk back to Auntie Ann’s house, where she’d doze in her yellow arm chair with Penny curled up in her lap as the sun began to set. When Shabbat was nearly over, we’d sit in darkness until her timer clicked loudly and turned on the lamp. Later, we’d turn on the TV news to catch up on what had happened in the world until my parents came to pick me up.

On Friday nights at home, my family also had a special Shabbat dinner together and lit candles. But it was different. Being Jewish was very important to us, even though we were not very observant. But it didn’t quite permeate every moment of our lives the way it did in my Auntie Ann’s home. And although Auntie Ann is gone now and so is the house on Saturn Street, the memory of the way being Jewish wrapped around us in that house has stayed with me over the years and has inspired my own Jewish observance in so many ways.

Bonnie Widerman has been a corporate writer and communications manager for more than 20 years. She also writes stories and poetry and has had poems for children published in Ladybug magazine and Fandangle. Bonnie is currently seeking publication for her book-length manuscript chronicling the year she spent saying Kaddish for her mother, who passed away in 2008 from ALS.

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January 21, 2013 · 7:29 am

Touched

by Bracha Mirsky (Jerusalem, Israel)

In Memory of Itka Rochel bas Shmuel z”l (1930-1974)

I’m a proud third-generation Canadian. I grew up in Ottawa the capital of Canada; the winters were long and cold. I remember the snow banks were higher than I was. Although my father was born and raised in Ottawa, by the time I was growing up most of my dad’s family had left the city. My mother was from Montreal where she had a large close-knit family she left to raise a family in Ottawa. We would visit and embrace the warmth of our family in Montreal as often as possible, but in Ottawa my mother was as isolated and lonely as if every day was winter.

I remember my grandparents’ towering gray stone house in Montreal. Even now, I can see through the eyes of a child and feel the warm wonder of the sights, smells and sounds of Pesach:  sweet gefilte fish, chicken soup, matzoh, grape juice, spilling the drops from our cup …to lessen our joy at the memory of the suffering of our enemies. I have fond memories of my grandfather, uncles, father and brothers at the head of the table singing. I looked forward to examining the drama of Pesach in pictures in a small, brightly colored Haggadah. My mother was a quiet woman; her attention was always focused on her children, ready with a kind word and a hug. She would help my grandmother prepare and serve the meal.

I’m nine-years-old.  I shyly ask my bubby, “Can I help too?”

“Of course,” my bubby replies. “What a big girl you are now. A shayna maideleh!”  I would help serve the gefilte fish and collect and wash the cutlery. I would bask in the glow of my mother’s pride in me.

My mother loved us so much! She was the emotional core of our family, yet we had no idea that in her quiet way she was instilling so much in us. She was a stay-at-home mom, with six children — that was no easy task! Dad worked hard but it was always difficult to make ends meet. There was no money for Hebrew school and so I went to the local public school.

As a child the world was puzzling to me. I could not connect the dots that others seemed to have no problem with; the world did not make sense.

“Dad, no one likes me, they won’t play with me, they’re mean and always try to get me in trouble.”  His only reply was, “Make yourself a small target.”

“Mom why do they call me a ‘Christ-killer’?”

“Just ignore them; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was hard to ignore them while the boys were beating me up after school as the girls watched. Canada, 1968, I was 11-years-old.

“Where are you going Mom?”

“There is a protest to free the Soviet Jews.” My mother never missed a rally or any event to try and win the freedom of a fellow Jew. This woman who loved children and her people so much, who would not hurt a fly, always put a heavy wrench in her purse before each rally. Just in case the KGB tried to break it up, she intended to take a good swing at one!

I can still see Mom lighting Shabbos candles and the whole world seemed to glow in that soft light. With my mother at my side, the world was at peace.

Shul — a place to sing! Awesome! Reading the stories of the Bible, imagining what it would be like to have such faith. I already knew that God was everywhere and I could talk to him whenever I wanted. Talking to God was easy, understanding God was the hard part.

“Mom, are you not feeling well again?”

“No dear, don’t worry I’m OK.”  But she wasn’t. Visiting the hospital, not understanding, “When will Mom get better?”

“Soon dear, soon.”

It seemed so gradual, I didn’t even notice it. Mom could do less and less and I did more and more. I’m 16, my two older brothers are away at university leaving me, now the eldest at home, to look after and cook for my father and three younger siblings. My youngest brother is only six- years-old.

I visit Mom in the hospital every evening with my dad but she looks worse and worse, no one says anything. A wall of silence, we didn’t know…how could we not know? She kept the truth from us, it was cancer.

Waking up erev Rosh Hashanah, I can hear my dad talking on the phone “…last night…” I stiffen in my bed, my body rigid, waiting, but no one comes. I get up and go down to breakfast; Dad acts normally and sends us off to school.

It’s erev Rosh Hashanah.

I sit at the back of the school assembly hall right up against a wall. In that big darkened room with only the stage lit up I’m in a tiny corner all alone, feeling with every part of my being that my whole world has come crashing down and no one else notices it, their world hasn’t changed at all. Yet I still try to deny it, I repeat to myself, “I must have been mistaken, Dad would have told me if anything happened, therefore nothing happened,” I say this to myself over and over again. Surrounded by a sea of people, I’m all alone in the dark.

That afternoon I begin my slow walk home from school with a heavy heart, thinking to myself, “It’s erev Rosh Hashanah.”

I’m about half-way home, alone as usual, when something softly brushes my cheek. I stop and stand still. My hair is tied back in a ponytail, there is nothing near me. Again, something softly brushes my cheek. My heart leaps out — NO! It can’t be! It’s not you, you’re not dead! It must be the wind!  I turn to face the opposite direction. The same soft touch brushes the same cheek. Then I knew…she was gone.

Stunned, I sit on a nearby rock, I don’t know for how long. Now numb and beyond pain, I accepted the truth. Then I began to wonder at the strength of my mother, to come to me and give me this gift. To reach out and touch me to say goodbye.

It’s erev Rosh Hashanah.

My mother taught me many things. She taught me about family, to be a proud Jew and to never stop caring. In her last moments on earth she taught me that God is real and that nothing can stop love, not even death.

* * *

I look after my father and siblings for three years until I’m 19 and then it’s my turn to go away to college. I become a nurse and meet my husband. We are married in a lovely ceremony in an Orthodox shul. I miss my mom, but I believe she is happy for me. I could not have anticipated the surprises that were in store for me.

I married at 23, and two years later I give birth to triplets, two boys and a girl. Oh! How my mom would have loved this! Never have I missed her so much as then. For the first time since her passing, I can see her in my mind’s eye, holding her grandchildren, and the joy from her face is blinding!

Public health services provide a really sweet woman to help out for the first few months, but after that initial period I am on my own. I am told by the supervisor, “No one can manage on their own with triplets; you’ll have to hire some help.”

“Really?” I say, “We’ll see…”

God, fill our hands with your blessings. In this, I am truly my mother’s daughter. Five years later I give birth to twin boys. Life is busier and happier than ever!

They grow, the years pass and they develop as proud Jews who know their God, and they are very proud of their people and love every one of them. I know exactly who they got that from. All the Bible stories are real to them, they love going to shul, singing and giving me joy.

And their mother tells them stories of a special soul, the bubby they never knew.

Mom, pray for them.

Bracha Mirsky is a mother of triplets and twins, Registered Nurse, Labour Coach, Certified Parent and Infant Consultant and Diabetes Educator. She has worked as a member of the St. Elizabeth Nurses Maternal and Infant Care Team as a specialist and with her local Family and Child services, assisting families with parenting issues. Bracha is a guide to parents through classes, as an advice columnist and as an author. Her book, What Makes Kids Tick? Giving parents the tools to shape child behaviour, is based on the counseling she has given parents and her own parenting journey, filled with stories of the challenges and rewards of raising multiple children and the insights the adventure has given her. Bracha can be reached at www.whatmakeskidstick.com. She has recently made aliya.

This story was reprinted with permission from Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women, Volume III, edited by Liz Pearl. For more information about the book, visit:  http://at.yorku.ca/pk/ll3.htm

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December 10, 2012 · 9:27 am

Remembering Chanukah

by Janice L. Booker (Malibu, CA )

I grew up in Philadelphia in the days preceding World War II when Chanukah was not nearly the celebration it is today.

The holiday was never mentioned in public school, despite the fact that the population of my elementary and junior high school was predominantly Jewish.

There was no expectation of equal coverage. Christmas was celebrated in the schools with a tree in every classroom and in assemblies where we sang Christmas carols weeks before the holiday.

An unwritten, unspoken agreement among the Jewish kids was that when we sang the carols, lustily and with pleasure, we kept our lips sealed when the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned. To my knowledge, no parent ever asked for this and no one discussed it; it just was.

I don’t remember feeling cheated or inferior. Christmas just didn’t belong to me, and Chanukah was no substitute. There were no decorations and no expectations of eight gifts.

Sometimes friends of my parents or relatives gave Chanukah “gelt,” a small offering of cash. A quarter was considered a windfall.

We did buy chocolate “coins,” but Chanukah was treated as a minor holiday, which it realistically is.

As Christmas has become the shopping extravaganza it is today, so Chanukah celebrations have proliferated proportionally.

I succumbed when my children were young and went into the one gift per night routine, which I still do with my grandchildren.

Janice L. Booker is the author of The Jewish American Princess and Other Myths, Philly Firsts, and Across from the Alley Next Door to the Pool Room, from which this reminiscence is excerpted with permission of the author. For more information about her work, visit: http://www.amazon.com/Janice-L.-Booker/e/B001KCCS8E

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November 12, 2012 · 9:10 am

Caring for My Mother: Burden or Responsibility?

by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)

I am my mother’s advocate. Together with my sister, I manage her household, supervise her caregivers, pay her bills, and run her errands. Most importantly, we champion her rights, providing her with a voice at a time when, tragically, she can no longer stand up for herself due to the decade-long ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

My mother used to be my role model and my best friend. Passionate, strong, courageous and intelligent, she was a brilliant scholar and a loving parent and grandparent, the person I could turn to for advice and companionship at any time.

Now the tables have been completely turned. The child who started out entirely dependent on her mother has matured to become the one on whom her mother depends.

Since my mother has been afflicted by illness, I constantly feel her absence like a gaping hole in my life. She may still look like my mother and remain physically near, but mentally and spiritually, she is no longer there for me.

When someone has Alzheimer’s, there is plenty of time to say goodbye. Deterioration occurs slowly, with changes almost imperceptible at first and then becoming only gradually more noticeable. Alzheimer’s is a cruel illness, as my late maternal grandfather noted, telling my mother when, sadly, he was in the throes of the disease himself, “I am losing my I,” by which he meant that he was losing what made him whom he was as a person.

Moreover, gradually much of the world forgets its sufferers. Many friends stop writing or visiting; it is almost as if people are too embarrassed and don’t know how to deal with someone who can no longer respond except with a smile, a look or a touch.

Yet, already in the third century, Talmudic Rabbi Joshua ben Levi had pointed out that just as the fragments of the first set of tablets of the Ten Commandments shattered by Moses were placed in the Ark of the Covenant along with the new tablets, so too should we “be careful” to respect “an old man who has forgotten his knowledge through no fault of his own” (Babylonian Talmud: Berakoth 8b).

Even earlier, the second century BCE Jerusalemite scholar Ben Sira wrote in his Book of Wisdom: “My child, help your father in his old age, and do not grieve him as long as he lives. If his understanding fails, be considerate. And do not humiliate him when you are in your prime” (3:12-13).

We are taught that we are meant to “honor” and “respect” our parents in the same way as we revere God as partners in the creation of life. Yet, the first century sage, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, acknowledged that this Fifth Commandment was the hardest of all to obey (Tanhuma Ekev 2). As Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dr Albert Micah Lewis says, this Commandment  “teaches that even though this kind of caregiving may not feel natural or even fair, it must be provided”(Person H.E. and Address R.F. (eds) 2003, That You May Live Long: Caring For Our Aging Parents, Caring For Ourselves, URJ Press, New York, p10).

Judaism values behaviour over thoughts and feelings. The Talmud lists the actions we need to perform in order to fulfil the mitzvah (good deed) of respecting our parents. “What is honor? Giving food, drink, dressing, covering, leading out and bringing in, and washing face, hands and feet” (Tosefta Kiddushin 1:11). In other words, children are required to ensure that their parents’ basic needs are provided.

While most Jewish sources insist upon children personally caring for their parents themselves – and with the right attitude – the medieval scholar and physician, Moses Maimonides, made an exception for children with parents whose minds were severely affected: “If the condition of the parent has grown worse and the son is no longer able to endure the strain, he may leave his father or mother, go elsewhere, and delegate to others to give the parents the proper care” (Mishneh Torah: Hilchot Mamrim 6:10). Chosen caregivers, however, must be able to cheer the patient up (Regimen sanitatis: The Preservation of Youth: Essays on Health, chapter 2).

Long ago my sister and I promised our mother that we would never put her in a nursing home. And we have honoured that promise, convincing her early on to move to the same city where we live and striving to ensure that she continues to reside with dignity in her own home. As card-carrying members of the “sandwich generation,” we have chosen to juggle her needs along with those of our own young families.

While that may not be the right decision for everyone, it has certainly proven to be the correct option for us, and we are fortunate to have had the freedom to be able to make that choice. Our mother can no longer thank us, but I know that she is grateful. Before she lost the ability to speak, she was expressing her gratitude to everybody who helped her, and I am sure she would still be doing so today if she could.

The debate over whether children should provide for their elderly parents from their own income or whether parents need to fund their own care also dates back to ancient times. Scholars were seemingly divided, with rabbis of the Jerusalem Talmud advocating that even poor children must raise the funds to support their impoverished parents (Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin, 1:7). As Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: “’Honour your father and mother,’ even if you have to go begging in doorways” (Pesikta Rabbati 23). Rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud, on the other hand, maintained that the parents should provide the money, while the children should give their time (Babylonian Talmud, Mas. Kiddushin 31b-32a).

Maimonides argued that only when parents had no money were their financially independent children obligated to support them according to their means, and could even be coerced into doing so by a Bet Din (rabbinic court of law) (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Mamrim 6:3).

If the children have money but refuse to spend it on their parents, Jewish law allows them to use funds they would otherwise have given to charity, but immediately “curses” them for “humiliating” their parents: (Babylonian Talmud, Mas. Kiddushin 32a). Others go further and compare such a refusal to murder, maintaining that such a comparison is warranted by the fact that the two Commandments, to honor one’s parents and not to murder, follow each other (10th century Midrash, Tanna Devei Eliyahu).

Broadcaster Sandra Tsing Loh said earlier this year on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation that the “daughter track is far more open-ended [than the mommy track] and has no rewards at the end except for death” (29 February, 2012).

No rewards?

Even though I would give anything to have my mother back again as she once was, I know that caring for her has taught me to be kinder and more patient, especially in the last few years, when I no longer know if she even recognises me. Sometimes being patient is a struggle in the flurry of everyday life, as I force myself to slow down to my mother’s pace, watching as she chews each mouthful of the meal that has been prepared for her.

As Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman of Congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison, Wisconsin, has said, “just by her being, she teaches us the highest form of compassion” (8 October 2008, “Aging and Caring for Elderly Parents”, http://www.shamayim.org/). Renowned Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal Movement, has wisely advised: “You may just want to sit and hold the hand of the parent with Alzheimer’s. Communicate on the inside. Something is going to happen in the silence. There is a being behind the brain” (September 2012, “From Age-ing to Sage-ing,” Front Range Living, http://www.frontrangeliving.com/family-health/rabbi-zalman.htm).

Indeed, even though she has forgotten her language, my mother often tries to communicate when she sees me. The other day, one of her longtime caregivers told her she was leaving to return to her homeland. “She looked at me,” the caregiver said, “and I knew she understood.”

Caring for my mother has also given me an opportunity to set a good example for my children, teaching them to be decent human beings. As my 11-year-old son said, “We owe it to our parents to look after them in their old age. They care for us when we are young and then it becomes our turn to care for them.”

If everything else fails, fear can be a strong motivator, as is understood by the Torah: “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord” (Vayikra (Leviticus) 19:32). Respecting our parents is the only Commandment accompanied by a reward, which can also be read as a veiled threat: “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may long endure, and that you may fare well, in the land that the Lord your God is assigning to you” (Devarim (Deuteronomy) 5:16; see also Shemot (Exodus) 20:12).

Not only should our fear of God influence how we treat the elderly, but we should also behave towards others as we would like to be treated ourselves. Indeed, on Yom Kippur morning, we pray “Do not cast us off in our old age; when our strength fails, do not forsake us!” (from Psalm 71:9). According to Rabbi Harold Kushner, “if we show honor and respect to our parents when they are old, we will be fashioning a world in which we will not have to be afraid of growing old, a world in which length of days will indeed be a reward and not a burden” (Foreword, xvii to Berrin S. (ed) 1997, A Heart of Wisdom: Making the Jewish Journey from Midlife Through the Elder Years, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing).

Meanwhile, I feel rewarded that I am providing my mother with a good quality of life from which she still derives some enjoyment.

Yes, despite everything, she still gets some joy out of life. Contrary to popular misconception, advanced Alzheimer’s sufferers are not vegetables. Although the illness may cocoon them from feeling the full brunt of life’s emotions, they still experience pain and pleasure, peace and agitation. My mother continues to appreciate good food, especially dark chocolate, music, flowers, massage and the warmth of the sun. She may be confined to a wheelchair, but she is not confined to her apartment, attending an adult day care program twice a week, going on outings and visiting with her family.

She is still a human being – even if she has lost her “I”.

Shira Sebban, a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, worked as a journalist for the Australian Jewish News. She previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She also serves as vice-president on the board of  Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. You can read more of her work at: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/category/australian-jewry/ http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13636  and at http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/

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October 15, 2012 · 8:07 am

Crumbs

by Sheldon P. Hersh (Lawrence, NY)

Crumbs are rarely, if ever, a topic for discussion. And rightly so for these annoying particles serve no obvious purpose and even tend to complicate our lives by finding their way into some of the most obscure and difficult to clean places. Crumbs, by their very nature, deserve to be thrown out with the rest of the trash. My mother, however, had an entirely different outlook when it came to crumbs. A Holocaust survivor, she would never permit food, no matter what the size, to be discarded in so demeaning a fashion. In her kitchen, crumbs were afforded a layer of respectability and were never included with the refuse that was thrown into the trashcan. At our home, crumbs were properly collected and set aside so as to ensure a more fitting and sensible method of disposal.

With her hand properly cupped, my mother would deftly sweep every visible crumb into a waiting bag that had recently been selected as a repository for our collected crumbs. “How can I throw this food away? These crumbs could have been a source of nourishment and hope in the camps and ghettos where there was little or nothing to eat,” she would solemnly recount. When it came to food, nothing would ever go to waste; it was simply out of the question to do so.

During the war, Jews, like my mother, quickly became masters of improvisation, cleverly turning less than desirable edibles and scraps into presentable, life-sustaining meals. Crumbs were part of the process and had taken on a new found importance in the camps and ghettos. Leftover bits of bread were always eagerly sought out and occasionally fought over by those driven by all consuming hunger. Oftentimes hidden on one’s person, crumbs became the currency of survival when food rations were not forthcoming or when a sick loved one was in dire need of nutrition. While growing up, if we children happened to be present during the collection of crumbs, mother’s stories relating to food, or lack thereof, would always accompany the gathering process. “We scavenged for crumbs,” mother related tearfully. “Crumbs meant survival.  Crumbs could have given a ghetto resident another day of life.”

Each meal and snack produced a new crop of crumbs and the bag would slowly fill. Once it was decided that the right amount was present, my mother would dutifully make her way to a pre-determined site in the back yard and begin sprinkling crumbs upon the ground. In no time at all, birds, accompanied by an occasional squirrel, would appear and descend upon this feast of tantalizing crumbs. The symphonic rhythm of the birds’ frantic pecking interspersed with the sporadic sounds of flapping wings had become an unforgettable melody that would bring a knowing smile to her beaming face. She was overjoyed knowing that nothing, not even the smallest crumb, had gone to waste and that some hungry creature had been given a proper meal.

Our custom of collecting crumbs quickly ended with my mother’s passing. Crumbs had suddenly become a nuisance of sorts and there were more important things to do with our precious time.  Yet every year when the winter months arrive, I find myself hypnotically drawn to the window that overlooks my own backyard. The ground, now bare and frozen, provides very little nourishment to the few winged residents that have elected to remain behind. Every once in a while, a number of birds land unexpectedly beneath the window and begin pecking aimlessly at the lifeless ground below. With nothing to show for their efforts, I can sense their frustration and disappointment as they raise their eyes in my direction and give me a look that nearly always conveys the same simple, yet urgent, request: remember… please remember us. 

Sheldon P. Hersh, an Ear, Nose and Throat Physician with a practice in the New York metropolitan area, is the co-author of The Bugs Are Burning, a book on the Holocaust. For more information about his work, visit:  http://tinyurl.com/86u3ous

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