Category Archives: Family history

April 2, 2012 · 8:26 am

Memorable Seders

By Helga Harris (Sarasota, FL)

“Look at David,” Aunt Sophie exclaimed. “It happened again. Remember last year, when he fell asleep at the Seder table and his sweet curly brown hair dipped into the matzo ball soup?”

I remember my earliest Passover Seders. I was five or six, and we sat around a beautifully set table surrounded by many family members at my grandparents’ house. Most memorable was my red-bearded Opa in a flowing white caftan. Reclining on a grand wing chair with a propped up fluffy pillow, he looked like an elderly angel in the light of the silver candelabra, which gently glowed on everything.

Some of the foods on the Seder plate – parsley, horseradish, hard-boiled eggs, onions, and matzo – we children were not anxious to consume. What we hungered for was the golden chicken soup with floating matzo balls. However, we weren’t permitted to eat a morsel before the formal recitation of every word of the first half of the Haggadah was read. It took more than an hour.

Nothing changed except the location when, years later, the Seder was held at my parents’ home. Although older, I wiggled impatiently in my seat. The reading bored me. It was all in Hebrew. Only my father understood the words. But when the Four Questions were asked by the youngest male child, everyone perked up.

Four cups of wine were consumed at the Seder table. A special goblet of wine was filled to the brim and reserved for Elijah, the prophet. The night’s drama took place when a child was assigned the honor of opening the front door to let Elijah enter. It was always nighttime, and my heart raced as I imagined all sorts of frightening images on my way to the entrance. It seemed an eternity until I was permitted to close the door. Everyone looked at the wine. Had a sip been taken? We agreed that the silver goblet was only a bit depleted. The elders explained: “Children, Elijah visits so many homes; he only drinks a little at each house.”

For the past two decades, the Seders have been held at my house. Now that I’m the matriarch, I have radically changed the tradition. At our table we have relatives and guests of varying races and religious persuasions: Jews, Methodists, Catholics, atheists, and one Muslim. The Haggadah has been rewritten in English by my family. The revisions give women recognition, long overdue, for the years of hardships that they endured and for their years of leadership, too.

One year, my 82-year-old sister-in-law, read The Four Questions (instead of the youngest boy). Another time, my 10-year-old granddaughter was chosen to lead the Seder. My father never would have permitted it. We’ve come a long way.

At our Seder we eat gefilte fish and matzo ball soup before reading the Haggadah. The most relevant aspect of our Seder is the homogenous mix of people sitting happily at our table. reminding us that life is good.

Helga Harris was born in Berlin, Germany, and moved with her family to New York City in 1938.  Throughout her life Helga has painted and has had numerous art exhibits in New York, Miami and Sarasota. She is the author of  Dear Helga, Dear Ruth, a memoir, and has published several articles in The Sarasota Herald Tribune and The Tampa Tribune, as well as stories in several magazines and anthologies, including We Were There, published by the St.Petersburg Holocaust Museum.

This story originally appeared in The Tampa Tribune and online at Tampa Bay Online. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

For more information about Helga, visit:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/11/16/Floridian/Dear_friends.shtml

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2747937-dear-helga-dear-ruth

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March 26, 2012 · 8:05 am

The Mystery My Mother Left Behind

by Lev Raphael (Okemos, MI)

My late mother loved the New York Times crossword and she loved reading mysteries. Born in Poland, she said the puzzle helped her perfect her English; she never explained the specific appeal of crime novels, but she was a huge fan of Agatha Christie, John Creasey, Frances and Richard Lockridge, and Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I read almost all the mystery library books she brought home; they were always better than the books assigned in school. On my own, I discovered the comic mysteries of Phoebe Atwood Taylor. While my mother enjoyed a good joke and had an Imogene Coca kind of laugh, those books weren’t serious enough for her.

It wasn’t until after my mother died in 1999 that I discovered profound and unsettling mysteries in her own life that I’m still trying to unravel. My mother was a Holocaust survivor. She lost her family, her home, her freedom — and would have lost her life if the war had lasted any longer than it did. She spoke about those war years sparingly, and when she did, I was too young or too overwhelmed to ask the right questions that would have yielded more information.

Going through her things after the funeral, I found something shocking in her closet. My mother had kept the concentration camp uniform she was wearing when she was liberated by the Americans in April 1945. You’ve probably seen “dresses” like these in movies and documentaries: thin, crudely sewn, it was gray with purplish stripes (though the colors may have changed over the decades). My father told me she’d washed it after the war, but he couldn’t say why she had kept this reminder of her horrible brutalization and the nightmare of seeing her world ground to dust.

I knew the names of the camps my mother had been in and contacted one via email but nobody could find records for her. This was troubling, since I knew that despite bombings and German attempts to destroy files, records existed for many camps. And then I tried again, this time using the number on her uniform.

A world of mysteries opened up to me. For at least part of the war, my mother, Helena Klaczko, was listed in several Nazi records as Lidja Garbel. How do I know this Garbel and my mother were the same woman? Because the insanely detailed prisoner card for my mother at Buchenwald lists her parents’ name, her street address in Poland, her education and her birth date. All the information matches what I know to be fact. Whatever her name, the woman with that number on her camp dress was the woman listed on the card and indisputably my mother.

But why did she have another name? The mystery deepened when I discovered that in a transport from one camp to another, there was a woman whose number was right before my mother’s and whose last name was also Garbel. So somehow, for some reason, my mother took this other woman’s last name as hers. But why? And why Lidja? Was it possible there had been an actual Lidja Garbel whose name my mother had assumed for some reason? The sister of this Frida Garbel?

My father had no idea what the answers were or what any of it could mean. And when I told him that this same Buchenwald prisoner card said my mother was married to a Mikhail Garbel, whereabouts “unknown,” he scoffed. “People said all kinds of things during the war.”

I had written a handful of Nick Hoffman mysteries by this point, and even been reviewed in the New York Times my mother revered. Sadly, my mother never got to read any of them because she was so sick when they started coming. But nothing in any of them matched these real-life mysteries whose solutions I have pursued in many directions, without answer. Sometimes I wonder if there really was a Mikhail Garbel or even a Lidja Garbel, if both were completely invented. Sometimes I think, what if my mother was married before she met my father? Sometimes I think, “There’s a book in this, if only I can find it.” And I wonder if my mother read mysteries not just as a fan, but as someone who had turned her own life into something mysterious.

Lev Raphael is a prize-winning pioneer in American-Jewish literature, and has been publishing fiction and nonfiction about the Second Generation since 1978. The author of twenty-two books which have been translated into almost a dozen languages, he has spoken about his work in hundreds of venues on three continents. His fiction and creative non-fiction are widely taught at American colleges and universities, and his work has been the subject of numerous academic articles, papers, and books. A former public radio book show host and newspaper columnist, he can be found on the web at http://www.levraphael.com.  He blogs on books for The Huffington Post and reviews for the on-line literary magazine Bibliobuffet.com.

You can check out his latest book, the Jewish historical novel Rosedale in Love, at http://www.levraphael.com/rosedale.html

This piece first appeared on The Huffington Post, and it’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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January 30, 2012 · 8:08 am

A Slice of Life

by Chaim Weinstein (Brooklyn, NY)

My daughter and son-in-law pray in an old-fashioned synagogue where women sit in the balcony and the pale yellow wooden pews are creaky. As their new baby’s grandfather, I feel a little creaky myself. Still, there is in the high ceiling, blood-red velvet ark cover and the long length of the room an elegance, a sense of awe, and none of the modern chic found in many suburban houses of worship.

I like this fine.

The congregants are a mixed group. They wear black hats, crocheted yarmulkes, and those pale blue satin ones which many nonorthodox seem to favor.  Most of them are smiling, anticipating the large kiddush afterwards, perhaps. Few are as excited as I to welcome another Jewish soul into our fold. Some are just happy today simply because something out of the ordinary will take place, a change in routine, an event.

I am greeted with shabbat shalom, or good shabbos, or, less commonly, git shabbes. Regardless of dialect, I know that each person wishes us a mazal tov and a peaceful, enjoyable Sabbath. My eight-day-old, very cute grandson will have his bris this morning. To them, it is not so much my grandson that is special, but the occasion. For me it’s all of it, especially the newly-formed family: my beautiful daughter, her sweet husband, and this new bunch of deliciousness that is my grandson.

My son-in-law’s brother leads the morning shacharit prayer, my own son leads us in musaf. I am transported by all of it, as well as by my own prayers and gratitude that my daughter is well and past the pregnancy, the family is all here in good health, that all present will meet my newest grandchild for the first time as a full-fledged Jew. I am amazed and excited at seeing the magical line come glittering to life, the line connecting this baby to his and our eldest forefather, Abraham.

From the moment that my daughter and son-in-law had called several days before to ask me to be the sandek, I bawled like a baby at the honor, the specialness and this precursor of closeness I prayed for to be between my little grandson and me.

This marks the first time in my life that I have been asked to be the sandek, meaning that my infant grandson will be placed on a pillow on my lap while the mohel does his thing (oops).

Being the sandek is a great honor in our Jewish tradition.

Sandek is a Greek word meaning “don’t look at what the mohel’s doing or you’ll turn green, hurt the mohel, or both.” Just kidding. Actually, sandek comes from the Greek word, suntekos, which means “companion of child,” which is what I want to be for him, as I hope to always be for all of my grandchildren.

So here I am, sitting in this plush chair to the right of Elijah’s Chair on the Ark platform. The little munchkin is placed on my lap, and I lovingly look only at his eyes, his forehead, and his quivering mouth. I watch the teal-blue pacifier near his lips bob like a buoy as he alternatively screams in pain and gasps for air. I whisper cooing, encouraging words to him, but they are not honest  words. What I really want to say is, “Give me a second, Bud, just hang on while I stiff-arm these people like an NFL pro and run for the door.” I check all the exits and see that the one behind me is my best bet. In my brain’s image I scoop him up before the mohel feels the downdraft from my moving blur, and we are out of there, no pain, truly no gain. My protectiveness is fueled by unbidden imagery of what is about to happen and I wish for Samantha-types of blinking power to teleport us out of there.

I stay, of course.

I can feel him straining hard to break free from my hold. It’s crazy, but I want to help him. I’m his grandfather, for crying out loud, I’m supposed to help him with all the fun stuff, not allow him to suffer. Let his parents deal with all the have-to’s, that’s their job. I know I’m conflicted, this is part of what the human family calls meshuga time. I know that I’m one of his peeps who is the transmitter of traditions such as the one we are all gathered here for. But I think: if he looks like me, then perhaps his tastes are like mine. I therefore formulate a plan to take him to the nearest Starbucks because we are so in sync, my baby grandson and I. So we’ll have a cup of coffee and schmooze about the scrapes we escaped from together.

Sigh.

Again with the fantasy, I know. What’s with me? Where are my personal prayers? I can’t. He has to endure this ceremony, no matter how painful for him, no matter how painful for me. So I steel myself for the task before us and hold his feet immobile, as the mohel has instructed me.

The wine-soaked gauze-pad they will place in his tiny lips will not fool him for a second, and I know that what he really wants is chocolate with almonds, or maybe a muffin, with that fresh hot coffee.

Soon, my eyes fall on the mohel’s tray, and when I see a little blood near the mohel’s instruments, it takes all my self-control not to perform a bris on the mohel himself for what he was doing to my grandson.

But the truth is, it is all just so moving and meaningful.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, all the way to my grandfather, then my father, me, and now my little grandson. A long line down through time, all obeying our Father’s request, all part of the same family.

I tell you, it’s enough to make you give up coffee.

For more than thirty years, Chaim Weinstein taught English in grades six through college in  New York City public schools as well as in several parochial schools. Three of his poems, “The Shul is Dark,” “Mr Blumen,”  and “Unlikely Pair” have appeared on The Jewish Writing Project, and an early short story, “Ball Games and Things,” was published in Brooklyn College’s literary magazine, Nocturne. He is currently working in several genres and is hoping to  share a larger selection of his work in the future.

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January 16, 2012 · 9:43 am

In Search of a Baal Shem

by Ellen Norman Stern (Willow Grove,PA)

I never heard her call him the “Baal Shem of Michelstadt.”

Instead my grandmother spoke of “Rebbe Seckel Loeb Wormser” as a “Wundermann,” a miracle-worker.

My first real memory of him is connected to a beam of bright sunshine falling into her parlor window, setting off her “good” blue-and-white Wedgewood dishes glistening on the table. She was feeding me a mid-day meal along with telling me about the famous man.

I was not in her parlor frequently for my parents and I lived in another city and we did not see her often. Even  rarer was the chance of hearing my Oma tell me stories.

Tiny sun motes floated about the room that day as she spoke to me of the rebbe’s wisdom, his kindness and his strong religious faith.

“Both Jews and Gentiles in the small town of Michelstadt south of Frankfurt benefited  from his remarkable skills. Many a person depressed by business or health problems found the Rebbe’s calm, serene manner and his gift for active listening eased his troubles, perhaps even solved them. And when a healed  visitor walked out of Seckel Loeb’s door, it was always with renewed self-worth and confidence.”

Oma had her personal reasons for passing on tales about the great man.

Her own mother, my great-grandmother, Babette Muhr, had been brought to the home of the rebbe as an orphan child.  He had taken her in  and raised her as a member of his own family until the day when, as a grown young woman, she left Michelstadt to be married.

At least a half a century passed before the name of Rebbe Seckel Loeb Wormser entered  my thoughts again.

Long after I had arrived as a child-survivor of the Holocaust in the U.S, married, and had raised a family of my own, the mail brought a brochure put out by a well-known publisher of Jewish books.

One of the titles advertised for sale read: “The Baal Shem of Michelstadt.”

I could hardly wait until the small book arrived and lay open on my desk.

It was a collection of warm, sentimental episodes taken from the life of a man once renowned as a healer and worker of miracles. The book was written in the early 1900’s by a Swiss rabbi, Naftali Herz Ehrmann, under the nom de plume of  “Judeus.”

I was stunned to find in it many of the stories my grandmother had once told me, stories I had somehow not trusted to have been “real.”

But it was the photograph on the book’s last page which stirred me the most: a picture of a house.

It was a box-shaped wooden structure — two full floors and a triple-window mansard.  The metal plaque attached above the first-floor windows aroused my considerable interest. It read: “In this house the humanitarian S.L.Wormser lived from the year 1826 to his death in 1847.”

The plaque was dedicated as a tribute by his hometown of Michelstadt.

I concentrated on the windows in that photograph. How I wished I could transport myself into the past. This house was surely the home of Rebbe Seckel Loeb Wormser, the Baal Shem of Michelstadt, and now I knew these were the windows through which my great-grandmother must have looked out at the world.

The more I read about the Rebbe’s life, the more faint images culled from my grandmother’s tales came back to me. I remembered certain details which were mirrored in the book.

After forty-one years I finally decided to go back to Germany.

One important reason for my return was the nagging wish to learn more about him, to find out what I could about the man they called the Baal Shem.

On the June day when friends drove my husband and me to Michelstadt, I carried the book about the Baal Shem with me.

We reached Michelstadt in the middle of the day. Ancient houses embellished with distinctive “Fachwerk” decorations lined the cobblestoned streets. I closed my eyes and pretended to be back in the medieval hamlet of southern Germany that was once the destination of many a Jewish and non-Jewish pilgrim headed for a visit to the bushy-bearded saintly man with the kind brown eyes known throughout the neighborhood as teacher and healer.

After a hearty meal in the oak-beamed dining room of the Green Tree Inn, I no longer needed to pretend. I was close to realizing my fanciful daydream. This very hostelry was a favorite with Jewish travellers who visited Rebbe Seckel Loeb. Many stories about the Baal Shem of Michelstadt grew into legends here, nurtured no doubt by glasses of excellent local beer. Because of their fondness for the inn, some patrons even nicknamed it “The Jewish Canteen.”

Armed with the family record, I finally entered the tall doors of the “Rathaus Annex” and headed for the chief of tourist reception. I told the man I was looking for links to an ancestor who grew up in the house of Rebbe Seckel Loeb Wormser. Immediately I felt my tourist stature increase to that of a VIP.

Meanwhile I could hardly wait to see the house of the Baal Shem.

No one knew the Wormser House by that name, so it took much searching and asking for directions before I located it. Suddenly I stood in front of it: my photograph had come to life.

One hundred and thirty-five years after Rebbe Seckel Loeb died here, the house was still in use. I walked around it and inspected it from every angle. Now it was occupied by a law firm, but no one was in. I was disappointed that I could not enter. I so wished to see the rooms where the Master taught the Holy Books, where the wise man counseled the troubled on urgent problems now long forgotten, and where my own ancestor climbed the stairs.

I left the Wormser House hesitantly and returned to the Rathaus-Annex where I had an appointment with the town archivist.

In one wing of this ancient seat of the mayors of Michelstadt, a Herr Hartmann presided  over  records dating back to the 13th century. His amazing collection of documents owed its survival to the little bomb damage the town sustained during World War II

I knew nothing about my great-grandmother except her name: Babette Muhr.

Herr Hartmann delved into his well-preserved archives of the Jewish community. Within a few minutes he located a page listing the death of a rabbi named Wolf Muhr in 1848. This is really a coincidence, he told me, because he had never come across that name before, let alone the name of a local rabbi.

I was convinced that there was a connection between Rabbi Muhr and my ancestor and asked the archivist to trace it.

We did not succeed that day, but I found a book of local Jewish history on his shelf and he allowed me to browse in it.

I discovered that Wolf Muhr was Seckel Loeb’s cantor who handled the town’s rabbinical duties in Michelstadt until 1826. During that year Rabbi Wormser returned after a lengthy stay in the town of Mannheim where he worked as a healer at the local hospital.  Upon his return to Michelstadt he resumed his post of rabbi there.

I had gotten closer in my ancestor search. The archivist promised he would continue it. Perhaps we would find the connection someday.

The old Jewish cemetery was too far from town. I wanted to stay in Michelstadt a little longer to meditate at the grave of Rabbi Wormser, but my time ran out. I did not make it to his last resting place and to the new gravestone which replaced the desecrated monument of the Nazi period.

However, a final touching experience awaited me during my last hour in town: I was given  a tour through the Baal Shem’s synagogue. Like most German synagogues the original tiny structure, built in 1791, was torched by the Nazis. Only its exterior shell remained.

One Jewish family still lived in Michelstadt in 1969 when members of a few remaining Jewish communities in the state of Hesse met and decided to restore the former synagogue as a museum.

It was named the Lichtigfeld Museum in honor of Dr. I.E. Lichtigfeld, a postwar rabbi of Hesse, who tried to revive Jewish life in the area. The Lichtigfeld Museum primarily memorializes Rebbe Seckel Loeb Wormser, the Baal Shem of Michelstadt, whose love for humanity once brightened this town.

Ritual objects, books and mementos filled the showcases along the walls of the modest ex-sanctuary. Among them were two new additions I had brought from America: the English translation of  “The Baal Shem of Michelstadt” and a copy of my own biography of Elie Wiesel, “Witness for Life.” Having them in this place is an honor I cherish.

The site of the original Almemor had been preserved. I stood near the spot where the holy man once prayed and I reflected on the tremendous faith he inspired.

What was the real nature of the Rebbe’s “miracles?” Were the stories his deeds generated just that–exaggerated accounts of local happenings, blown out of proportion by his simple fellow country–Jews who needed someone or something to believe in?

The hatred-bearers did extinguish the spark of life here and they succeeded in wiping out the  decency and healing which once existed. But they could not erase the memory of the Jewish spirit that long ago filled this building and this town.

And who knows? Perhaps the special memory may be the most lasting of this Baal Shem’s many miracles.

Born in Germany, Ellen Norman 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.

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December 26, 2011 · 9:48 am

Bubby’s Menorah

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

I never scrape off the melted wax
on my mother’s mother’s menorah.
I like the layers of color
and the textures of time
and underneath, the tarnish of greying age.

My mother, when she visits,
picks it off with her varnished fingernails
and the probing tines of a fork,
and then polishes the menorah with pink wax,
to a sparkle that again reflects flame.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes — including journaling and creative expression — at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania. She leads a non-fiction writing group and works with individual students, and is continuing to write Jewish-themed readings for what she hopes will become a book, In the Spirit of the Holidays.

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December 12, 2011 · 8:35 am

The First REAL Connection!

by Cheri Scheff Levitan (Atlanta, GA)

Filling in bits and pieces of the Sheff Family Tree has become a daily activity. I easily spend an average of 2 hours each weeknight — and goodness knows how much time on the weekends – searching for information and clues about family members.

Late one Friday afternoon, when I should have been preparing Shabbat dinner, I was doing some last minute sleuthing and uncovered the name of another cousin, a Deanne Ruth Sheff. I added her to the tree and, lo and behold, learned that her name appeared in someone else’s family tree, too! Could it be? Is someone else somehow connected to my tree? Is this real live family? I quickly sent an email to “Tree Owner”:

Hi! I think we’re related. Deanna Ruth Sheff’s grandfather was Barnet (Barney) Sheff. He was my great-grandfather’s (Abraham) brother. Deanna and my dad, Stan Scheff, were 2nd cousins. Who are you? Do you know any of the Sheff family history?

Hope to hear from you,
Cheri

Nervously, I waited for a reply. Mercifully, it came only a few hours later:

I am Kenneth Howard Platter. My mother was Deanna Ruth Sheff. I can provide you with plenty of family history as I am close with my cousin Debra Goodman who knows quite a bit. Our families all grew up together on Lotten Street in Brookline. You can call or e-mail me. So what is your name and where do you live?

I let out a loud “woo hoo!” David, my husband, thought I was crazy. I couldn’t help it. I had finally made a real connection. After months of sifting through records of deceased family members, I would talk to someone who was alive. I was elated! Now I could get somewhere with this project. A cousin of my very own who has information about the family. It was too late to call Ken that very second, but I was thrilled by the thought that we’d speak before the weekend was out.

I had to get it all straight in my mind: Abraham and Barnet were brothers; Grandpa Bill and Samuel were first cousins; Deanna Ruth and Stan (my dad) were second cousins; Ken and I are third cousins. Got it. Crystal clear. But was there anything to learn about Ken before I called him?

I snooped around on the computer looking for birth dates, names of siblings, etc. All of a sudden, a city directory entry showed me a past residence for the Platters. Could this be true? Had the Platter family really lived at 29 Michelle Lane in Randolph? My family had lived at 31 Michelle Lane, directly next door, until the summer of 1968. What are the odds of that? Was I imagining things? Had we been friends? Had we known that we were cousins?

It was time to call my parents to tell them what I’d been up to and get Ken Platter on the phone!

—-

Cheri Scheff Levitan started researching the Sheff Family tree in January 2010. She shares her tale on her blog, Finding Me…a personal journey (http://cslevitan.wordpress.com/), where this excerpt first appeared in slightly different form. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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November 7, 2011 · 8:35 am

Learning a New Language

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

My father is teaching me German.
He still speaks fluently, even though he
escaped from Nazi Germany almost
seventy years ago when he was seventeen.

We study nouns and verbs.
We study when to use the formal pronoun, Sie, you
and when to use the more familiar, Du.
One must be offered permission to use the familiar.

We study dialects.
The word Ich, I.
The Berliners pronounce it Ick.
Those from Frankfurt am Main, Isch.
Those from Schwaben, Ich or I.

He tells me when he was a kid he and
his friends used to say in a Berliner dialect,
“Berlin jeweesen Oranje jejessen und sie war so süss jeweesen.”
I was in Berlin and ate an orange, and it was very sweet.
“And then we added, dass mir die brüh die gosh runterglaufe is,”
with the juices running down my mouth.
He explains: “It is in our Schwäbisch dialect.
I should say, it was our dialect.”

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007), a collection of poems about her family and the Shoah. Her poems and essays have appeared in several journals such as the Connecticut Review and Limestone, as well as on Beliefnet. She is a teaching fellow at Clal.

This poem has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author and Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

For more about Kirchheimer’s work, visit: http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=janet+r+kirchheimer&page=index&prod=univ&choice=allproducts&query=Janet+R+Kirchheimer&flag=False&ugrp=2

And to read Kirchheimer’s recent piece on observing Kristallnacht this year, the first without her father, who died this past July, visit: http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/kristallnacht_without_my_father_20111102/

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October 31, 2011 · 8:08 am

Being Jewish

by Marcy White (Toronto, Canada)

In memory of Frank White z”l (1933-2010)

The first time I refused to go to shul for Rosh Hashanah I had the biggest fight with my father. We didn’t speak for one week because my dad expected me to do what he wanted. I was a 16-year-old struggling with the existence of God and refused to sit through a four hour service.

I couldn’t stomach the annual shul scene: everyone dressed in brand-new outfits, whispering about who gained weight, who looked good, who was unemployed or single. Eventually, I stopped attending services altogether. It was a gradual break, evolving over several years. I would wait at home for everyone to return and partake in the post-synagogue meal. Despite the comments from my father, I didn’t feel guilty about my religious lapse and I didn’t harbor secret feelings of being struck down for my agnostic beliefs.

Growing up in Montreal, I attended Solomon Schechter Academy and Herzliah High School. I ate kosher food at home and kissed the mezuzah before leaving on a trip. I went to Jewish camps and all my friends shared my religion.

When I was in my early 20s, I moved to Toronto and still practiced the customs: I lit Chanukah candles, ate matzah on Passover and nothing on Yom Kippur. I enjoyed the traditions but the shul sanctuary did not fill me with a sense of belonging.

When my first child was born in 2002, he spent three agonizing months in the hospital fighting for his life. From the second Jacob emerged from my body, every breath he took was a struggle. He was tethered to countless machines monitoring his breathing, his oxygen levels and his heart rate.

During that excruciatingly painful time, I did not find myself bargaining with God for assistance. I did not promise to eat kosher if Jacob would breathe without needing to be suctioned or become more observant if he would swallow without choking. But many friends who came to sit with me did so. I sarcastically joked that if there was a god, there were so many caring people of various religions praying for Jacob we’d have all the deities covered.

My son’s bris occurred under a general anesthetic when Jake was six-weeks-old, at the same time he underwent a surgical procedure. Instead of being held by his father or grandfather as dictated by our tradition, Jacob was lying on a gurney, sedated and intubated, under the glare of the operating room lights. It was a fortunate coincidence that one of the surgeons was also a mohel.

When Jacob was 10-months-old he was diagnosed with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD), a rare neurodegenerative disease. Although it was a relief to finally have a name to put to the assortment of symptoms, it was a crushing blow to learn that he would never walk or talk and would always be fed through the tube that was surgically implanted into his stomach on the day of his bris. I learned there is no cure and Jake’s symptoms would worsen over time.

When the shock of the diagnosis wore off, I resolved to give my son the greatest chance at a long and healthy life. I reasoned that if his body could be strengthened, it would be harder for the degenerative aspects of the disease to progress.

When Jake was 16-months-old, I hesitantly enrolled him at Zareinu Educational Centre, a school for children with special needs. I was wary of exposing my son, whose immune system was incredibly weak, to other germ-infested children. Until then, Jacob had been virtually sequestered at home, safely removed from others because a simple cold could be fatal to him. The opportunity for Jacob to receive an assortment of therapies to help his muscles develop, coupled with a vat of antibacterial hand wash, outweighed the benefits of keeping him sheltered at home.

The school was run by the Orthodox Jewish community. I’ve always heard that “they”, the devout Jews, who strictly observe all the rules of the religion, don’t consider “us”, the secular Jews, who drive on Saturdays and eat in non-kosher restaurants, Jewish. I wondered how Jacob would be treated in this program because our religious practices were vastly different from theirs. Would he be invited to participate with the others, or would he remain an outsider, the not-really-Jewish Jewish boy? Would the other parents try to keep their children away from my son?

Jacob, the most medically fragile child in the room, was welcomed into the class and received all the therapies and education the program had to offer.  My son was included and supported. It didn’t take me long to feel comfortable in the group.

Around the time Jacob turned four, I learned about Yedidus, a Sunday morning children’s program near our home. It was run out of Bais Yaakov High School, an Orthodox girls’ school and was open to all Jewish children with special needs.

Initially, I was skeptical about the qualifications of the leaders. How could teenage girls be comfortable taking care of my son when most adults were too afraid to be alone with him? My concerns were squelched when I observed the girls, all dressed modestly in long skirts and long sleeves, welcome Jacob into the group with an abundance of warmth. I knew he would be accepted despite our differences along the religious spectrum.

In the five years since we timidly wheeled Jake into the school on a Sunday in mid-October, my categorization of “us” and “them” has dissipated. Jacob was unequivocally enveloped by this extraordinary community.

Jacob’s Princesses, the frum girls affectionately named by Jake’s younger twin sisters because princesses always wear skirts, shower my son with attention, love and compassion. Unlike the typical teenagers depicted in the popular media, these girls do not devote their free time to listening to music, hanging out in shopping malls and playing video games with their friends. Consistent with the concepts of Gemilut Chassidim and Tikkun Olam that they see practiced in their community every day, the princesses’ after school hours are spent visiting hospitalized children, taking care of the elderly and helping their mothers with various chores. And they do this without hesitation and without complaint.

Jacob has been invited into their homes for Purim, Chanukah and to spend the night on Shabbat. For the past two summers, four incredible princesses took Jake to Camp Yaldei, an overnight camp in the Laurentians in Quebec, for a month. The girls spent entire nights at our house, awake while most of the city was sleeping, watching our nurses tend to Jacob so that they would be comfortable with all aspects of his care.

Thanks to these extraordinary Orthodox teenagers, Jacob is able to enjoy some typical childhood experiences, including sleepovers, camp and a house over-flowing with friends and laughter each year on his birthday.

Because of Jacob’s Princesses and the empathy and love they shower on him, I developed a new appreciation for Judaism and Orthodoxy. I realized that a religion that is based on helping other Jews and giving back to the less fortunate when life treats you well deserves a second look. Motivated by the relationships I developed with these incredible girls, I started to re-evaluate my commitment to the religion into which I was born.

I learned how to make challah and my family lights Shabbat candles together. My daughters sing the brachas and Jacob knows when to vocalize for his favorite part, the “amen” at the end of each prayer.

When we visited my parents two years ago in Montreal, my dad’s face glowed with pride as he listened to my children ask the four questions during our Passover Seder. He was thrilled once again when they came with him to shul for Rosh Hashanah.

Sadly, my father passed away a few months ago. Although I still question the existence of God, I believe in the goodness of the Jewish community. In honor of my dad, the person I used to argue with about attending synagogue, I go to shul every day to say Kaddish. For him.

Marcy White enjoyed a career in the investment industry that was sidelined with the birth of her son in 2002. Her academic degrees did not prepare her for caring for Jacob who was born with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD). Since Jacob’s diagnosis at 10-months- old, Marcy has become an advocate for her son and furthering PMD research to help find a cure. Marcy has written many articles about Jacob that have appeared in publications such as the Globe and Mail, Canadian Jewish News and Exceptional Parent. She co-founded www.curepmd.com to educate people about PMD and fund research into finding a treatment. Marcy lives in Toronto with her husband, Andrew, and their three children, Jacob, Sierra and Jamie.For more information about PMD visit www.curepmd.com.

Reprinted with the permission of the author Marcy White and with the permission of Liz Pearl, the editor of Living Legacies – A Collection of Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women – Volume III. (PK Press, 2011). For more information about this publication or to order copies please contact liz_pearl@sympatico.ca.

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September 19, 2011 · 7:35 am

I Never Asked

by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Huntingdon Valley, PA )

My bubba taught me to knit European style, yarn on the left.
What hands had guided her hands,
Which now guided mine?
I never thanked her for that gift.
Or for filling empty jars with cinnamon cookies.
Al heit shehatanu. For the sin of ingratitude.

My bubba could have shared memories:
Of a long-ago village
Of lost traditions
Of melodies sung by her father, the cantor
Who passed on the gift of his voice
Before dying on the passage from old world to new.
But I never asked her to sing those songs.
Al heit shehetanu. For the sin of not asking.

So I must speak for her.
“I remember my own grandmother,” she would have said,
“And you will probably live to see your own grandchildren.
So right now, between the two of us, we share two-hundred years of history.”
And if I had looked into her eyes,
I might have seen her great-grandparents, her great-great-grandparents,
And all who came before.
But I never looked.
Al heit shehetanu. For the sin of turning our backs on the past.

Natalie Zellat Dyen is a freelance writer and photographer living in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Her work has appeared in The Willow Review, Global Woman Magazine, Intercom Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other newspapers and journals. Links to Natalie’s published work are available at www.nataliewrites.com.

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August 1, 2011 · 7:00 am

Ellis Island

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

i

Hi, Dad.
Today I discovered the manifest
of the ship you sailed on
when you crossed the Atlantic alone
and arrived in New York, November 7, 1923.
The basic facts jump off the computer screen:
Age 18, single, male, brown hair,
$40 in your pocket and a
second class ticket in your hand.
Name of vessel – the “Polonia”
Ethnicity – Hebrew, Lithuanian
Port of Departure – Libau
But the pages before my eyes
say little how you felt
passing the Statue of Liberty,
said nothing of your dreams and fears.
Were you excited? Scared? Or both?
What words did you reserve
for your running thoughts then?
What words do you have for me now?

ii

You never told me tales of your youth,
except to say how hard life was,
and how you had to go without.
You never told me lessons you learned,
or what private words your parents presented,
and if they gave you blessing to cross the sea.
You never told me at the end of your life
what conclusions you had drawn
or whether you’d be leaving the world at peace.
I suspect you didn’t.
I suspect you withheld large portions of your years
that were to remain completely unopened.
Perhaps if I had known you better,
and did not gather information
off a ship’s manifest, it might have
made a difference, then again, perhaps not.
I do wish your life hadn’t been
such a Cracker Jack’s surprise box,
as I hope the airing of this and other poems
won’t be such a revelation to my own children.

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

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

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