Category Archives: Jewish identity

June 17, 2024 · 7:30 am

My People

by Marcie Geffner (Ventura, CA)

I lay on the narrow exam table with “everything off” except the blue-and-white hospital gown tied at my neck and open to the back.

It was early morning in Los Angeles and I was hungry—empty, really—and tired from the clear liquid diet—apple juice, vegetable broth, ten lemon JELLOs—and the routine colonoscopy “prep” I’d endured the day before.

A surgical assistant approached me with a wristband.

Inwardly, I moaned. Did I have to do this? Answer: yes.

“Hold out your arm,” the assistant instructed. “Just think of this like you’re at a music concert.”

At my side, the stocky, dyed-blond nurse stiffened.

As did I.

It had been only four days since Hamas militants massacred two hundred and sixty people at a dance party in Israel’s Negev Desert. Israeli soldiers now stood guard at the site, strewn with mattresses, tents, food, clothing, and one militant’s dead body, left there as a warning. In Israel, 1,200 people were dead with another 2,800 wounded. In Gaza, the death toll surpassed 1,500. The war had only just begun.

Could anyone be as clueless as this surgical assistant seemed to be? Apparently so.

“That’s…maybe not the best comment right now,” I said.

The nurse murmured, “I am half-Russian, half-Ukrainian.” Her thickly accented voice came low, as if for my ears only.

She sounded like my grandmother. Born in Kishinev, my father’s mother immigrated first to Panama, then to Los Angeles as a young woman.

I was born Jewish and brought up Jewish. As a teenager, I’d spent one glorious, fearless summer in Israel, studying Hebrew, harvesting potatoes, traveling throughout the state and visiting my great-aunt and great-uncle, who lived part-time in Netanya.

Later, though, my feelings toward my religious heritage changed. As an atheist, I had no interest in prayer. As an adult without children, I felt marginalized, even unwelcome, in synagogue life. But I don’t celebrate Christmas, either. No Christmas tree. No Christmas lights. No Christmas cards. I’m an outsider in almost any religious space.

So why did this Hamas massacre in Eretz Yisrael feel so personal?

Because even without formal religion, I’m still a member of the tribe. I’m not always sure what that means, but I’ve never denied it and can’t imagine that I ever would. Jewish values, history and culture are visible threads woven through the fabric of my life. I don’t know whether I still have distant relatives in Israel, but really, everyone who lives there feels to me like my family. Those vicious attacks? Those people murdered? They could’ve been my loved ones. Or me.

I extended my arm toward the surgical assistant.

“I don’t watch all that stuff happening on the news,” she declared, as if “all that stuff” could not have been of less interest to her. Or to anyone.

She snapped the band around my wrist.

I withdrew my arm.

“It’s easy to look away,” I said, “when it’s not your people.”

Marcie Geffner is a writer, editor and book critic in Ventura, Calif. If you’d like to learn more about her and her work, visit her website: www.marciegeffner.com

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June 10, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Scream of a Post-October 7th Jew

by Jessica Ursell (Campania, Italy)

in bed
cold beads 
of sweat 
catch me 
still in the snare
of my nightmare

back at the home
of my childhood
walking past 
the front door
realizing 
it wasn’t quite 
completely closed

I went to close it
on the other side
they were pushing 
screaming, shoving
with such force

struggling
I tried to push back 
but they were so many

coming for the Jew

spewing incoherent vitriol
their rhythmic battering
sounded the beat of
of an ancient hate

I tried to scream
for in my dream
my son was in the room
my brother used to have

but like my brother
my son‘s door was closed
with music playing
so he couldn’t hear
my strangled screams

dazed and in disbelief
inhuman strength surging
like those stories
of desperate mothers
lifting cars
off the helpless bodies 
of their children

I shoved the door closed
despite the heaving mob
pounding from outside
so hard to click 
that little lock closed

in suburban New York

Daughter of an immigrant Jewish mother from the foothills of the Himalayas and a South Bronx born Puerto Rican Jewish father, Jessica Ursell is a veteran JAG officer of the United States Air Force, poet, and public speaker against antisemitism and bigotry. The granddaughter of survivors of the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, and a descendant of a Taíno great-grandma, she understands in her bones what happens when intolerance, indifference, and ignorance take root in society. 

Raised by scientist parents, Jessica’s early environment was steeped in an atmosphere where questions were welcomed and asking “why not” was encouraged. Jessica lives with her husband in Southern Italy where she writes essays and poetry addressing the complex interplay between trauma, power, love, loss, and madness. 

Her essays, “At the Country Club with Superman,” “Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House,” and “What My Zayda Taught Me About Tikkun Olam“ were published by The Jewish Writing Project in July 2022, October 2022, and January 2024 respectively. Jessica‘s poems, “Sedimented Rock” and “Climbing Vesuvius in Stilettos,” were published by Writing In A Woman’s Voice in November 2023 and May 2024. Jessica’s poem, “A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects,” appears in the February 2024 print issue of Down in the Dirt magazine as well as online (v. 216 Scars Publications). Multiple military audiences, most recently the United States Navy, Sixth Fleet, have heard Jessica speak about the importance of never being a bystander to evil which she believes is the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust.

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June 3, 2024 · 6:15 am

Something Lost, Something Gained 

by Miriam Aroner (El Cerrito, CA)

My bubbe never tasted hummus or shakshuka.

Gelfilte fish, pickled herring, matzo ball soup: 

these were her inheritance 

from the old country, the cold country,

the country unfriendly to Jews.

She did not know Jews who spoke Arabic or Spanish 

or were, chas v’ chalila, Black. 

If they did not speak Yiddish and disliked gefilte fish, 

Not Real Jews.

She had escaped the Tsar, 

the arranged marriage, the sheitel,

the orthodox rituals from birth to death.

But every Friday she lit candles and made matzo ball soup.

She kept a kosher home, but not glatt.

Her daughter, my mother, born in Chicago, 

had no interest in the old country.

She wanted to be a “real American.”

She disliked bubbe’s home-made yogurt, 

her heavy stews, her kugel concoctions.

A few times a year she made matzo ball soup

with Swanson’s chicken broth.

Borscht came from Maneshevitz,

gefilte fish from Rokeach.

No pork or shellfish, all the rest was commentary.

Uncomfortable in restaurants other than Jewish delis

she would never order  pizza

 and was suspicious of Chinese food.  

But she liked McDonald’s Fish Filets.

Now I live far from my roots, such as they are,

from Ukraine to Chicago to San Francisco.

Some of us are intermarried, 

some are Jews of color, 

We collect money for Ukraine, and admire its Jewish President.

We mix nature worship, a bissel of Buddhism,

our High Holidays a tsimmes of shehecheyanus and Leonard Cohen.

All gods are welcome at our feasts, 

although most of us are agnostics or atheists.

We eat pho, won ton soup, avgolemono, albondigas,

clam chowder.

We still eat matzo ball soup: with a felafel or samosa.   

A native of Chicago, Miriam Aroner has lived in the SF Bay Area most of her adult life. She has worked as a librarian in private and university libraries, including Tel Aviv University. She has published several children’s books, and poems in print, and enjoys traveling “because she always wants to see what’s  around the corner or over the hill.” She is a member of a humanistic Jewish congregation. 

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May 27, 2024 · 7:30 am

First Snow

by Susan Michele Coronel (New York, NY)

It’s mid-January, nearly a month after Hanukkah 

ends, when I notice the first appearance 

of white flakes in 700 days. I celebrate 

the return of predictable winter joy, when ice 

slicks sidewalks, & fluffy blankets shroud 

windshields, press their weight into branches. 

I scrape my van after a spot of freezing rain, 

loosen snow & ice from door handles 

before temperatures plunge into the teens. 

On Facebook, I skim photos of my daughter’s 

campus, where kids haul cardboard rectangles 

up scenic slopes, clock tower behind, dots 

of city lights below. It’s the same campus where 

a professor said he found the Hamas attack 

in Israel “energizing” and “exhilarating.”

A British friend reports snow’s arrival with

photos on WhatsApp, streetlamps casting

a ghostly glow over parked cars & hedges.

He says he just checked on his sister,

who has poor balance due to cerebral palsy.

On my side of the world, darkness advances.

Trump wins the Iowa caucus without a sneeze.

The night before, I watch a documentary about

a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor visiting

Warsaw with her adult son. She recalls how

Jewish policemen beat ghetto Jews with clubs

to get them onto trains—if successful, they’d

spare their own lives. They wore the same

boots as Nazis, crisp black against the snow.

Outside my window, flake by flake, snow

tapers & stops. A few neighbors continue to

shovel or salt walkways. Maybe a few–

like me–look outside & gape in wonder

at a lavender sky that sheds white sparkles

over our ordinary lives. We are like candles, 

gazing through curtains at the ever present dark.

Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. She has received two Pushcart nominations and won the 2023 Massachusetts Poetry Festival First Poem Contest.  Her poems have appeared in publications including Spillway 29, Plainsongs, Redivider, and Fourteen Hills. In 2021 her full-length manuscript was a finalist for Harbor Editions’ Laureate Prize, and in 2023 another version of the manuscript was longlisted for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award.

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May 20, 2024 · 7:30 am

Ancestral Family Secrets 

by Ronit Widmann-Levy (Sunnyvale, California)

In the summer of 2013, my Swiss uncle, Albrecht, invited the extended German side of my family to visit Rostock for a family reunion and to hear from a historian who was commissioned by the city of Rostock to write the story of a prototypical Jewish family between the seventeen hundreds till today. 

Curious to learn about my family’s origins, and interested in filling in the many blanks, I accepted the invitation and flew to Germany to partake in this reunion, bringing my thirteen-year-old son and three-year-old daughter with me.

Holding my sleeping daughter in my arms, I stood at the arrivals terminal scanning the crowd for a driver who was supposed to pick us up. My eyes locked briefly with those of a short, blond-haired, middle-aged man who seemed to have recognized me upon sight and appeared, oddly, somewhat startled. Tired from our 12-hour flight, I didn’t think much of it. The man began walking directly towards me.  

“Frau Widmann-Levy”? 

“Yes, that’s me”  

“I’m Frank, your guide and the historian who wrote the thesis about your family, the Josephys” 

”I’m honored. Thank you for coming to meet us here.  I was expecting a driver,” I replied.

“I can drive too,” he quickly responded, and picked up my luggage and walked us to his car, an old, rickety Volkswagen station-wagon.

Later that day, Frank sat me down in the lobby of the hotel and showed me old photos of the Josephy family, including one of a young woman named Carla. Looking at the face gazing back at me from the faded old photo was like looking in a mirror. I felt an immediate connection to Carla.  And so began my acquaintance with a woman who had influenced my life in many profound ways long before I became familiar with her life story.  

In the following days, Frank walked us through the streets of Rostock and shared in great detail his research of our family’s history and origins. Walking the cobblestone streets of Rostock hand-in-hand with my two children that summer, the year of my son’s Bar Mitzvah, was surreal. As we were walking, Frank pointed at the still-standing homes of our ancestors. The well-restored or preserved original buildings and apartments were all inhabited by tenants who had taken over our family’s homes after they were forced out.

Frank unraveled the Josephys family’s history for us—where they had lived, whom they had married, where they had worked, and gone to school. At a certain moment, he pointed at a specific building with windows facing the street where we were standing. Leaning out the windows were tenants currently living in those apartments. Upon seeing our group, they all withdrew, clearly dismayed to see us and our animated guide. 

On the front lawn, children at play were pulled back into apartments in a flash while windows and shutters were slammed shut. Frank, who was explaining about the past while pointing at their building, was not whispering, to say the least. He shared his findings enthusiastically while sweating through his white linen shirt and smoking like a chimney.

Carla’s complete story — and the reality of how I ended up having both Christian and Jewish branches in my family — was revealed to me on my second day at Rostock when Frank, recounting more of our family’s history, mentioned an aunt, (tante) Carla Josephy, a famed Jewish opera singer in Germany before WWII. I had a  surreal image of the words coming out of his mouth and enveloping me, wrapping me in a blanket made of the sum total of my family’s journey. That was the summer of 2013.  

As our little group traversed the streets of Rostock, my great-uncle marched in front. He had been the child in the story and was now eighty years old. I couldn’t help but think again the one thought that had always popped into my head since I was a school-age girl living in Israel. Would I have survived? Would my blue eyes and blond hair have saved me? 

Carla’s story, the alias she created, saving her children by giving them to the nuns, marrying her gay colleague and traveling to Havana Cuba, made me rethink my long time assumption that my seemingly Aryan features would have been enough for me to survive the war. I understood that it was not Carla‘s Aryan features that saved her but rather her creativity and resilience. I stopped putting so much weight on external features as equating a better chance of survival. From that point on, surviving meant something completely different to me. It meant not just coming out of the experience with a pulse, alive, but rather having your soul intact and your spirit in a reparable condition. 

I knew that many people had physically survived the war. They were mere shadows of who they had been six years earlier, and they walked the earth for the remainder of their days agonizing over what they had lost, unable to move forward. After hearing Carla’s story, I understood that living meant more than coming out of the war alive. It meant not just presenting to the world the shell of who you were but truly engaging with life.

I looked at my uncle and saw the boy within, with a one-way ticket on the train to Basel the day his mother put him in charge and responsible for his five-year-old sister. Relinquishing her children may seem like an extreme and heartless choice on Carla’s part, but in fact, this was an act of tremendous bravery and infinite love. Both children would be fostered and saved by a Swiss Catholic family, and  Albrecht and Dorotea would grow up and dedicate their lives to leaving the world a better place than they found it.

My uncle’s wife, children, and grandchildren enveloped him with love and affection,  accompanying him on this self-afflicted journey that he was so determined to go through. 

The next few days would change my life forever. Every part of my being realized that in the face of an existential threat, it is the silence of our neighbors and friends that is deafening. It’s a silence that contains many shades of betrayal. 

—

Ronit Widmann-Levy, a luminary in the arts world, boasts a multifaceted career spanning curation, fundraising, branding, presenting, and strategic planning. Her remarkable expertise encompasses public arts administration and cultivating global partnerships. Renowned for her captivating performances, Ronit has sung in Carnegie Hall under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas and recorded for PBS Great Performances. Notably, she serves as the Director of the Israel Museum Bay Area Council, a role that reflects her commitment to promoting art and cultural exchange. Passionate about the synergy of arts and technology, Ronit co-chairs and produces TEDxPaloAlto.  She champions art’s transformative role in fostering inclusivity, celebrating diversity, and instigating impactful change. Her career is marked by unwavering dedication to innovation, social responsibility, and exceptional leadership that fuels brand longevity and sustainability in the arts sphere. Ronit resides in Sunnyvale California.

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May 13, 2024 · 7:30 am

Sitting in the Land of Limbo

by Anna Stolley Persky (Fairfax, VA)

Today we are burying my friend, my Jewish light, and it is gray and cold and muddy, and we are in the middle of a graveyard, and we are in the middle of a war, and people all over the world are telling us that they hate us, and I believe them.

It is December 2023. We are in the Philadelphia suburbs, where my friend and I grew up together, and where she is now being lowered into a hole in the earth. I am with her brothers and sister and father and friends, along with her three children. Her husband, their father, died of cancer more than ten years ago. 

My friend’s children, the youngest still in high school, are orphans.

There is a war going on more than 5,700 miles from us here, under a tent that barely shields us from the wind and rain. 

Some of my friends who aren’t Jewish are marching, even yelling that Zionists have blood on their hands. 

I look down at my hands. They are cold and tinged pink. I put them in the pockets of my jacket.

We are saying the Mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew, but in my head, I am hearing Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King,” a prayer that asks God for mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. My friend was a cantor. She led prayers in her lovely, lilting voice at synagogues in Florida before moving back to Philadelphia. She taught me what it means to be Jewish, and now she is dead, and I am standing among the lost and left behind, and I know better to ask why, and yet, still I ask. She was 54, the same age as me. 

My friend taught me that to be Jewish means to ask the questions that can’t be answered or, rather, can be answered in vastly different ways. She taught me that to be Jewish is to live in the land of limbo, the endless thirst in a desert. 

I don’t want her body trapped inside a coffin. I want to open it up and let her fly, but my friend isn’t in there; she is already away, in the somewhere else. Is she with her husband? Is she part of the wind? We debated death, my friend and I, and then we agreed that it probably meant returning to the universe in a squishy way we couldn’t fully explain. Then we laughed and tried again.

Here’s something I would like to ask my friend: Should we ask God for mercy? Why should we pray for redemption? What did she do but live in a way that was more good than bad, where she helped people find comfort in Jewish traditions? What have I done, what have any of us done but try to survive?

Do we need to ask God for forgiveness if we are fighting a war? Each life has value, so is there such a thing as a just war? What if you are attacked first? Does anything justify slaughter and rape? Does anything justify killing children?

These are the questions she would have debated with me – Jew against Jew, not against, not really, just trying to look at a problem from all the different angles. She appreciated nuance, something I fear is disappearing.

It’s time for each of us to take turns with the shovel.

We cover her coffin with bits of the earth, dirt, stones, each of us, three times. The first time we use the back of the shovel to demonstrate our reluctance to say goodbye. Then the other two times, we turn the shovel back over to symbolize our acceptance that she has gone from us.

One: Do you remember that when we first met? We were seven. You wrote poetry and ate Tastykakes in the library even though the rules said no eating in the library. You smirked while you opened the plastic wrapper. I want you to come back and debate with me why those rules, but not all rules, could be broken.

Two: Are we going to be all right? I mean, all of us, the Jews, and me without you? Your son called me on your phone to tell me that you had died, and I already knew because your sister texted me first, but when your son called on your phone, I thought it was you anyway. This shovel thing isn’t working. I see your children. They are looking down, stunned.

Three:  When we were in high school, you would let me lie next to you, and you would play for me “Fire and Rain,” and we ignored the Jesus in the song, but I am still on “I always thought I would see you again” repeat.

My friend was still living when the war started, although she was sick and knew she was dying. She was still living when she told me to turn off the television, that she couldn’t watch anymore because she was so angry, and she was worried that her anger would twist into a blood lust. She was so honest, sometimes, and unafraid of putting to words what the rest of us hold inside and allow to fester. She was also not honest sometimes, which is to say, human and mortal. 

Then she said, turn the television back on, and we talked about all the different emotions we were feeling and how they could exist at the same time, and all of them could be true to us. 

I look at my friend’s children again. They are Israeli American. Their father’s family had to flee Iraq, their home, to Israel or they would have been killed. My friend’s ancestors escaped pogroms. It is a miracle these children are alive, these three beautiful beings.

It is raining harder.

I want to sit with my friend in the land of limbo. I want to sit with my friend who reveled in the gray. 

It is perfect for her, this weather.

Anna Stolley Persky is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at George Mason University. Her essays have been published in Pithead Chapel, Two Hawks Quarterly, and The Washington Post. Her fiction has been published in Mystery Tribune, The Satirist, and Five on the Fifth. 

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May 6, 2024 · 7:30 am

Thirsty roots

by Jane Schulman (New York, NY)

We buried my father on a rise  

under a jack pine where steam rose 

from the fresh-dug grave, colliding  

with January air.  

My sons unloaded the casket  

from the back of a pickup and walked it  

to the open grave, a Star of David  

carved on the coffin lid. 

For years my father railed against  

synagogues, Zionism, all kinds  

of God talk – evangelical  

in his atheism.  

But in the end, when I asked  

one last time if I could bury him  

when he died, he shrugged and said 

if it means so much to you.  

It did.  It does. As his last gift,  

he let me bury him a Jew.  

Now the Star of David rests  

above his chest as thirsty roots 

of the jack pine mingle  

with heartache and nettle. 

Jane Schulman is a poet and fiction writer. She works as a speech pathologist with children with autism and cognitive delays.  Jane published her first book of poetry, Where Blue Is Blue, with Main Street Rag in October, 2020.  Her writing has appeared widely online and in print. She was a finalist for the Morton Marr Prize at Southwest Review.     

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April 29, 2024 · 7:30 am

It’s relatively quiet here in Central Israel

Rina Lapidus (Petah Tikva, Israel)

The rocket shelling from Gaza usually takes place between early morning and early hours of night. After midnight there are usually no air-raid sirens, and you can snatch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep until 4 or sometimes even 5. And thank heaven even for this – “Alhamdulillah,” as the Arabs say: Praise be to God. Aside from rocket shelling, the Central District, where I live, is not really impacted by the ravages of war. No large centers for evacuees from border areas are located here, and neither do you see many wounded people walking about in the streets; no burned houses, except for a few high-rises here and there damaged by shelling, with walls partly destroyed and some debris and fragments of missiles scattered around on the roads and sidewalks below. Also, medical centers are bursting at the seams with all the wounded brought here from other areas, so it is impossible for anyone else to get treatment – like me, for example, a woman who is neither young nor healthy.

Still, I did not give up hope and ordered a taxi to take me to the hospital. The hospital is in the city center of Petah Tikva, north-east of Tel Aviv. The Arab taxi driver who showed up was pleasantly surprised when I agreed to ride in his car. But I thought to myself that it wasn’t really up to me to agree or disagree: the taxi company must have sent me an Arab driver because all their Jewish drivers had probably been called up to the front. However, seeing that the driver was happy that I was prepared to travel with him, I thought it unlikely that he would harm me along the way. Besides, I could stick my bag in the window to keep it open, so if worst came to worst, and the driver’s behavior seemed to me suspicious, I would be able to escape. 

The ride was uneventful, and I arrived safely at the Petach Tikva hospital. At the entrance lobby of the health fund to which I belong sat an elderly Mizrachi Jewish woman. By the look of her she was about 75 years old. Her skin color was brown, but her face was black to the point that it radiated blackness. She sat there mumbling, “My grandson is gone… they killed him in Gaza…” Her words struck me to the quick. I was so shaken that tears burst from my eyes. I went up to her, bent down, and reached out to give her a hug. She shrank away, and pushed me back. Then she shouted at me: “What do you think you are doing, putting your hands around me? They killed my grandson in Gaza! And you came here to hug me?! What’s got into you? My grandson is killed in Gaza! Do you understand?!” I sat down next to her and cried. A Russian-Jewish cleaning lady came up and offered us two cups half-filled with water. I took one and drank. The Mizrachi woman waved away the cup intended for her and shouted, “I’ll manage… but they killed my grandson in Gaza!!”

I went to the reception window and asked a female secretary sitting behind it to set an appointment with a doctor. In reply, she said: “Can’t you see that there are no appointments available? Can’t you see all these soldiers – wounded and sick?” But the other secretary told me: “Try private, not through medical insurance. Maybe you can get an appointment that way.” I said to myself, “Oh, that’s a good idea. Why didn’t I think of it myself?” I thanked the secretary and turned to go.

I headed back home, but as I was getting off the bus, the air-raid siren started, signaling that the shelling from Gaza had resumed. Around me, everyone was running, looking for bomb-shelters in the nearby buildings. I couldn’t have run even if I had wanted to. I lay down on the asphalt of the sidewalk, face down, and put my hands over my ears, to protect my eardrums from bursting in case of an explosion. It was a short barrage, lasting only about fifteen minutes. When the sirens stopped wailing, I tried to get up from the pavement but could not, because there was nothing around that I could grab for support to push myself up. My face was sore as well, because I had scratched it against the asphalt. There I was, lying down prone on the pavement. At that point, people started coming out of shelters. I saw a Bukharan boy, beckoned to him to come over, and asked him to help me get up on my feet. He did, and I went home.

At the entrance to the building where I live, I saw a crowd of people, all of them religious Mizrachi Jews, like my next-door neighbors. I turned to a woman and asked, “What’s going on?” “The Ohanas’ eldest son was killed in Gaza,” she replied. “When is the funeral?” I asked. “It’s finished. We’ve just come back from the funeral, and are starting shiv’a now.” I went up to my apartment, left my bag, and came downstairs again to take part in the neighbors’ shiv’a. The apartment and the landing were full of people, men and women sitting separately, as dictated by religious custom. On the tables outside, there were sweetmeats. A woman whom I had not met before brought me some cakes. I said to her: “Since the war started, I haven’t been able to eat. Every morsel sticks in my throat. I keep thinking of the young people who were killed in the war and they will never be able to eat again.” She said: “I feel the same way. When the war started, I also cried non-stop and was unable to speak for several days. But you must get over it.” I said: “I can’t.” She said: “You mustn’t stop eating completely. You see what the Arabs are doing to us… don’t do it to yourself.” I said: “I’ll try.” I sat there and cried. 

Sometime later I returned to my apartment. Then my cousin, Olivia, called from Australia, where she lives, and started lecturing me, in a patronizing and didactic tone, that Israel should end the warfare and stop punishing the Gaza Arabs collectively. I told her, “It’s not a collective punishment. Gazan leaders keep appearing in the English-language media and saying that, as soon as they are able to, they will invade Israel again and again, the second and third and fourth and millionth time. We need to make sure that they cannot do this, that they don’t have the ability to invade Israel and massacre us again and again.” She said: “The massacre they carried out on October 7 was justified, because Israelis hadn’t been treating the Gazan Arabs well enough – they had even cut off their electricity.” I said to her: “Why don’t they generate their own electricity? Do they really believe that they can burn our babies alive and we will supply them with electricity in return??” Then I told her: “Don’t call me ever again!” and slammed down the phone.

In the evening I called my daughter, who lives in the north of Israel, and told her: “Get out of there and come to live with me, in my apartment in Petah Tikva. It is quiet here, and in the North there is going to be a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.” She said: “My husband can’t leave his job.” I said: “I will come down and take your girls to me.” She said: “My youngest is only a few months old. How will you take care of her? It’s hard, you won’t be able to.” I said: “I’ll take the older girls, then. Actually, the girls should be taken abroad.” My daughter said: “Do you really believe that it’s safer abroad? With all the anti-Semitism there?” I said: “Which is better – to stay inside the Warsaw ghetto or to hide in the Polish part of the city?” She said: “Inside it’s safer because in the Polish quarter you can let out that you are a Jew even by the way you look at people.” I said: “When WWII ended, not one whole brick was left in the Warsaw ghetto. You have to hide in the Polish part. Yes, it’s true that you can easily let out that you are a Jew, so learn not to look people in the face. Just keep your eyes to the ground – don’t raise them.”

In the evening, I said to myself that I should hurry up and sleep while there is no shelling: “Who knows what the night will bring and whether the Arabs who are throwing missiles at us will let us sleep.” I took my blood pressure and cholesterol pills, and went to bed. I didn’t really sleep: it was a kind of drowsiness mixed with nightmares and hallucinations. In my mind’s eye, the Arabs from Gaza were bombarding us with shells and missiles. These were flying in the sky in every direction, and Israelis were intercepting them in midair. And among all the shells, missiles and interceptions, I and my two young granddaughters are on a plane headed abroad. I woke up in a panic and thought to myself, “I didn’t really dream this up. A few days ago, I actually saw how, at the Lod international airport near Tel Aviv, an Israeli plane was taking off into the night sky amid shells, missiles and interceptions swishing hither and thither all around it.” But then I made up my mind, “Right now, it doesn’t matter so much if it’s reality or a nightmare or a hallucination. I have to try and go back to sleep as soon as possible, before they start shelling us again.”

Rina Lapidus was born in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union. After graduating from a high school in Haifa, she obtained her BA, MA and PhD degrees in Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Since 1984, she has been working at the faculties of Jewish Studies and Humanities at Bat-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan. Rina Lapidus is divorced, with one daughter and three granddaughters. 

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April 22, 2024 · 7:30 am

Trekking to Lakewood, New Jersey 

by Carol Blatter (Tucson, AZ)

“It will be a boring visit, I know it will be. I want to be with my friends. They’re going to the movies, and I’ll be left out. Do we have to go, Mom?”

“We have to visit Grandma. She always expects us a week before Passover every year and we don’t want to disappoint her. It’s too hard for her to make a seder. So going a week ahead gives her the feeling that we are together, like it’s a real seder. And as always, we will celebrate two nights of seders, one with friends, and one with the three of us at home next week.”

Dad nodded his head in agreement. 

“No discussion, we’re going.”

“Ok, I guess we’re going.” I hated that long ride down the Garden State Parkway. “Maybe I’ll read a book on the way or take a nap. Maybe we won’t have to stay long.”

Dad and Mom glared at me after I said that. Clearly, they were displeased with me.

Once we arrived, Grandma kissed me and gave me a huge embrace. I almost lost my balance.

Dad greeted his Mother. “Rosie, how are you?” Dad always called his Mother by her first name. I always thought it was disrespectful but I kept this to myself. Dad never liked to be challenged.

It was no surprise to see Grandma scrubbing the sink, then slicing some foods on a special board set aside for Passover each year. Grandma followed the requirements for Passover food preparation.  How she managed to do all her Passover cooking in this tiny kitchen still surprised me. She changed dishes, pots, and pans for this holiday. It was hard to imagine where she stored these Passover-only kitchen items after the eight-day holiday ceased. It was here in Grandma’s kitchen I learned about keeping Passover.

Grandma and her second husband, Max, lived in an dingy upstairs apartment with a  kitchen, a living room, a dining room, and a bedroom. Max was a miser. Anyone seeing this apartment would have been amazed to learn of my step-grandfather’s wealth. His adult children made sure there was a prenuptial agreement so that Grandma had no inheritance upon Max’s death. While my dad was upset when he learned of this, he and Grandma realized that she should go ahead with the marriage. It was better for Grandma to have a companion despite the spitefulness of Max’s adult children. Grandma started almost penniless prior to marrying Max, and she ended up the same way.

From the moment we arrived at Grandma’s apartment, I noticed how much older she and my step-grandfather looked from last year. Grandma was a short, stout lady with white hair pinned up behind her head, probably in her seventies then, maybe older, and she looked shorter and heavier. Max was a tall, slim, white-haired man, partially bald, who looked tired and frailer. He barely spoke. I never remember having any conversation with him. 

Suddenly, instead of disliking this trip, I wanted to help Grandma with the food preparations. I can’t explain the change in my mood. Instead of being sullen and annoying, I started to act more grown-up, not like a spoiled pre-adolescent. Maybe I wanted a relationship with my grandma and felt sad that so many years had passed since I had last seen her. So many of my friends had Zadies and Bubbies they were close with. Some lived with their families; some lived close by. I wasn’t so fortunate. We lived far apart. Maybe it had to do with my father’s distant relationship with his Mother; they were only intermittently close. Perhaps Dad’s relationship with Grandma had been marred by his having to go to work at the age of 14 in order to support their family. He had lost his childhood and his education. Maybe he suppressed his anger at her. But I also sensed in that hug, as their eyes met, he really loved her.

I still remember a surprising thing that happened when I saw Grandma many years ago. We were having a great time. I told her about my teacher and my friends. Then I remember saying that I had eaten a bacon, lettuce, & tomato sandwich for lunch that day. Grandma became upset. I had no idea why. She went into our kitchen, and within a few minutes I heard nasty rumblings between Grandma and Dad. I heard the word “bacon.” Why were they arguing about bacon? Several years later, I understood why Grandma had been so upset. She observed kosher dietary laws. Bacon isn’t kosher. She and Max ate only kosher meat and poultry, supervised by a rabbi with an OU label on each product. I think she was disappointed that we didn’t keep kosher. I wondered why my parents didn’t, but I never asked them. Mom came from an Orthodox Sephardic Jewish home, and Dad had grown up in an Orthodox Ashkenazi Jewish home. Why didn’t they follow the traditions that they had grown up with?

From these visits to Lakewood, I learned how to choose kosher for Passover foods and make a home clean and ready for Passover. Grandma told me that she cleaned cabinets, counters, closets and searched for crumbs, chametz, which had to be disposed of before the holiday began. Did Max help her? I doubted it. He was a sedentary, reclusive person. Maybe she never asked him. Throughout her life, Grandma worked hard and rarely had help. She was used to it. But as she aged, I could see how it became harder for her to do some of the things she used to do.

“Grandma, let me help. I know how to do things for Passover. I have friends whose parents keep everything kosher for Passover.”

“Here, you can put these dishes on the table.”

“And what about the silverware?

“Yes. And you can put them out, too.”

“Grandma, do you want me to put a piece of lettuce on each small plate to go under the gefilte fish?”

“Yes, bubbelah. Yes, meine aynikl.”

“Do you want me to fill these glasses with wine?”

“Yes.” 

“Can I have some?”

“How old are you now my bubbelah?”

“Eleven.” 

“Ok, a little schnapps can’t hurt.”

Then she pressed me against her large bosom, gave me a huge hug, and kissed me on each cheek. Her face filled with a warm glow that I felt for days afterwards. 

I knew Grandma had traveled in steerage with her parents and siblings from Poland to New York in the late 1800’s. I knew they had been sick for days in choppy waters. She spoke Yiddish and had to learn English in a foreign land. I knew her first marriage to a physically and emotionally abusive man had been a disaster. More choppy waters. And I knew she had raised four children herself after she locked my Grandpa out of their apartment. I doubt that Grandpa Henry gave her any money to support their children once she locked him out. 

Many years later, she married Max, who enjoyed her meals and her housekeeping without providing her with a more enjoyable and enriching life. Why would they remain in this little apartment when they could have lived with a little more luxury? When Grandma held me to her bosom and hugged and kissed me, I realized how amazing it was that she had any love left, having been deprived of love most of her life. I withheld tears. Grandma deserved better.

We sat down to eat lunch in their small dining area. The table was just big enough to fit five of us. The meal was reminiscent of what we would eat next week at the seder at the home of our friends. Gefilte fish. Then chicken soup with matzah balls followed by slices of potato kugel. For the main dish, she served chicken breasts seasoned with paprika and cloves of garlic, covered in onion slices, and bathed in chicken broth for baking. Everything tasted delicious. Then came my favorite. Dessert. Chocolate-covered macaroons, a specialty every year for Passover. Swee-touch-nee tea, Kosher for Passover,  ended the meal.

After lunch, I asked Grandma to tell me how she made gefilte fish. Like many old-world cooks, she didn’t have a recipe. She was a professionally trained guesser.

“Bubbelah, I grind carp, white fish, pike, mush them together with matzah meal and eggs, shape them round or into a log, like today. Broth, onions, fish skins, heads, bones, add carrot slices. Then boil them.” 

Can you tell me anything else? How much fish to use? How much matzah meal? How many eggs? How many carrots? How long do you boil them?”

“I don’t know, I just do it.”

I didn’t get specifics for making gefilte fish but I learned a lot about Grandma. What I thought would be a boring day turned out to be one of the most memorable days of my life. 

Carol J. Wechsler Blatter has contributed writings to the 2024 Birren Collection The Gift of A Long Life, Chaleur Press, Story Circle Network Anthologies, Writing it Real anthologies, The Jewish Writing Project, the Jewish Literary Journal, True Stories Well Told, Writer’s Advice, New Millennium Writings, and 101words.org. She has contributed poems to Story Circle Network’s Real Women Write, Growing/ Older, and Covenant of the Generations by Women of Reform Judaism. Ms. Blatter is a recently retired psychotherapist, she is also a wife, mother, and grandmother of her very special granddaughter who already writes her own stories  

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April 15, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Gift

by Cynthia Bernard (Half Moon Bay, CA)

Aunty Anne always wore 
lovely dresses with long sleeves,
even on that sunny day in August
when I sat next to her
at the picnic table,
soft yellow silk slid up her arm,
and I glimpsed the numbers.

What’s that, Aunty Ann?

Oh, just something for grown-ups,
Shayne meydele, she said,
gentle fingers kissing my cheeks.
Go and play.

And so she blessed me
with a few more years 
of childhood

Until that day in fourth grade,
somewhere on the cusp between 
only myself and the larger world,
when I learned about
the six million
and began my search for understanding—
which, of course, 
I have never found.

Cynthia Bernard is an Ashkenazi Jewish woman in her early seventies who is finding her voice as a poet after many years of silence. A long-time classroom teacher and a spiritual mentor, she lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine, Heimat Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Journal of Radical Wonder, The Bluebird Word, Passager, Persimmon Tree, Verse-Virtual, and elsewhere.

Note:  This poem was first published on December 11, 2023 in Ritualwell and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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