Category Archives: Jewish identity

August 25, 2014 · 7:48 am

Worms in the Flour

by Jacqueline Jules (Arlington, VA)

The sweet smell of baking bread
widened your nostrils, then your eyes.
“A girl who bakes bread!” Your face,
a nomad finding water in the desert.
It was the seventies.
Men were afraid to open doors, afraid not to.
You were ten years my senior.
“Challah,” I corrected. “Sabbath bread.
An expression of faith.”

When time allows and mood demands,
I still set out bowls and measuring cups,
yeast, eggs, and flour on the kitchen counter,
determined to knead a sticky white mess
into something smooth and solid.
It’s a noisy process. The first time
you heard the sound
of something being punched and beaten,
you ran to the kitchen to watch.

It requires more strength now,
in the house alone.
Finding the cabinet empty of yeast,
I can’t ask you to put down the newspaper
and run to the store. I almost quit today—
opening the flour tin, finding worms.

But there were empty bowls
on the counter, waiting
beside sugar, yeast, and eggs.
They taunted me, dared me to continue.
I grabbed my coat and keys.

Not long after, I came back
with new flour, ready
to start over.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of many Jewish children’s books including The Hardest Word, Once Upon a Shabbos, Sarah Laughs, Miriam in the Desert, and Goodnight Sh’ma. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com

“Worms in the Flour” appears in Stronger Than Cleopatra, a collection of poems about going forward in the face of loss. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author. For more more about the book, visit: 

http://www.booknook-eljpublications.com/store/p4/Stronger_Than_Cleopatra.html

 

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July 28, 2014 · 3:24 pm

Inheritance

by Bonnie Widerman (Irvine, CA)

There is a hole in the fabric of my Jewish childhood,
something missing, gone, nowhere to be found,
though I’ve searched my childhood home high and low—
Not for a beautifully crafted Tallit left behind.
I was never given one—no girl was in those days.
Not for a handmade Challah cover,
embellished with my awkward scrawling and designs.
Surely that fell apart years ago.
Not for my mother’s Shabbat tablecloth,
white patterned fabric with a neatly scalloped edge.
All her tablecloths lie exactly where she kept them
when she was alive.
No. The treasure I inherited and lost all at once
was the very fabric of my mother’s Jewish life,
embodied in her Shabbat candlesticks—
A wisp of white smoke threading through the air
from an extinguished match.
A blessing in two voices, intertwined.
Two dancing flames casting shadows on the wall,
knitting our family together in Sabbath peace.
After my mother passed away, her candlesticks vanished
as if they were that matchstick smoke.
When I stand in her kitchen and look up at the shelf
where those pillars of blue-green enamel and brass once stood,
I feel the weight of their absence—and hers—in my heart.
I cannot bring back what is gone.
But the pattern of lighting candles with my mother
week after week, year after year,
is woven into the fabric of my life.
It unfolds into blessing every Friday night
as I light Shabbat candles at my own family’s table
with my daughters by my side.

Bonnie Widerman is the Director of Marketing & Communications for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, a national non-profit organization. She has been a professional writer and corporate communicator for more than 20 years. In her free time, she writes stories and poetry and her work has appeared in Ladybug magazine and Fandangle. Bonnie is currently editing a manuscript entitled, Her Kaddish: A Jewish Woman’s Journey through Mourning, which she wrote during the year she spent saying Kaddish for her mother, and which she hopes to share with others facing a loss.

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July 14, 2014 · 8:27 am

Because I Could Mumble Some Words

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

The Cantor pulled me aside
and asked if I would spend
the holiday as a family guest
in the north side of town.

He said, the temple there
has a small congregation;
too small to guarantee
a minyan for the holiday.

“It’s an honor to be asked,
a mitzvah,” he said.
I was never asked to serve
as a Jew before, except when

I held the hupa for a wedding
at Rabbi  Guterman’s house.
The soles of my shoes had big holes.
I wore old high-top sneakers instead.

Friends coaxed me to go.
“You’ll be treated like a king,”
they said. No one asked
if I could daven. No one asked

if I had Tefillin or if I knew Torah.
I slept in the home of an elderly couple
not far from their shul. When we entered
for morning prayers, the men nodded and smiled.

“At last,” they shouted, “we can begin.”
When I returned home, the air seemed fresher,
the sun brighter, my mother’s eyes
beamed with delight.

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

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June 30, 2014 · 9:43 am

Berlin afternoon

By Ellen Norman Stern (Willow Grove, PA)

I was on my way home from school that wintry day. It was a long walk for an eight-year-old carrying a school bag and a lunch box. That day it seemed even longer because there was no one to walk with.

Most days my mother came to pick me up at school and walk me home. This day something had prevented her from coming.

In my childhood memories of Berlin I see empty streets lining endless blocks of grey tall apartment houses. The buildings cast dark shadows onto sidewalks where no trees grew. I see no people on the streets, only a silent landscape of hard grey shapes.

When I look at a map now, so many years later, I find street names long forgotten. Suddenly the names are back and I remember the streets on which I walked daily on my way home from school.

I didn’t mind being by myself. I was always a bit of a dreamer and thought of all sorts of lovely things when I was alone, thoughts that could not run around in my head if someone was talking to me.

Adults always tell children, “do this,” or “don’t do that,” even on walks. I suppose children must do what they are told. I was told not to talk to strangers on the street, and I never disobeyed that admonition willingly. Yet, that afternoon …

I was daydreaming when someone appeared at my side and started talking to me. It was a young blond German man, but I couldn’t tell how old he might be. He suddenly came out of nowhere. I wasn’t even aware know how long he had been walking and talking with me.

“Little girl, I need some help,” he said. “You look as if you are just the person to help me.”

I was startled when he put his hand on my shoulder, but he continued to speak as he walked with me.

“You look like such a nice little Jewish girl… you are Jewish, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Then I am sure you can help me to find Rabbi Silberstein who lives on this street. I have been looking for his name in most of the houses on this block. Do you know in which house he lives?”

I had no idea who Rabbi Silberstein was or where he lived. I did tell the man that I didn’t know. He was talking so fast I am sure he didn’t hear me. Or want to.

At that moment I became quite desperate. I wanted to run away, but I was afraid to be so impolite. The nice upbringing won out.

Within a few seconds he stopped at the front door of the nearest large apartment building and asked whether I would help him look inside. Once in the lobby, I noticed that he didn’t look at the large area of mailboxes where each box had a name affixed to it. I showed the mailboxes   to him.

“No, no,” he answered impatiently. “His name isn’t there. We must look on the second floor.”

He pointed to the large staircase and motioned for me to go ahead of him.

It got dark early that time of the year. I had never before been aware how dim the insides of those big apartment buildings were. The late afternoon sun filtered through the leaded glass panels on the landing barely enough to light up the stairs but left the rest of the building in semi-darkness.

The man pretended to look at the nameplate of every door on that floor. Then he shook his head again and pointed upstairs to the next floor, making me walk up ahead of him again. I thought of the punishment that awaited me at home if my mother found out about this.

I got a tight grip on my school bag and turned around to face the man who stood just a step below me on the stairs. I wanted to tell him I could not stay any longer to help him and that he would have to search by himself.

Suddenly, before I could say a word, he reached out, grabbed my waist, and knocked me down. In the darkness of the stairwell I couldn’t see his face but his heavy rapid breathing warned me that I must get away quickly. Like a trapped animal I felt a desperate urge to escape.

It was suddenly clear there was no Rabbi Silberstein in this house. The man had lied to me. Intense fear warned that I must get away quickly. In desperation I looked for an escape.

At the same time I was terribly angry. Hot anger boiled in me and gave me the strength I had not felt before.

I sat up, ducked, and ran right through the man’s legs, swiftly down three flights of stairs, and out of the house. Never looking back to see whether he was behind me, I did not stop running for at least ten blocks. When I finally reached home I darted into the house entrance, up the steps, and into our apartment.

Not until the door was closed securely behind me did I feel safe.

I rushed into my room and lay down on my bed. I cried and cried. When my mother questioned me, I told her the man had wanted to hurt me. I sobbed too hard to be coherent. She felt my head for a temperature and put me to bed for the rest of that day.

The scare did not pass easily. The next day I did not go to school, nor the next. I was calmer and could tell my mother some of the facts, but I was still afraid to go out on the street alone. Perhaps the man had found out where I lived and was outside waiting for me?

My mother finally went to the police without me. When she returned from the precinct station, she said the police had taken down her story and promised to look for the man who fitted the details.

She took off her coat and sat down in a chair next to the warm, safe bed I did not want to leave and talked to me. She fed me sips of hot tea. She looked sad and gazed past me out of the window into the winter sky.

My big pink teddy bear, dressed in my outgrown clothes, sat in another chair and listened, too.

I wondered what she had really been told at the police station. Perhaps they did not believe my story and said it must have been a child’s fantasy. Or did they care at all and had put her off politely?

I had always taken my problems to my mother, confident she would find the solution to them and set my world straight again. Her sad face suddenly revealed that my protector was not as strong as I had always believed. That day I knew for the first time that my mother too, was vulnerable.

About six months later I thought I saw the man again.

My mother and I were with friends on a Sunday outing in Berlin’s Grunewald at an outdoor cafe where strollers stopped for coffee and cake after a hike through the woods.

My parents had recently decided to divorce. No one explained to me what that meant.

All I knew was that my father was no longer living with us. My mother and I now lived in a newer apartment complex in West Berlin’s Wilmersdorf district. Walking home the long blocks from my school on Bleibtreu-strasse to our new home took much longer. After that past winter’s episode I had been unhappy and withdrawn. When spring came she took me out often, hoping that fresh air and exercise would perk me up.

That Sunday afternoon we sat at a round table covered with a white cloth. The waitress had already brought our order. Suddenly I was aware of a pair of eyes looking my way. They were the eyes of a young, good-looking, blond German man who smiled in a way that was not nice at all. I could not understand that kind of smile, and I stiffened with fright.

I was not sure he was looking at me, or that he had even seen me, yet somehow I sensed he had recognized me and that his smile dared me to open my mouth.

“That’s him, that’s the man, “ I said to my mother. I pulled her hand to get her attention for she was talking to someone at our table.

“Mother, that’s the one.”

I was anxious to go home. Those staring eyes, that smirking smile had spoiled the Sunday outing for me.

During the months that followed there were several occasions when I thought I saw the man again, especially among crowds of people. Perhaps it was my imagination.

As time passed I could no longer completely recall his face. His eyes, however, stayed with me for a long, long time. Now, after many years, the eyes too, have disappeared from my memory. Only in an occasional nightmare do they still linger.

Just prior to the start of my third school year the Nazi regime decided its good German children should no longer be exposed to daily contact with undesirable minorities and permanently barred Jewish children from attending public school.

I did not mind at all that I could no longer go to school.

I was glad.

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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June 16, 2014 · 8:36 am

Unlocking the Past

by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)

We did not expect to find the diary. A non-descript, navy-bound volume, it had been stashed away in a drawer of the massive wooden study desk at which our late mother had worked for so many years. Perhaps she had simply forgotten writing it? Or perhaps she had chosen not to share her youthful passions and agonies with her daughters… We will never know.

I had long abandoned any hope of uncovering more details of my mother’s past, her memories having been gradually extinguished by Alzheimer’s disease, which had afflicted her for the last decade of her life. Now, as I turned the diary’s yellowed pages filled with her distinctive script, I felt grateful for the opportunity to discover her anew, albeit in a younger form, becoming acquainted with the person she once was before I was born.

Written in English in the mid-1950s, when a postgraduate traveling scholarship had taken her back from Melbourne, Australia, to her birthplace of Israel for two years, the diary provides a glimpse of what life was like then for a single, 20-something woman. Attractive and bright, she was courted by a host of mostly unsuitable admirers, although occasionally, one would become the focus of her hopes and dreams. After all, as she notes, her mother had advised her to “secure a future” for herself, urging her to work hard to accomplish her purpose: in other words, “get married”.

Part-travelogue and part-social commentary, the diary reads like a film script, the vividly portrayed characters flitting in and out of various settings. One moment my mother is at a party or concert, describing the dating scene: “Noticed some very good looking men in the audience. Wonder where they usually hide.” The next, she is on a crowded bus, discussing the four young Yemenite girls seated behind her: “probably recent arrivals to the country. Full of joy of life, laughing and continuously talking in high pitched voices, cracking small black seeds and throwing shells on the floor of the bus.”

A picture builds of what life was like in what was then the recently established State of Israel. Many of those she meets are keen to move elsewhere, believing there is more opportunity overseas. A certain unease lurks behind the pages too, and on one occasion, she even has to identify a suspect at the police station after an elderly woman is raped across the street from her home. More often, however, she is scared to walk alone in isolated areas, having heard about “some unpleasant and unfortunate encounters with Arab infiltrators”.

The term, “infiltrator”, with its connotations of menace, danger and evil, has recently been revived to refer to African asylum seekers to Israel. Its origins date back to the early 1950s, when there were several attacks on Israeli settlements, resulting in around 100 casualties and culminating in the “Prevention of Infiltration Law” of 1954, which defined those citizens of surrounding Arab states, as well as Palestinians, who entered Israel illegally, as “infiltrators”, punishable by law, especially if they were armed or had committed crimes against people or property.

Emotions certainly ran high within Israel itself too. On a morning walk through the Carmel market near the family home in south Tel Aviv, my mother describes police arresting an “old Arab who was selling baskets… He was yelling his protests. Bystanders said he was allowed to sell his products in the main street, but not in the market.

“Further on I heard terrible cries, saw a young fellow who had slashed his own throat in protest at having had his cart full of vegetables taken to the police station. Apparently, he too had no permit to trade in the market.”

I had long known that after leaving Israel, my mother had undertaken an epic sea voyage to Italy, also visiting Paris and working in London before deciding to make her way to Montreal, where she would ultimately meet her future husband and my father. Until now, however, I had thought that those often-recounted stories had been buried with her. So imagine my delight to discover that the diary also contains a record of the first part of the journey she undertook by ship from the northern Israeli port of Haifa to Venice via Greece and then on to Milan by train.

Penniless, she could only gaze longingly at the elegant Italian shop window displays, but could “afford nothing no matter how cheap the prices were”. Arriving in Milan and not wanting to stay on her own, she was on the verge of boarding the night train to Paris with nothing to eat bar a box of biscuits, when she finally managed to contact the aunt and uncle of one of her best friends in Tel Aviv, who invited her to stay with them. Successful furriers, my mother writes, they had “made a name for themselves”, their shop frequented by “a good class of clientele”, including members of the aristocracy and movie stars.

Although most of the numerous names that appear in the diary remain unfamiliar to me, the family name of my mother’s good friend stood out. Hadn’t I gone to school with a boy of the same name?

It so happens I had been reminded of that particular family at the beginning of this year – before we discovered the diary — while on holiday in Israel, when I had learned that Michael, my old school friend, was staying in the same hotel. We spent some time catching up and also exchanged contact details.

Now, as I turned the pages of the diary, I realized that the characters so vividly depicted by my mother included various members of Michael’s extended family. My mother’s friend was Michael’s aunt, meaning the Milan furriers must have been his great aunt and uncle. I sent an email to Michael, who immediately put me in touch with the Italian branch of his family and all was confirmed. Even better, his elderly and frail aunt in Tel Aviv could still remember my mother and recalled the deep friendship between various generations of our families.

As it transpires, our familial ties date back at least a century to Poland via Tel Aviv and on to Australia: A tale of friendship and support, harking back to the days of our great grandparents, with the diary key to piecing together the puzzle of just how we are connected.

The ravages of Alzheimer’s disease had prevented my mother from recounting her memories long before her death last year. Her diary provides a portrait of her, as I never knew her: a young, passionate woman searching for intelligent companionship and the man of her dreams. It provides the key to unlocking a part of her past with which I was unfamiliar, a past that I thought had been lost forever.

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: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13636, as well as https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/category/australian-jewry/ and http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/

 

 

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May 26, 2014 · 6:49 am

Where I’ll Celebrate Passover Next Year

by Donna Swarthout (Berlin, Germany)

I resisted the idea of visiting Israel for most of my adult life. I was afraid I would feel nothing holy, nothing spiritual, nothing to connect me to the land of our forefathers. The Pesach cry “Next Year in Jerusalem!” never resonated with me. Why in Jerusalem? Why not in Berlin or Los Angeles, Moscow or Nairobi? How could spending Passover in Jerusalem make a difference in my life, enhance my Jewish identity, or connect me to world Jewry?

I spent my first Passover in Israel this year and returned with a twisted knot of emotions that will take some time to unravel. My greatest joy was in the daily gifts to my senses: the sweet smell of jasmine, the inviting warmth of the limestone architecture, the abundant sunshine, and the rich tastes of hummus and falafel. Each day the land and the people drew me in, but not without moments when my buttons were pushed and I drew back. I felt a bit like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, the gazelle-unicorn whose two heads try to go in opposite directions whenever it moves.

The greatest challenge was trying to make sense of the ultra-orthdox Jews whose demeanor and conduct sent a loud message that said “keep away — you are not one of us.” Driving through the Mea She’arim area and provoking the rage of its residents was probably a bad idea, but even worse was the feeling we had while walking around Jerusalem of being invisible in the eyes of those who are a part of our history but who reject us as Jews. Why wouldn’t they look at us? And why were they always in such a hurry, rushing along the streets in their big hats and black suits as if late for a pressing business appointment?

We did not travel with a group or attend any religious services so we had no interaction with more modern Jews. Stepping into one of Jerusalem’s major hotels to use the facilities, we saw huge signs for upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs. One elaborate display welcomed Gaby Schwartz and her bat mitzvah guests. I became obsessed with Gaby Schwartz and how she felt about having her bat mitzvah at a fancy hotel in Jerusalem. Did Gaby miss her friends who couldn’t travel to Jerusalem to celebrate with her? Why leave your local Jewish community for such an important rite of passage? What did it mean to Gaby’s parents to celebrate the twin occasions of Pesach and their daughter’s bat mitzvah in Jerusalem?

The cultural and earthly pleasures of Israel will pull me back one day, but I look forward to spending next Passover in Berlin. The phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem” isn’t just about our physical presence on the land; it also reflects our aspirations for unity among the world’s Jews, for world peace and spiritual fulfillment. But are these the best words to end a seder for the many Jews like me who struggle to find their connection with Judaism and who tire of being associated with Israeli policies with which we disagree?

Building Jewish community in the place where I live, a place where Jewish life came close to extinction, has meaning for me. Berlin has a growing Jewish population, and although it is quite fragmented and rife with conflicts, it is also rich and vibrant, a reflection of our resilience. In Israel I was just a tourist, but in Berlin I am part of a Jewish community where my presence has significance for building a better future.

Donna Swarthout writes about being Jewish in Germany on her blog Full Circle http://dswartho.wordpress.com/. Her work has appeared on The Jewish Writing Project and in Tablet Magazine, Tikkun Daily, Jewesses with Attitude, and AVIVA-Berlin.

 

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May 5, 2014 · 7:00 am

Searching For A Mensch

by Ronni Miller (Sarasota, FL)

I hit “send” on a nonsectarian, computerized, singles site. I thought the profile defined me. Widowed from my Irish Catholic husband who had been attracted to my legs and body as long as I left my mind somewhere else, I now hoped to find a Jewish man who was attracted to my body and mind.

Three men responded. Their profiles contained the words: “intelligent, sympathetic, curl up and grow together in each others arms.” We met. They talked.  I listened. The first, a retired scientist told me he was divorced and trying to get out of a relationship. He balanced his bulk on one hip while he withdrew his wallet to show me her picture, a zaftik, well stacked woman draped in diamonds. I, slim with barely protruding breasts, long, costume earrings, polo and jeans, realized he was looking for a clone and it wasn’t me.

The second, a retired surgeon, divorced with grandchildren had married a young, woman who filled his bed and stole from his wallet. He divorced and was forced to take jobs as a doctor in a clinic. I told him I was a writer with an unpredictable income. He sighed and said there was no chemistry for him.

The third date was with a retired man, never married who was in love with his new toy, a BMW. His picture, a rotund man with a sexy aura was not the man who sat across from me in the Italian restaurant’s bar.  This man was angular and bald and reassured me he would comfort my sorrow, something I never elicited. His last remarks were “merry Christmas”. Obviously he never had bothered to read my entire profile that identified me as Jewish.

I needed a new profile. I composed: “On this Saturday afternoon free from deadlines I will tell you what I’m looking for…”

Delete. This is not an essay or a short story. It’s an advertisement on a single’s site. My fingers ignored the warning. “I need a mate who appreciates a woman who earns a freelance income. I need to be with a mensch, a man who from his own life experiences recognizes and appreciates me for my sincerity, diligence, creativity and works I’ve produced.”  Should I use the Yiddish word without definition?

Delete. The most popular words on men’s sights were “having fun”. “Fun for me is living in Italy and finding Alessandro, the fictional hero in my last novel.” Delete. “Fun is sharing a home wherever that is.”  Delete. “Fun is being connected on many levels…”  By the time I finished writing and editing darkness had descended.  I also felt spent and at the same time relieved.  My thoughts and feelings were cleaned out. Prospective matches or men who might become significant others would never read those words.  I would rewrite the profile again and would include the word mensch without definition.

I wrote the final, profile: “Female mensch searching for male mensch for fun and good times.”

Ronni Miller, author of Dance With The Elephants: Free Your Creativity And Write and Cocoon To Butterfly: A Metamorphosis of Personal Growth Through Expressive Writing, among other published books, is an award winning fiction author and founder and director of Write It Out®, a motivational and expressive writing program for individuals of all ages since 1992.  She teaches and lectures in the US, facilitates writing retreats in Tuscany and Cape Cod, and writes about her Jewish roots, feelings, memories and experiences in published books, short stories, essays, poems and plays for children and adults. In her private practice as a Book Midwife, she helps people birth their books. See www.writeitout.com for more information. 

 

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April 7, 2014 · 8:48 am

My Olympics

By Ellen Norman Stern (Willow Grove, PA)

I didn’t think I had remembered. Or perhaps it was something I had wished to forget over the many years since it had happened.

But then the sight of the five interlocked Olympic circles, the flag-bearing gymnasts marching into the crowded spectator-filled stadium, the familiar melody of the Olympic hymn sounding through the television screen brought back a long-forgotten memory best not remembered.

In the summer of 1936, Berlin experienced an uncommon heat wave not usually felt in this temperate European zone. Earlier that late spring, as an eight-year old, I had suffered a heat stroke while playing in the school yard. As a consequence I was forced to spend the many days until summer vacation at home, dizzy and nauseous, lying on the bed in my darkened, spinning room, with a wet cloth covering my head.

Like everyone else in the city I hoped to be well again by the time August came around.

Then the much-awaited Olympic Games were to start in Berlin. The capital city was looking forward to become the site of a world event.

I had the fervent wish to be a part of it. To walk through the avenues flagged so splendidly with the banners of the Olympiad and Germany, its host country. To be in the crowd welcoming the many top sports champions from all over the world. To see them perform, perhaps. To witness their receiving the medals for which they had all struggled so hard.

How I would manage to achieve my dream I did not yet know. Nothing in the real Germany of the day favored the daydreams of a small Jewish child.

And yet…hadn’t I heard of things loosening up in the anti-Jewish world around me? Even from the hushed sound of voices in my parents’ living room rumors reached me that most of the fashionable restaurants in town were starting to remove the signs in their front windows, signs that spelled out Jews Not Welcome. “Even Dobrin and Kempinsky are among them,” I heard them mention two of Berlin’s top cafes. Many friends of my parents looked for every possible sign that the icy spirit of Hitler’s Germany was thawing before the eyes of the world.

Not many days later the sob-filled telephone call of my father’s secretary informed us that he had been arrested right within his office and that we had better not expect him home that evening because she assumed that he was taken right to prison. She had no idea what the charges were.

It took my mother several days of frantic investigating to discover that the charges were “bicycle theft” and were brought by an unknown party.

This type of “denunciation” had become a standard procedure in our day. Anyone with a grudge was using it to get “even” for an unknown slight. Especially if it was against a Jew.

However, it seemed particularly ridiculous in the case of my father. Even I knew that he hardly needed to stoop to such a crime. While we still lived in Hannover, prior to moving to Berlin, he had been a successful businessman driven by a chauffeur; my mother, a fashionable, artistic lady whose household had included a cook, cleaning maid, and a laundress. Why then, bother with such a lowly accusation?

A clue emerged a few days later when my mother received a letter from the police. She opened it with shaking hands, only to drop it with an outcry of horror.

“You are hereby informed to report immediately to the Olympiastadion in Grunewald where you are required to help in the construction of the “Reichssportfeld” by doing Feld-Arbeit clearing the grounds for the upcoming Olympic Games.

“This action is required in reparation for the charges incurred by your husband’s prison sentence and subsequent costs borne by the German government.

“Heil Hitler!”

I, of course, had not the slightest idea what all this meant. All I knew was that at last we, my mother and I, would be traveling to the site of my dreams, the Olympic Stadium in the Grunewald. And I was overjoyed!

Every morning of that summer of 1936 my mother and I boarded the U-Bahn (subway) at our stop in Charlottenburg and rode to the end of the line in the Grunewald Forest. Since no one was at home in our family, my mother was forced to take me along every day of her work. Each day she carried a sandwich for me and a bottle of water, plus a sunhat and appropriate clothing for me to wear during the heat spell. After all, I had already experienced one sunstroke.

This area was to be the future home of Berlin’s 1936 Summer Olympics. It had been designated long before, in 1912, by the International Olympic Committee.

The First World War had prevented any games from taking place. In 1933 when the Nazis came to power, the party decided to make the most of the tremendous propaganda occasion by using the Olympic Games as a showplace for the upcoming progressive world of the Third Reich.

The plan was the construction of the Reichssportfeld, a huge arena that was expected to take two years to build.

One of the sites included in the field was the Waldbuehne, an amphitheater with the capacity to seat 25,000 people.

It was this location which would require the labor of my mother and the many other women who were forced to convert the area into a showplace.

I had no idea of any of this when we arrived for work the first day.

With other women who had shared the train ride we climbed up the subway steps. A huge rock-strewn field of weeds awaited us at our destination.

I held my mother’s hand with one hand and carried my sandwich bag and a book with the other. We were met at the top by brown-clad SA men who registered us and turned us over to matrons who led us to a nearby cabin. There the women changed their dresses into more appropriate attire for the work ahead. Before each person left the cabin she was handed a rake and a hoe.

I do not remember any other children present. My mother settled me into an available chair, said that she would check on me whenever she could, and told me to be good.

And then she stepped outside into the burning sunlight and was assigned a stretch of the large field.

I could see her from my chair inside, although she was out of reach of my voice. In the stuffy heat of the cabin I saw my pretty mother chipping away at rocks or bending down to pull out the weeds she had loosened. It was an unreal, nightmarish view I wish I did not have to witness. It may well be the reason I have tried to forget this episode for a major part of my life.

So began each long, hot day, boring and tiring and far from my dreams of the Olympic experience. It was not until the sun began to set that the hoped-for hour of going home arrived.

August 1 arrived, and with it the opening of the 1936 Olympiade.

It was a time before television brought events into every home. I was not able to view the grand episodes I had hoped to see.

Eventually I saw pictures of the rock-strewn weed-filled field, which was now a lush green carpet terminated by a beautiful amphitheater named the “Dietrich Eckhard Buehne.” Another area of the terrain housed the special box of honor where Adolf Hitler greeted his guests. Everything was grand and splendid and politically motivated. The “Fuehrer” was shown bursting with pride, just as another evil dictator named Vladimir Putin would posture unsmilingly in a similar situation in another country many years later.

The sound of the Olympic Hymn in 2014 brought it all back. How little things have changed!

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.

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March 17, 2014 · 9:01 am

The Circle of Life

 by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

Yiddish births my mama’s mother tongue
Yiddish silences my mama at death
Yiddish curls around the circle of life
Yiddish comes up from beneath the dirt
Yiddish spits, curses, and insults
Yiddish grabs like my bubbe’s cheek pinch
It is the language I cannot speak.

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 blog The Whole Megillah – The Writer’s Resource for Jewish Story.

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February 24, 2014 · 9:46 am

Exploring “Emotional Genealogy”

What is “emotional genealogy” and how does it differ from traditional genealogy?

Award-winning travel journalist Judith Fein describes “emotional genealogy” as a combination of a family’s history and the behavior of family members who have created that history.

An acclaimed speaker and workshop leader, Fein is the author of Life Is A Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel and the just-released The Spoon From Minkowitz: A Bittersweet Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands. (If you’d like to read an excerpt  from The Spoon From Minkowitz, click here: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/minkowitz-and-me/)

She was kind enough to share some thoughts on “emotional genealogy” with readers of The Jewish Writing Project:

JWP: How did you first come upon the idea of emotional genealogy?

Fein: I noticed that when I saw names and dates on my family tree, I fell asleep under the branches. I so admire people who do genealogical research, but I realized that I am definitely not one of them. On the other hand, whenever my parents or relatives related the slightest crumb of family stories, I became ravenously hungry.  “Hmm,” I thought. “What do you call it if you are mesmerized by the tales of those who came before you? Emotional genealogy. It seemed to fit.

JWP: What is emotional genealogy?

Fein: It is not only the stories that are told and have been handed down, but it is also the family behavior patterns that are transmitted. There are positive behaviors–like optimism, the thirst for social justice, kindness, an artistic or musical bent–but also the dark ones like rage, violence, lying, addiction, stonewalling silence.

JWP: What if I don’t know anything about my ancestors?

Fein: There is always a snippet of information or a piece of a story. Even the most minor details are pieces of the puzzle. If you have older relatives who are living, they are a prime source. If you have cousins, they may have some stories. As a child, you certainly observed behaviors of your relatives. Do you see them in yourself?

JWP: What if no one in my family knows or wants to talk about them?

Fein: Then you go to Plan B, which involves research or using your intuition. Are you particularly drawn to a certain country? You may have had ancestors there, even without knowing for sure. Are you attracted to certain types of people? Well, you may have an ancestral connection. Your own intelligence, creativity and intuitive instincts are sources of a different kind of information.

JWP: What did you gain from approaching your genealogy search in this way?

Fein: First, by learning the stories, I feel that I have roots in a very rootless world. They give me a sense of meaning and purpose. That is why I wrote my book, The Spoon From Minkowitz: A Bittersweet Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands.

Second, I have understood the behavior patterns in my family–especially the toxic ones. I have seen how negative traits are passed down from one generation to another. And I have vowed that the buck stops with me. As someone recently told me, “If you don’t transform it, you transmit it.”

JWP: Thank you, Judith. Good luck with your explorations!

If you’re interested in exploring your own emotional genealogy, visit Judith Fein’s website for more information: www.emotionalgenealogy.org.

And if you’re interested in hearing her speak, click on this link to hear her inspiring TED talk on the beauty of travel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GErjagMyrYk&feature=youtu.be

You can view more of her work at her website: http://globaladventure.us

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