Category Archives: Russian Jewry

March 17, 2025 · 7:30 am

Tzipa

by Nina Zolotow (Berkeley, CA)

“You also have a Jewish first name,” my mother told me. “It’s Tzipa.” 

“Tzipa?” I asked, trying to reproduce the completely unfamiliar sound I was hearing.

“Yes, Tzipa. She was grandma’s sister who died.”

“Oh,” I said “Okay.”

There we were, sitting together on the couch in the light-filled living room of our brand-new house, up on a hillside in a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles, California, and I was young enough to simply accept the mystifying information that, in addition to my English first name, Nina, I had a “Jewish” first name, Tzipa, without asking any questions. But I always remembered what my mother told me. Even as the years passed and I never heard anyone call me Tzipa (my relatives called me Ninala or Ninatchka), I always remembered that name.

I also believed that no one else I knew had two first names. I didn’t realize then that it is very common for Jewish people to have a Hebrew name in addition to their name in the language of the country where they were living, and that their Hebrew names were not just second names in another language, but they were spiritual names in “God’s holy language.” I missed out on learning that, I think, because my parents, as well as my grandparents, were not religious, so I never went to synagogue or Hebrew school.

So that made me think that it was only me who had a secret name. It was like a magpie surprised me with a gift, dropping a small shiny object at my feet, and having no idea what to do with it but not wanting to get rid of it, I put it in a box with other precious objects. And I took that box along with me with every move I ever made, from city to city and even from one country to another.

I might have learned more about Hebrew names had I married a Jewish man. But, instead, I married a man who, despite being raised by parents from a small Protestant religious sect, the Church of the Brethren, always believed that everything he learned in Sunday school was just so many stories, stories that had no relationship to the world as he knew it. And he and I together raised two children who we brought up just as I had been raised without any religion.

“Do you remember me telling you about my Hebrew name, Tzipa?” I asked my husband recently.

“Tizpa?” Brad said. “No, not really.”

“I guess that name doesn’t mean anything to you,” I said. “But I definitely told you. I think you might remember when I tell you that it means little bird.”

“Ah, little bird,” he said, smiling fondly. “Yes, I do remember something about that.”

When I became an adult, my appreciation for my secret name grew because even though I didn’t like the sound of it, I learned that it means “little bird.” Tzipa, you see, is a diminutive of the biblical name Tzipporah, which is derived from the Hebrew word for bird, “tzippor.” And because birds can soar across the vastness of the skies above us, free from the restrictions that keep humans tied to the earth, in Jewish symbolism birds represent freedom. They also represent the awakening of the spirit and the connection between the earth and heaven, the material world and the spiritual one.

“Did you know that I have a Hebrew name?” I asked my brother, Danny “It’s Tzipa.”

“No, but I like the sound of that,” he said. “How did you find out about it?”

“Mom just told me that when I was a kid.”

“So, you mean that Mom and Dad gave you a Hebrew name?”

“Yes. They named me after Grandma Goldie’s sister who died in the Holocaust. But maybe you didn’t know that because no one ever called me by that name.”

“Okay…. Well, that’s a good person to be named after. It’s a nice way of keeping someone’s memory alive, whether the name gets used or not.”

Then, less than a year ago, my first cousin, Susan, sent me the result of the research she had done on our maternal grandmother’s family, the Levinstein family from Kudirkos-Naumienstis (also known as Naishtot) in Lithuania. And there at the end of the document was quite a lot of information about Tzipa, who she was and how she died.

I learned that Tzipa, who was one of the older sisters of my maternal grandmother Goldie Levinstein, had been born in Kudirkos-Lithuania in the 1890s. And that unlike her three sisters, she did not emigrate to the U.S. but instead stayed in the town where her parents and two brothers still lived. She married a rabbi named Itzhak, and together they had six children, five sons, Haim, Eliyahu, Israel, Dov, and one other whose name and fate we don’t know, and one daughter, Leah.

Then, on June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded the town and set the Jews to work under the supervision of local Lithuanians until a day in early July when a group of Lithuanian “activists,” under the command of Germans, attacked the city. This group ordered all Jewish males above the age of fourteen out to the streets and then took the Jewish men in groups of fifties to the Jewish cemetery. There the Germans and Lithuanian activists together shot one hundred ninety-two prisoners at the edge of pits they had already dug. The women and children were later forced into a ghetto within the town. On September 16, the 650 remaining women and children, and a few remaining men, were transported to the Parazniai forest by armed Lithuanians, who forced them to take off all their clothes and then lined them up and shot them all.

But Tzipa, her husband, and three of her children, Leah, Israel, and Dov, escaped the mass murders. After frantically packing up some kosher food, they ran for their lives. Once across the river, they fled into a more rural area. The first few days there they spent in an open field eating grass and finishing up the last of the kosher food. Then they found an abandoned shack and moved into it.

During those first long summer days, I imagine they must have seen birds of all kinds flying from tree branch to tree branch or high up in the distant blue sky above them and longed to be free like that, to fly far, far away from that place. Because things soon got worse.

Israel and Dov both left, joining the Lithuanian army that was attempting to fight off the Nazis. So Tzipa went away for few days, returning with flour for making bread, which she had purchased with money she received from selling her gold fillings. But her husband Itzhak, the rabbi, refused to eat non-kosher food. So he gradually starved to death. And then Tzipa herself came down with dysentery. 

What must it have been like for her to be dying and know that she was leaving her young daughter—only 14—completely alone?

Dov was killed fighting the Germans in the open fields. Haim was murdered by the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators, as was Eliyahu, along with his wife and their two month-old baby. But two of Tzipa’s children survived. Her son, Israel, was badly wounded and became disabled—his hand was seriously damaged, and he lost the toes on one foot—but after the war, he emigrated to Brazil. And her daughter, Leah, also survived. After her mother died, she found a job at a factory where they paid her with small amounts of food. And after the war, she found her way to Israel, which is how our family knows this story.

“Did I ever tell you that I have a Hebrew name.” I said to Quinn, our child who is a scientist now living in Scotland and who strongly identifies with being Jewish.

“Yeah, I remember you telling me,” Quinn replied. “I actually wrote the name out for you in the Hebrew alphabet when I was studying Yiddish.”

“I’m very glad you do remember. What are your thoughts about me having the name of a woman who died during the Holocaust while trying to save her family?”

“Yes, well, I do think it’s nice to keep her memory alive by giving her name to someone in the family, but it’s also some heavy shit because it represents how you grew up with the Holocaust all around you—after all, you spent a lot of time as a child around adults who must have had a traumatic response to that genocidal event.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Even though I didn’t understand much about it at the time, I always had some awareness of it.”

To be honest, I’m still grappling with what it means to me to carry the name of that extraordinary woman. But, at last, I finally know what to do with the gift of the Hebrew name that was given to me all those years ago. I am taking it out of my box of precious things where it has been hidden all these years, placing it in the palm of my left hand, and reaching my hand out toward you, saying, “Here. Look at this.”

Nina Zolotow just loves to write, and she has been doing it for her entire adult life. Currently she is writing creative non-fiction and experimental fiction/poetry, which you can find on her blog Delusiastic!, where there is both brand new and older works, and you can also subscribe to her on Substack, where she is releasing one story a week. Nina has also written or co-written four books on yoga (seeyogafortimesofchange.com) as well as being the Editor in Chief and writer for the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog for 12 years. Before that there was 20 years of writing instructional manuals for the software industry, including many books for programmers. And somewhere in there was an MFA from San Francisco State in Creative Writing. All of that taught her how to write simply and clearly when needed but also to go crazy with words when that seems right. 

This story originally appeared on Nina’s blog, Delusiastic! and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

3 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

February 17, 2025 · 7:30 am

Jewish Questions

by Nina Zolotow (Berkeley, CA)

I’m sorry,” the Danish receptionist said in English. “But I’ll need to search your bag before you go in.”

When we had planned our second trip to Copenhagen, I hadn’t thought of going to the Dansk Jødisk Museum, the Danish Jewish Museum—I didn’t even know that it existed. But it turned out that the fifth-floor apartment I’d rented for our week-long stay in the Norrebro neighborhood overlooked a beautiful, old Jewish cemetery from the 17th century. The first time I stood on the apartment’s balcony, I noticed that in the shade of several very tall, slender trees, there was a cemetery, not the park I had expected. It looked wild and untended, with countless worn, old gravestones of varying sizes, some standing straight up, some crooked, and others lying completely flat, all surrounded by lush, flowering summer weeds. And at the opposite end of the cemetery from our apartment, there was an old brick wall that had a small gate in it. The sense of death, of life, and of history all together left me with a quiet feeling of awe.

However, I hadn’t even realized that Jews had lived in Denmark since the 17th century, and now it turned out there had been enough Jews in Denmark to fill up a cemetery. But, of course, Jews went everywhere, didn’t they? Wandering Jews, they called us in the 19th century because we were always looking for ways to escape oppression, persecution, and violence—always searching for places we could call home. That was what became the “Jewish Question.”

But even after exploring the cemetery itself, which was founded in 1694 and was 13,500 square meters with around 5,500 burials, and then reading up on the history of Jews in Denmark, I was left with many questions.

My husband, Brad, was also intrigued. So, when I told him I discovered in my online searches that there was a Jewish museum in central Copenhagen, he immediately said, “Let’s go!”

It took us a while to find the museum because it was, to our surprise, part of the complex of old buildings surrounding the Royal Palace and the entrance was through a very small contemporary addition to a larger old building. When we walked through the front door into the museum’s lobby, there was just one person sitting at the reception desk and we were the only visitors in the room. The receptionist spoke perfect English, but she was very Danish-looking—blond, blue-eyed, and with Scandinavian features—so she was clearly not someone who shared my heritage.

After we bought out tickets, the receptionist asked us whether we wanted to use one of the lockers before we went into the museum. When we said no, she searched my very small handbag.

The receptionist apologized again after I showed her the sunglasses, sunscreen, lipstick, tissues, and charge cards that I had tucked into my little cross-body bag.

“I understand,” I said. “I’m Jewish so I appreciate you being careful.” Still a wave of unease washed over me at the thought that even here in Copenhagen—where everyone seemed so civilized, so very nice—extra security was needed at any place that was “Jewish.”

When we walked through the doorway into the museum proper, we entered a very unusual space. Although the outer shell of the building, which was originally the Royal Boat House from the 17th century, had brick walls, large arched windows, and vaulted ceilings, the interior was very modern and untraditional. The inner, white paneled walls were tilted and asymmetrical, and they seem to be arranged in some kind of labyrinth. And the wooden floors that guided visitors to the exhibits embedded in the walls were sloping instead of flat. Altogether, the design left me feeling tipsy and off balance.

Then, we noticed a very odd little display that had video images of Jewish people projected into a small model of a two-story house and a companion audio track promising a brief history of 400 years of Jewish life in Denmark, starting with the arrival of the very first Jewish merchants back in 1622. So we sat down together and put on the headphones. And as soon as I heard the narrator begin with these questions — Where are you going? Are you going home? Where is home? — I started to cry.

At first, I felt embarrassed about the tears flowing down my cheeks, but then I thought fuck it, it’s a Jewish museum and I’m Jewish, and if I fucking feel like crying I’ll fucking cry even if I have no idea why. My sorrow felt so primal, triggered instantly from somewhere deep inside me.

As I continued listening to the audio presentation and watching the display, I calmed down. Most of what the presentation covered was information I was already familiar with by then—how the first Jews in Denmark were Sephardic merchants invited by Denmark’s King Christian IV to settle in a new town, Glückstadt, on the river Elbe, in the early 17th century. The story is that King Christian thought that having Jewish merchants living in his new town would bring more business to the community. Later Ashkenazi Jews, like the Jews I’m descended from, also joined the Sephardic merchants.

I even laughed to myself when I saw the video images of actors playing early Jewish merchants in their storehouse with bags of coffee beans and chocolate. Ah hah! I thought. They tolerated the Jewish traders because they wanted all that good stuff those Jews knew how to obtain. But then they showed a short scene illustrating how the Jews back then had to practice their religion in secret, hidden behind drawn curtains and closed doors in their own houses. It turned out that the dispensation made for the Jews by King Christian only included protection, the right to hold “private religious services,” and the right to maintain their own cemetery. I quickly realized that being “tolerated” and “protected” was not the same as being an equal member of Danish society. Same old, same old, I thought.

Eventually, though, in the late 18th century, the King expanded the rights of Danish Jews, allowing them to buy real estate, establish schools, study at the university, and join guilds. Then, finally, a royal decree on March 29, 1814 granted the Jewish people the same rights as other citizens. In contrast, the Russian Empire, where all four of my grandparents were born and where they were restricted to living within the Pale of Settlement, never granted citizenship to the Jews who lived within its borders.

However, for various reasons—the Danish government restricting immigration to people who had money, Danish Jews intermarrying with Danish Christians—the population of Jews in Denmark during the 400 years after they first arrived remained fairly small. And now the population was only about 6,000.

After the presentation was over, we walked through the rest of the museum, which was dedicated to the more recent history of the Jews in Denmark, especially during World War II. We learned that the walls inside the museum were carefully arranged in form of the four Hebrew letters that spelled mitzvah, which is the Hebrew word for “commandment” and also for “good deeds” that fulfill a religious commandment.

The mitzvah that the museum was designed to reflect was the aid the Danish people gave to their Jewish neighbors, over 7,000 in total, during the Nazi invasion, when they helped almost of all them to escape on boats to Sweden, which was neutral during the World War II. Later, after the war was over, almost all the Jewish refugees returned to Denmark, though some then emigrated to Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. That’s why Denmark had the highest survival rate of Jewish people of any country invaded by the Germans: 95 percent. And two of the people who were saved from the Nazis became well-known public figures. Danish physicist Niels Bohr, whose mother was Jewish, was one of the early refugees who fled to Sweden, and, after he himself evacuated, he helped arrange the mass rescue of over 7,000 Danish Jews. And Arne Jacobsen, an architect and mid-century modern Danish designer, escaped on a small boat to Sweden and spent his two years there creating fabric designs based on Swedish nature. After he returned to Copenhagen, he became world renowned for both his famous buildings, such as The Stelling House and Aarhaus City Hall, and for his designs of everyday objects, including his iconic Egg chair. He is now considered the grandfather of modern Danish design.

This, I knew, was in stark contrast to the fate of the Jews in Lithuania, the country my mother’s family was from, where the Lithuanian people aided the Nazis in exterminating their Jewish neighbors, resulting in the lowest survival rate for Jewish people out of all the countries invaded by the Germans, only 5 percent. The Nazis didn’t even need to move the Jews of Lithuania to concentration camps because the work of taking people into the woods, shooting them, and burying them in mass graves was often done by the Lithuanians themselves. And I knew too that some of my maternal grandmother’s family members who had not emigrated from Lithuania before the war, including her two brothers, Leizer and Laibl, were murdered in this exact way.

“Even though it’s still a bit weird to me to think of Jews living in Scandinavia,” I said to my husband, “They were right to come here.”

As we walked out of the museum into the sunny courtyard, I noticed that what had originally looked like an abstract sculpture outside the museum’s entrance was actually the outline of a ship. And I realized then that with its slanted, uneven floors and its angled walls, the museum had intentionally evoked in me the visceral sensations of walking on a small boat out at sea and the disorientation of a world turned upside down. Those feelings were still clinging to me.

As I found my feet again on the steady earth of the low-lying, flat city and we headed back to the apartment overlooking the old Jewish cemetery, I remembered that—come to think of it—today wasn’t the only time I had cried in a Jewish museum. The first time was in 2019 at the end of our visit to the Jewish museum in Sevilla, Spain, which we decided to visit only because it was just a couple of blocks from where we were staying, which, by chance, happened to be in the old Jewish quarter, now called Santa Cruz, adjacent to the Alcazar. The story was that the Jewish quarter was right next to the royal palace so everyone would know that Jews there were under the protection of the king.

Even though Sevilla once had the largest Jewish community in Spain (around 5,000 people, including doctors, scientists, lawyers, merchants, and money lenders) with 33 synagogues, the Centro de Interpretaction Juderia de Sevilla was small and modest—just a few window-less rooms in a very old Sephardic house. Displayed on colored walls, the exhibit was mainly a collection of manuscripts, maps, and other documents, some from the 1391 pogrom and some from the time of Spanish Inquisition, along with legends about a few of the people who had lived in the Jewish quarter before the Jews were expelled from Seville in 1483 and a small number of everyday objects they had left behind. These all just left me feeling vaguely sad. All those written explanations and stories printed on placards, and old “things” behind glass felt like tales from a distant past that had nothing to do with me. In the last room before the exit, the delicate, yellowed dress of a child who had once lived in the Jewish quarter evoked a small wave of sorrow within me but didn’t move me to tears.

However, when we followed the signs to the exit, which led us in a different direction than the entrance, we walked through a room where there were dozens of large black iron keys hanging from the ceilings on strings. Without knowing what those keys signified, I felt an upswelling of a very powerful but unnamable emotion.

“Wow,” I said to Brad, as I stopped walking and just looked up at all those keys.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s intense.”

Then, after we passed out of that final room and returned to the reception area, I asked the receptionist in English, “What is the meaning of those keys?” She explained that when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the Jews of Sevilla took their house keys with them because they hoped they’d be able to come back to their homes one day. Living in exile, they had passed those keys down to their descendants, generation after generation after generation, until now, when those very same keys were donated to the museum. And that’s when I started to cry.

When I returned to the US after visiting Copenhagen, I walked to Indian Rock in the Berkeley Hills and climbed up the steep steps that were carved into the rock to reach the top. I wanted to see the panorama that never fails to thrill me—the great San Francisco Bay shining in the sun, with Mount Tamalpais to the northwest, San Francisco to the southwest, and in between the Golden Gate, the entrance to the bay that opens out into the Pacific Ocean. “Is this my home?” I wondered. Of course, I was born in California and lived here most of my adult life, but sometimes I felt like a stranger here on the Pacific Rim, half a world away from Eastern Europe where all four of my grandparents were born. 

All those keys in the museum in Seville were so heartbreaking because of the hopes they represented—for hundreds of years, people held onto those keys on the chance that one day, someday, they might be able to use them once again to open the doors their ancestors had closed behind them when they were expelled from Spain. But I never had that kind of hope. The only relatives of my Lithuanian grandmother who survived the Holocaust were two of her sister’s children, Israel and Leah. After the war, the siblings met up in Lithuania and went back to their old house in Kudirkos Naumiestis. There they found their home was already occupied by Lithuanians who refused to leave. So Israel left for Brazil and Leah made it to Israel. Why would I ever think about going “home” to a place like that?

On the other hand, there I was at that moment on top of a large, volcanic rock on land where for six thousand years the xučyun (Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people) had lived, but which after that was claimed by Spain in 1542, and after that was owned by Mexico when it became independent in 1821, and after that was purchased from Mexico by the US after the Mexican-American war in 1848. I just looked out at the view and took it all in.

Nina Zolotow just loves to write, and she has been doing it for her entire adult life. Currently she is writing creative non-fiction and experimental fiction/poetry, which you can find on her blog Delusiastic!, where there is both brand new and older works, and you can also subscribe to her on Substack, where she is releasing one story a week. Nina has also written or co-written four books on yoga (see yogafortimesofchange.com) as well as being the Editor in Chief and writer for the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog for 12 years. Before that there was 20 years of writing instructional manuals for the software industry, including many books for programmers. And somewhere in there was an MFA from San Francisco State in Creative Writing. All of that taught her how to write simply and clearly when needed but also to go crazy with words when that seems right. 

1 Comment

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

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

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. 

2 Comments

Filed under history, Israel Jewry, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, Russian Jewry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 11, 2024 · 7:00 am

My Grandmother’s Hands

by Arlene Geller (East Petersburg, PA)

Her hands, swollen with arthritis, don’t fail her
as she plucks the chicken for the Sabbath meal
kneads the dough for her must-be-dunked poppy seed cookies

Her hands once supple worked her Singer machine
                          (prized possession)
sewed my clothes, homemade creations 
marked her status as a working-class immigrant

She and my grandfather
tailors from the old country
opened a store and plied their craft

The old Singer humming along
sustaining their livelihood
as they raised a family, three sons and a daughter 
                          (prized possessions)

Fulfilling their Russian dreams of an American life
now envisioned through the rolling fog
as they drew nearer to Ellis Island
the Statue of Liberty waving them in

Poet/lyricist Arlene Geller has been fascinated with words from a young age. Two poetry collections, The Earth Claims Her and Hear Her Voice, were published in 2023 by Plan B Press and Kelsay Books, respectively. Her poetry has also appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Tiferet Journal, The Jewish Writing Project, White Enso, and other literary journals and anthologies. Collaborations with composers include commissioned lyrics, such as River Song, featured in the world premiere of I Rise: Women in Song at Lehigh University and since performed in numerous national and international locations. Learn more at arlenegeller.com.

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 15, 2024 · 7:30 am

What My Zayda Taught Me About Tikkun Olam

By Jessica Ursell (Campania, Italy)

My beloved Zayda Nachman Libeskind’s life consisted of circumstances finding him in the unlikeliest of places, such as when he was escaping Poland on a rickety craft in the dead of night on the River Bug with two warring armies (the Soviets and the Germans) shooting at each other from opposite sides of the river, and later when he was framed, interrogated, and beaten by Soviet agents in the remote reaches of Kyrgyzstan because of a mysterious envelope he was forced to take with no knowledge of its contents, or when years later, during a ceremony pertaining to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Gerhard Schröder then federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1998-2005) made a point of personally approaching my Zayda to express contrition for the horrors perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazi regime during the Shoah.

So when Nachman, a survivor of brutal Soviet gulags, shootouts, starvation and all manner of deprivation, traveled to the deep American South to participate in my official “pinning on” ceremony when I was promoted to the rank of Captain in the United States Air Force, it was another in a long line of the unlikeliest places for a man of his age and experience and, for me, the greatest honor of my life.

Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama was about the unlikeliest location conceivable for the youngest son of an unemployed carpenter born to an impoverished Jewish family in the industrial city of Łodz, Poland in 1909.

Jewish and proud, my Zayda actively sought to join the Polish army during the period between the first and second world wars because he was a patriot and wanted to resist the ugly Polish caricature of Jewish men as weak and cowardly.

His attempts to join the army were met with a considerable amount of skepticism by the Polish military authorities who rejected him multiple times due to his being underweight (read Jewish).  But Nachman was determined and kept applying until finally the Polish military authorities, surprised and confused by his persistence, accepted him.

When, immediately after finishing law school, I chose to join the United States Air Force (USAF) as a lawyer in what was then known as the Judge Advocate General’s Department (now USAF JAG Corps), it was nearly as unusual a choice for me who had been brought up with a European Jewish Bundist ethos as my Zayda’s was back then. 

Like my cherished Zayda, I too, wanted to prove to anyone and everyone what it meant to me to be Jewish. I wanted to defy ugly stereotypes and demonstrate that Jews are able and willing, even eager, to serve their country, in ways that historically were exceedingly difficult, or even impossible, for Jews. I wanted to battle the hateful concept of Jewish inferiority and expose the oft promulgated lie that Jews living outside of Israel are loyal only to Israel. I felt that by actively making a choice to serve my country in uniform as a lawyer, it would be a tiny, but personally meaningful way, of demonstrating my desire to be a part of something greater than myself, and to, hopefully, engage in work that would bolster democracy – a value that I find inherent in the concept of Tikkun Olam. In this respect, when I served as Chief of Operational Contracting, I was fortunate, among my other duties, to be the officer responsible for interpreting, applying, and ensuring compliance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Promotion day arrived as did my parents and my beloved Zayda. I adored my grandfather, and was thrilled that he would make the trip with my parents. Driving all the way from New York City to Montgomery, Alabama, where I was working my first assignment as a JAG, the distance they traversed was not only through several states, but into an entirely different world. They journeyed from the urban diversity and the Yiddishisms spouted by all New Yorkers, Jew and non-Jew alike (oy vey!) into the deep south, with all of its not so distant past, and still simmering present, laden with racism and overlaid with a veneer of southern homeyness, hospitality, and homogeneity.

The entire experience was, I imagine, a bit surreal for all of them.

It was definitely surreal for me. What I remember most all these years later is the juxtaposition of my background and my new reality – my New York Jewish family and my new friends and fellow airmen from all over the southern United States and the midwest – virtually everywhere else other than New York.

Zayda Nachman, with his sparkling cerulean eyes, enchanted everyone he encountered. This was nothing new. His optimism and zest for life and colorful experiences, despite all that he had endured, was contagious.

Unlike many others, who chose not to talk about and thereby relive the horrific brutality and nightmares they endured during the war, my Zayda made the deliberate choice to speak out, and bear witness to the unspeakable.

Yet, my Zayda rarely spoke about the instances where his own actions helped to prolong and save the lives of his fellow prisoners in the merciless Soviet gulag of Opalicha in Yaroslavl oblast. We know of Nachman’s actions only because they were relayed to us by those whom he helped, and on the rare occasions my Zayda referred to these events, it was only tangentially in talking about the entirety of his experiences of extreme deprivation, starvation, and brutal forced labor in the Opalicha gulag.

Years after the war, my mother heard from several of Nachman’s fellow prisoners at Opalicha who moved to Israel. They explained that my Zayda Nachman drastically understated the consequences to himself had he been caught sheltering fellow inmates. He would have been executed – not “merely” beaten. 

When I think about my Zayda Nachman’s experiences during the war and the way he met the very worst of humanity with the very best of his humanity, I am struck by the awareness that Nachman lived his life through the lens of Tikkun Olam, while he also embodied the core values of the United States Air Force – Integrity, Service before self and Excellence in all he did.

Everyone at my promotion ceremony was so warm, welcoming, and genuinely full of joy and affection for me and my family. I was deeply touched to see how everyone delighted in meeting my family especially my wonderful Zayda. It all happened as though it were a dream. Even during the ceremony I had to keep reminding myself that it was actually real – that I was standing in front of my parents and beloved Zayda and all my new Air Force friends achieving something that would have seemed inconceivable to me only a few years earlier.

My commander Colonel Turner was respected, indeed revered, by all of the junior officers. He treated us with kindness and respect and was gentle in correcting any of our errors. We all were better officers because of the way he modeled leadership. So it was a monumental honor that he and my Zayda pinned on my new rank. Colonel Turner treated my Zayda with great warmth and respect. When I look at the photo of them with their raised arms poised above my shoulders pinning on my new silver Captain’s bars the surge of pride I still feel is profound.

Reaffirming the oath, the ceremony, the cake, and being surrounded by my friends and family made for a memorable experience but the one thing that stands out above all else is the way my Zayda Nachman was beaming with pride throughout the entire ceremony and afterwards. It was, I think, a vindication of all that he had endured to make it to America, the Goldene Medina – that his Jewish granddaughter was proudly serving the country that he believed stood for truth, justice, and the American way.

Now when I reflect on the burgeoning and violent acts of antisemitism that have metastasized throughout the United States since my Zayda passed away in 2001, I know deep in my gut that my beloved Zayda Nachman’s optimism and vision of America as a safe haven from pogroms, persecution, and privation has been shattered. 

Tikkun Olam, the uniquely Jewish concept of repairing the world that my Zayda held so dear, is more crucial now than ever before. 

Nachman would be horrified and brokenhearted to see the promise of America betrayed as neo-Nazis, marching at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, shouted “Jews will not replace us” and one year later the deadliest antisemitic terrorist attack in US history that killed 11 people and wounded six including Holocaust survivors at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2018.

Antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of bigotry are now openly touted as patriotism and not just by fringe political figures. Such beliefs are now horrifyingly mainstream. 

Nachman’s famous optimism sprang from the idea that learning, knowledge, and understanding can breed tolerance. Tolerance leads to respect for differences and respect can lead to peace and even friendship.

My beloved Zayda Nachman taught me that the essence of Tikkun Olam means standing up for the rights of others even when one’s own rights are not in jeopardy. 

Besides voting, as my Zayda did faithfully in every election (he viewed it as a vital act of citizenship), my efforts at Tikkun Olam are to continue speaking out, and committing to never being a bystander to injustice. 

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 ardent advocate and public speaker against antisemitism, racism, 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” and “Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House,” were published by The Jewish Writing Project in July 2022, and October 2022, respectively. Jessica‘s poem, “Sedimented Rock,” was selected by Beate Sigriddaughter, former poet laureate of Silver City, New Mexico and was published by Writing In A Woman’s Voice on 18 November 2023. Jessica’s most recent poem, “A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects,” will appear in the February 2024 print issue of Down in the Dirt magazine as well as online (v. 216 Scars Publications).

16 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

March 28, 2022 · 7:30 am

My Mother, A Jewish Southern Belle

by William Levine (Belmont, MA)

In a Yankee cemetery in 2006, my eulogy for my Atlanta born and bred mom, dead at 82, didn’t do her  justice. I didn’t play Dixie. I had contemplated using Elvis’s version from 1972, but my sense of political correctness trumped my Southern born and raised mom’s legacy.  

While I was growing up in suburban Boston in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Dixie was the only song my Boston born dad and my mom asked orchestras to play.  It was an anthem for mom.

Though mom lived over 5 decades in Massachusetts, and only two decades in Atlanta, she never stirred herself into the clam chowder melting pot.  She may have lost some of her accent over the years, but Atlanta and Georgia were always on her mind.  New England’s climate was always too cold and as were most of its inhabitants. She in turn always had that Southern graciousness so she fielded all her phone calls, from friend or foe, with a warm chatty, “How are you, dear.”  

Her real pet-peeve about Yankee living was the cost of it. She would often tout the cheap household labor in the South, not apologizing for Jim Crow.  Her well-off family always had live-in help and mom would sometimes sadly admit her maids raised her, an only child, as much as her parents did.  She would occasionally strongly suggest to my dad, an only moderately successful dentist, that we hire a maid.

Once as a precious elementary schooler, I told mom about the amazing Mount Rushmore in the far away   South Dakota with humongous carvings of the presidents.  She countered with Stone Mountain in Atlanta in which Southern heroes Stonewall Jackson. Robert E.  Lee and Jefferson Davis were carved into immortality.  What’s more she had actually seen Stone  Mountain in person. Whereas South Dakota in the early ‘60s might as well have been on the moon.

In the early 1960s, I asked mom about the two senators from Georgia, Richard Russell and Herman Talmadge. This inquiry most likely came after I had devoured the paperback, Meet the Senators, and wanted to get her informed opinion. I remember that mom extolled both legislators as Lions of The Senate types, ignoring their arch-segregationist credentials. 

Occasionally, her Yankee family would take a gentle swipe at her beloved South. Mom would then sometimes counter with “The South Shall Rise Again,” mostly joking.

Of course, I am raising the point that my mother sounded more like a Daughter of the Confederacy, than the grand-daughter of Russian empire Jewish immigrants, who arrived in Atlanta about 25 years after it burned down. Mom’s paternal Jewish family was large and well-known. Her father was one of 11 Bresslers and the spot of his department store in Atlanta is a registered neighborhood historic site.  Her uncle was president of Atlanta’s conservative synagogue. My mother, Irma Bressler, immersed herself in the clannish world of Atlanta’s Jewish population.  This world of temple, Jewish social events, Jewish organizations dances was the impetus for her happy teen years. She didn’t date Rhett Butler types, but was instead very happy to be popular with the boys at Georgia Tech’s Jewish frat. 

Her Jewish insularity most likely softened the antisemitism of 1920s and 1930s Georgia.  Mom was born in Atlanta in 1924, just 9 years after the infamous lynching of the Jewish pencil factory manager, Leo Frank, wrongly convicted, due to antisemitism, of murdering a young girl employee.  The Frank Case drove 3,000 worried Jews out of Georgia, though mom’s future parents were not among them.  When mom turned 1 in 1925, there were more Klansmen than Jews in the US.  The New Georgia Encyclopedia says about the post Frank trial years in Georgia, “During the succeeding decades Jews were attacked by the Klan, the Columbians, and other right-wing groups. They were tolerated but also singled out as different.”

It does seem ironic then that mom, a Southern outsider, embraced the Southern culture’s uber-maxim of “The Lost Cause” that emphasized the honor of the valor of a Confederacy fighting for states rights and home-turf protection and not slavery.  But though her innermost concentric cultural circles were Jewish, the larger, peripheral concentric circles advocating the Lost Cause were hard to ignore. Most likely she first learned of the War of Northern Aggression in the textbooks at the historic Spring Street school in the early 1930s.  From then there was Confederate Memorial Day, the statues of Civil War heroes, and social norms to reinforce her regional pride.

My mother’s racial biases were more societal than personal. Thus, she was easily awakened to the Civil Rights movement’s goals, I remember her being excited to attend a lecture by a Southern civil rights journalist in the late 1960s.  She always voted Democratic, as the South moved Republican after 1960. Most tellingly, I don’t know of any band playing Dixie for her, after a Bar Mitzvah my family attended in 1964.

Before Alzheimer’s locked down mom’s brain when she was 75, she understood that “Dixie” had become an anthem with many negative connotations. My sister and I also understood this, but we also understood that Dixie was a short-cut to her treasured Southern identity.  In 2014, we unveiled my dad’s grave marker.  Dad and Mom are buried in the same plot.  The gathering was just my son and I, and my sister and her two kids   We recited a few required prayers. Then we added our own flourish. My nephew, amped by his IPOD and Elvis, sang a few bars of his version of “Dixie.” To our family  this memorial requiem was not Lost Cause specific, or callously played.  The song just defined who mom was, a Jewish Southern Belle, for better or worse.  

Bill Levine is a retired IT professional and an active freelance writer residing in Belmont  MA.  He still prefers pecan pie to  Boston creme. 

2 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 7, 2022 · 7:30 am

Yosl and Henekh

by Mark Russ (Larchmont, NY)

My father, Yosl Russ, was born in 1907 in a shtetl 30 miles southeast of Warsaw called Kaluszyn (Kal-u-sheen).   Kaluszyn, the Poles corrected my pronunciation to Kal-oo-shyn (I explained mine was the Jewish pronunciation), was a midsize commercial town that was on a major trade route between Warsaw and eastern Poland and Russia. My father was one of six children born to a poor family that dealt in the beer distributing business; they had a small tavern connected to their home.  The family was observant like all others in the shtetl.  Crisis struck the family when my father’s father suddenly passed away in 1917, one of millions of victims of the Spanish flu pandemic.  With no means of support, the family moved to Warsaw.  My father was sent to live with an aunt at the age of 10 and spent his teenage years performing housework and eventually learning to work in the knitting trade.  He, like so many others in his poverty-stricken, working class generation in Poland became radicalized, gave up religious observance, embraced a Jewish brand of socialism and internationalism, and went on to organize like-minded Jewish youth in Warsaw.  He became active in the Jewish Labor Bund, the principal Jewish political party of his time and place, a Yiddishist, consistent with the Bund’s tenets, and a leader in the party-affiliated sports and outdoors organization, Morgenshtern.  The latter provided organized physical activity and an appreciation of the natural world to slum-bound, impoverished Jewish working youth.  He led “ski trips,” hikes and other expeditions in the Carpathian Mountains and environs of Warsaw.   It was in this context that he met my mother. 

My parents never wanted to return to Poland after the war.  They had escaped east to Bialystok and the Soviet Union in 1939, one step ahead of the German advance into Poland.   They spent the next 18 months in a forced labor camp in Siberia cutting timber.  The Sikorski-Mayski Agreement was struck in 1941 between the Soviet Union and Polish Government in exile in London, effectively liberating all Polish citizens held captive by the Soviets.   My parents, like tens of thousands of other Polish Jews who had taken the same path, made their way south in a harrowing journey through the Soviet heartland.  They spent the remaining war years in Uzbekistan.   After the war they briefly returned to Poland to see who had survived; all but one sibling on each side of the family perished.  They lived in a German DP camp for a time, Paris for a year, and eventually immigrated to Cuba (where my sister and I were born), and finally, to Philadelphia. 

This background is necessary to explain what happened when my wife  and two adolescent children decided to visit Poland.  Initially, the trip was planned as part of a larger Bar Mitzvah journey for my nephew’s son that was to begin in Poland and end in Israel.  Timing was such that we could only join my sister’s family for the first part of the trip.  I shared my parents’ reservations with respect to visiting Poland.  I imagined a land full of anti-Semites, denigrating me and insulting me on the streets of Warsaw.   Although I had powerful trepidations about the trip, I remained curious about what it would be like.  Part of me was drawn to travel there.   

My father had a younger brother, Henekh.  Growing up, I heard bits and pieces about his life.  I heard that he was smart, quick-witted, passionate, and very energetic and capable.  I also knew that he was very well thought of.  My parents’ friends, all Holocaust survivors, many of whom were bona fide heroes in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and partisans in the Polish forests, all knew him and held him in high esteem.  He was one of them.   As I grew older I read some the biographical sketches that had been written about him in Yiddish texts.  Before the war he had been a leader in the young adult section of the Jewish Labor Bund, the Tsukunft, and served on the Bund’s Warsaw central committee, a major achievement for someone so young.  With the advent of the Internet and newly discovered references to him in a variety of books and documents, I learned more about him over the years.   I learned that he had been an active member of the Jewish underground in the Warsaw Ghetto, and that he had been the co-editor of one the underground newspapers, Yugnt Shtime, preserved as part of Emanuel Ringelblum’s Oneg Shabbat archives.  He also authored a “diary” consisting of the proceedings of meetings and historical events related to the Bund in the Warsaw Ghetto, preserved in the YIVO Archives in New York.  I learned that his infant son was killed during a bombardment in the Ghetto.  According to Marek Edelman, the leader of the Bund fighting organization in the Ghetto, Henekh’s vote broke a deadlock resulting in the decision to create the Jewish Combat Organization (the Bund’s military group) in the Warsaw Ghetto.  Henekh and his wife were captured and sent to the Majdanek death camp near Lublin for four months.  I read that he had engaged in acts of heroism while incarcerated.  He and his wife were ultimately sent to Werk Tze, the section of the notorious munitions factory commandeered by the Germans in the town of Skarzysko-Kamienna midway between Krakow and Warsaw.  This factory had three sections, the third, Werk Tse, a combination factory and concentration camp, was reserved for Jews.  The work in this part of the factory was so dangerous and toxic (they used picric acid as part of the munitions processing that literally turned the skin yellow) that the life expectancy of Jews in this setting was 3 months. 

And I knew two more things.  I knew that my uncle and his wife, along with others, were shot in the forest outside this camp in a failed attempt to escape following a rumor that the camp would be liquidated the following day.  And I knew from the time I was a small boy that my father had always said:  “If I knew where my brother Henekh was buried, I would bring flowers to his grave every day.”  These were words I never forgot, words that expressed both a connection and a loss too intense to comprehend.   I had always imagined a “grave” waiting for flowers that would never come.   

Mixed feelings regarding our trip to Poland gave way to clarity of purpose.  I did not know where or how my family perished.  Only Henekh’s journey could be traced, and, with the help of my research efforts, Internet and modern technology, I was intent on addressing my father’s wish.  I found a map of the factory where my uncle and aunt had been incarcerated in Felicia Karay’s book about the Skarzysko camp, Death Comes in Yellow.  With the help of Google Earth, I was able to superimpose that map on the current map of Skarzysko.  I contacted the local historical museum in the town and was informed that parts of the factory still exist, that it is still a munitions plant, but that it makes classified weapons (many of which, ironically, it sells to Israel), and that I would need permission to visit.  My goals were to visit the ruins of Werk Tse if they were to be found and the forest where my uncle was murdered.  With this information in hand, I was able to surmise the approximate location of where Werk Tse stood and that a forest still exists outside the factory complex.  As expected, it was to the east, precisely the direction they would have gone in 1944 to reach the advancing Soviet army.  With help from the local museum staff I was able to contact the factory administrator and set a date for a visit for my wife, my children and me.  We arranged to have a guide as well who would drive us from Krakow to Skarzysko and on to Warsaw, our final destination.  My plan was simple; lay flowers at the ruins of Werk Tse. 

In Krakow, we stayed in what had been the Jewish quarter, on the block lined with “Jewish” restaurants, each with its own ensemble playing Yiddish folks tunes and klezmer music into the night.  Initially odd and off-putting, there was an air of respectfulness among the locals we met, and, for me, a kind of strange familiarity that counterbalanced an otherwise bizarre and awkward scene.  We visited Auschwitz and toured Krakow, including the site where the Krakow Ghetto had stood.  On July 30th, coincident with the exact day that my uncle and aunt were killed (this was not planned), we bought a bouquet of flowers, and were off to do what we set out to do.  That very morning, however, I received an email from an administrator at the munitions factory stating that he regretted to inform me that the factory was about to start its annual two week summer holiday and that our visit could not take place.  I asked our guide for advice.  He said we should not respond, check in with the museum staff first, and then make our way to the factory and “play dumb.”  If asked, I was to lie about getting the email that morning.  This made me very anxious (I am not a good liar), but fittingly seemed to evoke the uncertainty and tension of an earlier time.   We followed his instructions.  The museum staff could not have been friendlier or more welcoming, and, in a show of support and enthusiasm, two of them piled into our van in a scene reminiscent of “Little Miss Sunshine,” and we were off to the factory.  Our guide took the lead, spoke with Security, and after what seemed like an eternity, arranged an impromptu meeting with a plant administrator.  A long and tense discussion took place in Polish in the parking lot of a surviving factory building.  I was not called upon to lie, but did learn during the negotiations that Werk Tse no longer stood.  However, there was a memorial at the site of Werk Tse, which they referred to as the “Patelnye,” which was absolutely off limits for a visit.  The word “patelnye” was instantly recognizable to me as it was one of the many Polish words that made its way into Yiddish vernacular and my family’s kitchen.  It is the word for frying pan, and came to epitomize the horrifying conditions of the labor camp in the most grotesque terms imaginable.  I also learned that the larger factory complex had its own memorial.  It was located in the surviving and refurbished building immediately in front of us.  They called it the Room of Remembrance and it was dedicated to all those who had perished in the era, Poles and Jews alike.  After what seemed like endless negotiations, we were informed, begrudgingly, that the administrator could take me alone into that room, and just for a minute.  Realizing this was the best I could do, I took my flowers and followed her to the room.  Among the various military artifacts and other memorabilia in the room was a simple stone memorial dedicated to the Jews who had perished.  In an experience that was robbed of meaning and emotion, I lay the flowers down in a perfunctory manner, and left.   

But my real goal, to honor my father’s wish to visit my uncle’s “grave,” was not yet realized.  Naturally, there was no grave, but there was the expanse of forest immediately adjacent to the site where the camp had stood.  I knew that somewhere in that forest, my uncle, aunt and others had been shot.  After dropping our new friends at the museum, I instructed our guide to drive down the road that bordered the forest.  At a small dirt road, which I found on Google Earth, I asked him to stop.  My wife, daughter, son and I walked down the road to a small clearing in the forest.  This was certainly not the spot where Henekh perished, but it would have to do.   We read my uncle’s biography.  My son chanted El Malei Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the dead.  We hugged and shed some tears.  I suddenly felt this pang in my heart; I had used the flowers to support our ill-fated visit to the factory, and could therefore not fulfill my father’s wish to lay flowers on Henekh’s “grave.”  And just as suddenly, I had this epiphany.  I had, in fact, fulfilled his wish.  My children and my family were his flowers.  We had done what we set out to do. 

But the story does not end there.  There is a postscript.  Part of our itinerary in Warsaw included a visit to the museum, POLIN, dedicated to the thousand-year history of Jews in Poland.  It is a magical place, first rate, detailed, comprehensive, and beautiful.  After wandering through centuries in the galleries, we walk into a gallery devoted to the history of Jewish political movements between the two World Wars.  We approach the section devoted to the Jewish Labor Bund.  The exhibit includes several “Ken Burns style” slide shows depicting photographs of the era.  As I watched one of these slide shows I gazed upon a photograph of a large group of young people in boats on a lake.  To the right in the photograph was a handsome man, bare-chested, wearing sunglasses.  I swear it is my father.  But I am very familiar with how the unconscious desire to see things can influence what you see.  I call my wife and ask her, without preparation or warning, to watch the slide show.  “Oh my G-d, it’s your father!”  I break down.  She then goes to a second slide show in the exhibit.  She says, “Quick, come here.  It’s a picture of Henekh.”  He is marching in a parade, his clear and piercing eyes evident, dressed in the uniform of his party.  The poignancy of the moment does not escape me.  For however long this museum will stand, my father and his beloved brother will be together.  And, perhaps for at least a brief moment in time, one brother’s wish will have been honored, bringing a modicum of peace to another brother’s soul.

Mark Russ is a psychiatrist in Westchester County, New York.  He is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and Vice Chair of Clinical Programs and Medical Director at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Behavioral Health Center in White Plains, New York.  Dr. Russ was born in Cuba and emigrated to the United States at the age of 2 with his parents and sister.  He was the first in his family to achieve a baccalaureate degree and attend medical school.   Dr. Russ has contributed to the scientific psychiatric literature and is beginning to publish fiction and non-fiction pieces.

4 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 11, 2021 · 6:40 am

Furniture

by Steven Sher (Jerusalem, Israel)

Before proposing, Grandpa Sam

bought furniture and Grandma Anna,

pragmatic, agreed to marry him.

That’s what passed back then for love,

the young torn from their families and homes,

fleeing Russia before the next pogrom.

A couple needed a proper bed,

a table and chairs, a dresser and sofa.

They even believed that sturdy

furniture would prop up any failings

in their feelings, that they could build

a life around it and six kids.

Sam died before I was born. Named after him,

I don’t put too much stock in furniture.

Anna outlived him thirty years,

the stern and proper widow

always sitting straight and proud

in an upholstered high back chair

before the family when we gathered

every week around the solid table

Sam had bought so many years before.

Steven Sher’s recent titles include What Comes from the Heart: Poems in the Jewish Tradition (Cyberwit, 2020) and Contestable Truths, Incontestable Lies (Dos Madres Press, 2019). A selection of his Holocaust poems, When They Forget (New Feral Press), is due out in 2021, while his prose will appear in New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust. For Flowstone Press, he is editing an anthology of Oregon poets. Steven lives in Jerusalem. If you’d like to read more about Steven Sher, visit his website: steven-sher-poetry.wixsite.com/writing

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 18, 2021 · 10:02 am

Queen for a Day

by Herbert J. Levine (Sarasota, FL)

My grandmother loved to watch Queen for a Day, 

listening to each woman tell her sad story,

until they placed the crown on the winner’s head.

The American competitors needed washing machines.

My grandmother needed only her husband,

dead for more than twenty years.

How many separations she’d endured 

in the years when, with trumpet calls, he’d rallied the Czar’s troops 

against Japanese and Germans, 

the years he’d peddled door to door in New England towns,

while she ran a market-day saloon 

for the drunken farmers

and when he sent the money to buy tickets

having to separate from her mother, 

who would one day be killed by Hitler’s villains, 

also from her youngest brother and his wife, 

who left their baby girl with a Gentile family,

dying to save their comrades. 

If she could once have spoken of these things, 

she might have broken down at last and wept

not as queen for a day, but as mother of all our catastrophes.

“Queen for a Day” is from Herbert Levine’s second book of bi-lingual poems, An Added Soul: Poems for a New Old Religion (2020).  Many of the poems in his first book of poems, Words for Blessing the World (2017) are being used liturgically in a variety of congregations. He divides his time between Sarasota, FL and central Maine, where he and Ellen Frankel have three granddaughters.

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 4, 2021 · 9:22 am

From Russia with Love

by Judith Rosner (Sarasota, FL)

“Take these candlesticks my child,

And when you light the Sabbath candles

In your own home with your own family,

Remember me and the family you came from.”

My grandmother, a girl of fifteen, heeded her mother

And carried these silver twins, wrapped in a pillowcase, 

Across the ocean from old world to new.

As her mother hoped, she faithfully

recited the Sabbath blessing over them

Each Friday evening, her family gathered at the table. 

Now two generations later, these candlesticks 

Still stand tall upon their three-pronged legs

In my home, handed down from my mother.

Grape vines etched upon their stems

Show off hanging clusters of ripened fruit

Amid the dings and dents of age and

Dark spots where tarnish resists polish.

Though weighty to the eye,

Hollow bodies give them little heft,

Light enough to be carried

Across the ocean years ago

By a girl of fifteen,

So that on this Friday evening,

I may light and pray over the candles they cradle,

As did my mother and grandmother before me,

To welcome the Sabbath and remember this story.

Judith Rosner, Ph.D., is a retired college professor, leadership trainer, and executive coach. She has published in the areas of leadership and management, stress and health, and women in the professions. Currently she writes poetry and personal essays. Two of her poems are published in the literary magazine Her Words  (The Black Mountain Press), her poem, “Forest Sanctuary,” appears in the Living Peace 2019 Art of Poetry Anthology and two of her essays appear on The Jewish Writing Project.  Judy and her husband split their time between Sarasota, Florida and New York City.

To read her stories on The Jewish Writing Project, visit:

Y’all Are Different: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/yall-are-different/

My First Aliyah: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/my-first-aliyah/

4 Comments

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

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