December 25, 2023 · 6:30 am

An Unexpected Invitation

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Brooklyn hosts many different religions,

but for this less than practicing Jew,

the invitation to attend a Mennonite

prayer service was indeed a surprise.

Much different from traditional

services in my own synagogue,

this service was held in a coffee shop

with hymns and readings wafting

over the cakes and pastries.

What impressed me most

was the unmistakable

sense of community,

a fellowship of followers.

Fundamentalists, sure, but

holders of a tenacious grip

to the tenets of their faith.

I bore witness to their devotion, 

admiring the warm coat 

of their faith while I shivered 

in my own garment of doubt,

a requirement, it seems,

of the Jewish religion,

while I sat and prayed during

the High Holidays. 

It must be so comforting

to be so sure.

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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December 18, 2023 · 7:30 am

It Took a War 

by Jena Schwartz (Amherst, MA)

~ for Stella ~

It took a war for us to do this –

her words as we exchanged numbers 

after two hours of talking over decaf, 

trading name stories, hair products,

questions of what even matters now,

questions of what constitutes courage,

affirmation that we’re not overreacting. 

It took a war for us to leave our houses 

in the morning, to interrupt our routines

and leave the pets wondering, 

risk a new beginning, discover 

we have the same necklace, 

the silver cube with the Coleridge 

quote engraved in the tiniest letters –

he looked into his own soul…

mine a gift to myself as a young woman 

not yet out, not yet found, 

hers a gift from her best friend, now gone 

yet always with her. 

What bookends our days, 

what bookends our lives?

Always my thoughts turn to the spaces 

between – between danger and safety, 

sunrise, sunset, 

birth and death, war and peace. 

All of these absolutes that when 

broken open reveal a thousand 

stories, shards, fragments, letters

so small we need magnifying glasses

to read them. 

You have the right to remain curly, 

the slogan goes, she told me.

You have the right to remain Jewish. 

You have the right to reach out 

across the bridge, to bridge the divide, 

to burn bridges when you need to, 

to turn to face the door where the Shabbos bride 

blesses the room with her messengers of peace,

the door with its mezuzah

reminding us to love our God

with all our heart. 

It took a war to see how quickly 

our sense of safety would quake 

under the weight of hatred, 

a doppelganger for a love of justice, 

and how justice herself weeps 

at how words so laden 

with suffering are thrown around

so casually without listening 

to the sounds of those who live 

inside of them, who cannot keep 

up with counting their dead, 

and whose cellular memory 

is not a thing of the past 

but the face of a woman 

who could be my daughter 

dancing in the desert, 

the daughter whose name 

is in the title of one of my new friend’s 

books, and how this morning 

this new friend asked for my address

so she could send an inscribed copy,

and we shared links to hair products,

some slant way of saying it took a war,

we need each other now, 

we cannot do this alone, 

we are for each other 

and for ourselves 

and for the other, 

the stranger, 

the never 

again.

Jena Schwartz is a poet, essayist, and writing coach whose work has appeared in Jewish Journal, Cognoscenti, On Being,Tikkun, and Vox Populi, among other publications. She lives in Amherst, MA, where she serves as Poet Laureate at the Jewish Community of Amherst. Learn more about her work at www.jenaschwartz.com.

This poem first appeared on Friday Dispatch, Jena’s Substack page, and is reprinted here with permission of the author: https://jenaschwartz.substack.com/p/friday-dispatch-it-took-a-war

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December 11, 2023 · 7:30 am

The Challenges of Conversion

By Joseph O’Keefe (Rockville Centre, NY)

Please do not call me by my Hebrew name. As a convert, I am considered the child of Abraham and Sarah (Avram v’Sarah), but they are not my parents. Brian and Cathy are.

For all the richness that Judaism has brought to my own life and family, I have never been able to reconcile with this tradition – particularly as it involves the love and support of those that positioned and prepared me for the choice to embrace a new faith. 

Is it possible to feel fully accepted when such a distinction is made between Jews-by-birth and Jews-by-choice? At what point does the symbolism of a shared ancestry ostracize the convert? And how can their ‘real’ past be recognized while simultaneously honoring the history of their adoptive one? 

Anita Diamant opens her invaluable book Choosing a Jewish Life with an anecdote about a rabbi telling a convert that even Fitzgerald can be a Jewish name. That may be true outside of temple. But where it also counts, during rites and rituals, the gentile’s past is essentially disregarded.

Having been raised a Roman Catholic, I was familiar with the Biblical stories of Abraham and Sarah, including how they are told that their descendants will someday be as numerous as the stars in the sky – the very beginning of Jewish lineage and the reason why all converts are considered their children. 

There is an undeniable beauty in the idea that we Jews share a common set of parents and that our ancestors were prophets singled out by the Almighty. To be born to Jewish parents is to draw a continuous line between oneself and the ancients, but the convert lives both inside and outside the diaspora, and assigning a single surname to the entire group can leave us feeling ‘other.’

Heritage should be a point of pride, particularly for a group whose history is so heavily defined by attempts to eradicate it. The stories of crypto-Jews, those Jews who secretly practiced their faith in 13-14th century Europe, were an inspiration to me during my conversion and remain so now. Even today, some Jews proudly refer to themselves as Kohans – descendants of an exalted line dating back to the Israelites. My birth name, O’Keefe, tells its own story, but it is easy for converts to feel some insecurity when their Hebrew names so clearly denote newness, i.e., the absence of longevity. 

Not all sects recognize converts like myself as equal members of the faith, and those looking to join stricter denominations are subject to an even more rigorous process than I was. Between the ascendance of antisemitism and the hard-right drift in Israeli politics, I worry about the distinction becoming relevant should my family ever need to seek safe haven – this despite the fact that, as many of the Jews I know have noted, the conversion process has left me more knowledgeable than some born into the faith. In fact, there are plenty of stories of Jews by choice who took to their new faith so strongly that they became more orthodox than their partners had anticipated or hoped. 

My parents had already come to know and love my wife before I chose to convert. From the time we began dating, we knew that religion would be an issue, and there were plenty of intense discussions along the way. She had been raised in an observant home, attended yeshiva, and wanted to be married under the chuppah. Like countless others in our position, we took a class together while I did some one-on-one study with our rabbi and learned some basic Hebrew. In time I found myself in the mikvah, successfully pleading my case in front of the beit din and embracing a new faith while my wife was reconnecting with hers. 

Admittedly, I do not recall thinking much about my new name during the conversion work. It was not until we were invited to  to the bema after I had finished that it truly dawned on me. 

Members of my family had come to temple to celebrate, and my in-laws were sponsoring the post-service meal. My wife had been helping me with my pronunciation and I was sitting nervously waiting to be called when the rabbi introduced us by our Hebrew names. She said it quickly enough that few likely   noticed, but I did. And then again at our aufruf. And during our vows. Now it is written in the ketubah that hangs in our home and will be recited at my children’s mitzvot and someday at my own funeral. 

My conversion certificate is a joyful souvenir of the time spent learning about and embracing Judaism, but its signatory line stings. It is a reminder that no matter what has been gained and how I have worked to join this community, there are some lines that can never be breached. Nevertheless, I continue to live a life informed by faith, and we are raising our children to do the same. My parents have since passed and though their names are illuminated on the dates of their Yahrzeits and I remember them at Yizkor, I cannot help in moments of solemnity to feel envious of those who carry the names of their actual parents along with them and, even more, to think that mine deserve better.  

The questioning of tradition is itself an expression of Judaism. On the very first night of conversion class, the rabbi told us that doubt was an essential part of the journey and that so long as we were to be Jews, it was our responsibility to argue and debate. So here I am doing my part. If Judaism means to embrace its converts, recognition of their actual pasts is a good place to start. 

Joseph O’Keefe is a research administrator from Long Island, NY where he lives with his wife and two children. 

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December 4, 2023 · 7:30 am

I forgot to light a candle

by Dennis Gura (Santa Monica, CA)

I forgot to light a candle the other day:

It was an uncle’s memorial,

But he was gone before I was,

And the recollections second-hand:

What my father mentioned,

The documents entrusted to me,

The rare, very rare, comments of my grandfather.

I did not know the precise date until

After they too were gone, when

I dug through the papers

And figured out the World War

Two details. They did not mark

The date.

Nor did they light a candle,

And certainly no prayer was uttered.

No kaddish for the boy gone in France.

My grandfather might have

Been bemused, or likely annoyed,

That I would recited the doxology

For his sons, or for him,

For that is an obligation I have

Saddled myself with.

But this year, I neglected

To consult my calendar in

A timely fashion, and the

Day on which I should have

Lit the candle to

Honor the sacrifice of

The too-young uncle

Had already passed.

No candle this year.

Perhaps this scribble will do

To recall the uncle gone

Before I, or my elder sibs,

Arrived, though both of them bear

His name in some fashion. Perhaps

Their lives will make do

For the absent flame.

Dennis Gura is a father, husband, and an engaged and serious Jew who tries to understand a complex and confusing world as best as possible. A native Angeleno, he has been deeply engaged in Jewish thought and experiences his entire life–the ethnic, the ethical, the secular, and the religious.  He was privileged to study at Machon Pardes in 1982-83, and has since bounced around various LA synagogues and Jewish groups.

If you’d like to read more of his work, visit his Substack page, where this poem first appeared (and is reprinted here with permission of the author): https://dennisgura.substack.com

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November 27, 2023 · 7:30 am

Watch and Wait: A Jewish Mindfulness Practice

By Susan Spector (Cornville, AZ)

You. Have. A. Brain. Tumor.

Five words and everything changed. I became a patient on a Watch and Wait protocol I now call WaWa.

And that’s what I’m doing today. I stalk the online portal, waiting for my test results. The radiology report shows up just before bedtime. 

I skim over my three favorite words: the first one is “stable.” The second and third words go together: “grossly unremarkable.” Kinahora. That’s what my Yiddish-speaking Jewish grandmother would say, invoking the evil eye, not wanting to jinx the good news. 

I search out the fear, sensing I’ll find it, but not in a mindful, meditative or particularly grateful way. That gratitude I once believed would last forever, where did it go? 

“FLAIR hyper intensities in cerebral white matter and white matter lesions.” And there it is. Something new. Something to be afraid of.

I chug my water, determined to flush away the gad, short for gadolinium, the intravenous contrast used earlier in the day. I want the heavy metal poison out of my body.  Gad is an injected light source used to illuminate what’s lodged deep inside my brain. Its atomic symbol is Gd, an acronym my tradition uses as a placeholder for the sacred nature of God’s ineffable and unpronounceable name. I contemplate a quote from the Holy Rascal teacher, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, “God is real and everything we say about God is made up.” It’s a mystery how the gad knows just where to go in my body. 

Ironically, I met the light of the Infinite Mystery, what the mystics call the Ein Sof, through the rogue cells deep inside my brain.  

When I broke out in a sweat on one of my bi-annual retreats inside the big magnet machine, I listened closely and heard a small voice, over and above the noise of the beast. I lay still.  Inhale, Sh’ma, pause. Exhale Yisrael, pause. Breathe in Adonai, pause. Exhale Eloheinu, pause. Breathe in Adonai, pause. Return the breath to the Source. Exhale, Echad. A six-word Jewish prayer mysteriously appeared. Despite the thrumming, drumming and clanking noise inside the machine, I connected. Partnered with divine energy, everything changed.

I head for an emergency visit to Dr. Google, worried I’m moving toward a life inside an assisted living facility. In the morning, I wake up early with no more clarity than the night before. I grab my coffee, sit down at the table, pull up an empty chair for my partner and anxiously fire up the laptop. I like to be early for the Zoom Room. It dials down the anxiety of meeting with the expert meditation guides. The neurodocs. 

In the beginning, they gave me the mantra for finding my sense of calm and quiet within. They gave me the practice. The WaWa. Now they keep me on track and pull me out of the rabbit holes I can’t seem to avoid. 

The lead meditation Teacher/Neuro-oncologist shows up, wearing a crisp white lab coat and looking radiant on the screen.  She gets right down to business, with her unusual combination of strength, clarity and comforting softness.

“Your MRI looks beautiful. All stable.”

“Yeah, but what are those new white matter lesions?”

She points to highlighted areas of the brain image on her screen share.

“This big white lesion is scar tissue. See how it follows the surgery path where Dr. Yirah did his magic to “let flow occur?” And these other white dots, well, you could call them “blessings of maturity.” 

She’s a poet. She skillfully moves the conversation and the meeting forward. 

“Were you comfortable with the nine-month scan interval or do you want to try and push it out to one year?”

“I don’t know, what do you recommend?”
“I would be comfortable either way.”

I turn to my partner, now sitting beside me at the table.

“What do you think?”

“I’d rather see sooner than later if something’s going to change” he says without

hesitation.

The neurodoc/poet moves the conversation along, directing the question back to me.

 “So, you’re the only one we haven’t heard from, what do you want?”

“Part of me wants to graduate to the annual milestone, but I’m more comfortable with 9 months also.” 

Everyone smiles at each other from their Zoom squares and I finally exhale.

The apprentice meditation teacher enters the Zoom room. He is a resident intern with a clipped data-only voice. 

“White matter lesions, clinically insignificant, 30% of MRI’s, higher in older people.” 

The master meditation teacher enters the Zoom room. The neurosurgeon.
I tell him I spent time last night with Dr. Google, chatting about white matter lesions.

“It’s Watch and Wait, not watch and worry. At least you weren’t consulting with

ChatGPT!” 

The mindfulness. The challenge. Return to the WaWa. 

Return to the breath. 

Susan Spector is a brain tumor survivor who focuses on writing as a path to healing She is a retired educator. Her true education began with her diagnosis at age 62. She is currently at work on a series of essays under the pen name Shoshanah bat Malka, with the working title Reporting Live from the Frontal Lobe. 

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November 20, 2023 · 6:30 am

Needless To Say 

by Lesléa Newman (Massachusetts)

                                    October 30, 2023

“I’m back to counting noses,” says my friend

who needless to say is Jewish. As needless to say

am I. We bend our dark heads together

across the narrow table, leave our coffee 

to grow cold and speak in hushed voices

which needless to say is so unlike us 

usually so out, loud, and proud

which needless to say is now totally

out of the question in this New England café

as we quietly question ourselves:

Should we unclasp the Jewish stars around our necks?

Yank the mezuzahs off our doorposts?

Straighten our hair?

Change our names?

Ask friends if they would hide us?

Are we overacting?

Are we underreacting?

How did our ancestors know when it was time to leave?

Is it time to leave?

Needless to say, there is nowhere to go.

Lesléa Newman has created 85 books for readers of all ages including the dual memoir-in-verse, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father and the children’s books, Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story, The Babka Sisters and Ketzel the Cat Who Composed. Her literary prizes include two National Jewish Book Awards and the Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award. Her newest book, Always Matt: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard, a fully illustrated book-length poem celebrating the life and legacy of Matthew Shepard, has just been published. For more information about Lesléa, visit her website:  www.lesleanewman.com .

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November 13, 2023 · 7:30 am

Outwitting the Angel of Death

By Elaine Freilich Culbertson (Philadelphia, PA)

My mother was extremely superstitious, and her superstitions guided much of what went on in our home. We were held to certain behaviors, what we should and should not do and most importantly how to overcome bad luck. Spitting three times (pooh, pooh, pooh) was a regular practice whenever compliments were given or received. We couldn’t whistle in the house or sit on a made bed. We couldn’t open an umbrella inside or step over someone’s feet. If my mother was fixing a hem on a dress I was wearing, I had to chew on a thread to keep my wisdom from being sewn away. Babies could not be held up to mirrors and if you sneezed while someone was talking about a dead person, you had to pull your left ear up to avoid the angel of death. Never hand a knife to someone with the edge out and most importantly don’t take a direct path home from the cemetery lest the angel of death follow you.

My mother used to say that when a baby falls, an angel swiftly glides underneath to cushion the impact. She believed there were angels and was particularly well-versed in how to recognize and avoid the angel of death. I liked the idea of angels being on guard for babies, angels whose wings provided safety, but I was never sure what to think about the angel of death, in Yiddish the “malachomovitz.” Death was inevitable, this I understood. Outwitting the “malachomovitz?” How could a mere mortal do that? To say someone looked like or acted like the angel of death was the greatest insult. To get the better of the angel of death was the greatest heroic feat.

One day my mother and I were assured of the presence of angels when I told her about an eerie incident that had occurred on the off ramp at 22nd St. and I-676 in Center City Philadelphia.

It was on the way home from work in the western suburbs during rush hour that I was exiting I-676 to my home in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia. I had the reverse commute – everyone coming out of the city while I was coming back in from the suburbs. The myth was that there was less traffic going in that direction, but it wasn’t the truth. Each evening the crawl from I-95 onto 676 seemed to last longer than the evening before. On this night, I was aware as I crept up the highway of how the seasons were changing. The sun had started to set earlier each day as it does when fall fades into winter. It was that time of day when shadows and objects can play tricks on one’s perception, when the sun can blind you with its brilliance as you are driving and then suddenly disappear from the horizon, leaving only the first wan glow of illuminated streetlights as guides. Things look different at that time of day and the eye can be fooled by the descending darkness. I’ve heard it called “the gloaming,” that romantic time of day when the light has mostly faded but it’s not quite dark yet, a time when on this night I was fumbling for my headlights, realizing that I thought I saw a person standing on the 22nd St. ramp.

As I approached, what had been an almost amorphous figure resolved into the shape of a woman clad only in a short-sleeved shirt and a long skirt that almost touched the ground. Her hair was blowing in the wind. It was a chilly day, but she had no coat or outer garment to protect her from the oncoming night air. The expression on her face was one of distress. She was attempting to stop cars as they drove up the ramp, indicating with her hands that drivers should roll down their windows to listen to her pleas. No one was complying. This was years before the stop light had been installed at the top of the ramp, and it was always a bit of a free-for-all as cars tried to merge onto 22nd St. The drivers that evening had no intention of stopping for her and as she grew more frantic, she stepped further and further into the lane of traffic. 

By the time I reached the top of the ramp she was in front of my car, determined to stop me. I rolled my window down and asked her to step aside. She shook her head and began retelling her story of why she was on the ramp. Her car was on the road below, just past the off ramp, broken down. She needed money to get home. Any amount would help. She insisted that she was not a beggar, but a commuter who had a sudden mishap.

Something about her touched my heart. I hated seeing women in desperate straits. A homeless woman on the street was a more pathetic sight to me than a man. Her vulnerability seemed double that of a man in the same dilemma. I imagined myself in her situation. I wondered if anyone would stop for me. Certainly, I was better dressed, but in that helpless moment might I have left my coat in the car and started walking, hoping someone would help? 

I told her I would give her $10 if she would step away from my car. The tears were running down her face as she mouthed a thank you. I found $10 in my wallet and handed it to her. If that was all it took to save her in this moment, then I didn’t feel I had been duped in any way. 

The cars behind me were beeping furiously. How dare I stop to help this street person! How rude of me to extend their commute time by even 10 seconds, for that was all the time it took.

“Please get off the ramp!” I was sure she could hear the insistence in my voice.

“I will,” she replied, and as I started to drive away, I lost sight of her. 

I made the turn onto 22nd St. and just as I was ready to pull through the first intersection on the Ben Franklin Parkway, a car traveling at ridiculously high speed ran through the red light, completely heedless of anyone, vehicle or pedestrian that might have the right of way.

I gasped. 

If I had been one second sooner onto the ramp and into the intersection, that car would have broadsided me, surely injuring or perhaps killing me.

Because I had stopped to help the woman on the ramp, I had been late to what might have been a dreadful fate.

That evening I called my mother, as I did each evening, to recount the day’s events. At this point in her life, she lived in a retirement home, and anything I might tell her was of great interest, as the days stretched out uneventfully for her.  When I told her about the woman on the ramp and the speeding car, she said very determinedly, “She was an angel.”

“Mom. I thought angels only helped little babies or led people to their deaths.”

“You are my baby. She didn’t let you get hurt. She was an angel. I am sure of it.”

Who knows, maybe she was. That angel of life had helped me outwit the “malachomovitz.”

Elaine Culbertson is the chair of the Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council, a statewide organization of teachers, survivors, and liberators who volunteer to keep the lessons of the Holocaust alive in the schools of the state. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Act 70 Committee and a convener of the Consortium of Holocaust Educators in the Philadelphia region. Elaine represented the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Museum Fellow and a Regional Educational Consultant in the Mid-Atlantic. She presently provides professional development for teachers using Echoes and Reflections, a curriculum resource developed by the Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem and the Anti-Defamation League.

Elaine retired as the director of Curriculum and Instruction in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, ending a 36-year career in public education. She is the executive director of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. For the past 18 years she has served as program director of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers’ Program, a seminar based in Poland and Germany, that has provided professional development to more than 1100 teachers in its 36-year existence. She works with teachers and students to connect the events of the past with the genocides of the present day. Elaine has written chapters in five different books on Holocaust teaching methods and lectured across the United States, using the story of her own parents’ survival as the basis for her presentations on developmentally appropriate and morally responsible pedagogy. She is working on a memoir that incorporates her mother’s writing with her own reflections on being the daughter of survivors.

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November 6, 2023 · 7:30 am

21 Alternative Recipes: Notes from a Google Search History

October, 2023

by Tzivia Gover (Massachusetts)

what does ethereal mean

when is the pool open for lap swimming

what’s happening in the middle east

fighting in israel and gaza news headlines

the power of baking challah together in hard times

can you use expired instant yeast

how to make sourdough challah

how to make whole wheat challah

easy challah recipe

when was the yom kippur war

can you substitute honey for sugar

beautiful braided challah

how to braid challah

do you grease the baking sheet

what does taking the challah mean

what is the blessing for baking challah

what is the miracle of sarah’s challah

where to send money

does active yeast expire

where to put dough to rise

what if there is no warm place

Tzivia Gover’s most recent book, Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing, combines writing, spirituality, and dreamwork. Her poems have been published in dozens of journals and anthologies including The Mom Egg Review, The Naugatuck River Review, and Lilith Magazine. She shares her poetry and reflections as she reimagines the life of the biblical matriarch Sarah in her Substack newsletter, “The Life of H” https://tziviagover.substack.com.

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October 30, 2023 · 7:30 am

The Last Lullaby

by Lesléa Newman (Massachusetts)

                                    (October 7, 2023)

Never again the sound of their laughter,

Never again the sound of their cry.

Never again the sight of their smiles,

Never again the sight of their eyes.

Their tiny starfish hands—gone.

The small stones of their toes—gone.

Never again their shrieks of terror,

Never again their shrieks of joy.

Never again to play peek-a-boo,

Never again to say, I see you.

Their milk-white baby teeth—gone.

Their desert-smooth dimpled cheeks—gone.

We didn’t know it would be their last supper,

The last sip of soup, the last slice of bread.

We didn’t know it would be their last bath time,

The last soaping up, the last rinsing off.

The last lifting of arms to slip into pajamas,

The last carefully chosen story to read.

Never again their warm weight on our laps,

Never again their quick hop into bed.

The last tucking in, the last goodnight kiss,

The last lullaby, the last shutting the light.

Gone….the last….never again.

We didn’t know. We didn’t know.

Lesléa Newman has created 85 books for readers of all ages including the dual memoir-in-verse, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father and the children’s books, Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story, The Babka Sisters and Ketzel the Cat Who Composed. Her literary prizes include two National Jewish Book Awards and the Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award. Her newest book, Always Matt: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard, a fully illustrated book-length poem celebrating the life and legacy of Matthew Shepard, has just been published. For more information about Lesléa, visit her website:  www.lesleanewman.com .

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October 16, 2023 · 7:30 am

You Want Me to Keep a Kosher Kitchen? Really? 

by Carol Blatter (Tucson, AZ)

I was surprised when my husband-to-be told me that he wanted me to keep a kosher kitchen.  

“How do you keep kosher?” I asked.

“I can show you. I use white gold-rimmed glass dishes which are ok for both meat and dairy on the first two shelves of that cabinet.” 

He pointed to a wooden four-shelf cabinet with a brass handle on its door above the Formica counter. 

“I keep pans for dairy and meat on the third and fourth shelves. On the back side of each one is incised with either a D or an M.  I can put sticky notes on each of these drawers so you will know which silverware is for dairy and which is for meat. It’s really easy.”

“I don’t think it sounds so easy. . .” 

Anxiety visited me. My stomach felt tense and I started to sweat. My heart rate climbed. I’ve never been very good at change and I’ve always feared failure. Now recollections of old failures tried to take hold of me again. 

A few deep, steady breaths helped me relax. Keeping kosher is not a test of competence. What are the worst things that can happen? Maybe I will mix up meat and dairy silverware? Maybe I will make an egg and cheese omelet using a meat pan instead of a dairy pan? Then I reminded myself that mistakes are inevitable. There’s no penalty I could think of for goofing up with the exception of my slightly damaged ego, some embarrassment, and some shame which will all be short-lived. Maybe I will disappoint my husband-to-be, but that’s ok. He’ll have to get over it.

I took the big step. I told him I would keep kosher.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

* * *

My husband, unlike me, grew up in a kosher home. His parents never mixed meat and milk. They had separate meat dishes and dairy dishes. And they had separate dishes, pots and pans, silverware, and utensils set aside only for the eight-day holiday of Passover. That’s what he knew and keeping kosher was his choice in adulthood.

“We’ll work on this together,” he told me. “I use these bowls for cereal at breakfast and small dishes for sandwiches like tuna and egg salad for lunches on the weekends when I’m not at work. And I use these large plates at dinner time for a meat or chicken meal. Sometimes I use these larger bowls for kosher soups. Almost all are parve except for the chicken soup.”

“What’s parve?”

“Neutral. Parve foods can be eaten alone or with meat or dairy. Glass doesn’t retain either. ”

“What else will I need to know?” I asked, feeling my stomach churn again.

“Don’t get too worried. You’ll be fine. We’ll work together preparing our Shabbat dinner. What about chicken for the main meal? 

“I know many ways to make chicken,” I said, relieved to know I could cook some of my favorites, like baked chicken with seasonings of onion salt and paprika, mixed with wine and orange juice, and chicken cacciatore, chicken browned first with minced garlic and baked with a tomato, onion, and basil sauce.

“Wow, that all sounds great. I was a bake ‘n shake man until you joined me.”

* * *

We married a few days before Passover to avoid the eight-week no-marrying period between Passover and Shavuot.

All I remember about Passover was seeing a box of matzah on the kitchen table in our apartment. We didn’t search for the chametz. I never saw my mom do a mega-house cleaning. I don’t think we even had a seder. So how could I have possibly known what to do?”

Fortunately, friends invited us to the first seder on Passover just after we got married. We arrived early. I told Bobbie, our hostess, that I had no idea how to keep kosher for Passover. She showed me the pantry where she kept the Passover-only dishes, silverware, pots, pans, and utensils. In a second pantry, she kept Passover-only non-perishable foods. Bobbie taught me which foods were appropriate for Passover.

In the middle of the table was the seder plate with the roasted egg, the shank bone, the celery, the hazeret, the charoset, and shavings from the horseradish root. We read from the Haggadah and discussed the theme of freedom from slavery and the current forms of enslavement. I’ve never forgotten that seder. It shaped my understanding of Passover and my desire to give seders in the future.

* * *

Throughout the fifty-four years of our marriage we have kept kosher. For me, keeping kosher is part of being a proud and devoted Jew, continuing a practice that has contributed to Jewish survival for thousands of years. 

Carol J. Wechsler Blatter is a recently retired psychotherapist in private practice. She has contributed writings to Chaleur Press, Story Circle Network Journal and One Woman’s Day; stories in Writing it Real anthologies, Mishearing: Miseries, Mysteries, and Misbehaviors, Real Women Write: Growing/ Older, Real Women Write: Seeing Through Their Eyes, Story Circle Network’s Kitchen Table Stories, The Jewish Writing Project, Jewish Literary Journal, New Millennium Writings, 101words.org, and poems in Story Circle Network’s Real Women Write, Beyond Covid: Leaning into Tomorrow, and Covenant of the Generations by Women of Reform Judaism. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother. 

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