January 24, 2011 · 8:46 am

The Warmth of a Familiar Blanket

By Linda K. Wertheimer (Lexington, MA)

Ambivalent Jew. That was me through childhood. I knew very few Jews. For the latter half of my childhood, we were among just a handful of Jews in our small Ohio town. Sunday school was a drag. It was decidedly not hip to be anything but Christian where I lived. I had no desire to switch religions, but I was very unsure about my faith and what it meant to be Jewish. I hunted for answers by burying myself in books about Jews. Through reading, I often found what I lacked – a community of Jews.

Now, I am confident with my Jewish self. I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah in 2006 at age 41 and still can feel the shivers that traveled down my spine as I chanted from the Torah. I have found my rhythm and place as a Jew. I still can immerse myself in a Jewish-themed book and experience an invaluable treasure.

In my teen years, Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar, and Golda Meir’s My Life provided very different pictures of Jews. Marjorie Morningstar, a teenager in the 1930s, is a part of an American family of Eastern European immigrants living free of persecution in an area where it is normal — and largely accepted — to be Jewish. They do what I never experienced in childhood: have Sabbath dinners every Friday with chicken soup, and pot roast, with the blessings over the wine and the Challah. They are steeped in tradition, even as Marjorie seems intent on assimilation and only attends temple (her father bemoans) for dances. Marjorie, who uses Marjorie Morningstar rather than Morganstern as her stage name, is a glamorous substitute for the Jewish girls I rarely encountered during my teens. She is beautiful and mostly graceful, though at times she seems shallow as she flits about New York City with friends and beaus. She matures as the world becomes darker, and the Nazis come to power in Germany. She volunteers with a Jewish refugee-aid committee. She marries and returns to the traditions of her faith. I was mesmerized by her, a person unlike any I had ever known.

Golda Meir, Israeli’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, was born in Russia, and the pogroms drove her family away to America when Golda was very young. She could have been one of my great-grandparents, fleeing as a young child to America. The first page of her autobiography shook me to the core as she recalled how she felt as she watched her father and a neighbor barricade their home with wooden boards to thwart an expected pogrom.

Wrote Meir, “And, above all, I remember being aware that this was happening to me because I was Jewish, which made me different from most of the other children in the yard. It was a feeling that I was to know again many times during my life – the fear, the frustration, the consciousness of being different and the profound instinctive belief that if one wanted to survive, one had to take effective action personally.” She described exactly how I felt at times when I was tired of being one of the only Jews in my public school and neighborhood. Reading her story also gave me a Jewish female hero to admire.

Recently, once again hungry for Jewish literature, I read The Tenth Song, the newest novel by Israeli author Naomi Ragen. The story is a more modern tale than most of her other novels. It chronicles a present-day American Jewish family whose leader, an accountant, is accused of a horrible crime – helping to funnel money to terrorists. The novel at times resembles a high-class soap opera as Ragen shows us the ripple effect of the father’s supposed misdeed on his wife, daughter, and even his shul. For three evenings, I stayed up late turning page after page, drawn to this community of eclectic characters, some likable and some despicable for their apparent love of material wealth. The story has several twists as the man’s wife and daughter evolve into more soulful human beings.

Like the books I found in my youth, The Tenth Song put me in the middle of a Jewish community. It showed me once again just how diverse Jews are. Unlike during childhood, I did not struggle to understand some of the Jewish religious and cultural references. I realized I was no longer looking for answers about Judaism. Now, I was enjoying the warmth of a familiar blanket.

Linda K. Wertheimer, a veteran journalist, is writing a memoir about how her journey through grief after the loss of her brother led her deeper into Judaism. She left her most recent full-time post – education editor and staff writer at The Boston Globe – to pursue writing her book and spend more time with her toddler.

“The Warmth of a Familiar Blanket” first appeared with a different title, “Books Create My First Jewish Community,” on the author’s blog, Jewish Muse, A Writer’s Blog on Faith and Family, and is reprinted with permission of the author. Her blog and website are at http://lindakwertheimer.com.

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January 17, 2011 · 9:04 am

Treadmill

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

At the gym and on the treadmill,
I have thirty minutes measured time
to contemplate the absurdities of the universe.
Ginny died, the wife of an old college friend,
he diabetic, one leg gone
and confined to a wheelchair.
And she dies? Really?
What was that?
God’s monstrous sense of humor?
The benign indifference of the universe?
The totally random roll of the cosmic dice?
And me, on the treadmill, goin’ nowhere.
Why is that?
The universe does not correlate
to any sensible plan I can see.
It sputters, lurches, falls back on itself,
and pathetically I want reasons?
I’m on the treadmill, goin’ nowhere,
trying to put one foot in front of the other,
optimistically, before my own set time runs out.

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

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

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January 10, 2011 · 8:50 am

The Bloodied of Our Generation

by Olivia Wiznitzer (Washington Heights., NY)

He is among the most bloodied of your generation. He has the most to forget, and can forget nothing.
Gershon spoke up and said to the darkness, He has a friend.
~from Chaim Potok’s The Book of Lights (p. 324)

She had always wished that she could pray with the fervency that she ought. Her every nerve ought to sing; her body ought to hum with desire. She believed in God, so why couldn’t she find him in the words? Beautiful Hebrew words, archaic words that had been sung by so many, that had touched the lips of the pure and the holy. Sacred words. And yet she could not bring herself to voice them. She had tried to explain it to herself many times. She did not like to lie, and would not offer prayers she did not mean. She was frustrated by the words, in a language she did not speak and did not understand. She hated the entire way in which one must stand within a rectangular cube and dedicate her soul to God. It seemed to her to be utterly impossible to do truthfully, and she had long ago determined that she would do nothing that was not truthful. She had learned from her share of lies. Whatever the reason, it was why she resented the fact that she was made to attend shul on Shabbat. She did not pray there. She did not tell anyone that was the case, but the only prayers she voiced were those that touched her lips in her mother tongue, in blessed English. And that was when her soul took flight, and euphorically, pearls of rapture escaped her mouth. And she prayed with her whole soul, which was broken, and her name was that of the one who came before her, Chana.

She longed to be outside. Out of the confines of this box, with its ceremonies of which she had no part, placed behind the curtain. Mei’akhorei ha’pargod. She remembered when she was little, younger, sitting on her Daddy’s lap, excitedly waiting for the Torah, longing to kiss it, in love with everything it represented. There it was, bedecked in velvets and jewels, the living embodiment of the Shekhina, crowned in silver, God’s partner and lover. She ran up to it and raised her hand to it, pressing her kiss onto the soft velvet. She beamed with pride as she went back to her seat, looked through the words of the parsha and followed as her father read them, anxious to catch him in at least one mistake to show him that she had been attentive. She remembered skipping happily, dancing outside of shul, telling Daddy that she had gotten all the way up to V’ahavta this time (she could never keep up with the congregation.) She remembered how happy she had been to go to shul. She wondered when she had lost that interest and that desire to be part of everything.

But she had not lost it. It was just that she could not find it there, within the concrete walls, even the ones that were painted gold. She could only find it outside, outdoors, preferably when she was alone. She loved the bikepath. She loved the glittering gold of the sun reflecting off the green leaves, the statues, with their pinks and purples, a world which was vivid and full of color. This caused her to feel, and with feeling she could pray. Without feeling she could not. She was aware of everything Heschel had written on the subject. Prayer cannot be spontaneous; it must be an act to which one commits, no matter the feeling that provokes it. She had a friend who told her that though he could not always pray with the intensity that he desired, he found it easy to set aside the time for God. For her the concept was strange. How was she to set aside time for God? God was always there, always beside her. She felt Him. It was precisely because of that closeness that she felt difficulty conceiving of Him as a presence whom she must obey, or one to whom she must bow. He was too close to her to be anything but understanding. And yet, even she knew that she had her responsibilities, and her obligation to fulfill them.

Why was it that she felt as though she were part of some vast power-play? God tugged her in one direction and the other; He showed her images and pieces of his world, and all of them left her disconcerted, if not in tears. At first He had only shown her his glory, and dazzled, she stood bewildered before Him, her hair lit by the golden light of his aura. But then he had unveiled his terrible darkness, and she was still caught within it, walking this path that seemed endless, and desiring to leave. And the most terrible thing of all was that the door stood open before her, had she not the courage, or the strength, to devote herself to attempting to go forward in her desire to understand.

God knew that the most difficult thing for her to do was to bow to his command. He had granted her a heart to feel, but then he told her, not that she must revoke that feeling, but that she must act despite it. How was she to act despite it? Such feelings crippled her, left her feeling helpless, retching in the gutter, doubled over with disgust or pain. Those who were cold could doubtless act. Why should it trouble them to kill an Amalekite child, if God declares it is necessary? They would obey God, in whom they believed wholeheartedly. But for Chana, images flashed before her eyes of the children she loved at the Kohl Children’s Museum. That beautiful blonde boy who gurgled with laughter as he splashed water on his head- and what if he were an Amalekite child? And she was mandated to kill him? But he had done nothing!

There were ways of making oneself understand. One could claim that there were metaphysical realms beyond the one which one could see. Perhaps, in primordial fashion, there was a cosmic tear in the universe should even one Amalekite be left alive, in the same way that there were rips in the cosmic fabric of the world each time she, or anyone else, sinned. When Chana closed her eyes she could see this. She would close her eyes and see an image of a universe bathed in light and swimming with angels and demons, each of them formed or deformed according to the actions of its owner. She saw the rips in the fabric of the world and the ugly seeping darkness that leaked into our world. All this was easy for her to visualize. But even with that, because there was no direct correlation between the child and the rip in the world; because it was something she had to close her eyes to see, she struggled and found herself lacking.

And suppose, not today, but at a different point in time, a non-Jew or pagan were to appear on her front lawn on the Sabbath, and they were dying? It is forbidden to be mechalel Shabbos for a non-Jew. And suppose it were her friend Kate? How could she look into her friend’s eyes and watch her die? And this was what God asked of her, to forego anything which could be called mercy in favor of cruelty; this was the price she was to pay? The Rav spoke so often and so frequently of surrendering to God. He was very clear on that point. There was a reason why. If one lives by the mercy of one’s heart, there is much that is permitted. There is much one does not understand, and which causes one to struggle. And one broods and broods and begins to twist the halakha and the laws in order to fashion them in accord with the desires of one’s heart. And this is a perversion, but a tempting one, because one would do it in an attempt to do good.

In her mind’s eye, she watched what she could do, and what she could be. She had watched it many times. She would walk away from her Judaism, or at least from her Orthodoxy, and would fashion it as she would like to. She would fashion it in the manner that she saw fit, in accordance with what her heart told her. And in that way she would be publicly lauded and accepted, the Nobel Peace Prize candidate of the Jews. But she knew, in a place that went deeper than the horror that filled her at fulfillment of the law, that she could not do that. Because somewhere else within herself there was an awe and fear that she did not admit to, because as yet she could not. She did love God, for all that she hated Him. And it was within that dichotomy that she struggled, and wished that there were a way out. She wished she could walk out of her darkness and into the light, but not the blinding destructive light, only the one that was pure, and healing.

Her imagination was fascinated by the image of the Rabbis, agilely defending, refuting and disputing each other with brilliant repartee and back-and-forth. She imagined these Rabbis and walked with them in her mind, astounded by their knowledge, by their power of recall and of comprehension, to delve through matters logically and assign solutions, no matter how preposterous or strange, through the derivation that no other solution was possible. She saw in them a power that was worthy and strange to her, and deliberately kept aloof from it. She did not want to master it, or to be their equal. So long as she kept apart from them, she could hide herself in the darkness of her ignorance and tell herself they knew far more than her. So long as she did that, she could state she did not understand, and because she did not have the knowledge, she had no right to doubt.

While she still existed without the knowledge that she might have desired, she no longer hid from it. She believed, now, that even had she all that knowledge, she would still have respect for the Rabbis formed by the power of her feeling, and her acknowledgment of their brilliance. She thought of this each time she was tempted to think of them as nothing but mortal men, men like those she encountered within her world. It would be easier to think of them as these fallen men, prey to lusts and desires, for indeed, did not their very words tell her so? This one had lusted after a prostitute while that one had delved too deeply into mystical texts. Could she not ascribe to them the desires of every man of her generation, and determine they had their weaknesses as well, that their very humanity made them frail, and made them a product of their times? And if so, could she not put aside their laws as she saw fit, or at least argue them, in an attempt to find what would gladden her heart and please her?

She could. For a time, perhaps, she even had, in her desire to advance and move beyond, move forward. She knew how seductive such an option was. The Rav had written about it. Korach and his Common-Sense Rebellion, he had called it. Korach argued that everything he desired was simply a product of common-sense. He was the mitzvot as relying upon emotional factors. If one blue string on the tzitzit causes one to remember the sky and therefore one’s Creator, how much more so if the entire garment were true! Chana found herself thinking of the laws within the same terms. What did it matter, truly, if one kept to the letter of the law or the spirit of the law? Was not the spirit of the law much more important? Did she not prefer the spiritual people to the lawkeepers who often went too far? They banned everything! They forbade everything! This aside from the fact that they seemed to believe that covering up scandals and hiding people was the way to advance Jewish society. She was not proud of them, and did not wish to associate herself with them. Besides, they had hurt her, or at least their representatives had. Foolish representatives, certainly. What do seminary graduates actually know, and yet they are entrusted with the young minds of our people? But it is our very society that declares that they do know, and enables them to teach us the Law.

I hate them! she thought, and it was true. It resonated in her heart, thrummed there in the blood that flowed through her veins. She hated them and everything that characterized them. They were petty; they were foolish; they confused the Law with their own interpretation of it. They forbade things that were perfectly legitimate; they saw darkness where there was only purity. Chana knew, having been one of their suspected miscreants. An angel who was suspected of being a devil could be no more affronted than she had been. And there was a corner of her brain that urged her to take the challenge, and the bait. If they think of you as a devil, why not be one? this corner of her mind urged her, whispered to her. Indeed, why not? There is no incentive to be better than what other people think you to be. People rise to expectations. And yet, what if there are none? What reason to go on, or to go forward?

The darkness comes creeping in through the good. Chana’s yetzer hara knew that she took no pleasure in the blood that streamed down a person’s face after she had hurt him, or the bruise that such an exercise in passion would leave behind. For this reason, her desire garbed itself in the form of an angel. She would improve Judaism. She would make it better, make it stronger, allow more of its holiness to shine through. The only thing she had to do was listen to her heart, and trust herself. Had she not always done that? Was she not, nearly always, right? Hadn’t most everyone told her not to listen to her heart when she knew that she was being truthful? Well then, wasn’t this the same- was this not truth? Why now ought she to defy her heart and bow to the will of inscrutable, irascible men, those same men who kept her behind the curtain, and wrote her off entirely and completely? There was no honor in this. Honor came in stating the truth, and in keeping to it. Why not follow her heart, which urged her to find a way to reinterpret, to look at the law and somehow reform, to do what would allow her to be at peace with herself? And then every law which hurt her could somehow be done away with, and yet she could be content with her presence before God.

Except that she could not be. For she knew, somewhere within herself, at a darker level, that this angel, which gleamed with so holy and pure a light, and seduced her with words that appealed to everything she desired to do, and would do in a moment had she only not been born Jewish, was really her own darkness transformed and given shape. Light is misleading, as it appears in different forms. There is the blinding light of the atomic bomb, which destroys and destructs the world, and the lush, appealing pagan beauty of Kyoto, where Chana’s soul feels so at home. And then there is an ugly light, the light of a kerosene lamp, which smells and drips, and yet that might be truth. Would she really be so easily lured, to follow light where she knew she could not go?

And yet it was so tempting. She knew that if she began, it would only get easier with time. Whenever one breaks a law, they justify it to themselves. There are good reasons, pure reasons, for breaking that law. Reasons that even God could not dispute! Everything is somehow pure; everything is somehow sheathed in light. Everything is beautiful. And yet the law is the law, and in the end, you have broken it, no matter the reason, no matter the intention, no matter the desire which forces you to do so. Do we not all lust after different things? Does it matter if I lust to be inclusive of people who are excluded? To each his own lust, and such lusts may be forbidden nevertheless.

But God, she could not be at peace with it! Sometimes the words of Stephen Dedalus flared up and seduced her.

“What did it avail to pray when he knew that his soul lusted after its own destruction? A certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering to God even one prayer at night though he knew it was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy. His pride in his own sin, his loveless awe of God, told him that his offence was too grievous to be atoned for in whole or in part by a false homage to the Allseeing and Allknowing.”

Sometimes she wanted that so much that it hurt her. What did it matter if she ruined her soul, if in the process one more person opened their eyes with joy, having been included within the community? This was her battle because it had been her battle. She had been unfairly excluded from the community; she had been cast out; she had been suspected of darkness which she did not harbor. And hence it was part of her to protect the defenseless, to struggle to defend those whom other people damned. No matter who they were, so long as they did not harm others, she desired their inclusion if only there were a way to allow for it. What did it matter to her? Gentiles, homosexuals, idolaters, sinners of all kinds; was there not a gateway for all of them, some way in which they could be brought near? Chana existed to bring people near, not to push them away. It went against her entire nature and everything she loved to push anyone away, even within the context of the law.

This is why anything which required that of her, which made that her mandate, hurt her. Why must she be the one to do this? Why was there this law that bound her? What a foolish law! What a cruel and possesive law, to take her desire to include and twist it so that she must exclude or cast out! How could she cast out, who herself had been an outcast? It was so ironic a twist of fate, so impossible, so cruel. She was not at ease with herself. She did not like herself. She did not like that she could live an existence that was entirely at odds with what she desired to do. As a human being, she felt that all human beings were sacred. Can there be anything unforgivable? Can there be anything for which we truly exclude someone else?

She laughed sometimes to think what she would have made of being a Jew of the desert. What would she have done then, in a society built on boundaries and rules? In a society where the leper was cast out and had to announce his impurity to all, how would she have felt? It is possible she would have seen that as being the norm, not having been raised upon Western rules and morals which would tell her that being inclusive was a positive trait, and she would have accepted it more easily. But her heart did not tell her so. Having known how painful the experience of rejection was and is, she would not have been able to cause anyone else such pain, unless supported by the hands of others. Moshe had been supported by Yehoshua and Chur when he prayed to God by that first Amalekite battle.

Moshe fascinated her. How did this man feel, having been raised within an Egyptian palace, having had his every need and whim taken care of by Bitya and Pharoah? He pursued justice, no matter what it cost him. He killed the man who beat the Hebrew slave, despite the fact that he had to flee because of it. He intervened between two Jewish men who were fighting, one with the other. He helped the pagan daughters of a Midianite priest to draw water from a well, and fend off the unwanted advances of the other shepherds. He cared for the sheep, tending to their needs as well. And then this caring and compassionate man who pursued justice had to return to Egypt, to demand from the man who had as good as been his grandfather to let his people go. He begs God not to send him, to send someone else, anyone else. How difficult must it have been for him, to have two separate loves in his heart, one for the man who had cared for him, and the other for his people? What must it have been like to have been so hated by this man, who slapped him and ordered him banned from his presence? The amount of pain that Moshe feels throughout his leadership of the Jews compels me. He loses everything because of them, and because of his identification with them- he loses his position of power, privilege and leadership. He becomes a mere shepherd, after having been imprisoned in a pit in Jethro’s backyard. His people are unruly and ungrateful. He himself does not always understand the God whom he must serve, and cries out to him in pain. At the end of his life, his last wish is not granted. And yet, he is our model of the most special and beautiful of people, a leader like none other. His life is an exemplar of what it means to sacrifice. He sacrifices his wife to be pure so that he can approach God, he sacrifices his time so that he can sit in judgement on the people, he sacrifices his authority by the episode of Eldad and Meidad, and later by Joshua, he sacrifices his dream to enter the Land of Israel. His life is an everlasting struggle between his God and his own personal fulfillment. And he chooses- although one can argue there is no choice, because Moshe is a truthful man, and the truth is staring him in the face- God.

Is this her destiny? Is she also, in her struggle to emulate this man, to suffer pain as he did? He was slandered by his own brother and sister, albeit only due to their intent to do good for him, the people he cared so much for often struggled with him and hated him, his life was subsumed by the cares of others and he was weary unto the death. But one thing no one can argue: his life had meaning. Is this the cost one must pay for a life of meaning? Is this the cost she must pay? She is frightened; she freely admits she is frightened. There is so much pain along that path. Why not choose compassion? And yet, she knows that compassion outside the law is forbidden. Saul chooses such compassion, and he is not rewarded; indeed, the kingdom is taken from him. But what is worse, he turns against those he truly loves- against David, against Jonathan- because he is blinded by what he believes is his. In the same way that he believed it was in his hands to listen to his heart and to abide by compassion, so too does he believe that he may award the kingdom to he to whom it ought rightfully to pass- to Jonathan, his beloved son. Saul too is a man of justice; he would have seen his son dead had not his men ransomed him. There is in Saul that might, but it is perverted; it is confused. He falls to darkness, though he means only to do what is right- to give the kingdom to the one who deserves it, via direct descent, to do what is just.

David realizes this, and David lives out the same pattern that Moshe had. He, too, has a man in a position of power, not a Pharoah, not a man who enslaves the Jews, but a King nonetheless, who desires his death. What pain it must have caused David to be pitted against his King, whom he loved, as is depicted by his endless elusive moves in efforts to evade Saul, to plead reason with Saul, to show Saul that this is God’s will and His commandment, not David’s own personal wish. David, too, lives a life that is full of pain. He is our greatest King, and yet he has no peace. He has his women and his kingdom, but his sons revolt against him, he loses a child before it has had a chance to live; his time is consumed by fighting his enemies or evading capture by those whom he ought to have no need to fear, and his life, too, is consumed and subsumed by affairs much larger than him. Why does God reward His most beloved in his fashion? From His most beloved he expects everything; he wants their very souls.

Why does God give us pain? He gives us pain to teach us. Could Moshe have been a compassionate leader had he not known what it was to fight against injustice and to lose everything because of it? Could David had he not fled from Saul, loving him and still fearing him, and the spirit that possessed him? We learn how to act because of what we ourselves undergo. We are strengthened by it; we are created through it. But that does not make it an easy path to walk. That does not make it the path that anyone would desire. David cries out to God in his psalms, and Moses speaks to Him face to face. What have I? I have only this; I have my words. Hear me, God, and give me strength to obey you, when you have made it so difficult for me.

Is my anguish impossible because I have been blessed? I am not starving; I am not dying. I am well-fed and I am blessed. I have been granted all I need. Physically, I am fine. I am not running from someone who desires my death. Perhaps this means that I am wrong to pray before you. Perhaps I have no right to do so, when you have given me so much good. This anguish I feel is a selfish anguish, one that only a generation which basks in the light of the sun of Aesop’s fable can feel. I am blessed that I have the time to worry over the ethics of my actions! And God, I appreciate that blessing, with every fiber of my being. But that does not make what I feel any less real. There is a conflict, and it is difficult for me. I speak, and the words of comfort I wish to utter cannot come to my lips, because your law has forbidden it. I keep your law, but I do it with tears. I wish your law was not the way it is. I wish I had the power to change it. I wish, perhaps, that you would change your own law. This too is selfish. But I cannot sleep, God, because of how much it pains me. I stay awake and think over what I can say, what I can say to those who want to be close to you and who suffer because of things they cannot do, things that are impossible for them. You will tell me nothing is impossible. I know, and I bow my head before you. And yet. And yet I cannot sleep.

Does this please you? Will my prayer make it a little easier for them? Consider them as you would consider me, God, an honest sinner. I sin, but I make honest confession before you. I am what I am. So are they. They live honestly with what they are and with their sins, and all of them offer themselves up to your judgement. And yet they are judged by their fellow people, and cast away and pushed out. This I cannot bear. I lived this; I felt this. You know how I felt it. There is a difference between the right of man and God to judge, is there not? Man must act with compassion wherever it is permitted. It is God who will determine which of our actions was correct and which was incorrect. It is upon me to love, as much as I am able, and to be kind. Within your law, God. Although I would I were without it. I wish I could do away with your law, God. But that is not my path, now is it? A path would have no meaning if it were easy for me to walk.

I too am among the most bloodied of my generation. I carry the blood of tears. What shall I do with those earnestly trying to come close to you, God? What shall I do with their tears? I shall keep them all, to show you. And perhaps you will be merciful for the sake of their pain, and their tears. Perhaps they will have atoned with their pain. Perhaps I shall atone in the same manner. Beloved God, why must you make me angry with you? But perhaps You too are bound. You looked into the Torah and created the world. Perhaps you too are bound, and sit in shackles, the shackles of the law which must continue in order for our world to exist. The world was created based on the blueprint of the Torah, and if the law is broken, it creates a tear in the fabric of our universe. You cannot reverse the foundation upon which the world was created. This is the Law; it must be kept. But then, is it your beloved bride to whom I should address myself? Shall I beg the Torah to recreate herself? No, no, I cannot. That same Torah is in my blood; it is in the fabric of my existence. Should she recreate herself, I would become so many particles of golden dust.

We are caught; are we not? You and I. We are both caught, trapped, but in such beautiful bonds! And for such a holy and exalted purpose! You would think I would not struggle, would you not? And yet I struggle. I struggle…

I do love you, God. Only sometimes, I love your people more.

Olivia Wiznitzer is a 21-year-old author and creative soul who currently resides in Washington Heights, New  York, alongside her husband, Heshy. She is in the process of obtaining her Masters in Bible from Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and works for the Orthodox Union in the capacity of Associate Program Director at OU Alumni Connections.

“The Bloodied of Our Generation” is reprinted with the kind permission of the author. It first appeared on her blog, The Curious Jew http://curiousjew.blogspot.com/

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January 3, 2011 · 9:53 am

First Day of Religious School

by Arlyn Miller (Glencoe, IL)

A new beginning, possibility born
from the holiness of Ne’ilah.
The gates have closed –
the gates have opened.

Families walk, children skipping or dragging along.
Cars pull up surrounding the synagogue,
a staccato symphony of doors slamming shut.
Wide open, the door to Am Shalom
welcomes her people of peace.

The New Year is ushered in
with the annual pilgrimage
to the first day of religious school.

The Rabbi sings to the children –
abandon and zeal on the heels
of a not long broken fast.
The children sing back,
sparked and spirited.

How can we deny the Divine?

Yesterday, during Yom Kippur morning service
the ominous sky decreed  torrential rain.
This morning, sun lights the world anew
radiant as the children’s voices –
ruach resounding
like the shofar’s call
announcing the New Year.

This poem is Arlyn Miller’s first installment in her project this year to chronicle the life of her synagogue (Am Shalom in Glencoe, IL) as its Writer in Residence.   A writer herself, Arlyn teaches creative writing in schools and in the community through Poetic License, Inc.  You can find out more about her and her work at www.poeticlicenseinc.net.

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December 13, 2010 · 9:04 am

From the Promenade

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My parents passed the Statue of Liberty,
refugees from the ravages of the second World War
searching for a piece of the American dream pie.
Child of immigrants, I stand now, some 60 years later
staring out at the same lady from the Promenade
in Brooklyn where earlier strangers to the shore
battled the British with meager resources.
Before me, across the busy East River,
lie the jagged teeth of the city skyline,
blocking the exposed cavity of 9/11.
Other immigrants, other times, same religion
came through the cavernous halls
of Castle Garden where they were
accepted or rejected for arbitrary reasons.
This harbor of my Jewish forefathers
seems less welcoming now, awash in the tide
of a resurgent radicalism loath to let in
anyone new and foreign and strange.
The port of New York sits warily
across the railing of the Promenade,
keeping its once wide open door cynically ajar.
Fortunate now, I see America in parts.
Then, would I have even been permitted in?

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

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December 6, 2010 · 9:18 am

Zaidie and Ferdele

by Carol Katz (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

I loved Ma’s father, Zaidie Gedalia. He and Bubby Bobtze lived on City Hall Street near Mount Royal Ave. This was Montreal in the 1940s, the era and area of Mordecai Richler, Baron Byng High School, and Wilensky’s juicy smoked meat sandwiches on rye, served with a generous portion of greasy, salty French fries. But the unique geography of Montreal is its high mountain in the middle of the city. I also remember the marble grey statue of Jacques Cartier, the bandstand, and Beaver Lake. Zaidie and I spent hours together each summer watching the katchkes (ducks) and walking in the woods. What I cherished most were the horse and buggy rides.

I lived with Ma, Daddy and my younger sister Rona on Park Avenue between Bernard and Saint Viateur Streets. Our tiny one-bedroom apartment was situated above Duskes’ Hardware Store. Ma and Daddy slept in the living room. Rona and I shared the one bedroom. Park Avenue in the 40s and 50s was primarily Jewish. I remember Ben’s Delicatessen across the street and Pascal’s Hardware Store at the corner. I took ballet and tap dance lessons at Rialto Hall, now a movie theatre. Since Park Avenue was a main thoroughfare, the rumble of the streetcars often disturbed my sleep.

Passover Seders at my grandparents’ home were the highlights of each year. The number nine streetcar on Park Avenue took us to Mount Royal Avenue. We walked four blocks on Mount Royal Avenue, passing the Y.M.H.A, and the Jewish Public Library. As soon as I arrived at Bubby’s and Zaidie’s, I jumped onto Zaidie’s lap and showered him with hugs and kisses. His white, wispy hair blew from side to side as he shook his head and his large, dark-framed glasses fell onto the bridge of his nose.

His face lit up when I bit into those sweet, soft, half-moon Passover candies.  He didn’t mind my sticky, sugary fingers on his cheeks. Then I went into the warm cozy kitchen to kiss my Bubby’s red cheeks and greasy hands. She was at the stove with its black, thick, iron-stove pipe reaching up to the ceiling. I still taste her succulent roast chicken and potato knishes, filled with onions and pepper.

At every Seder, I was chosen to recite the Four Questions from the Haggadah. I began with the first one: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” But, each year, I added a fifth and sixth question: “Zaidie, what was life like for you in the old country? Why did you leave?”

Zaidie’s answer was the same: “Meydele, (little girl) I already told you my story last year.”  I would laugh and pretend that I did not remember.

Then he began: “I was born in a shtetl (small Jewish town) called Kamenetz-Podolsk in the Ukraine, which was part of Russia. I worked in a shop that made iron for stoves. One day, I noticed a young woman who had entered the shop. I immediately knew that I was going marry her. I fell in love with her beauty and gracefulness. Sarah and I were married within six months.”

“Your aunt Jenny was born in the first year of our marriage. Five years later your mother, Libby, came into this world. We spoke Yiddish and Russian. I read the Haggadah in Hebrew, which I learned in cheder” (Jewish elementary school).

“One morning, as I was about to leave for the iron shop, we heard a loud knock on the front door. I answered. A gun was pointing at my nose. Two burly, moustached Russian soldiers forced me backwards into the living room. Bubby was sitting on the couch, knitting a sweater. Jennie and Libby were in school. Bubby began to scream. I begged them to let us go. The younger one stared at us with piercing eyes and hesitated. Without warning they both walked out.”

We all knew the rest of the story—how Bubby Bobtze, Auntie Jenny and Ma came first, the long, tiring, ride on the ship, the seasickness, and the arrival in a strange country, not knowing the language. They stayed with Zaidie’s brother Berel on St. Urbain Street.

Zaidie found work as a scrap peddler soon after he arrived in Montreal. In the 1950s, horse-drawn wagons still plied the streets of Montreal. Zaidie owned a horse that he called “Ferdele” (small horse).  Ferdele had a light brown sheen with a silky, long black mane, a white, furry face and pink nose. The fur on her long white legs covered her hoofs. She gazed at me with such intelligence and understanding. Ferdele looked enormous beside Zaidie’s small stature and thin body. However, she neighed with pleasure whenever Gedalia stroked or fed her. I became attached to Ferdele. The stable was in back of his house on City Hall Street.

I begged Zaidie to let me accompany him on his selling jaunts. But his answer was always the same: “You are too young, maydele, and you are too small to reach the reins.” I put my wish aside and concentrated on my schoolwork.

But one day he changed his mind and called me. Zaidie had decided that 12 was old enough to hold the reins. I ran all the way to his house, my heart skipping a beat, my hands trembling and my legs weak. Hand in hand, we walked towards the stable. There was Ferdele, standing tall in all her majesty.

The wagon with its rickety wheels stumbled along slowly. Ferdele seemed to know when to adjust her pace. As we passed the houses, we shouted: “Bottles, Rags, Clothes.” People would come to us, pick some items and give us a few cents. I felt a sense of wonder at a world so different from the classroom.

Suddenly I wasn’t a poor school girl anymore. I was a princess riding in my gold coach with Zaidie the King. I held the reins in my royal hands and led Ferdele, our royal steed. On and on we journeyed down the avenue towards the palace. I began to relax the reins. Without warning, the wagon jerked, the wheels started grinding and the horse began to speed up. Before I knew it, we were in the air, soaring like a kite. I grabbed the reins and held on tight. Zaidie was laughing, saliva streaming down his long greyish-white beard blowing in the wind. His kipa (skullcap) slid off his head and whirled downward. Ferdele began climbing higher and higher, her black, silky mane drinking in the air. The whitish-grey clouds enveloped us in a soft, cotton blanket. My cheeks were flushed. I closed my eyes.

I heard a strange sound. I opened my eyes. Zaidie was shouting: “Bottles, Rags, Clothes.” A woman came out of her house and picked an old, long, flowery red skirt, a nickel in her hand.

Ferdele obeyed Zaidie’s commands most of the time. However, this horse had a stubborn streak in her. One day, as Zaidie sat in the wagon, pulling on the reins as he did every other day, Ferdele came to a sudden stop. Zaidie was jerked back in his seat. In an instant, glass bottles rolled out of the wagon, miraculously not smashing into smithereens when they hit the road. Dresses in all shapes and colours flew out of the wagon, helter-skelter. Cars honked. Drivers yelled. Some got out of their cars. People ran out of their houses and jumped into the pile of clothing, retrieving whatever they could. Two ladies were seen fighting over the high-necked, silky green dress.

But Zaidie remained calm, sitting in his seat, staring at the mess. After all he was King of the road. He was clothed in a red, velvet cape with white fur trimming, a golden, shiny sceptre in his hand. A silver crown, studded with diamonds, adorned his head.

Zaidie gazed at Ferdele. He was looking at a magnificent mare. Her white, furry face appeared majestic. Her brown sheen turned into white, silky fur, adorned with a long, silvery mane stretching across her back. Zaidie’s face shone like the crown on his head as Ferdele pranced gracefully on her golden, dainty feet along the red-carpeted road. She was no longer just a small horse from the shtetl. She was Zaidie’s royal princess. Without warning, Zaidie dropped his sceptre and climbed onto princess. They soared and soared, cape and mane flying in the wind.

The commotion on the street pierced Zaidie’s ears. His eyes looked down at his hands. With a quick tug on the reins, Ferdele began to move again.

“Bottles, Rags, Clothes.”

Carol Katz has worked as a teacher, librarian, archivist and administrative assistant, and her short stories, poems, articles, and book reviews have appeared in various anthologies and journals. Her most recent story, “Zaidie and Ferdele,” was published in Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women, Volume 2. Edited by Liz Pearl. Toronto: P.K. Press, 2010, and it’s reprinted here with permission of the author.

She lives in Montreal, Quebec, with her husband, Sol, a bibliophile, and has two wonderful children.  She can be reached at: katzcarol2@videotron.ca

For more information about Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women, visit: http://at.yorku.ca/pk/ll.htm

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November 29, 2010 · 8:47 am

Shammas: The One that Lights the Others

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

The one that lights the others
leads them out from darkness.
It must be fully on fire itself, first,
before performing its feat of illumination.
It has to stand tall
and withstand the fire from below, and
by not wilting, but waiting
to be certain that all the others have caught on.
The shammas is the ice breaker,
the first to start a conversation,
the one to ask for a dance
(like Nachshon of the first step).
The shammas is the grunt,
the blue-collar worker,
the one who builds the foundation,
the one who makes the rest possible.
As we stand by the light of the menorah
let us thank each shammas in our life
who has freed us to shine
and let us aspire, each, to be a shammas
and enable others to reveal their light
and glow.

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

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November 22, 2010 · 8:30 am

Ambassadors

By Susan L. Lipson (Poway, CA)

You may be the first Jew—
The first they’ve ever seen in person.
You may be the only Jew—
The only Jew to whom they’ve ever spoken.
You may be the one Jew—
The one to disprove their preconceptions about Judaism.
You may be that special Jew—
Special enough to make a lasting positive impression on them.
You may be the exemplary Jew—
An example of our entire people, in their eyes….
So be a light unto others
As God commanded you.
For you, alone, can cast a mighty glow—
Enlightening shady images,
Illuminating the invisible for the blind,
Counterbalancing darkness
With your goodness.
Goodness embraces and inspires others,
While dogma squeezes and restricts.
Let them remember goodness,
That potential we all share,
Not how you differ from them.
Let them remember nonjudgmental, loving you
Whenever they think of a Jew.

Susan L. Lipson, a children’s novelist and poet, has taught writing in the San Diego area for more than ten years. Her latest books are Knock on Wood (a middle-grade novel) and Writing Success Through Poetry. She writes two blogs: www.susanllipson.blogspot.com and www.susanllipsonwritingteacher.blogspot.com.

Lipson also writes songs, including Jewish spiritual songs, some of which have been performed by synagogue choirs and soloists.

Contact her via Facebook or MySpace (Susan L. Lipson).

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November 15, 2010 · 8:45 am

My Grandmother’s Kitchen

By Ferida Wolff (Cherry Hill, NJ)

My grandmother’s kitchen smelled of
allspice and cloves,
hot frying oil,
pungent sour salad
all mixed up with summer heat
and years of family dinners.

Give me the recipes,
Grandma, I begged
as I sniffed at the pots
on the old-fashioned stove.
She smiled her Mona Lisa smile
and told me to take
a glass of this,
a soup-plate of that,
mix it and fry it
and there it is;
no magic about
the nose teasing smells,
the tongue pleasing tastes.

But when I tried it
somehow mine wasn’t the same.
Perhaps my soup-plate
was too big or
too small.
The pinch of salt
she neglected to mention
made a difference
though not enough –
something was missing.
When I asked her why
she shrugged with innocence.

It took me years to discover
that the food she cooked
was her gift to us,
our inheritance,
her life reflected
in the shimmering oil
of the frying pan.

Ferida Wolff’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Moment Magazine, Midstream, Horizons, and Woman’s World, among other periodicals. An author of seventeen books for children and three essay books for adults, she has also contributed stories to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and HCI’s Ultimate series, as well as online at www.grandparents.com and as a columnist for www.seniorwomen.com. You can visit her website for more information: www.feridawolff.com or her blog at http://feridasbackyard.blogspot.com/

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November 8, 2010 · 8:36 am

On Transmitting Family Trauma to the Next Generation

by Suzanna Eibuszyc (Calabasas, CA)

It is said that in every survivor’s family, one child is unconsciously chosen to be a ‘memorial candle,’ to carry on the mourning and to dedicate his or her life to the memory of the Shoah.  That child takes part in the parents’ emotional world, assumes the burden and becomes the link between the past and the future.  I realize now that my mother chose me to be that memorial candle.

My mother was forever haunted by her loved one’s images. She saw them starved and frozen in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. She saw them in the cattle cars that took them to the Treblinka death camp. My mother never forgave herself for leaving to save her own life and abandoning them to the horrible deaths that followed. She never stopped mourning.

My parents’ huge losses were more than I could fathom. In time I came to realize it was impossible to recover from such a tragedy.  They carried on with their lives, but the Holocaust was being played out in their minds on a daily basis. Understanding this became crucial in my understanding of myself.

I grew up in a home where my sister and I lived, day by day, with my parent’s experiences.  I sensed my mother’s abandonment and helplessness and felt her fears and resignation. I lived with her rituals, where every crumb of bread was important, where fear of being cold was magnified, and where suspicion of others, and secretiveness and mistrust ruled everything she did.  Her scars became my scars.

Growing up in the shadows of the aftermath made me a witness to what had happened.  Sometimes I was sympathetic. Other times I was filled with contempt.  I was angry, and overwhelmed for being connected to my mother’s ongoing grief.

I tried to understand how my parents’ family could just be gone, completely gone.   My mother visibly mourned her five nieces and nephews, repeating often, with emotion, “so young and innocent, they should be among the living. They were all taken away and murdered.” And I grieved with her although I had never even seen any photographs.

In truth, I could not comprehend how her family could just be gone.  I have never seen any concrete images that my mother once had an extended family.  I was frightened, confused and ashamed that I did not believe my mother. In my heart I was sad but in my mind I decided her family had never existed.

I was also envious of my mother’s incredible adventures.  Overwhelmed by the tragedy, I found that I could feel safe when I focused on her Russian stories.  I loved the glimpses of hope and excitement that my imagination turned into exotic tales.  I pictured her living in a foreign place, in the desert, under a hot sun and riding camels.  I never imagined her going hungry or being sick.  From those early childhood stories I decided I wanted to be like her, to travel and visit unusual and far away places where she was heroic and a pillar of strength.

I also did not understand my mother’s fearful and anxious behavior.  I remember her being especially intensely anxious and fearful during Christian and Jewish Holidays.  She seemed to want to make us invisible.  This was a time to stay indoors, to be mistrustful, afraid of a possible mob mentality.  The baffling, unexplained, anxious behavior only intensified the fear in my child’s imagination.

In Poland, where I grew up, people had a deeply rooted belief that Jews were responsible for killing Christ.  Jesus’ birth at Christmas and his resurrection at Easter was a time of great fear for Jews.  The Jewish holiday of Passover was a time of anxiety too.  The wide-spread rumor was that matzoth was made with the blood of Christian children.  It was not until I got to the United States and was in college that I learned that Jesus was a Jew who was crucified by the Romans.  To this day I do not have any emotional attachment to holidays, but now at least I understand how this disconnection came about.

* * *

My very first memory is the sensation of fear.  I believe I was born being afraid.  I believe the Holocaust left in its path a darkness and despair that enveloped both survivors and their children’s consciousness.  I am convinced that the fear my mother experienced was passed on to me through the sinewy strands of chemical inheritance known as genes.

As a child I had an abnormal fear of people.  When people came to our home I hid under the large kitchen table covered with a linen cloth that reached to the floor.  I refused to come out until the guests departed.

I remember the trauma when I was five years old and our town held army maneuvers in the city square right in front of our house.  Although I understood that they were just exercises and celebrations for showing off what the Polish army could do, I was inconsolable.   I often wonder if my over-sensitivity that day to the sharp sounds of gunfire and tanks rolling through the streets had anything to do with my mother surviving the bombing of Warsaw.

I was six years old when my mother took me to an art exhibit that had come to our town.  My sister was in school.  The exhibit was a tribute to mothers and children who suffered during the war.  The art showed SS soldiers ripping children from mothers’ arms and killing them, mothers being killed and mothers begging for mercy.   I remember how my mother cried when we walked through the exhibit.  I was overwhelmed with both her tears and because the art was frightening. When I think back to that day, I realize my mother had no idea the exhibit would be as traumatic as it was. She also probably thought I was too young to really understand.   Her tears were enough for me to see and know the horror of what the work depicted.

The next morning as I was waking up I had a hallucination.  An SS soldier was standing on each side of my bed. I was not allowed to move.  If I did, they had orders to shoot me.  I remained motionless, afraid to take a breath until my mother came looking for me. I never burdened her with my terrifying waking dream because I remembered how she cried that day.

I was seven when I learned that being Jewish meant that I was different from my Polish friends. On September 1st 1958 I attended my first day of school.  It started happily enough.  My mother allowed me to approach the school alone.  As I got closer I was confronted by some of my future classmates who proceeded to taunt me. “You are Jewish, Poland is not your country, and Palestine is where you belong.”   I didn’t understand. This was the first time I’d heard that my home was in Palestine.  It also was the first time I realized that being Jewish and Polish could not be combined. Suddenly that day that began so happily for me dragged on.  I could not wait to run home.

I remember that I was crying as I opened our kitchen door. I needed an explanation. My mother sat with me by the kitchen window and explained what it meant to be Jewish.  I can still remember the sadness in her voice and the tears in her eyes.  At the time my mother’s reaction was not important; it was eclipsed by my amazement.  Our true homeland was in Palestine.  My response was a simple one, ‘let’s go where we belong.’

I still remember going to the train station on so many occasions to say good-bye to friends and people we knew.  It was always someone else leaving for Israel or America.  I could not understand why it was not us.  I was intensely angry with my parents because it seemed they had chosen to stay behind.  It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out my parents secret and why we could not leave Poland.  We had to stay until my father died in 1961; he was only forty nine years old.  He died of the tuberculosis he had contracted in Saratov in 1940.  As Jewish families were leaving for other countries we were denied entry because of his illness. Even Israel would not accept him because of the advanced stage of his tuberculosis.  My parents concealed the seriousness of father’s health.  My sister, who was four years older than me, was able to finally figure out the reason. I never did. In my anger I saw them as weak, indecisive and helpless.

My father, Abram Ejbuszyc, was silent about his past. He never uttered a word about what happened to him during the war or even about his life before the war.  I cannot help but wonder if this was a form of self-imposed punishment.  Studies have shown that there are two kinds of parents among survivors: those who can not connect and those who can not separate from their children.  My father detached himself and didn’t talk, as if afraid to make a close connection and lose loved ones again, as if to contain his trauma within himself and spare his children.  He lived behind a wall of silence. That was his shelter.  He took his burden to his grave.

* * *

In New York, in order to survive, we each went in different directions, and the family that we had been in Poland disintegrated.  Our lives became turbulent as our notions of how things should be collided.  My mother worked in a factory. She got up at six in the morning and took the one-hour subway ride from the Bronx to Manhattan. With an address scribbled on a piece of paper, she managed to ask for directions and got to work and back home again. She was a fighter and a survivor.  She was not going to succumb to her fears.  She was determined to make the best life possible for herself.  And so, at age 50, after working in a factory all day long, she enrolled in night school and soon became fluent in English. I watched her navigate through her new life, never giving up.  She did not burden us with her fears and problems, she buried those deep inside her.  Two years later she was working in a bank.

I took classes at City College in the department of Jewish studies.  One of my professors was the famous writer and survivor Elie Wiesel.  It was in Professor Wiesel’s classes that I realized the importance of my mother’s story.  I persuaded her to write about her tragic life.  My mother listened.  She understood the importance of history and of remembering, not just with regard to the Holocaust but also for the Jewish legacy in Eastern Europe.  She wrote her story in Polish.  My huge regret was that I did not get to translate her memoir while she was still alive.  Somehow we never had the time to journey and emerge together from her trauma as adults.

I went back to Poland in 1972 when I became an American citizen. I was still haunted by the memories of our departure from Poland when my mother was inconsolable.  I had to return.  I was looking for something, a piece of me I believed I had left behind.  The rationale for going back had to do with nostalgia for my homeland, and the belief that my father was calling me back to the tiny, overgrown Jewish cemetery where he was buried. The ghosts of my past were clamoring for some attention.

I traveled through Europe and Israel. I lived in the desert, under the hot sun, in a tent.  By 1979 I moved to the West Coast, far away from my mother in New York. I saw her a few times a year and we talked on the phone every week.  I often remembered that when I was a child all I ever wanted was to follow in my mother’s footsteps.  I wanted to go to exotic and far away places.  I turned her stories about surviving in Russia into heroic journeys.  Traveling made me feel courageous like my mother.  She passed down to me her pessimism about life, suspicion of others, and assumptions about everything turning out for the worst. However, traveling always put me in touch also with my mother’s strengths. It temporarily wiped out the negative themes that played on in my mind.   While on the road, surrounded by unusual, new places, I was happy and at home. At the same time I had an overwhelming fear of putting down roots.  I did not want to have them severed in the same way my mother had.

The trauma of loss, the disconnection from community and my frightened family influenced how I chose to live my life.  Like other children of survivors, I developed a self-preservation defense.  I built a wall around myself to protect me from the traumatic home that I grew up in.  I was torn between letting go and staying connected.  At times my mother’s gloom was almost too intense for me, but I continually found myself being pulled back into her world anyhow.  My conscience would not allow anything else.  With my mother’s death, remembering carried a deep and sacred meaning.

* * *

I feel that it is not only my obligation to remember the Holocaust, but also to carry the burden.  I was raised in its shadows, inheriting my mother’s trauma which in turn shaped my personality, and will continue to burden my daughters who grew up with my emotional experiences of loss and abandonment.  My daughters knew about my Jewish Polish history, but years went by before I shared with them my family’s dark secrets of surviving and perishing in the Holocaust.

In the summer of 2008 I took my two daughters to Poland to keep our Jewish history and heritage alive. They were twenty-one and eighteen.  I wanted them to see the country of my birth and where I spent my childhood and teenage years.  We went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz had been turned into a museum and it does a credible job of telling what happened to our people.  When you enter Birkenau you go into shock.  The sheer vastness of the place, with the train tracks in the middle, made me gasp for air.  It was the reality that the Nazis intended and almost succeeded to annihilate the Jewish people in Europe.  My mind saw the trains coming and going, the selections taking place, the gas chambers and ovens working.  I heard the cry that went unheard. I saw the guns, the dogs, and the killing machine going at full speed.  In Auschwitz-Birkenau alone millions died, ninety percent of them Jews, among them my father’s family.

We went to my mother’s city of Warsaw, my father’s city of Lodz, and to visit his grave in the city of Klodzko.  We went to Poland to pay homage and ended up mourning.  I went to remember what my family had lost, to face my own exile and my need to reconnect to my roots. It was only with my mother’s death that I truly understood the magnitude of the loss and suffering she and her generation endured, and the importance of never forgetting.

Born in Poland, Suzanna Eibuszyc graduated from CCNY where she took classes in the department of Jewish studies with Professor Elie Wiesel, who encouraged her to translate her mother’s memoir, Bashert: It Was Meant to Be, into English. You can read an excerpt of Bashert in an earlier posting on the Jewish Writing Project: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/devotion-to-faith/

This essay is an edited version of a longer chapter, “Afterward/Epilogue – Our life in Poland after the war and my insights about family trauma and how it is transmitted to the next generations,” which appears in Bashert: It Was Meant to Be.

All rights reserved “On Transmitting Family Trauma to the Next Generation” by Suzanna Eibuszyc.  No part of this work may be used or reproduced without written permission of the Author/Translator/Rights-Holder. For more information about the work, write to: suzanna_eibuszyc@yahoo.com

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