Tag Archives: American Jew

November 17, 2025 · 7:30 am

Matchmakers

by Steve Pollack (Woxall, PA)

“I met your mechuteneste today,” my mom’s father stated, as if a simple matter-of-fact. All of us recognized that Yiddish word, but something wasn’t translating. Poppy’s eyes announced a playful intent and he unfolded the story like a riddle. Soon, we learned that Poppy had visited the mother of his grandson’s girlfriend. 

I was dating 16-year-old Linda Donecoff for about a month, when I offered her my mezuzah, originally a bar-mitzvah gift. Linda tied a “lover’s knot” in the sterling chain, which made it way cooler. We tied up our parents’ phone lines, discussing nothing more substantial than what to do that week-end. We were discovering our relationship, not contemplating marriage, not ready to be intimate. Linda’s senior prom was not penciled on our calendar.

A girlfriend is not a partner blessed by sacred vows, not a betrothed—her mother not really a mechuteneste! Yet, Poppy was confident in a destiny no one else around our kitchen table could foresee. Life experience and the faith he wore, comfortable as a vest, taught him patient optimism. Linda and I were “going steady” for three, maybe four months, when he decided to meet my other half in the person of her mother.

Attired in sports jacket with buttoned vest, creased hat atop silver white hair, Reuben Mazer carried himself in a posture that fooled a diminutive stature. Stretching his legs, greeting neighbors on his way, he was known as “the Mayor of Oakland Street”, not because he won an election or had political ambitions. Words of this humble tailor soothed us at stressful moments: “Don’t worry, everything will press-ach-oyes!” 

At that kitchen-table-moment in 1964, Mom collected her thoughts and inquired further, “Did you just go to her front door, uninvited—knock like a peddler?”

Poppy volunteered that he had approached her house the previous week, but “her gotkes were hanging out”. That word less familiar, but Poppy clarified, “it was her cleaning day”. He observed a bathroom rug airing out a second story window, and postponed meeting the woman who he predicted would be his daughter’s mechuteneste. 

Seated around the faux-marble table, we all begged in accidental unison: “PLEASE, Poppy— tell us the whole story!” We savored his news of the day like the evening meal. Poppy revealed he had walked to the Donecoff’s home at 7275 Rutland Street, a handful of streets away. Observing no gotkes, he considered it a good day to knock, and introduced himself as Steven’s grandfather. Miriam Donecoff had no hesitation inviting a well-dressed elderly gentleman into her home, even though her husband was away at work.

How Poppy knew the exact address we didn’t ask. I don’t recall that detail during our frequent nighttime chats. Our relationship was close as twin beds. Had I confided the nearest corner—the block —the family name? I imagine Poppy politely stopping a stranger: “Can you tell me in which house the Donecoff family lives?” 

To my Mom and Dad, each born in America, his bold pilgrimage was unthinkable and intriguing. Perhaps, Mom was envious of his initiative. She had been asking me about Linda for weeks, hinting that I invite her for Shabbat dinner, but tiptoed a nuanced ballet on that subject.

To Poppy, informed by old-world se’khel, an intuition to push things forward, this was a normal call of the family patriarch. He was no peddler selling rags. This was the sociable way of checking the household where his grandson’s girlfriend lived. He noted only positive impressions, and believed our attraction was bashert.

In Miriam, he discovered a gregarious hostess whose infectious laughter could vibrate a room. She was delighted to sit with him in her velvet, forest-green living room. Poppy liked this woman, a balabusta in charge of her neat household—a woman who also arrived by boat to America and found his visit not at all bold. Miriam welcomed the opportunity to share a glezel tei and discuss the kinder. Since first meeting her daughter at a Sweet Sixteen party across narrow Rutland Street, she placed me at the top—a respectful college bokher, a nice Jewish boy with a charming Jewish grandfather! Reuben Mazer’s visit, no doubt, enhanced her evaluation of me. 

Miriam and Poppy had each suffered loss that could not heal. They trusted neither bitterness nor fairy tales, but believed in happy endings. They understood the meaning of bashert. Throughout history, difficult circumstances often compelled decisions. Poppy made us believe that everything will iron out; that meant to be will find a way. We make choices. We change our minds. Call it random chance or coincidence, if you prefer. Fate is a gem of many facets. 

Linda & I, and the generations before (or after) us, would never be born, but for a perfectly aligned sequence of disconnected events—necessary one to the next. We regret not knowing folks who never boarded a boat, those before our immigrant grandparents. From bleached beginnings, people identified only by names passed forward, or those in Biblical narratives—their experience somehow inhabits my bones and my psyche. Blessings most fine sift through an intricate mesh. 

  ***

Poppy passed away the following Spring, within weeks after witnessing Linda & I off to her high school formal, dressed as if atop a tiered buttercream cake. He did not see us four years later, at my college graduation or under the chupah. Miriam lived another ten years, enough to count toes of her first grandchild.She and Poppy had adapted the art of shtetl matchmaking to a modern American model.

Linda still keeps the mezuzah, my first gift for her, in a jewelry box filled with precious gems, none as bashert. I recognize meant to be only in hindsight. Now, we have new names, Bubbe & Zayde, old names we choose to honor. Though our lives are profoundly different than parents and grandparents, we celebrate many flowering branches. We kvell with ancestors, and call upon Poppy’s satin chutzpah, Miriam’s bottomless laughter, as our grandchildren search their destinies.

Editor’s Note: A much longer version of this story appeared under a different title in The Jewish Literary Journal in April 2022. It’s reprinted here with the permission of the author.

Steve Pollack hit half-balls with broomsticks, rode the Frankford El to Drexel University, sailed the equator on the USS Enterprise. He advised governments, directed an affordable housing co-op, built hospitals, science labs and public schools. His poetry has recently appeared in  Schuylkill Valley Journal, Jewish Poets Collective, and Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. His chapbook, L’dor Vador–From Generation to Generation, was published by Finishing Line Press. He was named the 2025 Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate. He volunteers on the One Book One Jewish Community team sponsored by Gratz College and sings bass with Nashirah: the Jewish Chorale of Greater Philadelphia. He and Linda live in suburban Philly, where they celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary on November 2, 2025. 

To read more and Steve Pollack and his work, visit: Steve Pollack Montgomery County poet laureate and From generation to generation: l’dor v’dor

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October 20, 2025 · 7:30 am

Daffodils and Nuns (1957)

By Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

Daffodils, ridiculous, happy flowers with
small pinched faces in yellow or orange
gaze innocently at the world haloed
by petals like the yellow habits of nuns.

A day off first grade, I was dusting wine bottles
in Pop’s liquor store when black-cloaked nuns
with pinched white faces and fleshy foreheads 
pressed into white bands shuffled into Pop’s store.

The bells over the door chimed their welcome,
but I didn’t see heaven, only over-sized
penguins with huge silver crosses blazing
like lightening across broad chests.

I remembered my mother’s warning
never to enter a church where nuns 
might steal a Jewish child and
a story foraged from the forests

of Poland that told me of priests 
inciting pogroms at Easter from 
their pulpits, and I ran up the stairs
to Pop in the backroom, screaming,

“Nuns, Nuns, here in our store!”
Pop touched a finger to my lips,
held me close in his arms, said,
“They’re only here collecting charity,
money for Saint Mary’s down the street.”

No matter where my fears first blossomed,
I know I would have preferred nuns in yellow
and orange habits. Maybe I would have even 
given them the quarter I had buried deep in 
the pocket of my red overalls.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.


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September 30, 2024 · 7:30 am

Hatikvah

by Dennis Gura (Santa Monica, CA)

Back behind the school, under a corrugated

tin awning, propping ourselves up against

the half-filled bike rack, the late spring days

already too hot for most to ride bikes to school,

A.V. and I practice singing Hatikvah off

a transliterated sheet.

We had carefully chosen the place, distant

from the hubbub of our lunchtime recess. 

For the other kids — A.V. was in fifth grade,

me in fourth — would likely have razzed us

practicing a Hebrew song.  We two were the only

Jews in the school, and we kept it on the QT.

We lived on egg ranches with parents

who did not fit the mold of either farmers nor

So Cal rural residents in the 1950’s.  My folks,

Manhattanites, came post-war to California, my 

mother to escape the cold, my father dutiful.

A.V.’s folks, on the other hand, had the more

dramatic story. His mother, elegant and French, 

his father, a Litvak, off to Zion, then to fight in Spain,

barely surviving and repatriated to the Proletarian

Homeland, later air-dropped into Poland.

The two met in, and survived, Auschwitz.  And ended

up in the San Gabriel Valley (LA’s other one!). 

Raising chickens and two kids, and, like my

folks in the ’50’s, keeping their politics —

Left, more Left, yet even more Left — under

wraps in a town whose most famous boast of

the day was as the headquarters of 

America’s only homegrown Fascist group.

Some old Israel contact of A.V.’s dad placed a kibbutznik,

sent to California to help out a local

Zionist-Marxist group, on their ranch. He corralled

as many Jewish children as he could find locally for 

membership.  As the parents were often close to,

or members of, the Party, Zionism was viewed

with suspicion, but, on the other hand (always another

hand), even the most reluctant nationalist Jew in 1960 

was hollowed out by the oh-so recent events, and

thus was scintillated by the stories of pioneers and

survivors creating a state and refuge.  So the 

emissary kibbutznik worked the farm, organized

the kids for the youth group, and encouraged the romance

of redeeming the land and people with discipline and

song.  To earn our membership and the coveted

blue shirt — hultza khula — A.V. and I needed to 

sing Hatikva.  We neither knew nor read

Hebrew, so we worked off the transliteration.

We spent a week at the bike rack, managing 

to memorize a foreign song which only had

a distant meaning, if that.  Years later, I finally 

figured out the meaning of the line that 

cracked us up: Our Hope Is Two Thousand Years 

Old.  The word “Years” was transliterated as

“Shnot.” What’s this song about “shnot”?

What else does a nine year-old think?

That Friday night at our meeting, A.V. and I

sang, likely off-key, from memory, the

words, and didn’t even start laughing

when we got to the “shnot.”

The leaders, only teenagers themselves,

loosely supervised by the kibbutznik emissary,

who could not have been more than in his twenties,

presented us with the blue shirt, signifying

our membership in the youth movement to

build the Zionist future.

Neither A.V. nor I made it to kibbutz life, although

some of our friends did for longer and shorter

durations.  And we’ve lost track of each other,

more or less.  But I learned the words to the song,

and eventually even the meaning, and,

now, especially now, I’m glad I have it

imprinted in my heart.

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:https://dennisgura.substack.com

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September 23, 2024 · 7:18 am

My Father’s Name is Israel

by Talya Jankovits (Chicago, IL)

I have only been to Israel once. 

Ten days when I was eighteen,

a program that assured me 

it was my birthright to visit

this land that so many feel

holy connections to. 

The other attendees sped through

customs with generic Jewish names

or secular ones like Dusk or Dawn,

but my father’s name is Israel

and I carry a name that could

sound Israeli; Talya Shulamit.

They thought I was Israeli. 

They asked question after question. 

My father’s name is Israel. 

His name made them wonder

at my American passport. 

Whom did I belong to with a name 

like Talya Shulamit Bat Israel.

To whom did I belong?

To whom do I belong?

Where do I, bat Israel 

belong if not to Israel? 

They tell me I don’t belong there. 

They tell me I don’t belong here. 

Tell me, where do you want me?

Oh, hear Israel. Let us listen.

Let us hear where they want us. 

Talya Jankovits, a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, has been featured in numerous magazines, some of which she has received the Editor’s Choice Award and first place ranking.  Her poetry collection, girl woman wife mother, is forthcoming from Keslay Books in 2024. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters. To read more of her work you can visit her at www.talyajankovits.com, or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @talyajankovits.

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March 21, 2022 · 7:30 am

What My American Grandmother Said

by Herbert J. Levine (Sarasota, FL)

That she had come to this country from the Austro-Hungarian empire at age two,

that her mother ‘s Viennese relatives were cousins of Theodor Herzl,

that her step-mother felt jealous of her good looks,

that she had become a Suffragette at age sixteen and raised money for the cause selling flowers on the Boston Common,

that the grandson of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had been smitten with her appearance as Isaiah’s wife at a play at the West End YMHA,

that he had asked her to marry him on the spot, saying “my grandfather the poet loved your people,”

that she had replied, “Well my father doesn’t love yours,” 

that she married an American-born man twelve years her senior,

that she and her husband embraced whenever they met one another in whatever room of the house it was,

that it took her seven years after she married at nineteen to realize that she could get on top,

that she had gone every Sunday night to the Ford Hall Forum to hear visiting intellectuals who lectured on every topic under the sun,

that she had practiced saying, “every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” as one of them had advised,

that her sister who lived upstairs once said, “Rosie, what are you constipating to do?”

that there was nothing more beautiful than the sunset seen through her kitchen window,

that she lived as a widow forty-two years after Hyman‘s death, half of those working for the Federal government,

that the buses she took to work were designed for making friends with her neighbors,

that if you don’t own a car, it’s very important to befriend people who do,

that rush tickets at Symphony Hall were half-price for Friday afternoon rehearsals,

that there was nothing better for the spirit when visiting historic sites than saying “I love America!”

that it was important for young people to cultivate a sense of intimacy – she had been reading Erik Erikson at the time –

that she would never live long enough to use that bottle of one thousand buffered aspirin that I bought her,

that she left to her children and grandchildren her love of the sun and the moon and the stars and the sky

that she would spend her money before she died, which she did not, 

that I should say at her funeral that every morning she recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, but not until after she had eaten her bagel.

Herbert Levine is the author of two books of bi-lingual poetry, Words for Blessing the World (2017) and An Added Soul: Poems for a New Old Religion (2020). He is currently working on a humanist and earth-based prayer book: Blessed Are You, World: A Siddur for our Time. This is the fifth of his family portraits shared on the Jewish Writing Project. To learn more about Herb and his work, visit:https://benyehudapress.com/books/words-blessing-world/

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August 23, 2021 · 6:48 am

T’shuvah

Chris Farrar (Columbus, OH)

I’ve been Jewish all my life, but for the first 17 years I didn’t know it.  It’s fair to say that I didn’t really know what “Jewish” was.  In fact, once when I was 8 or so, I went with a friend to Mass, and then told his mother – to her great delight – that I was definitely going to be Catholic.

Well wouldn’t she be surprised.

My father was raised Baptist but really had no interest in religion.  My mother’s family was Jewish, but very secular. 

I, my sister and brother were raised without any religion or religious connection.  Due to my father’s influence, I imagine, we always had a Christmas tree, we went on Easter egg hunts and generally did the things that Christian families did.  But nothing Jewish.

I grew up without any of the normal Jewish childhood experiences.  No Yom Kippur.  No synagogue.  No Passover.  No summer camp.  “David melech yisrael” would have been just a string of sounds in a catchy tune.

It was as if my mother’s Jewish heritage didn’t exist. 

So here’s what happened.

Some time in the middle of high school I underwent knee surgery and had to stay home for several days.  After exhausting all the science fiction in the house I was desperate for something to read.  The only thing I could find was “The Source” by James Michener.

This novel takes place in Israel in the early 60s.  It looks at the history of the Jews through the lens of an archaeological dig.  The site is a fictitious tel named “Makor.”   In Hebrew the word means “source.” 

When I finished that book I knew I was Jewish and I grabbed at it with both hands.  I read book after book on the history of the Jews.  I took courses.  I even joined the Jewish Defense League for a while, until I came to understand them better.

Later I lived on a kibbutz in Israel and learned Hebrew.  I taught it at the university as a TA.  I married a wonderful Jewish woman and raised three amazing Jewish children.  And now there’s a Jewish son-in-law and a new generation of Jewish grandchildren.

Early in my relationship with Judaism, after I returned from Israel, it seemed to me that the only way to be Jewish was to be ultra-Orthodox.  The Chasidim were the saving remnant, the keepers of the sacred flame.  I moved into the Lubavitcher Chabad House at UCLA.  I put on tefillin every morning.  I kept kosher.  I kept the Sabbath. 

This lasted a month.  At the end of the month I knew I couldn’t be Jewish in that way.  I wasn’t even sure I believed in God.   Not, at any rate, the way I needed to in order to live the Lubavitcher life.  That wasn’t going to be my connection to Judaism. 

Instead, as it has developed over the years, my connection has been to the Hebrew language, to the holidays, to my family and to the history of the Bible and of the land of Israel as understood through the perspective of archaeology.

So.  T’shuvah.

On Yom Kippur we think of it as repentance.

What it really means is “return.”

For me it’s been a return to a history that is my history, to a language that is my language and to a land that is my land.

And it’s a return to a book of writings so compelling in its message that it has become the foundation of our whole concept of the obligations of our shared humanity.

 And for me, more even than this, it means a return to wonder.

Who were these people, my ancestors? How did they live? How did they think?  They were a tiny outpost of humanity, living in a poor nation, smaller than many US counties.  They were ravaged horribly by powerful nations, not once but over and over again.  They lost their Temple and their sacred city but somehow, uniquely among ancient peoples, they didn’t lose their God. 

How did they, among all peoples, develop the moral, ethical and spiritual foundation now embraced by half the world’s population?

If they could see how the power of their belief has cascaded down the centuries, what would they think of it?  What would they think of the re-emergence of their nation in its own land, of the resurrection of their language?

Would they recognize their God?  Would they see Him in the miracles of the Tanakh?  Would they see Him in the rebirth of the land of Israel?  Would they see Him in the spread of their vision through Christianity and Islam? 

Or maybe they would see Him in the way a day of teenage boredom can change a person irrevocably, sending reverberations not only down the decades of his own life but also down the lives of generations to come.

So, back to t’shuvah.  Return.

Not just a return to history; but rather, perhaps, a return to the future.

Chris Farrar grew up in southern California, earned a doctorate in linguistics, and worked in technology marketing and, eventually, in data analytics. His first novel, By the Waters of Babylon, follows twelve-year-old Ya’el as she’s deported to Babylon after the siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The novel is available on Amazon,  Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple Books. If you’d like to learn more about Chris and his work, visit his website: christopherfarrar.com.

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November 12, 2018 · 7:00 am

Have the Hate-filled Times Come Again?

by Ellen Norman Stern (Ambler, PA)

On the night of November 10, 1938 my mother and I stood on the sidewalk of Fasanenstrasse in Berlin and watched flames shoot out of the roof of our beautiful and beloved Temple, the great Reform Synagogue, across the street.

I was eleven years old and could not understand what was happening. Behind us in the street several fire engines manned by their crews rested without attempting to put out the fire. In front of the engines crowds of people just stood and watched, some of them obviously snickering.

No one made any attempt to put out the fire. It was obvious to me even at a young age that this was no accidental fire: it had been set because of hatred.

This was the synagogue in which I had my first introduction to Judaism, where I learned about our holy days, listened to the heavenly music of the choir, and felt the closeness of God even as a young child.

That night I even questioned God: “Dear God. This is Your beautiful house. Why are You allowing these evil people to burn it?  And why did You not punish those just standing around seemingly enjoying the spectacle?”

But I said these thoughts quietly to myself for even my mother just stood there silently not saying a word. Her face wore such a languished look I did not dare to interrupt her sadness.

Finally, she turned to me and said in a quiet voice, “Remember this.” Then she pulled me away from the crowd and led me to the train station nearby. We went home in silence.

I have remembered that night throughout my life. It has become known as “Kristallnacht” (Night of Broken Glass) because aside from the burning of synagogues, other horrendous episodes occurred that day. Jewish shops all over Germany had their storefront windows smashed by unruly mobs, and many Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

“Kristallnacht” was the forerunner to the Holocaust.

On Saturday, October 27, 2018, a crazed, heavily armed individual entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and murdered eleven elderly congregants while they were praying. His comment upon being wounded by arresting officers (who themselves sustained gunshot injuries) was: “All Jews should be killed.”

These words lie heavily upon our souls. Have the terrible, hate-filled times come again?

Never in the history of the United States have American Jews faced such concentrated venom.

Yet there is a difference. And there is hope.

In Germany, the hate and conflagration was started and fostered by tools of the State. Here, the actions were of a lone, crazed gunman. And here, the State, in the form of Pittsburgh’s police force and elected officials, Pennsylvania and Federal law enforcement officials, along with Pittsburgh’s medical personnel, the American Press, and worldwide reaction to the tragedy, has supported the bereaved Tree of Life congregation.

Despite my great sadness as a child Holocaust survivor, I have faith in the future.

Born in Germany, Ellen Stern came to the United States as a young girl and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She’s the author of numerous books for young adult readers, including biographies of Louis D. Brandeis, Nelson Glueck, and Elie Wiesel. Her most recent publication is The French Physician’s Boy, a novel about Philadelphia’s 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic.

 

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November 5, 2018 · 7:32 am

Pittsburgh 1918, 2018

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My father, an immigrant,
crossed the ocean,
went to live with his older brother,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant,
went to 5th Avenue High,
worked hard to understand
the strange English language,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant,
went to doven each Shabbos
in the local synagogue
a world away from the
sumptuous temples of Squirrel Hill,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant
knew anti-Semitism, later escaped Hitler,
was spared the horror of that morning,
in Pittsburgh.

What would he have said
were he born a century later
to witness murder so heinous?

Would he have cried out to the heavens
in mourning for his lost brethren,
knowing it could have been any Jew, anywhere?

Would he have recognized the
the darkening of the national identity
as human behavior descends into blind hate?

Would the ghost of my father have screamed
in the sanctuary with the fallen?

My father, an immigrant,
died in 1974, a devout believer.
His soul lingers with the eleven,
immigrants or not, who died,
in Pittsburgh.

He never questioned
the existence of evil in the world.
Would he have been surprised
that it came home to Pittsburgh
to shatter, until the next news cycle,
the spirit of man?

Coda:

And I, my father’s son,
fail to find the fitting words
necessary to speak of this tragedy.

The stop in my throat,
the tears in my eyes,
reduces me to silent outrage.

Others may be able to speak
more emotionally, more eloquently.
Instead, I will go out to my father’s grave,
put a stone on his tombstone,
and carry eleven other stones in my pocket
in remembrance of those Jews
who can no longer speak for themselves.

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 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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October 29, 2018 · 5:56 am

Born in America

by Bruce Black (Sarasota, FL)

As a boy I learned Hebrew while sitting in
a cramped, stifling second-floor classroom
on Wednesday afternoons and on Sunday
mornings, chalk dust in the air and cigarette
smoke mixed with sweat and the stale smell
of ink and old paper, reading Bible stories
from ancient books with dusty yellow pages
and the smell of an exotic, sun-drenched land
rising from between the lines.

The land was called Israel—Eretz Yisrael
in Hebrew—and I was told to call it home,
even though home for me was a split-level
house in northern New Jersey within sight
of the tall spires of Manhattan where my
father worked, and all I knew about Israel
was that it was hot and dusty, a dry land
covered in sand, a place where refugees with
numbers tattooed on their arms came from
Europe’s death camps to build new lives.

I remember how the Hebrew letters felt so
strange on the tip of my tongue and made
the back of my throat swell so that I nearly
choked on the words, and I remember how
I turned the pages hoping my teacher wouldn’t
call on me to read, afraid I’d stumble and trip
in front of my friends over the unfamiliar words.

In the end I learned what I had to learn for
my bar mitzvah, no more, no less, and memorized
all the Hebrew words and how they were supposed
to sound by listening to a record the rabbi had
made, and I repeated the words over and over again
until they sounded like words that came from my
heart, words that I had absorbed in my mother’s
milk as an infant nursing at her breast.

Only I could never convince myself that Hebrew
was really my language. I always felt like an
imposter reading the words, as if the odd-shaped
letters and words belonged to someone else. I was
an American Jew, after all, and, like most Americans,
I spoke English, not Hebrew. And when I walked down
the streets of my suburban town in northern New Jersey,
I foolishly thought that my friends and I were safe
forever from the horrors of the past, and that Israel
served as a haven for others, not for Jews like us
who had been born in America.

How my friends and I had laughed at the idea that
we needed to learn Hebrew. Instead, we dreamed of
playing basketball and throwing a football in a high
spiral on a perfect autumn afternoon and sneaked
peeks across the aisle at the girls, their heads bent
over their books, pretending that we weren’t there,
intent on learning the Hebrew words that all of us
might need one day to strengthen our bonds as Jews.

Bruce Black is is the founder and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. He lives in Sarasota, FL.

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April 9, 2018 · 6:27 am

Ibex, Sheep, and SWAT Gear

by Saraya Ziv (Jerusalem, Israel)

The son of my lawyer, Dina, is getting married tonight and she has just about obligated me by contract to show my face for the ceremony. The wedding is across the street from Jerusalem’s large central market where a pigua, a terrorist attack, hit this morning. In my evening bag I carry pepper spray which I do not know how to use and which looks as menacing as a canister of breath freshener. I have two sharp pencils. I have the dull pin of an old brooch. I have no chance if a pigua hits tonight.

One route to this wedding is through the town of Beitar. The bus winds past a stretch of trees which reminds me of a parkway on Long Island. When we travel through concrete tunnels erected to postpone bullets blowing off my skull, I remember I’m not headed towards my brother’s Oyster Bay colonial. At a checkpoint, a civilian has another in a bear hug; they’re both giggling. Our driver opens his window and says something that sobers them. On a thin meridian, shoulder to shoulder, soldiers stand guard.

We pass between razor wire fences into Beitar. A life size diorama of ibex, sheep, and deer graze at a giant welcome sign. One large billboard encourages – enjoy Shabbat, from the minute it comes to the minute it leaves. Another warns – you’re bad talking others?  I don’t want to hear it! The only one to jump when two figures in SWAT gear and masks board our bus at the front door and exit at the back is me.

I reverse the trip in the dark. My bus is stuck behind a truck that says FedEx International. I imagine the truck plowing the Atlantic, crossing Europe, and landing in front of us, all on a single tank of gas. The driver is tuned in to a radio station he selected in New Jersey. His radio reports that the Garden State Parkway is backed up for miles, the new Miss America can drive a tractor, and nothing about pigua in the soft Judaean Hills.

On the hill to my village we halt at a roadblock. Two soldiers, one a woman with a French braid and a sub-machine gun, examine the trunk of a car. A loud crack terrifies me. It’s the limb of a tree, victim of a recent conflagration.

Saraya Ziv attended SUNY Buffalo, worked as a Business Analyst on Wall Street, and left the United States one April morning in 2015 on a one way ticket to Tel Aviv. She was born and lived in New York City all her life, but now lives a short drive to Jerusalem. You can find more of her work at her website, Mask for Winter (http://www.maskforwinter.com/) where this piece first appeared.

Note: This story appeared under a different title, “Beitar,” on the Mask for Winter in 2017, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. 

 

 

 

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