Tag Archives: Brooklyn Jews

June 16, 2025 · 7:30 am

Disrupting the patriarchy

by  Janice Levine Hamann (Brooklyn, NY)

When the pandemic was waning, I went to a High Holiday service in a tent in Brooklyn and was suddenly transported.  “Shema Yisroel, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad” was chanted, filling Prospect Park with the soul touching vibrations of Hebrew.  The Rabbi and Cantor harmonized, as my tears flowed.  The Hebrew words flooded my soul as I realized that Judaism lived deeply inside of me.  In an act of bad-ass, 70-something rebellion, defying the Orthodox rule forbidding women from reading the Torah, I decided to become an adult B Mitzvah. Other than opposing my upbringing, I really can’t say what exactly motivated me. 

Perhaps this was my rebellion against constant taunts and put downs, my chubby body, a life driven by rules that I could never follow, always feeling wrong, alone. 

The small Formica table in the kitchen of our apartment in a 2-family house was the hub of our lives in the 1950’s and 60’s. Strict Kosher rules were observed, as meat and dairy, and any implement involved with their preparation, were always separated.  Mom did all the cooking and housework. We ate fish cakes with spaghetti and ketchup every Thursday.  On Friday, Shabbat, we moved to the dining room for the formal meal, usually chicken and kugel. Candles were lit, kiddush and blessings chanted. Saturday was leftovers, and Sunday brought a trip to the Kosher Deli in Far Rockaway for corned beef on rye. Every meal included thanks to God for our food and drink.  Daddy donned his tallit, t’fillin and kippah each dawn for his prayers. 

The routine was routinely shattered when Daddy and my brother Steven got into violent altercations. As my parents grappled with how to deal with the challenge of an oppositional son, he was rewarded with tickets to baseball games, with a bicycle, with a stereo, and I watched, ignored for trying to follow the path, unrewarded. 

 Saturday morning was time to go to Shul.

A small burnt orange synagogue by the ocean in Rockaway; foggy, salty air, deep wailing, a tinge of mildew, cracked linoleum, faded paint.  I sat alone on a creaky oak bench in a balcony, looking down, watching closely as men stood above the Torah, chanting, praying.  A scene emerges under a haze, a ghostlike group of men draped in white tallit, heads covered, swaying as they took turns reading. It was distant, voyeuristic, forbidden to women.  A rainbow of color, sparkling, bestowing holy light above the bimah where the men stood, shining through the stained-glass windows into the stale, pungent air of the chapel. They sang in Hebrew, tearfully bellowing, creating the soundtrack of my childhood, the vibrations of this biblical language forming my psyche.  The man with huge hands and ears, Daddy, who’s voice was always the loudest, shook the building’s foundation as he chanted the prayers.  

I was forced to attend services as my mother stayed at home, cooking, cleaning, or talking on the phone, (forbidden on Shabbat).  Taking attendance, Daddy made me stick my round freckled face into the room of men when I arrived, after attending Junior Congregation services at the nearby Conservative Synagogue.  Daddy sat with my brother, among other fathers and sons; a respectable gathering, hiding the disfunction that lived outside the shul’s walls. 

As a teenager, my cheerleader outfit was hidden beneath an Orthodox Jewish uniform. I showed my face, then bolted out and onto a bus to cheer during Far Rockaway High School football games. I jumped out of my bedroom window on Friday nights to meet friends. I was punished for trying to find a life in the non-sectarian world where I lived.  Smacked with a belt buckle, grounded, I learned to sneak around.

Perhaps this arrangement didn’t settle well inside…. My feelings were rarely in synch with my actions.

Perhaps it was a seed waiting for hormones, ready to grow into a creeping rebellion.

Perhaps this story is about patriarchy, about being left out, about not being able to find a place between my father and my brother studying Torah together to prepare for Bar Mitzvah, as I begged for recognition.  

*****

In the early 1930’s, Daddy, a young man in his twenties with the Great Depression devastating America, set off on his adventure to Palestine.  He lived on a Kibbutz in the desert for a few years, under deep blue skies, working to create irrigation, farming, watching children play as they were raised communally, dreaming of the possibility of the state of Israel, a democracy filled with Kibbutzim, of spending his life in this idyllic world.  The call of his Orthodox family brought him back to Brooklyn to resume his role as the only son with 5 sisters. 

 In 1948, after the once unimaginable Holocaust, his dream came true; the State of Israel was born.  I felt none of his enchantment. Each summer Daddy offered me a trip to his beloved Israel.  And every time, I refused. 

The restrictions of Orthodox Judaism made no sense to me. Why couldn’t I tear toilet paper on Shabbat? Why was driving on the Sabbath considered work when walking was much more difficult?  Why was switching on an electric light forbidden on holy days?   Why did my neighbors, Holocaust survivors, make their living as slum lords? Why Judaism?  Why Israel?  A million “Whys.” Children seek meaning and truth which were not obvious to me.

Orthodox Judaism didn’t save my brother from lifelong struggles with school and addiction. 

Orthodox Judaism didn’t save my mother from cancer. It didn’t save me from becoming her caregiver, from feeling that my role in life was to serve others. 

 Perhaps I always felt less than, an outcast in a chubby body, despite my screaming and kicking, not being allowed to be a Bat Mitzvah.

 Perhaps I hated my childhood in a family that was filled with contradictions, always fighting, favoring my brother who was constantly in trouble. 

 Perhaps the demon seed planted in the burnt orange synagogue was taking root, the vibrations of Hebrew fading from my brain, a butterfly waiting to be set free from the cocoon of Judaism.

***** 

In high school, I continued to hide behind the façade of niceness, the good girl from Belle Harbor who had a boyfriend, who was going to live the right life. A traditional Jewish wedding of high school sweethearts, Janice and Binky, me in a Mexican lace gown, him in a rented brown tuxedo, was held at Levine’s Washington Hotel by the sea. Barely out of our teens, we blindly followed the roadmap that we were born to.  In the end, unable to walk on the path that was expected, yielding to the allure of others, of freedom, of young life, the façade crumbled.  The “Get,” or Jewish divorce, happened within a year.

 Perhaps, by becoming a young Jewish bride I didn’t take ownership of my future. No soul searching, smug, doing it ‘right,’ blindly following, walking the path, the blueprint, eyes wide shut.

After college and early annulment, the vibrations of the burnt orange synagogue by the ocean deeply embedded within, I rejected any hint of the faith I was born to in my newly single household.  I wandered away from Jewish ritual, abandoning my nightly chanting of the sacred “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad, Here oh Israel, the lord our God, the lord is one,” no longer observed Shabbat, ate non-Kosher food, ignored Jewish holidays, erected a Christmas tree. I still can’t exactly say why. 

Perhaps I was discarding the patriarchy of my religion, my family, remembering Daddy screaming orders at Mom, a housewife, expected to survive and persevere, happiness never considered.

Perhaps the vibrations still living inside pushed me to try another Jewish marriage, to a young man similarly skeptical of Judaism.  

Still in my early 20’s, Murray, my second husband, appeared in my life, trying to be a pianist, a lover of music, handsome, funny.   He had no interest in pursuing anything related to Judaism except for some excellent brisket, a little corned beef, and bagels with lox and cream cheese. I believed that with this marriage, I was doing something different than what was expected of this Orthodox young woman.

A fully Jewish female was born of this union.  Before her second birthday things fell apart, yielding to the allure of independence, freedom, attraction to others. 

 Perhaps I was trying to define my blooming womanhood, free of restrictions. A butterfly struggling to escape, but stuck, wings unable to spread. 

Perhaps I was unable to fully free myself, still trying to please Daddy. I couldn’t see that I was still on the train, trying to follow the path, moving in circles. 

 I still needed to be married, as my upbringing had defined womanhood for me.  The third attempt was to Brad, a Lutheran young man, an artist.  This time, two daughters were born, technically Jewish, as the lineage is passed through the mother.  I continued to live in the role that I knew best; be the caregiver, trying to fully manage the household, to work, to be a good wife and mother.  I could not fathom the idea of my three daughters not learning about their heritage.

Perhaps this marriage fell apart because of the cultural divide between Judaism and Christianity.

Perhaps I was still trying to jump back on the train, to patch up my life, to find my place on the roadmap. 

*****

Many decades into womanhood, returning to Judaism as a mother, I dutifully enrolled each of my girls in Hebrew School, and was required to attend weekly Shabbat services. Seated on a softly upholstered bench, surrounded by men and women in the antique Park Slope synagogue, I felt the music emerging from a deep place.  Enveloped in shimmering light that evoked images of the burnt orange synagogue in Rockaway, the vibrations of Hebrew surrounded me and touched my soul.  The congregation harmonized as these familiar tunes appeared.  I knew the playlist, when to lower my head, when to rise.  I anticipated each prayer, knowing how they signaled the pace of the service. I teared up when the ark was opened and the Torah appeared. I sang in harmony with the prayers to end the Torah service, almost hearing Daddy’s booming voice. On cue, my stomach gurgled with hunger pangs as the final praises to God were chanted. 

Perhaps I was starting to feel like I belonged to this faith; the seeds sowed in the burnt orange synagogue by the ocean had deep roots.  

Two of my daughters were Bat Mitzvahed, as I never was; consigned to watch from above, not close enough to smell the parchment, see the handwritten letters, to touch, to lift the holy scrolls, confer with the Rabbi, be part of the important people. I was relieved to see these young women being initiated into an egalitarian Jewish practice, meeting the Rabbi’s eyes, looking straight ahead, not down, feeling equal in thought and prayer, the sparkling rainbow of light shining directly on them.

Perhaps the seeds planted in them will grow into satisfaction with the power of Jewish womanhood.  Their spirits can soar in any direction, free of the struggles that I endured. 

 A relationship with the Torah began for me.  Omniscient, mysterious, spiritual, powerful, these scrolls symbolize the collective stories of an entire civilization, the heritage that I had only witnessed from above.  

I thought that chanting from the Torah would be as simple as reading a few words in Hebrew. I would be healed, saved, complete; escaped from the lonely top floor of the burnt orange synagogue, allowed to participate with the important people, alongside the men. No problem. I signed up for my adult B Mitzvah; January 20, 2024.

What did I get myself into?  This was a real commitment.  I talked about my B Mitzvah constantly and must have invited about two hundred people to witness my rebirth as a Jewish woman.  

*****

I needed to find a tutor to guide me through this monumental task.   Names were collected.  I spoke with one young lady who seemed like a fit.  She lived out West but was visiting her Chabad family in Brooklyn at the time, so we decided to meet up.  I parked the car and realized that I was now in the heart of the Chasidic community of Crown Heights.  Would she be wearing the long dark uniform of the Chabad women, showing no skin, an aura of holiness? Would her head be covered?  What kind of café did she choose for our meeting? 

In the sticky summer air of Brooklyn, full of dread, walking along the sidewalks lined with limestone houses, I found the meeting spot; a small glass fronted luncheonette.  Inside, there were four tables.  A tall man stood in front of a wide mirror cleaning silverware and folding napkins, never wavering from his ritualistic task.   A young, gorgeous woman sat at the counter of this Judeo-hip café where the tattooed owner blasted a playlist of vintage Rock n Roll music. 

 Dark hair flowed from my tutor’s uncovered head.  Her shorts and sleeveless shirt revealed forbidden skin.  She is the age of my youngest daughter.  Seated at the counter, reflections emanating from the large mirror shining light on us, the vibrations of our bond filled the air. Somehow, I knew that we would learn from one other.  Her story paralleled mine.  As a child, and then a younger woman, she reacted to the many rules and restrictions imposed by her Jewish community.   She was raised in a world surrounded by Hebrew texts, no outside media, an isolated family of 14 in total, in a community filled with like-minded people. She needed to explore, to find spirituality, to feel how her nerve endings connected to Hebrew, Prayer, Torah, Shabbat, Feminism.  She needed to experience life apart from Judaism.  At 18, she left the sect; alone and very brave.  In a different world, in another century, I had had similar feelings.  A match was made, a teacher was found. 

Perhaps she embodied the Jewish feminism that I aspired to; escaped, freed. She was braver than I ever could be, boldly confronting her feelings and acting on them, unafraid of being alone. 

Our weekly Zoom sessions began with big, small talk…. where to purchase Sea Moss, questions of how to live, how to love, our family, our hurt, our betrayal. Our age gap was minuscule as we shared thoughts about the soul, nature, parenting, acceptance, leaving her sect, feeling alone. 

 At first, the studying was painful, I struggled, queasiness in my stomach, my brain frying, legs unstable, overwhelming exhaustion conquering all.  The tropes, the Hebrew words, somehow embedded in my psyche, began to come to life.  As I opened the Chumash that Daddy had given to me decades earlier, and read the words of my parsha, I entered into a meditative state. As I began to chant, the vibrations of Hebrew transported me.  Suddenly, I was back in the desert, thousands of years ago. Through repetition of the tunes, imagining the sand and sky, being stripped to basics, away from the 21st century, calmness descended.  I suddenly began to understand what the men in the burnt orange synagogue were feeling as they bellowed and swayed, my father’s voice the loudest in the group. Meetings with the Rabbi illuminated deeper meaning, how Pharoah was blind to the beauty of the world around him.

*****

Will I wear a tallit?  My association with this fringed prayer shawl has been about the men, wearing, kissing, folding, praying; another forbidden holy object and ritual denied to women.  I believed that to wear a tallit one must be male, B mitzvah, married; none of which defined me.  The rebellious seed that was planted in the burnt orange synagogue was in full bloom. Donning a tallit, once forbidden, looked like a definite check for my check list.  The question now is what tallit will I choose?  My father’s?  A new one, feminine, to be passed to my granddaughter?  Avoid the inevitable fight over who will ultimately gain custodianship of this sacred object/memory?

The tallit struggle began.  I asked my brother, who lives in California, the holder of the sacred cloth, if I could borrow Daddy’s tallit for my B Mitzvah.   As the only son, he had inherited it with all ceremonial objects; the silver kiddush cup, and the menorah from Belarus, continuing the patriarchal balance of power and ownership of our lineage.  

Perhaps I was looking to overthrow the patriarchy, to show my brother that I am important, to declare myself as an equal in prayer, no longer the chubby girl who was afraid to speak up. 

*****

At a recent service I observed carefully.  Something had shifted since the years that I sat apart, above, away, in the burnt orange synagogue near the ocean.  The space was on one level, no looking down. I sat close to the bimah where it was all happening.  There was a sea of tallitot around me, worn over the shoulders of men and women alike.  Each wearer had a distinct movement, folding, draping, twitching, hugging, tented, protected, sheltering the fragile soul that lie within the wearer.  As the people of the tallit swayed, stepped three feet forward, then three feet back, bowing, rising in silence, then song, a calm descended on the room.  The vibrations of Hebrew were now surrounding me.  I was part of the action for the first time in my life.  Images of the men in the burnt orange synagogue by the sea surrounded me as I sat in an ocean of fabric, swaying in waves.

Perhaps a matriarch was struggling to be born, worthy of being the leader of the clan.. 

Consciousness was transforming.  As I listened to Torah study class, I heard the archetypal dilemmas that were, and will always be, present… the wife of Lot looked back at horrors and was turned to salt.  I must look forward, not get stuck in the past. Each word that I study is important.  Letters have crowns.  Sounds are music and vibration.  I was comforted by my work in using these teachings to create an internal compass, guiding, leading to light, shedding the shackles of the burnt orange synagogue by the sea.  

Why have I never understood the service until my senior years?  Alone, apart, and tiny, my childhood and adolescence of attending services in the burnt orange synagogue had isolated me from the prayers, from the Torah. I practiced my Parsha and learned the words that told the story of Moses and how he defied Pharaoh (with help from God).  As I repeated the chants, my mind wandered to the desert, to Egypt, to Israel.  The vibrations calmed me when I was anxious, gave me faith, God grew inside of me.  When troubled, I now evoke images of my people fearlessly fleeing slavery, knowing that I can face my demons and leave them behind, that God lives within. 

*****

 A warning alarm buzzed in my brain as I looked at the 10-day forecast, worried about Saturday, January 20, 2024, the day I would read from the Torah. The worst week of winter weather in the past two years was predicted, adding to the stress about my upcoming adult/geriatric B mitzvah.  Snow and ice were coming just as people needed to travel from near and far; a great excuse for those who were looking for one. It snowed on Tuesday, with temperatures down in the teens.  Treacherous slippery patches were everywhere, hiding like land mines, death threats to the boomer generation.  Is the weather forecast an omen?  Will I seem foolish?  Will I forget my chants?  Will I fumble my Torah talk? Will I slip and fall in front of everyone?

 “I really want to be with you on your special day, but I don’t think it’s safe for me to travel due to the winter storms.” said the text from my brother, the one person who shared the torture of our religious upbringing, the only one who could fully understand what this meant for me. There were no storms predicted for Thursday, his travel day, only slight snow flurries, no accumulation expected.  Disappointing. 

 Electrical currents buzzed beneath my newly enlightened exterior.  I was supposed to be forgiving, moving to a new part of my life, leaving the desert of slights, belittling insults, put downs dished out by him, behind.  I fight the urge to scream, to yell about how many times I abandoned my life to rescue him and our parents during the last 50 years.  I don’t ever feel like talking to my brother again. Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel.   Sixty years earlier, a 12-year-old girl tantrumed  and screamed for a Bat Mitzvah like the boys, to be celebrated, loved.  No one listened.  

Perhaps I was merely settling a score?

 Fast forward, my geriatric B Mitzvah Day arrived.  Standing on the bema, watching my grandchildren play as I sang, I knew that the world had changed.  I was equal.

My three daughters stood with me as I said the prayer to wrap myself in the ancient tallit; the same prayer shawl that my father wore since he was 13, the same one that covered and protected each of my girls during their wedding ceremonies.   The same one that my brother was territorial about. The same one that will never see the sun of California again.  Now, tired and frayed, the tallit continues to protect my family, to help me be a matriarch, to give me strength. 

“ Lcha Adona ha gevulah v haticheret” the cantor sang as the drums and guitar supplied the heartbeat.   A frenzy of joy broke out in the book-lined chapel as my sons-in-law held the Torah and circled the room. The Rabbi, Cantor and I huddled around the Torah, as flashes of the men in my childhood synagogue came to me.  I now shared their awe, finally a partner in prayer, no longer the small child looking down onto the bema, shocking myself as I fearlessly held the pointer and read from the holy scriptures. My daughters performed the honors, reciting the prayers before and after the Torah reading, as their husbands played with the children. My eight-year-old granddaughter opened the arc and remained on the bema, closing the circle that began when my eight-year-old self-sat alone, apart from the men who led.  

Shock waves pulsed through my body the moment my chanting began.  Something changed. I  now felt equal, a woman capable of leading, of disrupting the patriarchy.  I showed the world that I could read in Hebrew, chant, think independently.

Months later, my brother showed up in Brooklyn, claimed the tallit, and whisked it away to sit in a drawer.  “I would like to keep it. I actually use it, wrap myself in it as I pray, it’s life continued.” “You promised to give it back!  You are not keeping your word!  Shut up!!” “Don’t tell me to Shut Up!” Daddy’s tallit, in it’s blue velvet bag, was thrown across the room. “Here, you can have your damn tallis.”

.

With my eyes closed, I was transported back to Rockaway, to my childhood of repression, to Daddy’s bellowing shouts, to my brother wresting me to the ground, to a lifetime of struggle to evolve. 

Perhaps he isn’t able to change, to see Daddy’s holy object being used by a woman, patriarchy buried deep inside.

Perhaps I am now the true matriarch of my clan, able to speak up to my brother, 

Perhaps I now feel the self-esteem that was strangled during my childhood.

Having touched the Torah, there’s a shift, I feel enabled, confident in my role. And now, I am equal in prayer, equal in my voice, empowered to speak, sing, pray.  I remind myself that I have left the Egypt of my mind, left the bondage and servitude, once forced into Jewish obedience, of following the patriarchy.  I am entering a new feminist land, the desert of bravery, looking forward, leaving the patriarchy, able to feel God.

Janice Levine Hamann is a late middle aged woman living in a multigenerational setting in Brooklyn.  Two years ago, after a long career in Education, she began to write creative nonfictional essays that hopefully will become a book one day.  If you’d like to read more of her work, visit Oldster Magazine:  https://oldster.substack.com/p/hitting-replay-on-my-first-memory and check out her Substack page: @janiceglevine

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

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December 25, 2023 · 6:30 am

An Unexpected Invitation

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Brooklyn hosts many different religions,

but for this less than practicing Jew,

the invitation to attend a Mennonite

prayer service was indeed a surprise.

Much different from traditional

services in my own synagogue,

this service was held in a coffee shop

with hymns and readings wafting

over the cakes and pastries.

What impressed me most

was the unmistakable

sense of community,

a fellowship of followers.

Fundamentalists, sure, but

holders of a tenacious grip

to the tenets of their faith.

I bore witness to their devotion, 

admiring the warm coat 

of their faith while I shivered 

in my own garment of doubt,

a requirement, it seems,

of the Jewish religion,

while I sat and prayed during

the High Holidays. 

It must be so comforting

to be so sure.

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

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May 1, 2023 · 6:30 am

My Bar Mitzvah Story

by Jack Braverman   (Sarasota, FL)

This was the day that I was to become a man. It was the day of my bar mitzvah. I could only wonder about all of this. I was the smallest of boys, and I knew that in all ways I was just a little kid. 

Everyone was rushing. My mother, Lisle, and my father, Nachman,  were getting dressed in their very best. My sister, Marilyn, was yelling something about nylons. Her fiancée, Stanley, was coming to pick her up in a little while so they could go out together for breakfast before going to Temple.  

I said the brucha that I had been taught and pulled my tzit tzit up over my head. I put on a new stiff white shirt and clumsily tied my tie into a giant knot. This made the tie too short, so I tried again, and this time the knot came out lopsided, but the tie was the right length. I put on the new suit my mother had bought me from the tailor at the dry-cleaning store. It was my very first suit made too big so I could grow into it and made of thick, stiff, scratchy wool that made me feel itchy all over. I could wear it to my sister’s and brother’s engagement parties and their summer weddings so it wouldn’t be a waste.  

I looked in the mirror and tried to smile. Sometimes I wondered if I was normal. Other kids laughed and smiled. I just couldn’t seem to smile. I didn’t know what it felt like to be happy. I usually felt just sort of numb. My parents had often told me how hard their lives had been as children. They had been new immigrants so it had been a struggle for their family just to survive. They often went hungry, were often cold, and some of their brothers and sisters just weren’t strong enough and had died as young children. My father had to leave school in the third grade to sell newspapers in the streets of Montreal. He had learned then how to fight for the best street corners, how to jump onto a speeding trolley to sell some papers and then to jump between the cars onto the next trolley that passed before the conductors could collect a fare. The school of “hard knocks,” my father had called it.  

So my father taught me what he himself had learned as a child in order to survive—how to fight with your fists and how to knock someone out before they knocked you out, how to be tough and take a punch and never ever show pain or weakness, how to be a man. So I learned how to be tough. I challenged the other boys to hit me in the stomach and trained myself to take any punch they could give. I never flinched, never showed pain, never cried. But no matter how hard I tried, I never seemed to be as strong or as tough as my father wanted me to be. My mother taught me what she had learned as a child—how to account for every penny, how to work tirelessly without stopping from before dawn to well after dark, to never to give up, to hold my feelings deep inside and never let them show. I was a good student. I learned what my parents taught me. 

My parents moved often so I had to go to a variety of different Hebrew Schools. I never much liked Hebrew School. When I lived in Far Rockaway and Brighton Beach, I had to ride my bike to get there, so it was easy to just get lost along the way. Then I would weave my bike slowly back and forth across the whole width of some back road, leaning hard into the turns, feeling the edge, feeling the slow hypnotic rhythm as I rode one curve into another, feeling the bike as it felt the road. Sometimes I made it to school, sometimes I didn’t. 

When my family moved to Flatbush in Brooklyn, I was within walking distance to Hebrew School, so I couldn’t use my bike to get there. There was a collapsed building right next door to the school, and there I could spend the hours I was supposed to be in school. Jumping off the edge of one broken wall to another, playing at being an adventurer who could find my footing on the edge of any precipice, leaping out over broken glass and steel shards from one ruined wall to another, improvising more and more difficult jumps—allowing my feet to feel the strength and shape of the broken brick, trusting my senses to gauge the jump and then jumping beyond what I had ever done before, testing my courage, challenging myself to climb higher and jump further, trusting my feet to find their own footing. There was a feeling of danger, and I reveled in it because it made me feel alive. 

The Hebrew School teachers in Brooklyn weren’t kind when boys missed class or disobeyed. They taught as they themselves had been taught. Brutalized when they were children, these teachers taught brutality along with the Hebrew alphabet. They walked the aisles striking each desk with a thick wooden pointer as they passed, seeking out the boys who looked away or showed fear for they knew that these were the boys who were not prepared. There was an edginess, a feeling of danger, in the classroom as they called on one boy after another, waiting to catch one unprepared or not paying attention. When they caught one, they would humiliate him, embarrass him, scrape their wooden pointer across their knuckles or slap it across their backs. Sometimes they smashed the pointers across a desk, and the loud crack of wood splintering always managed to command attention. I read well, so the teachers rarely called on me. I made up a game of making the teachers believe I was asleep, resting my head on my books or mindlessly staring out the windows, knowing I was baiting the teachers, knowing that if I lost my place as I played the game I would be shamed or hit or thrown out. I knew it was risky, but it was the very risk that made it fun. 

Occasionally, some of the biggest boys, who were bigger even than the teachers, answered back. It was then that little Rabbi Menachim, who wasn’t much taller than 5 feet, would be called in. Rabbi Menachim was the toughest teacher in the school. No matter how big they were, Rabbi Menachim just grabbed these boys by their collar, lifted them right up out of their seats, and threw them down the stairs. Rabbi Menachim became my bar mitzvah teacher, and after throwing one boy out of school Rabbi Menachim confided in me that when he himself was a boy of just fifteen, he had disobeyed his father by cutting his hair short to be like the other kids. His father had thrown him down the stairs and out of his house. Then Rabbi Menachim’s father sat shiva for seven days as if his son were dead and never did speak to him again.  

The rabbi told me that though the bruises from being thrown down the stairs went away in a few days, the pain of hearing his own father say the prayer for the dead for him —the pain of looking into his father’s eyes while his father looked right through him as if he weren’t there—that pain was with him still. The personal confidences that Rabbi Menachim shared with me created a special bond between us, and I worked very hard to please the rabbi.  

Rabbi Menachim made it very clear to all of his students that if they could not or would not sing in the very fast, precise, restrained, somewhat stilted way that he taught, they would be bar mitzvahed anyway. They would sit up on the bima, but they would sit there like fools, shamed and embarrassed in front of all of their friends and family because they would  sit up there in front of everyone and say nothing. He insisted on the form of the cantillation being perfect—every word sung in an even controlled tone, no part louder or softer, no part faster or slower.  

I worked as hard as I could at being the perfect student for Rabbi Menachim. I did just as I was told, and the rabbi gave me more and more to chant and finally gave me the Torah portion itself to chant. I sang every note perfectly and distinctly just as I was taught, even though the stiffness and the flatness made the words sound dead—without spirit or heart or melody. 

The chanting that Rabbi Menachim taught sounded nothing like the cantorial music that my father listened to at home. My father would sit at home in the evening listening to old scratchy recordings of the great cantors of Europe and America—Moishe Kousevitsky, Rosenblatt, Serota. These were the cantors from a lost age, my father would tell me. These were cantors who had found a poetry, a natural harmony, in the Torah. They sang with a mesmerizing rhythm, an intensity, an anguish, a cry in their voices that drew me in. My father called these cantors chazans—those who could sing with a feeling in their voices that came from somewhere beyond themselves. They gave a voice to the pain, the loss, the loneliness and the hopes of generations of Jews. The chazans, my father told me, were those who could recreate the ancient haunting melodies hidden deep within the Torah. 

I heard that same music over and over for years growing up. My father would sit in a chair listening, crying quietly as he listened, revealing an emotion that I didn’t know my father had. My father and I didn’t talk much but since my father always seemed pleased when I sat down and just listened, I sat with him often. He told me that these chazans“sang from the heart” and “that was why their singing was so powerful.”  

“Singing from the heart, touches the heart,” he would say. 

Sometimes when I was sure no one was around, I played those old records, listening carefully to the anguished chant of those chazans. I even found a recording of my own Torah portion and sang along and joined in with the  recording, singing in the loudest voice that I could, filling the room with my voice, releasing something inside that was almost dead. 

My sister, Marilyn, came in to see me before she left with her fiancé for breakfast. She retied my tie, tucked in my shirt, which was half out, kissed me on the cheek, and gave me a hug. 

I sat up on the bima waiting to get up to sing my portion. It was the Akedah, the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. God himself had had to intervene to stop the sacrifice. This was the Abraham whom God had told to lech lecha, to leave his father’s house, to leave everything he had known, and go to himself. What a strange idea, I thought.  To reach beyond everything he had known by going to himself, to reach into  himself in order to go beyond himself. Is this what I’m doing now, I wondered?

I felt even smaller than usual sitting up there alone, vulnerable in front of all those people. I swung my feet back and forth while I waited to be called. I could hear Rabbi Menachim’s instructions in my head. I could still hear the pain in the rabbi’s voice when the rabbi had told the story about his father saying the prayer for the dead for him. 

I felt confused. Didn’t Rabbi Menachim’s own father sacrifice his son just for cutting his hair? Didn’t Rabbi Menachim himself sacrifice some of the bar mitzvah boys just because they couldn’t sing perfectly? In my mind, I could hear the cries and the hypnotic chanting of the chazans. I could hear the rhythms of the poetry in the Torah, the mesmerizing passion. As I sat perched high up on the bima, I remembered my father sitting in the living room crying as he listened to the chazans chanting.  

I wanted to please Rabbi Menachim. I wanted so desperately to finally please my father. I wanted to express the pounding, throbbing emotions that I felt. I wanted to stand up and scream out, “Here I am. I am a person. I have feelings too!” I wanted so much for my father just to notice me, to express some emotion towards me, to approve of something. I wanted to step out of the deadened, crushing life that I lived, unfeeling, numbed. 

Was this a dream?  A dream where I couldn’t feel? A dream where sad old men had taken over a religion and forgotten their heart and their spirit, where a son became dead to his father because he had cut his hair, where a father could cry for long dead cantors while ignoring his own living son sitting right in front of him?

I heard my name called in Hebrew. I stepped up onto a stool so I could see over the podium. Standing on the edge of that stool, I felt I was standing at the edge of the world, on the edge of everything I had ever known, and I could see a soft void in front of me waiting for me to fill it. All those faces in front of me.  

Something was tearing at me inside. My head was throbbing. Thoughts and memories were crowding within me, pushing against each other, trying to get out. There was a pounding in my ears. My skin was hot. There was a cry pushing its way out of me: the anguish of Rabbi Menachim, my father’s tears, my own long buried ache pulsing and pounding within me. I was sweating. I could smell my own fear. I tried to control all these feelings that were exploding within me. I tried to hold myself together. 

I could hear the words of my portion — “Heneni: here I am” —screaming in my head.  I am a human being. I am someone, too. I won’t be crushed. I will be…….

An ancient haunting wail filled the synagogue echoing back from the rear walls. An ancient rhythm seemed to call out to each of the listeners, speaking to each of them in their own name, drawing them in with a passion and a cry that seemed to know each one’s secret pain. The usual constant murmuring in the synagogue was silenced. The passions of the chazans was still alive. A song from the heart touched many hearts that day. I  looked up to see my father embarrassed, wiping away some tears before anyone noticed. 

At the end, when I walked off the bima, I tried to catch the eye of Rabbi Menachim, but the rabbi stood there stone-faced. At first the rabbi seemed to turn away. But when he turned back toward me, he looked right through me, as if I wasn’t there. My father ran up to me, his face still wet, and, proud father that he was, he picked me up and held me up high like a trophy. 

Rabbi Menachim and I never spoke again. 

Jack Braverman was born and raised in “the old country,” better known as Brooklyn, New York. He dabbles in swimming, sailing, kayaking, photography, and writing short stories.

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August 30, 2021 · 11:12 am

A Day at the Ball Park

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Feeling the need to catch the ocean breeze,

I went to a Brooklyn Cyclones game

in Coney Island, a minor league team 

of my beloved New York Mets.

The game was sponsored by Hadassah,

the world-wide Jewish service organization.

Seated comfortably in the stands,

I was surprised to receive

their free gift: a baseball cap

emblazoned with the Star of David

surrounding the team’s logo.

A flash to the Jews of the 1940s

who were forced to wear such a star,

my relatives for one, plus countless others.

How wonderful America is

that Jews can gather at a ball game

and proudly display their heritage.

The next batter up is Jay Gordon.

Is he Jewish?

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

Author’s Note: It is the practice of many minor league ball clubs to offer their fans free giveaways like hats, shirts and game passes. Different organizations sponsor these events.

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December 15, 2014 · 9:30 am

My Chanukah Miracle

by Eleanor Wachs (Sarasota, FL)

I would say that I was the only child in Borough Park, Brooklyn who begged for a menorah. When I was growing up, there was very little Jewish life in our apartment on 1466-49th Street. Yes, there were a few Yiddish words thrown in here and there, and, a few Jewish foods picked up at a delicatessen or kosher bakery or take-out to eat at home. But there was no mezuzah on the doorpost. No brown and white Hadassah Hospital sticker annually placed on the apartment door. No Shabbos candlesticks or Kiddush cup for wine. No Passover plate for a Seder. No Jewish calendar in Hebrew and English for benstch licht times. No blue tin tzedokah box for the poor that rattled nosily when coins were dropped in. There were no ritual objects in our home on display. Yet, I was surrounded by the signs of a continuing Jewish tradition. At a friend’s house, I learned when to use the soap with the blue stripe and when to use the soap with the red stripe when washing dishes. On Yom Kippur, I saw that it was expected to get dressed up but it was permitted to wear sneakers. It was much later, way past childhood, that I found out what a “shatnes” test was. I could not figure out why a dry cleaner could perform what I thought was medical test! (Orthodox Jews cannot wear clothing that mixes linen and wool.)

Brooklyn’s neighborhood of Borough Park where I grew up on 49th street was a Jewish world on display—noisy and busy—except for the Sabbath day, when it was peaceful and quiet. On Shabbos, everyone walked. Men in long, black kaftans flapping in the breeze like penguins’ wings and huge fur trimmed streimels, (black wide-brimmed hats designating a wearer as a member of a Chasidic sect) would walk with their small boys. Young girls, whether in the sweltering summer heat or the freezing winter, wore long sleeves and white tights, and would saunter across the sidewalks in groups of five or six connected by pinkies. Mothers wearing neat sheitls (wigs) and expensive suits strolled with other young mothers, infants, toddlers, and small children around them, gabbing effusively in Yiddish.

My street was bordered by two majestic temples. One was on 14th Avenue and one was on 15th Avenue. 14th Avenue had the Conservative temple with a choir, wooden pews, velvet and silver encased torahs and a rabbi with a booming voice that reached the 1,000 ears of the worshippers each Friday night and Saturday morning. The other temple, on 15th Avenue, was Orthodox with its beautiful Italianate dome that opened to show the evening stars. Four steibels (house synagogues) were on 49th where men, like rows of tall pepper shakers, rocked back and forth in prayer. Supposedly, there was a mikva, a ritual bath, in the basement of an unobtrusive red brick house with forsythia bushes and a decorative iron fence. The house was indistinguishable from the others on either side. How could there be a bath in the basement? What a mystery.

On Friday afternoon, everyone scurried around a bit faster to get ready for Shabbos. Bouquets of pink and white mums, dumped into white mop pails, were sold on the 13th Avenue corner next to the newspaper vendor where you could buy the Yiddish papers that were draped over the newsstand next to the New York Post, the Daily News and the New York Times. The silver candlesticks with the Shabbos candles were in windows by now. The crystal chandeliers in the front rooms on 49th Street were soon to glow for at least a full day, for turning on or off a light was forbidden. As I peeked into most any window, I would see the large dining table with a lace cloth. The next day, the table would be filled with crystal bowls of fruits and kosher candies. Sometimes, I would see the portrait of the “rebbe” hung on the center wall behind the dining room table; but, I never knew who he really was, or his name, or his importance.

Two enormous rosy pink apartment buildings stood tall near the end of our block. Our home was in 1466, apartment 4C. It was a cramped one bedroom apartment for four people. 1455 was its twin right across the street. In the dismal and dark lobby of 1466, (free of any furniture which had been stolen years ago), I would wait for the Shabbos elevator that stopped on every floor, and sniff the sweet aroma of chicken soup that whiffled through the first floor lobby, imagining the matzo balls in the steaming broth. Next course, I would guess, would be the chopped liver, a small delicious scoop sitting on a lettuce leaf, or perhaps an oblong of gefilte fish dunked in jelly sauce and magenta horseradish, followed by a few more courses and then a delicious dessert.

In this neighborhood, I wanted to celebrate Shabbos and all the Jewish holidays and their rituals. For Chanukah, I wanted a menorah. The menorah I yearned for was a plastic, chartreuse menorah with two lions at its base. It sat in the Barton’s Candy Shoppe window on 13th Avenue for the month of December. The lions’ heads were tilted back, their manes braided. They had a distinguished look for their important job of holding up the weight of the burning candles for every night of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. Across the top of the menorah was a metal strip for nine candle holders and underneath the strip was a Hebrew script which, of course, I couldn’t read. Surrounding the menorah were shiny gold coins of chocolate Chanukah gelt or pretend money that children used for barter when spinning their dreidels, or tops. I wanted this menorah in the same way that a young girl would want a pretty doll or a fluffy stuffed animal, two worthless dust gatherers according to my mother.

I didn’t expect any gift for Chanukah from my parents; however, I had to go the annual Christmas party where my father worked and where Santa Claus with his big sack would pull out gifts for all the children: Christina! Camille! John! Ann Marie! Eleanor! Santa would usually give me some token—I remember a silver bracelet that soon had a greenish tinge. It was an annual ritual for my family to go – my father making the rounds, making sure he said hello to this general or that lieutenant, and my mother standing by his side, smiling. But the late afternoon affair, which was usually on a Friday, always filled me with a deep sadness—I knew that I wasn’t going to celebrate either holiday. Santa wasn’t going to visit 4C and no menorah would glow there. I had nothing to say to the other children who would ask me about my Christmas plans.

On my long walks on 13th Avenue to the public library on 43rd Street, my usual ruse to leave the apartment, I would linger at the Barton’s candy shop window, checking to see if the menorah was still there. It never dawned on me that the shop would have more than one. Maybe I was attracted to its unusual color, or its prominent place in the window, or its chocolate surroundings. Unlike the many stores on the avenue filled with very expensive Judaica, this was a simple menorah. My mother bought candy weekly in Barton’s or Lofts, their competitor, to feed her chocolate addiction—or you could say raise her serotonin levels with sugar to escape an unhappy marriage. All varieties of chocolates, from fancy truffles to plain Hershey bars, were staples in our home, like crackers, or green beans, or fruit at friends’ houses.

One chilly night, we were walking home side by side from the library on 43rd Street and 14th Avenue, both of us holding the treasures we had found on the library shelves. When we passed Barton’s, my mother stopped. “Let’s go in here for a moment,” she said as if it was an unusual stop. She marched ahead opening the heavy, glass door with its long designer style handle, as I followed behind, giving a quick peek in the window for the chartreuse menorah.

“Yes, a box of butter crunch, a box of mixed dark chocolates, and a half pound of orange peel, and two chocolate marshmallow squares” were my mother’s orders to the candy lady who scrambled up and down the counter from case to case as my mother pointed out what she wanted to buy. My mother took out her wallet from her purse to get the money to pay for the chocolate. I stood next to her, anxiously gathering up chutzpah to ask for the menorah, expecting to hear the familiar annoyance in her voice because of my request. I knew that I was going to displease her and I knew of her quickness to anger that would rise in seconds and could last for days and shut me out.

“Ma. Ma? MA?”

Did she hear me? Was she too involved in figuring out if she had enough cash to buy her chocolates?

“What is it, Eleanor?”

“Ma…Uhm, can I get…Can I….Uhm….Can I get the green menorah in the window?”

Everything stopped. I held my breath waiting for her answer. The cash which was soon to be extended to the candy lady was snatched back into the second button of her coat. The candy lady stopped the transaction. She leaned back against the back counter, crossed her arms across her white uniform and stared at us waiting for the outcome. Was the sale finished or not?

“Why would you want that? We don’t need it.”

“Please. I will take care of it.”

Here was the paradox. Denying a Jewish child in Borough Park a menorah was like refusing a Catholic kid in Italian Bensonhurst a Christmas tree. C’mon, lighten up. It’s Christmas.

“Please Ma. I’ll do all the lighting.”

“Well, all right. Does it come with any chocolate?”

The candy lady went to the window and pulled out the menorah and put it in a special box made for it which she stored in a shelf behind the counter closer to the front window. Then, she put it into a Barton’s plastic bag, and stretched over the counter and handed it to me. My mother paid for her candy, my menorah, and the Chanukah gelt, and we schlepped home on the icy city streets with her plastic bags of candy, my menorah and our library books.

I must have bought a blue box of Chanukah candles somewhere on the avenue since they were everywhere and inexpensive. On the back of the box, the prayer for lighting the candles was transliterated, and I mumbled it even though there wasn’t anyone around to correct me if I made a mistake in Hebrew. Who would know?

Even then, I knew we were different, yet Jewish. It was both confusing at times and shameful. I was unlike any of the other girls in the neighborhood. But now I had my plastic menorah and I could enact the ritual that I saw around me in my community. The candy shops are gone now and my mother died years ago. Yet, I still have my candy shop menorah. It’s my Chanukah miracle.

As a folklorist (Ph.D Indiana University) Eleanor Wachs has written and published articles about crime victim stories in New York City, urban legends, and personal experience narratives. She currently teaches courses on folklore and writing at Ringling College of Art and Design and has lived in Sarasota for ten years. 

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July 15, 2013 · 8:59 am

Blue Nails on the Subway

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Blue nails,
Hebrew prayer book,
Nike running shoes.
What question would I ask, I wonder?
How, my child of Israel,
do you reconcile your two worlds?
I shudder to think you go partying
at hot spots in the city Friday nights,
or run half-marathons Saturday mornings.
I watch you as you hold your book
up to your face after reading, as if
you were memorizing the wisdom therein.
There is no doubt God’s tent
is large enough to shelter you
no matter which corner you inhabit.
You get off at DeKalb Avenue,

confident of stepping surely in both worlds.

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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