Tag Archives: childhood

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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May 5, 2025 · 7:30 am

Passing

by Susan Kress (Saratoga Springs, NY)

I was summoned

by the big girls

at the convalescent home

where I was recovering

from that illness

and I remember

the biggest one

twelve years old at least

sitting cross-legged

saying You think

you are chosen because

you are a Jew

and I could not imagine

how they knew—

maybe the nurse

who said I have a bone

to pick with you

because I’d told

my mother I did not

get the chocolate

in the package she 

had sent—opened

before I ever saw it—

maybe that nurse had

spread the word

and there I was

accused and not even

seven years old

sure I would be shunned

for being different

like my father

even after that big war

so all I said was But 

I believe in Jesus

and perhaps I did

since my school

had taught me all

about him and I sang

the hymns and carols

loving the music

and the words Breathe

on me breath of God

which I could feel

lifting my hair

like a halo

and those big

girls let me go

though not before

enforcing my un-

easy Yes I do I do believe

in Jesus and I could

leave it there

except this was only

the first time I

was afraid and passed

but not the last.

Susan Kress, granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland, was born and educated in England and now lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her poems appear in Nimrod International, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, Salmagundi, New Letters, South Florida Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, La Presa, and other journals. Her poems have been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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March 24, 2025 · 7:30 am

America 1955

by Penny Perry (Rainbow, CA)

 My shoes crunch on alley gravel.

A boy calls out “Christ killer.”

I turn see his red hair, freckles.

A brick sails past my head.

Braids slap my shoulders.

My legs tremble. I grab

our back garden gate,

run to my mother.

She drops a trowel, hugs me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Weeping in my mother’s arms,

I say, “I’m not a killer.”

The smell of dill in the kitchen.

My grandfather looks up from his 

hot tea in a glass and blinks back tears.

“My granddaughter isn’t safe in America.”

He sips his tea, probably remembering

his own grandfather who encouraged him 

to go to America to learn English and

become a  lawyer.

My grandmother ladles soup.

The carrots are sweet. I’m still 

trembling. My mother paces, says

“Should we call the police?”

My grandfather says “No.”

The bump on his head glistens

in the kitchen light. Cossacks threw

a rock at him when he was a baby.

“We’ll only cause more attention

on ourselves. I will have a civil

conversation with the boy

and his family.”

How can he be so calm? “It’s not safe 

for you, Dad,” my mother says.

Rinsing spinach at the sink, my grandmother 

says “It’s enough the child isn’t hurt.”

“Dayenu” I say to myself. The song

is my favorite part of our Seder.

It is enough that the brick missed me,

thank God. 

It is enough that my grandfather will help,

enough that my mother hugged me, enough 

that my grandmother is making my favorite dish, 

spinach with a hard boiled egg and sour cream.

I wipe my wet face. My grandfather 

slips into his bedroom, steps out 

in his favorite courtroom gray suit 

and purple tie.

The room now smells of baking bread.

In spite of the flying brick, I’m proud to be 

a Jew, proud of our survival, our traditions, 

grateful for God’s blessings.

Penny Perry is the author of two books of poetry Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage and Woman with Newspaper Shoes, both from Garden Oak Press. Her poems have appeared in Lilith, The Paterson Literary Review, Third Wednesday, San Diego Poetry Annual, Poetry International and many other journals. 

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December 16, 2024 · 7:30 am

On That Day

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

It rained that day. The gray sky 

matched everybody’s mood

and as my face was pelted 

with large, heavy drops that hurt,

I reassured myself that I would never cry. 

I was almost 10.

I stood lost in the crowd. I didn’t 

have a need to be up front

but someone nudged me, 

pushed me closer to the grave

and I looked down and saw

the plain pale brown coffin 

decorated with a matching 

Jewish star, the place in which

my mother slept (that was the current 

euphemism), and I was numb. 

An old man speaking through 

his beard, dressed in a long black coat, 

a rabbi whom I’d seen in my rare visits 

to Temple Emanuel in Parkchester when 

certain holidays occurred, said words 

I didn’t understand, made noises 

that offered a young child no comfort, 

and sporadically others, most of which 

I didn’t recognize because my family had chosen 

isolation as a way of life. He mumbled what I guessed

were prayers, and all I felt was the heavy rain that

seemed determined to replace the tears that wouldn’t come.

I paid attention to my heavy breathing 

because, I guess, it took my mind away 

from that pine coffin that held what was left 

of the woman who used to comfort and care for me 

when I was sick, who used to cook for me in her 

Jewish-Latvian way, from scratch to tasty,

with the constantly secret sacred ingredient 

being love.

I had been her companion as she prepared the food,

the one who licked the bowl … but what exactly 

was my role now that she was gone? Who would be

my mother? A little child needed a mother, but she was gone.

These thoughts bombarded my defenselessness

while wise men said their Hebrew words and still 

the tears refused to visit me, and the rain kept falling 

and the shovels lifted senseless dirt and dropped it 

on my mother and I felt like screaming and running 

to her but she was no longer there for me. Instead, 

the sounds replaced her voice, those holy sounds 

that meant nothing to a ten-year-old, 

a boy who simply wanted to hear

his mother’s voice again.


Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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July 10, 2023 · 6:30 am

Coming of age on Blake Avenue

by Janice Alper (La Jolla, CA)

Six days a week, after morning prayers at synagogue, Zayda set up his notions stand, with needles, threads, barrettes, bobby pins, hairnets, and other stuff, on the sidewalk in front of his basement knitting store on Blake Avenue in the East New York section of Brooklyn. He lumbered up and down the steps hauling six sawhorses and three planks of wood. Once in place, he disappeared into a dark storage space, and carried up flimsy cardboard boxes laden with the goods. By 9:30 am, in all seasons, he was ready for business.

The dark, dank basement underneath a two-family house—sandwiched between Sapoff’s children’s shop and Brodsky’s appliance store—reeked of kerosene from a black stove even when it wasn’t on. Along the curb a pushcart sold fruits and vegetables. Another sold fresh fish, where the pushcart man yelled, “Fresh flounder today.” 

The fish, with clear glassy eyes, sat on a pile of shaved ice. Grandma bought some and the man wrapped it in newspaper. “Enjoy,” he said, as he handed it to her.

On the farthest corner a commercial laundry belched steamy, moist clouds which floated over to us from the large dryers. Across the street, the German bakery perfumed the air with fresh breads Grandma bought at the end of the day—crusty seeded rye, thick black pumpernickel, and onion rolls saved for breakfast the next morning. Sometimes she treated me to a crumb bun. The powdered sugar covered the front of my clothes as I gobbled it up and licked my lips to get the last of the sweetness.

Even at five years old, I noticed Zayda was different at his stand than he was at home where he seemed as if he was the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. I covered my ears and fled to my room when he came home from the store. He only spoke Yiddish and was strict about my behavior, making me say a morning blessing and warning me no to talk to boys.

“How come you don’t speak English to me?” I asked.

He looked down on me with his beady brown eyes, “Sha, Yenta,” and put his finger to his lips.

My parents opened their grocery store in another neighborhood when I started kindergarten in 1945, so Grandma took me to Blake Avenue every day after school. To pass the time I’d sort the plastic barrettes by shape and color—pink butterflies, mock red ribbons, and white daisies. Whenever I held a pair up to my hair, Zayda wagged his finger at me. I’d escape to the safety of the basement where Aunt Hilda sold yarn, knitting needles, knitting books, and provided knitting instructions to the customers.

Downstairs, I crossed my arms around myself in the coolness. It felt comfortable, despite the smell of kerosene in winter and summer, and as time passed, I didn’t notice it. Even on gloomy winter days, when Zayda stood huddled in a warm overcoat, hands in pockets, a muffler on his neck, and earmuffs to keep the frost from his ears, it was still brighter outside than the store below where the light came from two bulbs, each one pulled on with a metal chain. On the counter in back rested a bronze cash register where numbers popped up in a window when you touched the keys.

Along the walls the yarns were in boxes—light-weight ones for cardigans and baby sweaters, heavier ones for scarves, or for crew necks with reindeer patterns. The names of the colors were written on the boxes—scarlet, maize, beige. Some of the wool came in balls where you pulled out a thread and it was ready for knitting. Others were hanks that had to be made into balls before you could use them. More than once Aunt Hilda said, “Stick your arms out, Janice.”

She took the loops of the skein and placed them on my wrists. I’d spread out my arms so the wool wouldn’t droop as she wound it into a ball. It tickled and I loved the soft feel against my skin.

One day Aunt Hilda handed me a pair of knitting needles with two rows of bright red stitches on one of them. “How would you like to learn to knit?” she asked.

“Oh, can I?”

“Of course, I’ll show you.”

I sat on a stool and faced Aunt Hilda whose plaid woolen skirt covered her knees. She bent her head, with its crown of long braided hair framing her face and showed me how to wind the yarn on my finger and transfer the stitches from one needle to the other. My first attempts were clumsy, and I kept dropping the stitches. “It’s hard,” I whined.

“Don’t cry, I’ll help you.” She guided my hands until I managed on my own. I wrapped the long belt that I had just made around my waist and paraded in front of Aunt Hilda. “You look satisfied,” she said.

I marched up the stairs to show Zayda, “Look what I made.”

“Good Yentele,” he said and patted me on the head.

Grandma packed Zayda’s lunch every day: two hard boiled eggs, two slices of buttered rye bread, an apple, and a large thermos of coffee. Sometimes she surprised him with a tuna fish sandwich. He took his lunch downstairs and sat next to the kerosene stove he used for a tabletop.

Grandma watched the stand while Zayda was gone. I liked being there with her, especially since she couldn’t hear so well, and I sometimes had to shout what people were asking her. I’d lean over and repeat what the customer wanted into the hearing aid on her chest.

One time as I arranged the cards of barrettes, she took a pair, shaped like red ribbons, and handed them to me. With her finger on her lips she whispered, “Don’t tell Zayda.”

Later at home I looked at myself in the mirror with the plastic barrettes in my dirty blond hair and paraded up and down, hands on hips, like the ladies in Mommy’s Redbook magazine.

As I got older and could be on my own, I didn’t go to the knitting store after school; instead, I stayed home by myself. It was a relief to be free of the place. I had time to spend with my friends enjoying an egg cream at Vogelson’s candy store, or playing a game of stoop ball, before I took the bus to Hebrew school.

….

On a rainy Sunday, in 1953, as Zayda sat in the entrance to the basement store, the black kerosene stove exploded and started a fire. Zayda ran up on to the sidewalk and scratched his head as he watched the firemen work. Not much was salvaged, and the knitting store closed forever.

My mother shared the news with me and added, “I don’t know what Papa will do now without the store.”

Zayda continued with his habit of going to shul twice a day. 

I, on the other hand, had been doing without the store for many years by then. Already in eighth grade, and no longer at Talmud Torah, my time after school was filled with band and Honor Society. However, Young Judaea replaced my formal Jewish education. Fascinated with the egalitarian role of women in the fledgling state of Israel, I began to seek ways to be part of a an egalitarian community. Something I continue to this day.

It all began on Blake Avenue.

Janice Alper has reinvented herself in her senior life as a writer of poems, personal essays, and memoirs which have been published in San Diego Poetry Annual (2018, 19, and 20) The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Shaking the Tree. 

Currently, Janice’s memoir, Sitting on the Stoop, about her Brooklyn, New York childhood from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s, is available on Amazon. You can view it here:

Sitting on the Stoop

Words Bursting in Air, her book of poetry, may be obtained by contacting her at janicealper@gmail.com. And you can follow Janice on her occasional blog at www.janicesjottings1.com

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November 28, 2022 · 6:30 am

Where Do We Begin?

Elan Barnehama (Boston, MA)

My childhood home in New York City was within walking distance of several congregations, but my parents rarely took us to synagogue. And I was fine with that. And it wasn’t because my father wasn’t within walking distance to anything, what with him being confined to a wheelchair since getting infected by polio in Israel, ten years after his family fled Vienna, and one year after Israel became a state. His polio made mobility difficult, but it had never stopped him and my mother from going anywhere or doing anything.

We did, though, observe the Jewish holidays, rituals, and traditions with as many friends and relatives as could fit around our dining room table. Those who joined us eagerly engaged in robust conversations, lively debates, and detailed storytelling, with thick accents that seamlessly moved between Hebrew, German, and English. 

Later, when I had children of my own, I continued the tradition of skipping synagogue in favor of gatherings around our table which we expanded to capacity. I was, by then, a writer and teacher, so I did my thing which was to choose Biblical tales to retell, discuss, and  analyze the stories. But in order to teach, I had to learn. And that meant re-reading the Torah.

I started at the beginning. Or tried to. As a child, I was confused when I realized that Bereshit wasn’t read during Rosh Hashanah, even though the holiday celebrated the beginning of the year and creation. Also confusing was that Rosh Hashanah fell during the seventh month, and not the first. 

It seemed to me that those early rabbis were comfortable with inconsistencies and contradictions, with nuance and context, and that appealed to me. I mean, they put two different stories of creation right next to each other in the opening chapters of Bereshit. There were valuable lessons to be learned from each version and each sequence of creation.

So, when I began again at the beginning during Simchat Torah, I found a different translation for the beginning for Bereshit. This translation didn’t translate the word Bereshit as “in THE beginning,” but rather “in A beginning.” Several internet searches reveled that the translation of the word Bereshit had been fixed by Rashi and Ibn Ezra about a thousand years earlier, though it had not caught on everywhere. Still, it explained much. Beginnings are a constant. Sometimes they happen by choice. More often they are prompted by, well, life. 

The thing is, I’d been raised on stories of new starts as my parents and their parents had endured several demanding beginnings. And on their belief in that old Jewish proverb that stories are truer than the truth. My parents’ stories brought them to the United States, their third county and their third language, all before the end of their third decade.

My mother’s family-tree chronicled 500 years of German residence before her parents fled Berlin for Jerusalem in the fall of 1933. My father’s family, fortunate to have survived Vienna’s Kristallnacht, made their way to Haifa in the days that followed. While participating in the push to create a Jewish state, my father gave himself a new Hebrew name in honor of this beginning. But polio forced another beginning as doctors sent him to New York City for medical care that was unavailable in Israel at the time.

When I was a kid, I liked to slip out of my bedroom window onto the roof of our house in Queens. Safe in my own fortress of solitude, I replayed my day and planned for the next one with renewed optimism and possibility. 

One thing I learned from my parents’ stories was to trust not knowing. Sure, what’s ahead might be horrible and miserable. But that moment of not knowing also holds the promise of possibility, of a beginning that lies ahead.

Elan Barnehama’s new novel, Escape Route, is set in NYC during the 1960s and is told by teenager, Zach, a first-generation son of Holocaust survivors, and NY Mets fan, who becomes obsessed with the Vietnam War and with finding an escape route for his family for when he believes the US will round up and incarcerate its Jews. Elan is a New Yorker by geography. A Mets fan by default. More info at elanbarnehama.com and Escape Route, available now

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January 3, 2022 · 7:30 am

The truth is not always easy to find: discovering my family’s Jewish roots

by Cathy A. Lewis (Nashville, Tennessee)

In 1963, my thirteen-year-old brother Jeffrey left our home in Pittsford, New York, to travel by plane to Mexico.  I had no inkling he’d return to us changed after spending six weeks there.

My mom’s family lived in Mexico City, which was beyond my comprehension at age six. While I was growing up, there was always a shroud of mystery around Mom and her familial origins.

Mom would tell me, “I’m not Latin, nor is our family. Circumstances caused me to be born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while my brothers and sisters were born in Lima, Peru.”

My parents met in Colon, Panama, where Dad was stationed during WWII. Mom worked on the US army base as a translator. Their worlds collided, and it was kismet. They married six months later. I wondered at the brevity of their relationship. Mom would explain, “Back then, you didn’t waste any time. You never knew from one day to the next whether or not the world would implode.”

It was a year after Jeffrey returned from Mexico when my sister, at age ten, two years my senior, broke the news to me. She said as a matter of fact, “Jeff Lewis is Jewish.”

Puzzled, I asked, “What? What is Jewish?”

At that point, Mom sat me down and explained that my grandparents, who were named Silverstone and had changed the name from Zilberstein, were Jewish. “So that makes me Jewish, and my children Jewish. You are Jewish.”

My brain felt like it could burst by the sheer force of questions popping into my prefrontal cortex. One question dominated all others. “But how did your parents get to Mexico?”

Exasperated by my barrage of questions, Mom answered, “They had to leave South America due to the economic issues plaguing that country. Mexico at that time seemed like a land of opportunity. Plus, there was an already established sizable Jewish community.”

I still had questions. The thing about my mother, though, was once she finished discussing a subject, that was it. No further interrogations could continue. Much of my childhood was like that—no resolution to my unending queries.

In eighth grade, a history project was assigned. We were told to pick a country we’d like to live and work in. Much to Mom’s chagrin, I proclaimed, “My project will be about Israel and a kibbutz!”

My father became involved in my research, helping me put historical events in chronological order. I read an article Dad gave me about David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir and the founding of Israel. It inspired me even further to communicate the empowering story of survival and conviction. 

My project was one of three picked to present at a school event, with parents invited to attend. At the end of my presentation, I concluded that “Moving to Israel was on my radar, and kibbutz living was the life for me!” With my parents sitting in the audience, I saw the color drain from my mother’s face.

On the ride home, Mom explained how she came to the US in 1944 after marrying my dad. She faced so much anti-Semitism. Mom had a great desire to protect her children from the hatred she experienced. As it turns out, my mom’s parents had fled Baranovichi, Poland (now Belarus) when WWI ended, to start a new life in Buenos Aires after marrying.  The Nazis murdered their extended family members who had stayed behind. 

Many years later, after Mom passed, I completed an ancestry search and found out that Mom’s family all had come from Israel at the start of the first century, fleeing to Eastern Europe after the Romans conquered Jerusalem, Israel. 

Now I embrace my birthright with pride and joy. Through my newfound connection to Judaism, I’ve formed a meaningful relationship with my Creator. And I’ve found while researching my genealogy over 100 relatives living in Tel Aviv, all Orthodox Jews. I’ve also connected with my cousins who immigrated to the US from Mexico, some of them Reform Jews, some Orthodox living in Lakewood, NJ. 

They have all welcomed me into the family with a full embrace, disregarding our differences, while focusing on the mutual affection and pleasure we derive from being one big family.

Cathy A. Lewis’ novel, The Road We Took—Four Days in Germany, 1933, is partially based on a true story of her father’s sojourn through Europe as a sixteen-year-old in 1933 and the four days he spent in Germany.  The book’s main objective, she writes, is to honor her relatives and those who perished in the Holocaust and express how quickly hatred can destroy our world. “It is a critical imperative,” Cathy says, “to remember history to ensure such events like the Holocaust never happen again.” To learn more about Cathy and her book, visit: https://cathyalewis.com

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June 10, 2019 · 10:42 am

My First School Bus Ride

by Maureen Rubin (Los Angeles, CA)

When I finished second grade, my parents moved to the Detroit suburbs.  Mom was expecting another baby so we needed a bigger house. This was 1956. Nobody lived in the suburbs yet.  The roads weren’t paved and there were plagues of earthworms after it rained. 

In September, I took my first school bus ride.  As soon as I was seated, I felt a wet spitball sting on my neck.  

“You kike,” yelled one girl.  “Get off our bus.  Get out of our school.  We don’t want you dirty Jews here!”

This made no sense.  What did I do?  I took a bath last night.  I was clean.  I was only eight. I wasn’t even sure what a Jew was.  

When I got to my classroom, the girl who threw the hardest, wettest spitball was sitting at one of the desks.  Her name was Marsha. She told all my classmates not to speak to me because I was a Jew.  They complied.  

I was often tormented throughout elementary school.  If I raised my hand in class, I heard whispers of “Smarty-pants Jew.”  At recess, I stood alone. The other kids jumped rope or played jacks.  If I tried to join them, they twirled the rope at warp speed and made me fall and skin my knees. They stole my jacks,

I finally learned why.  Our new house was built in the middle of farmland. My subdivision had expensive new houses that many Jews had purchased.  Jealousy probably fueled the hatred.

In high school, Dave asked me to a school dance.  He was very cute and very not Jewish.  The day before the dance, I saw him speaking with Marsha.  That night he called me and said he couldn’t go to the dance with me.  I cried.

For most Americans, anti-Semitism is abhorrent, but most likely abstract.  Perhaps someone in a college dorm asked to see a Jewish student’s horns. Maybe a fellow vacationer advised bargaining with the natives because, “You can always Jew them down.”  But to me, anti-Semitism has always caused mental and physical agony.

Over the years, though, I got stronger.  I earned a law degree and worked in social justice organizations.

At my 25th high school reunion, I saw Marsha.  She came up to me and said, “It’s great to see you.  I have lots of Jewish friends now.”

That sentence finally gave me the power to confront her.

“You tortured and bullied me when I was a kid,” I said.  “You might think it’s admirable to tell me you have lots Jewish friends now, but that statement proves you’re still an anti-Semite.  A racist. A bigot. You don’t understand how dangerous it is to see people as Jew first, and anything else second. Even a friend.”  

Maybe I shouldn’t have confronted Marsha that night.  Maybe instead I should have thanked her for motivating me to fight ignorance, bigotry and racism in all the Marsha’s of the world.  

Maureen Rubin is an Emeritus Professor of Journalism at California State University, Northridge. In her 30 years on campus, she taught writing and media law , served in a variety of administrative positions, published widely and received numerous teaching and public service awards.  Prior to joining the university, Rubin was Director of Public Information for President Carter’s Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs in the White House, and held similar positions for a U.S. Congresswoman and several non-profits. She has a JD from Catholic University School of Law In Washington, D.C., an MA in Public Relations from University of Southern California and a BS in Journalism from Boston University.

 

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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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March 6, 2017 · 7:15 am

The Old Man and the Tortoise

by Ellen Norman Stern (Willow Grove, PA) 

Whenever I think of Olivaer Platz, I remember the old man and his tortoise. A picture of him remains in my mind and brings up a complete memory of a time and a place.

Olivaer Platz was a small public park in the midst of Berlin when I was growing up in the 1930s. It was located near the major artery of Kurfuerstendamm, and it attracted many people. All around the park were shops popular with customers of all ages.

I remember my favorite, Café Heil, where I was occasionally treated to the small meat pastry I loved whenever one of my parents had coffee and cake there, met friends, or just read the assorted newspapers and magazines available to the patrons. There was an ice cream parlor in the same block, too, whose various flavors of ice cream sandwiches were in enormous demand in warmer weather.

In the afternoons I remember seeing older adults reading their newspapers on the benches in Olivaer Platz. It was only a few squares from our home in Mommsenstrasse 66, and I was occasionally taken there to play in the children’s section.

I went primarily to shoot marbles. The object of the game was to propel the marble with one’s thumb in order to hit an opponent’s marble. If the hit was successful, the other child’s marble became yours. I had a collection of colorful glass balls on which I prided myself. Not being very skillful, however, I was often unsuccessful at the game, lost my own marbles, and came home crying.

One day my mother and I arrived at Olivaer Platz and found that one of its park benches had been painted yellow with an orange-colored letter J drawn on it. The bench clearly stood out from the others. Nearby was a sign proclaiming that due to a new ordinance Jews were no longer allowed to sit on the regular benches and were subject to arrest if they disregarded the law. The yellow bench was now the Jews’ bench.

After that my mother, whom I called “Mimi,” no longer took me to the park, except for walking through it en route to the Kurfuerstendamm. She would not sit on the yellow bench. And she could not—and would not—stand around waiting for me to finish my marble game.

I still remember that bench, primarily because of one old man. I saw him only twice. Each time he fascinated me, not because he sat on a bench that had changed its color, but because of what he did when he sat on the bench.

I watched him closely as he carried a shabby leather briefcase to the bench, sat himself down, and opened the briefcase. Out came a large, dark-brownish tortoise. The old man gently placed it on the ground in front of him, presumably to give the tortoise a little air.

I assumed the tortoise was his beloved pet, possibly his only family. It was certainly a sad time for all of us. How pathetic that lonely old man was I could not fathom then. I only knew I felt sorry for him.

But in years to come, the memory of the old man sitting on the yellow park bench with his tortoise became a symbol to me.

In my mind all of the degradation and isolation heaped upon the Jewish people by the Nazi regime crystallized into the figure of that solitary old gentleman, with his reptile friend, sitting alone on a yellow bench.

(Author’s Note: It was not until September 1, 1941 that a new Nazis law required all Jews over the age of ten to wear a yellow star affixed to their clothing identifying them as Jews. The yellow star was intended to humiliate Jews, as well as make them visible targets vulnerable to attack. Not wearing the insignia carried the death penalty.)

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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