Tag Archives: childhood memories

April 15, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Gift

by Cynthia Bernard (Half Moon Bay, CA)

Aunty Anne always wore 
lovely dresses with long sleeves,
even on that sunny day in August
when I sat next to her
at the picnic table,
soft yellow silk slid up her arm,
and I glimpsed the numbers.

What’s that, Aunty Ann?

Oh, just something for grown-ups,
Shayne meydele, she said,
gentle fingers kissing my cheeks.
Go and play.

And so she blessed me
with a few more years 
of childhood

Until that day in fourth grade,
somewhere on the cusp between 
only myself and the larger world,
when I learned about
the six million
and began my search for understanding—
which, of course, 
I have never found.

Cynthia Bernard is an Ashkenazi Jewish woman in her early seventies who is finding her voice as a poet after many years of silence. A long-time classroom teacher and a spiritual mentor, she lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine, Heimat Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Journal of Radical Wonder, The Bluebird Word, Passager, Persimmon Tree, Verse-Virtual, and elsewhere.

Note:  This poem was first published on December 11, 2023 in Ritualwell and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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April 1, 2024 · 7:30 am

From The Old Country, Through Cuba, To The Family Duplex, Montreal

by Lisa Miller ( Lexington, KY)

For Ma—my great-grandmother

A five-year-old girl

schmaltz & gribenes, cholent, gefilte fish, chicken soup & matzah balls, tongue, chopped liver, latkes, stuffed cabbage, kishke, kasha, farfel, plátano frito, arroz con pollo, fricasé de pollo, ensalada Cubana—

The hands that smell like garlic, dill, parsley, parsnips, saffron—the kitchen—

soft, warmed, sheltering, applauding, soothing 

comfort—

Always Home.  

Lisa M. Miller is an inclusive mind-body health specialist. She facilitates therapeutic arts workshops that call in deep healing and synchronicity—a compass for meaning, intuition, and well-being. She’s an empty nester from Canada, living in Kentucky, married to her 1986 Jewish summer camp sweetheart. Her newest book, Woe & Awe, will be published by Accents (Spring 2024) Her podcast is called: The Women’s Well. Follow Lisa on Instagram: @LisaMillerBeautifulDay

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August 21, 2023 · 6:30 am

Something about the rugelach

by Carol Coven Grannick (Evanston, IL)

Something about the rugelach…

they bring her to mind 

the word rolling out like pastry dough

spreading smooth and silky, caressed then cut

they bring her to mind 

as part of the duet with Dad during nighttime travel

dark-lit stars, Yiddish lullabies in the language of then 

the word rolling out like pastry dough

with tastes of comfort and warmth and now

tenderness of hugs still desired this long time later

spreading smooth and silky, caressed then cut

fondled, filled and curled with tenderness then baked

now infusing my mind with the delicate aroma of my mother’s memory.

Carol Coven Grannick is a poet and children’s author whose award-winning novel in verse, Reeni’s Turn, debuted in 2020. Her poetry for adults and children appears/is forthcoming in numerous print and online magazines, and she has received two Illinois Arts Council grants and a Ragdale Foundation Residency for her work.

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August 7, 2023 · 6:30 am

Connections

by Liz Paley (Concord, MA)

There’s a certain time of day when the light comes in my kitchen that reminds me of my childhood home. Only recently did I start to notice it. My father died in January, on New Year’s Day, and now he and the house are gone. I miss him terribly. It’s during the late afternoon when this light comes in, and it’s the same time of day that I usually called my dad. 

“Well, good afternoon,” he always said, when he picked up his old landline. 

My father grew up in the Bronx, in a segregated neighborhood; Jews in one area and Blacks in another. So, at an early age, he understood injustice. He was the first in his family to attend college and after marrying my mother, who was not Jewish, they moved to Long Island. They built a life there for my sister and me and he was deeply rooted in the community. A local newspaperman, my father was fair and forward thinking. 

He ran for town supervisor in the 1960’s. He was a Democrat in a Republican stronghold, but also a Jewish Democrat in a predominantly Irish and Italian community. He told us that when he campaigned he would introduce my mother using her maiden name, a recognizably Italian one. It was a strategy, he said matter-of-factly. He knew he was up against antisemitism and he wanted the Italian vote. He still lost. It took me years to recognize the vulnerability and courage it must have taken for him to run for office.             

Our family embraced our different backgrounds but most of what I learned about Judaism was from my mother, not my father. He was a man who had faith in family and community, but not in religion. My mother, the daughter of immigrants, grew up in a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She went to Brooklyn College where she met my father who was seated alphabetically next to her. A schoolteacher, she tried her best to teach us about Jewish holidays and tradition. Growing up, we would celebrate with both sides of our family, and it was fun – Seders with some cousins and Easter egg hunts with others. Sometimes, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins from both sides would gather at my parents’ house. What we all had in common was a connection to each other. 

For me, though, there were times I felt I belonged to both traditions and other times when I felt as if I didn’t have either fully. I watched my mother hide the Christmas wrapping paper when she brought gifts to my Jewish grandparents because she didn’t want their neighbors to see. And I remember when the Rabbi in our town told my sister she could no longer attend Jewish youth group because a parent had complained she was there. These experiences were all part of my foundation. 

In the last few years of my father’s life, we sat quietly in the house he had lived in for over sixty years. It was the one I grew up in. I can picture him sitting in his worn black leather chair holding a pencil nub, working on a Sudoku puzzle in the New York Times, and sipping lukewarm coffee from a mug he’d poured earlier in the day. The afternoon light would fall across the room. I found purpose and love in those visits, and my father and the house anchored me. 

After my mother’s death, a few years prior, I often felt powerless. I turned to family recipes as a connector with my father. I made the dishes for him that my grandmother had made when I was a young girl. I’d make her matzo ball soup, challah bread (to mixed reviews) and sour cream cake, carefully following her cursive notes in an old cookbook. I’m not all that sure of the connection my father felt with his parents. His emotion was often kept at bay. My grandfather had failed my father in many ways, mostly through his absence. But the food helped me feel connected to my past, my Jewish heritage, and most of all, my father. 

I have unanswered questions about what my father’s Jewish identity meant to him. I feel a sense of loss now in not having discussed it more with him. I do, however, know what his identity as a newspaperman meant to him. My father instilled in me a love of words and using them to somehow try to make sense of things, even if we got parts wrong. He modeled a life of curiosity and reflection. Today, I continue to question the role of religion in my life but I do have faith. I also follow in my mother’s footsteps by trying my best to pass down Jewish traditions to my daughters. 

New Year’s Day seems like an odd day for a life to end; it can be a time of anticipation and hope. It was one of my mother’s favorite holidays and I’d like to think they spent this past one together. Someone once told me if you’re not looking for signs, you won’t find them. So I look. I notice the afternoon light coming in and wonder what my father would think of this exploration of our family’s Judaism. I watch shadows dance across the floor and listen closely for my father’s, “Well, good afternoon.” 

Originally from New York, Liz Paley worked in social services for many years. She now lives in Concord, MA where she teaches preschool. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe and Ruminate Magazine. She was a finalist in Ruminate Magazine’s 2021 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize. She has two grown daughters.

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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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April 5, 2023 · 11:10 am

Passover Table

by Janice Alper (La Jolla, CA)

Thanks to Joy Harjo

This is the table

where Zayda held court.

His grandchildren cut their teeth 

on matzah, 

made crumbs on the floor.

This is the table

where sweet red wine stained

the white tablecloth

and the little books we read

about freedom.

This is the table

where I learned to ask questions,

listened to uncles argue,

aunts disagree.

And Zayda droned on…

with a twinkle in his eye.

This is the table

stretched out

to make room for one more

who had no place to go.

This is the table

I hid under

with my cousins

giggled

played pat-a-cake

as the seder went on

late into the night.

This is the table

where we slurped hot matzah ball soup

ate roast lamb

tzimmis

sticky desserts

loudly sang Passover songs.

This is the Passover table

today,

compact,

far from its original home,

where memories resonate

with every drop of wine

every matzah crumb.

The image of Zayda

hovers over us

as we continue the tradition

with new melodies

new rituals

and ask more questions.

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, will be available on Amazon in the next few weeks. Words Bursting in Air, her book of poetry, may be obtained by contacting her at janicealper@gmail.com. You can follow Janice on her occasional blog, 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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June 27, 2022 · 6:30 am

The Ladies of the Monday Night Club

by Madlynn Haber (Northampton, MA)

When the Ladies of the Monday Night Club

met in our living room, I helped my grandmother

put chocolate candies out in crystal dishes.

I sat on the floor by the swinging door

watching the ladies who smelled like flowers.

They took their seats around the room

talking in loud accented voices.

Some were called by their last names,

no Miss or Mrs., they were just

Homnick, Goldman, and Levine.

Some called by their Yiddish names,

Manya and Malka, and some by their modern

American names like my grandmother, Ruth.

Their laughter and chatting was hushed

by a leader when the meeting’s rituals began.

The one I most remember was the collection

of money for Tzedakah, for charitable causes.

Each woman in turn rose, walked to a basket

making her donation, her addition to the kitty

in the name of an honor or blessing in her life.

A grandchild’s graduation. A daughter’s pregnancy.

A husband’s promotion. I listened to discover

if my latest report card would earn me a mention

when my grandmother took her turn.

After the sharing, there was a card game

and home-baked apple cake and coffee

The Monday Night Club Ladies, always on hand

for celebrations, came out in full force

for my grandmother’s seventieth birthday.

There were less at her eightieth and only a few

when she turned ninety. By then, the meetings

had been moved to Monday afternoons

and I had grown-up and moved away.

I hold cherished memories of sounds, smells,

and stories, I recall from my spot on the floor

when the Ladies of the Monday Night Club met.

I inherited my grandmother’s membership pin,

a fondness for women’s groups, her recipe

for apple cake, and a commitment to making

donations when good fortune comes my way.

____

Madlynn Haber lives with her dog, Ozzie, in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in the anthologyAdult Children (Wishing Up Press, 2021), Buddhist Poetry Review, Dissonance Magazine, K’in Literary Journal, Hevria, The Jewish Writing Project, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetica Magazine and other journals. Visit her online at www.madlynnwrites.com

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March 14, 2022 · 6:52 am

An Invitation

by Linda Laderman (Commerce Township, MI)

Invited to a friend’s grandson’s Bar Mitzvah I am divided,

directed to sit behind a gauzy white screen in the balcony.

My Siddur lies on my lap open to a random page.

Ancient words in a language that still feels foreign to me.

Yet I stand on command, a stranger in my old house.

Near the end of a long hardwood pew by the exit

I watch a round-faced woman, young enough to be my

granddaughter, hair hidden under a shiny black sheitel.

A bevy of blue ribboned ponytails nestle their restless bodies

close to her. In a meditative moment she stands and presses

her back against a wall. Eyes closed, she rests her fingers

in the sliver of space between her breasts and burgeoning belly,

then turns and gazes at the five fresh faces looking at her.

Each one returns her gaze, leaning toward her like a chain of flowers.

She pulls a fistful of candy from her pockets & passes pieces

of the sweets down the row, then beckons her girls closer.

Locking arms, they rise and follow her out to begin the long-skirted

walk home. Too late to catch her eye, wishing I could have told her how

I once sat & fished rock candy from my mother’s pockets, my tight

ponytail pulling at my forehead. I think of what it is to want and not want,

to separate from what is given. Boxed & bowed, waiting for me to open

the lid to take what’s there, a package I have been unwilling to unwrap.

After the last prayer is recited, I hurry down the stairs. For a minute,

I imagine I have time to catch up with the mother and her five Shana Maidelas.

 Linda Laderman grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where she has wonderful memories of walking to services and sitting in the balcony with her mother and grandmother at the old B’nai Jacob Synagogue. She earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Her news stories and features have appeared in media outlets and magazines. She returned to school in the 1990’s graduating with a Master’s of Liberal Studies and a Juris Doctor degree from The University of Toledo. Her memoir piece, “Grandmother’s Warning” was published in the summer 2021 edition of the Michigan Jewish Historical Society Journal, and later reprinted in the Detroit Jewish News. Her poetry has appeared in The Jewish Literary Journal, The Bangalore Review and The Sad Girls Literary Blog and is forthcoming this spring in The Scapegoat Review, The Write Launch and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Linda currently lives in the Detroit area. For the last decade, she has volunteered as a docent at the Zekelman Holocaust Center, where she leads adult discussion tours and is a member of the Docent Advisory Committee. 

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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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