Tag Archives: grandfather

November 17, 2025 · 7:30 am

Matchmakers

by Steve Pollack (Woxall, PA)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ***

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

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

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

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

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

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August 10, 2025 · 7:16 am

In His Hands

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

My grandfather once held my grandmother’s hands in his. I never knew her. He held the keys of his wooden register in his hands. Canned goods. Fresh produce. Milk bottles for the 1915 free milk campaign as announced in the Newark Evening Star. He held my infant father in his hands, an American-born baby of a Litvak and a Galitzianer. He held his aging mother’s hands and when I was born, and my mother asked him for a name, he gave me the name of his mother, Bryna, and his eldest sister. Doba, who died in the 1918 flu pandemic. He once held shoelaces that he dipped in leather in his first job at a Newark tannery. He once held pencils and rulers in his work as a joiner in Russia. He once held the parcels of his Russian life as he steamed across the Atlantic at age 19 on the SS Rotterdam in 1899 to join his brother in Newark. He held the fringes of his tallis and the leather straps of his phylacteries that I now keep in a special treasures drawer. My grandfather once held the remote to his Amana television to watch The Lawrence Welk Show and used it to change the channel to The Wonderful World of Disney for me. He once held the lever to vote for Al Smith for American president after he became a US citizen. He once held the keys to a corner lot house after decades of living behind the general store he and my grandmother owned and operated. As he aged, he held the iron-wrought banister of the outdoor stairs to my father’s car. He held my father’s hands for support. He held onto life itself to the age of 93.

But with all that my grandfather held, I don’t think he ever once held me.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

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June 23, 2025 · 7:30 am

My grandfather, Bubushi 

By Sophia Nourafshan (Los Angeles, California) 

My grandfather, Bubushi, is a man who wears his Jewish identity with pride, refusing to conceal it, regardless of the circumstances. My grandfather shared a painful incident he experienced, and the impact of his words has stayed with me ever since. It was a typical Saturday afternoon when he walked out of the synagogue, his blue kippah on, tzitzit hanging visibly, a siddur in one hand, and some chicken and rice from Shul in the other. As he walked toward the crosswalk, he saw a man sitting on the cold ground, shivering in ragged clothes, with a sign asking for money.

My grandfather, always looking for a chance to do a mitzvah, went over and slowly began placing the meal beside him. That’s when the man grabbed his wrist, looked him in the eye, and yelled, “You filthy Jew,” before punching him. I vividly remember the deep wave of upset that hit me when Bubushi initially told me about this. All I could think was, how could anyone treat him that way, simply because he is Jewish? But the next part of the story completely changed how I saw the situation.

Instead of reacting in anger or fear, I learned that my grandfather calmly placed the food beside the man, looked at him, and said softly, “Shabbat Shalom, and have a great rest of your day.” I could hardly believe it. I was told that he did not flinch. He did not feel the need to fight back nor defend himself. It struck me that what he did in order to perform a mitzvah was more powerful than any retaliation could ever be.

Hearing this story made me rethink how I approach life. I was always proud of my faith, but after hearing what my grandfather had done, I felt a deep connection to his act of kindness, one rooted in resilience. I now wear my Star of David every day, not just as a symbol, but as a reminder that I should not let fear or prejudice silence who I am. Walking with my grandfather to Shul every Saturday has become more meaningful as each step with him feels like a quiet statement of who we are and where we stand.

Bubushi has shown me that real strength comes from humility and kindness in a world that can sometimes be hostile. His example has shaped how I see myself, my faith, and the importance of standing tall, even when the world tries to knock you down. I have learned from him that dignity does not come from how others treat you but from how you choose to respond. Like him, I hope to embrace faith and resilience as the core of my identity, a testament to the strength that comes from knowing who I am and standing by it, no matter what. 

Sophia Nourfshan is a current senior at Milken Community High School. She writes: “I am fortunate to have two older brothers and wonderful parents who inspire me and set an example for me every day. From a young age, my parents instilled in me the importance of Judaism and the values that define us. This story is essential for me to share, as it reflects who I am and resonates with the challenges we are facing in today’s world. Judaism is a core part of my identity, and despite the antisemitism we encounter, I will continue to live proudly and authentically as a Jew. I hope my story can inspire others to stand up for their faith and respond courageously in the face of adversity.” 

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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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January 15, 2024 · 7:30 am

What My Zayda Taught Me About Tikkun Olam

By Jessica Ursell (Campania, Italy)

My beloved Zayda Nachman Libeskind’s life consisted of circumstances finding him in the unlikeliest of places, such as when he was escaping Poland on a rickety craft in the dead of night on the River Bug with two warring armies (the Soviets and the Germans) shooting at each other from opposite sides of the river, and later when he was framed, interrogated, and beaten by Soviet agents in the remote reaches of Kyrgyzstan because of a mysterious envelope he was forced to take with no knowledge of its contents, or when years later, during a ceremony pertaining to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Gerhard Schröder then federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1998-2005) made a point of personally approaching my Zayda to express contrition for the horrors perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazi regime during the Shoah.

So when Nachman, a survivor of brutal Soviet gulags, shootouts, starvation and all manner of deprivation, traveled to the deep American South to participate in my official “pinning on” ceremony when I was promoted to the rank of Captain in the United States Air Force, it was another in a long line of the unlikeliest places for a man of his age and experience and, for me, the greatest honor of my life.

Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama was about the unlikeliest location conceivable for the youngest son of an unemployed carpenter born to an impoverished Jewish family in the industrial city of Łodz, Poland in 1909.

Jewish and proud, my Zayda actively sought to join the Polish army during the period between the first and second world wars because he was a patriot and wanted to resist the ugly Polish caricature of Jewish men as weak and cowardly.

His attempts to join the army were met with a considerable amount of skepticism by the Polish military authorities who rejected him multiple times due to his being underweight (read Jewish).  But Nachman was determined and kept applying until finally the Polish military authorities, surprised and confused by his persistence, accepted him.

When, immediately after finishing law school, I chose to join the United States Air Force (USAF) as a lawyer in what was then known as the Judge Advocate General’s Department (now USAF JAG Corps), it was nearly as unusual a choice for me who had been brought up with a European Jewish Bundist ethos as my Zayda’s was back then. 

Like my cherished Zayda, I too, wanted to prove to anyone and everyone what it meant to me to be Jewish. I wanted to defy ugly stereotypes and demonstrate that Jews are able and willing, even eager, to serve their country, in ways that historically were exceedingly difficult, or even impossible, for Jews. I wanted to battle the hateful concept of Jewish inferiority and expose the oft promulgated lie that Jews living outside of Israel are loyal only to Israel. I felt that by actively making a choice to serve my country in uniform as a lawyer, it would be a tiny, but personally meaningful way, of demonstrating my desire to be a part of something greater than myself, and to, hopefully, engage in work that would bolster democracy – a value that I find inherent in the concept of Tikkun Olam. In this respect, when I served as Chief of Operational Contracting, I was fortunate, among my other duties, to be the officer responsible for interpreting, applying, and ensuring compliance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Promotion day arrived as did my parents and my beloved Zayda. I adored my grandfather, and was thrilled that he would make the trip with my parents. Driving all the way from New York City to Montgomery, Alabama, where I was working my first assignment as a JAG, the distance they traversed was not only through several states, but into an entirely different world. They journeyed from the urban diversity and the Yiddishisms spouted by all New Yorkers, Jew and non-Jew alike (oy vey!) into the deep south, with all of its not so distant past, and still simmering present, laden with racism and overlaid with a veneer of southern homeyness, hospitality, and homogeneity.

The entire experience was, I imagine, a bit surreal for all of them.

It was definitely surreal for me. What I remember most all these years later is the juxtaposition of my background and my new reality – my New York Jewish family and my new friends and fellow airmen from all over the southern United States and the midwest – virtually everywhere else other than New York.

Zayda Nachman, with his sparkling cerulean eyes, enchanted everyone he encountered. This was nothing new. His optimism and zest for life and colorful experiences, despite all that he had endured, was contagious.

Unlike many others, who chose not to talk about and thereby relive the horrific brutality and nightmares they endured during the war, my Zayda made the deliberate choice to speak out, and bear witness to the unspeakable.

Yet, my Zayda rarely spoke about the instances where his own actions helped to prolong and save the lives of his fellow prisoners in the merciless Soviet gulag of Opalicha in Yaroslavl oblast. We know of Nachman’s actions only because they were relayed to us by those whom he helped, and on the rare occasions my Zayda referred to these events, it was only tangentially in talking about the entirety of his experiences of extreme deprivation, starvation, and brutal forced labor in the Opalicha gulag.

Years after the war, my mother heard from several of Nachman’s fellow prisoners at Opalicha who moved to Israel. They explained that my Zayda Nachman drastically understated the consequences to himself had he been caught sheltering fellow inmates. He would have been executed – not “merely” beaten. 

When I think about my Zayda Nachman’s experiences during the war and the way he met the very worst of humanity with the very best of his humanity, I am struck by the awareness that Nachman lived his life through the lens of Tikkun Olam, while he also embodied the core values of the United States Air Force – Integrity, Service before self and Excellence in all he did.

Everyone at my promotion ceremony was so warm, welcoming, and genuinely full of joy and affection for me and my family. I was deeply touched to see how everyone delighted in meeting my family especially my wonderful Zayda. It all happened as though it were a dream. Even during the ceremony I had to keep reminding myself that it was actually real – that I was standing in front of my parents and beloved Zayda and all my new Air Force friends achieving something that would have seemed inconceivable to me only a few years earlier.

My commander Colonel Turner was respected, indeed revered, by all of the junior officers. He treated us with kindness and respect and was gentle in correcting any of our errors. We all were better officers because of the way he modeled leadership. So it was a monumental honor that he and my Zayda pinned on my new rank. Colonel Turner treated my Zayda with great warmth and respect. When I look at the photo of them with their raised arms poised above my shoulders pinning on my new silver Captain’s bars the surge of pride I still feel is profound.

Reaffirming the oath, the ceremony, the cake, and being surrounded by my friends and family made for a memorable experience but the one thing that stands out above all else is the way my Zayda Nachman was beaming with pride throughout the entire ceremony and afterwards. It was, I think, a vindication of all that he had endured to make it to America, the Goldene Medina – that his Jewish granddaughter was proudly serving the country that he believed stood for truth, justice, and the American way.

Now when I reflect on the burgeoning and violent acts of antisemitism that have metastasized throughout the United States since my Zayda passed away in 2001, I know deep in my gut that my beloved Zayda Nachman’s optimism and vision of America as a safe haven from pogroms, persecution, and privation has been shattered. 

Tikkun Olam, the uniquely Jewish concept of repairing the world that my Zayda held so dear, is more crucial now than ever before. 

Nachman would be horrified and brokenhearted to see the promise of America betrayed as neo-Nazis, marching at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, shouted “Jews will not replace us” and one year later the deadliest antisemitic terrorist attack in US history that killed 11 people and wounded six including Holocaust survivors at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2018.

Antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of bigotry are now openly touted as patriotism and not just by fringe political figures. Such beliefs are now horrifyingly mainstream. 

Nachman’s famous optimism sprang from the idea that learning, knowledge, and understanding can breed tolerance. Tolerance leads to respect for differences and respect can lead to peace and even friendship.

My beloved Zayda Nachman taught me that the essence of Tikkun Olam means standing up for the rights of others even when one’s own rights are not in jeopardy. 

Besides voting, as my Zayda did faithfully in every election (he viewed it as a vital act of citizenship), my efforts at Tikkun Olam are to continue speaking out, and committing to never being a bystander to injustice. 

Daughter of an immigrant Jewish mother from the foothills of the Himalayas and a South Bronx born Puerto Rican Jewish father, Jessica Ursell is a veteran JAG officer of the United States Air Force, poet, and ardent advocate and public speaker against antisemitism, racism, and bigotry. The granddaughter of survivors of the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, and a descendant of a Taíno great-grandma, she understands in her bones what happens when intolerance, indifference, and ignorance take root in society. 

Raised by scientist parents, Jessica’s early environment was steeped in an atmosphere where questions were welcomed and asking “why not” was encouraged. Jessica lives with her husband in Southern Italy where she writes essays and poetry addressing the complex interplay between trauma, power, love, loss, and madness. 

Her essays, “At the Country Club with Superman” and “Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House,” were published by The Jewish Writing Project in July 2022, and October 2022, respectively. Jessica‘s poem, “Sedimented Rock,” was selected by Beate Sigriddaughter, former poet laureate of Silver City, New Mexico and was published by Writing In A Woman’s Voice on 18 November 2023. Jessica’s most recent poem, “A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects,” will appear in the February 2024 print issue of Down in the Dirt magazine as well as online (v. 216 Scars Publications).

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February 3, 2020 · 7:54 am

Hyman in America

by Herbert J. Levine (Sarasota, FL)

Born down the street from Boston’s Old North Church, my grandfather Hyman was the first American-born child of Jacob and Jennie, so his family fondly called him Hyman-in-America. His mother was one of two sisters Levine who married two brothers Krasnapolsky, who had the good sense to take their wives’ last name, so that their American children didn’t grow up with names like Hymie and Morris Krasnapolsky.

I never met this grandfather for whom I was named, Herbert having substituted for Hyman, because my mother didn’t want the bullies calling me Hymie (they Herbie’d me instead). He had seven brothers and two sisters. The brothers mostly died of heart disease, so we Levines watch our cholesterol. I wear a gold ring that was his, a mermaid ringing its edge, with a garnet in its tail, and our shared initials in Chinese-y script in the middle. I have the well-worn tefillin that he received for his bar mitzvah and used all his life, quite small and still useable more than a hundred years later. I had his Hamilton gold pocket watch until our house was robbed and also the pin from his fraternal order, the Knights of Pythias, which featured a medieval-looking helmet and crossed lances, pinned to a velvet cloth in a leather folder, one of my childhood treasures.

This order that was so important to him, the Knights of Pythias, took as its founding myth the legendary story of two friends, Damon and Pythias, students of the Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras. The story goes that Pythias, sentenced to death by a tyrant, asked to go home to settle his affairs and was allowed to do so only because his friend Damon stood surety for him until his return. That he did return so impressed the tyrant that he freed the loyal pair and kept them on as counselors to his court. The motto of the latter-days Pythians is the founder’s creed: “If fraternal love held all men bound, how beautiful this world would be,” which goes a long way to explaining why my father so often quoted to me that part of Polonius’s speech on male friendship, which he described as his father’s favorite: “The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,/ Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”

When my father gave me an edition of the Twelve Minor Prophets for my Bar Mitzvah, he said his father had given him the book and told him to make his philosophy of life from each of the prophets. At that time, Martin Luther King was quoting Micah in his world-shaking speeches: “Let justice flow like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” so it seemed a powerful idea to me. Both my father and my Levine grandmother loved to quote another of Micah’s memorable utterances, “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God,” so it’s likely that this verse also summed up my grandfather’s creed.

Grandfather Hyman was something of an orator, so was designated to give the annual Yom Kippur appeal at the community’s one synagogue, even though he was neither a successful businessman (he worked at a coal company weighing the coal trucks before and after their deliveries), nor renowned for scholarship or piety. Apparently, his oratorical flair was what was called for. His surviving books also show his affinity for oratory – Emerson’s Essays, which were first delivered as public addresses, and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, in which the poet presents himself as a grand teacher to America and the world.

Whitman, who loved laborers, might have celebrated him as a jack of all trades. There’s a picture of him smiling broadly wearing a carpenter’s belt with a hammer suspended from it and behind him, one of the bunks at Camp Young Judea that he had helped to build, which generations of his descendants have attended. 

As I grew older, I heard darker stories — that he had to be carried home drunk from a Simchat Torah eve festivity, that he had occasionally snuck out with Gentile friends on a Saturday night to eat non-kosher food in Boston’s Chinatown. Fifty years later, my father was still burdened by these memories. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to pass them on as the shadow of his father’s legacy.

Toward the end of his life, Hyman had a stroke and sought to recover his faculties by practicing penmanship. We have in his hand a short popular poem that he copied in an elegant, calligraphic script. This poem can be found on the Internet, under the words of its refrain, “All I Got Was Words.”  The stanzas speak to me of his life – like the poem’s anonymous speaker, he got no fine clothes from his parents; they gave him no car nor sent him to college. What he got were words that embody a way of life, “Zog dem emes,/ Gib Tzedakah,/ Hub rachmones/ Zei a mensch.” –Tell the truth, give to the poor what is just. Have compassion. Be a mensch, the sort of person with whom one is proud to be associated

Herbert J. Levine published his first book of poetry, Words for Blessing the World, at the age of 67. His previous books were scholarly treatments of Yeats and Psalms. To learn more about Herb and his work, visit:https://benyehudapress.com/books/words-blessing-world/

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July 3, 2017 · 8:35 am

Pidyon Haben

by Gerard Sarnat (Portola Valley CA)

“Every first-born male among your children, you must redeem.”

— Exodus 13:13

Redemption’s a primitive mitzvah commanded in

the Old Testament to occur on my grandkid’s 30th day

when a Kohen from the priestly patrilineal tree of

Aaron is handed 5 silver shekels by the boy’s father.

While our alternating amused and distraught daughter

nurses off in a dark corner, ultra-orthodox little girls

clothed from head to toe wrap garlic + sugar cubes

in gold lamé lace bags that their subjugated mother

hangs for kenahorah-poo-poo-poo knock on wood

good luck to shoo away devils — after which she checks

that the fancy sheitel covers her wifely shaved skull.

Compared to the newborn’s bris with the mohel

hacking off the infant’s foreskin, this ain’t nothin’.

But having successfully bit my tongue, all said & done

till the next one, these rituals reinforce why I’m an atheist.

Gerard Sarnat has spent time as a physician and social justice protestor in jails,  built and staffed clinics for the marginalized, and spent decades working for Middle East peace. His work, which has appeared in over seventy magazines, including Gargoyle, Lowestoft Chronicle, and The American Journal of Poetry, has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

For more information about Gerard Sarnat, visit his website: GerardSarnat.com.

 

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December 1, 2014 · 7:00 am

A Passionate Life: Portrait of My Grandfather

by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)

“Retain integrity without succumbing to authority.”

So my beloved Saba advised me on my 18th birthday. “Don’t let anyone interfere with your endeavors to develop an independent way of thinking,” he told me. “Think first; afterwards argue or act. Don’t lose your countenance under duress.”

Saba (Hebrew for grandfather) was my mentor and anchor, who encouraged me to strive for excellence and showed me that I could do anything to which I set my mind. He taught me to be humble, ethical and empathic and encouraged me to stand up for what I believe in and not be afraid to admit I had made a mistake, learn from it and move on.

After all, that was the way he always behaved. Saba underwent many transformations in his long life, from Jewish scholar to Zionist rebel, laundryman, world traveler, benefactor, thinker, writer and friend to many. He lived throughout as if he was on an insatiable intellectual quest. As he wrote to me, “life is full of exciting curiosities, joy and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries”.

Saba was the second son born to an Ultra-Orthodox family of textile manufacturers and fur merchants in the central Polish town of Zdunska Wola near Lodz. He was named Berl Dov Gross – one of about 50 Berls in the Gross family! His birth date was given as 16 December 1906, although a question mark always remained over that date, the family joking that he had changed it to make himself slightly younger than his future wife Chana.

His mother died while giving birth to him, and his father then married her younger sister, who sadly would not prove to be a good stepmother to Saba and his older brother. This second union would produce three more sons and a daughter, all of whom were to perish in the Holocaust. Indeed, Saba’s father would be the last Jew to have a full religious burial in Zdunska Wola.

Years later, a study of local Jewish cemetery records would reveal that Saba’s mother had actually died in 1905, proving the family’s suspicions to be correct all along.

He had had good reason to make himself younger than he really was, helping him to escape Polish military service and immigrate to the then British Mandate of Palestine in 1925 – one of only a few members of his extended family to escape the subsequent reign of Nazi terror.

For many years, Saba would beg his family to flee, but no one would listen. Tragically, when they later turned to him to help them escape, he was no longer in a financial position to do so. It was a heavy legacy, which he bore stoically but did not allow to hamper his zest for life and all it had to offer.

The family belonged to the Gerrer Hasidic movement, then probably the largest and most important Hasidic group in Poland. While Hasidism generally promotes spirituality and joy through Jewish mysticism, the Gerrer Hasidim emphasize religious study and the objective service of God. Forbidden to learn anything but sacred texts as a child, Saba nevertheless managed to sneak secular books under his bedclothes, learn violin, and even find a tutor to teach him mathematics and other worldly subjects.

Although he rebelled against his religious upbringing, it would stand him in good stead in later life, enabling him to cite Jewish textual sources with ease. He would often recall being taken as a young boy to another town to meet the Rebbe or leader of the Gerrer Hasidim, describing a crowded room where he and other boys literally hung from the rafters to see what was happening.

As an adolescent, Saba became a member of a local Zionist movement and announced his desire to join the pioneers in Palestine. His father would only agree on condition he enter into an arranged marriage. His bride Chana was from the nearby city of Lodz, and the young couple was married in 1924 and left the following year for Tel Aviv. Chana’s parents and sister also decided to follow their lead and move to Palestine, only to make the fateful decision to return to Poland when their money ran out soon afterwards.

Arriving in Tel Aviv without a trade, Saba learned about textiles and proceeded to combine study, both secular and religious, with work. He and Chana would come to have two children, Naomi (my mother) and Moshe. A generous man, Saba was happy to share the little he had with those less fortunate. His strong individualist moral convictions and sense of justice, however, also placed him on a collision course with the powerful Histradrut or Labor Union, finally resulting in him returning his membership card.

He set up his own laundry business in Jaffa, but it was destroyed by fire during the Arab riots of the late 1930s, which were protesting against Jewish immigration and land transfers. Thus, the family was left without a source of income, but as Saba would later reflect in a letter to a friend, he would come “through the hardest years of 1929-39 unscathed, not having bowed at any time to any person”.

According to family legend, Saba had no option but to go down to the harbor, where he found one ship departing for South America and another for Australia. It was July 1938, and fortunately, he chose the vessel heading for Melbourne, promising his young family that he would send for them as soon as he could.

War, however, was to intervene, and it would be several years before he could afford to purchase even one ticket for a family member to join him. Meanwhile, back in Tel Aviv, Chana was forced to resort to housecleaning to feed her children. Having arrived in Melbourne without a word of English, Saba worked hard whenever he was able. When unemployed, he spent his time reading in the public library and listening to records in a local music store. He would then, at times, feel obliged to spend his meager income on classical music records instead of food.

Eventually, he managed once again to establish his own laundry business, sweating over hot machines and lugging heavy sacks of laundry up and down stairs. A recent letter from the daughter of one of my grandfather’s former employees vividly describes the tough work and conditions: “It was extremely hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. No such thing as heating or cooling and the dust from the washing was thick on all the beams… They were happy times but you had to work for what you got.”

After the War, Saba was finally able to bring his family out to Australia, starting with his teenage daughter Naomi. By then, he had begun to travel overseas, and over the years, he would visit exotic places before it became fashionable to do so, such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Pacific Islands and even Dutch Guiana (Suriname) by freighter, maintaining a travel schedule that would exhaust someone half his age. He reveled in the adventure of being an independent traveler of modest means, although as he grew older, the advent of mass tourism with its package tours and controls disillusioned him considerably.

In 1946, he spent the entire year in China, shortly before Mao Zedong came to power, only returning to Australia when his family and friends lied to him that his factory had burned down. While in Shanghai, he assisted European Jewish refugees with their emigration to Australia. In Melbourne too, he would help newcomers from Poland and Israel to become established.

He and Naomi enjoyed a warm relationship and were well matched intellectually, spending long hours in discussion. Saba was a handsome man, and many, upon seeing her on his arm, found it hard to believe they were father and daughter.

Eventually, his son Moshe joined Saba in the laundry, and by the late 1950s, had taken over management of the business. Chana by then was living in Melbourne too. Although separated from Saba since 1938, they never officially divorced. He had a home built for her in Tel Aviv and continued to support her in Australia. For the rest of her life, Chana would live with Moshe and his wife Yona, helping to raise their growing family.

Now free to focus on his intellectual pursuits, Saba moved to London for a while, where he eventually set up house with a Hungarian-Australian artist. The relationship would last for some years during which they traveled widely, but by the late 1960s, it was over, although they remained friends.

Fascinated by the ancient world, Saba spent about thirty years studying Israelite society and in particular, Abraham and Moses. The result was his book, Before Democracy, in which he attributed the Israelites’ survival to their tribal way of life based on family and individual responsibility. He controversially argued that their transition to a centralized monarchy was an ill-conceived and retrograde step “but a stone’s throw away from despotism”.

Reluctant at first to have his life’s work published, Saba preferred, as he wrote to a friend, to “preserve my integrity and end my life as an individual who refrained from partaking in the rat race of publish or perish”. He ended up, however, battling unsuccessfully to have the book published for several years. Finally offered a contract, he withdrew his work before it had seen the light of day, refusing to make the major changes the publisher required.

In the end, he never found the “daring publisher” he hoped for, and the family ended up self-publishing the book, although sadly, by the time it appeared, he was too ill to appreciate it fully.

Saba endured several bouts of ill health, which on occasion left him scarred, but not beaten. He was like a cat with nine lives, rebounding from each episode with renewed vigor. Eventually, however, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease – the same illness, which tragically, would later come to afflict Naomi too. “I am losing my ‘I’,” he told his daughter, by which he meant he was losing what made him whom he was as a person.

My last memory of my brilliant Saba is of him sitting in the middle of his room, endlessly twisting a rubix cube around in his hands. He passed away on 8 July 1994. To this day, I still regret that I did not learn more from him about my Jewish heritage while I had the chance.

Almost ten years earlier, he had given me a pair of silver candlesticks from Israel as a wedding gift, fondly expressing the hope that I would remember him each time I lit the Sabbath candles.

Every Friday evening and on numerous other occasions, I remember him as my beloved Saba, my teacher and my friend, from whom I learned to question, to reason and to explore. In my mind’s eye, he remains the invincible hero of my youth, strong and independent, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder and striding away, as he did when we bid each other farewell at the airport for the last time.

May his memory be a blessing.

Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia. A former journalist with the Australian Jewish News, she previously worked in publishing and now serves as vice-president of Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. Her work has appeared in online publications including the Jewish Literary Journal, Jewish Daily Forward, Times of Israel, Eureka Street, Alzheimer’s Reading Room and Online Opinion, as well as The Jewish Writing Project. You can read more of her work at shirasebban.blogspot.com.au

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