Tag Archives: mothers and sons

February 19, 2024 · 7:30 am

Cover Photo

by Dennis Gura (Santa Monica, CA)

My mother brought back from France,

Sometime in the 1960’s,

An oversized book, these often-termed

Coffee table books, meant to be

Casually perused while comfortably seated.

She kept the tome prominently displayed, 

Moving the book from living room to family room

On occasion as if to insure that

Friends and family would encounter it.

In French, we could not read it. 

And she and I would spat, mildly, 

About it, for the cover photo of this

Photo book was gruesome, and was meant

To be: entitled La Deportation, a hollowed-

Eyed survivor stared dully out.

When I would come home from school,

I’d turn it face down, the photo 

Too difficult to see while sitting 

With a morning cup of coffee. 

I’d leave the house and, upon

Returning, be greeted by the grieving

Face front portrait. My mother never 

Chastised me for flipping the  book, and,

When I’d complain how disturbed the image

Left me, she’d simply say: we must remember. 

I miss my parents, who died natural deaths

In the natural course of days, and now

With pained reluctance, I must say I’m relieved

That they are exempt from witnessing again

Images as, perhaps, more gruesome.

This is a book which I cannot 

Flip over to avoid the image and

Alas

Will need to be left face up

To instruct us again

That we must remember. 

Dennis Gura is a father, husband, and an engaged and serious Jew who tries to understand a complex and confusing world as best as possible. A native Angeleno, he has been deeply engaged in Jewish thought and experiences his entire life–the ethnic, the ethical, the secular, and the religious.  He was privileged to study at Machon Pardes in 1982-83, and has since bounced around various LA synagogues and Jewish groups.

If you’d like to read more of his work, visit his Substack page:https://dennisgura.substack.com

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August 14, 2023 · 6:58 am

Bar Mitzvah

by Perri Weinberg Schenker (Cincinnati, OH)

Like Moses, you stand poised to ascend,

wrapped up in the tassels of your courage and your fear.

Man-child, my child.

Child of God, child of green grass,

of ocean waves and snowflakes,

of flames that never consume.

Surely you know—surely—

that today you will leave behind

the spindly legs and tender leaves

that propelled you here.

Before this crowd of sinners and supplicants,

you will shed that skin, and rise.

Will the mountain expand you,

braid your soft sinew into knots?

What will you learn from the pebbles beneath your feet?

Man-child, my child,

Child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

square your shoulders

so they can bear the heavy stones.

Plant your foot into rock, foot into rock,

finding the rhythm, 

finding the crevices where secret knowledge hides.

Wedge yourself a foothold

in the footsteps of your fathers,

and climb

—away from me.

Perri Weinberg Schenker is a writer and editor in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she focuses on academic publications, textbooks, medical manuscripts, and marketing communications. She has always been a closeted poet, and “Bar Mitzvah” is her coming-out poem. Perhaps she’ll share more in the future—who knows?

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January 23, 2023 · 6:30 am

Reflections on a Wall

by David Drimer (Kingston, NY)

Every time I visit Jerusalem, it feels like the first time.

There is a force, a powerful magnet, always drawing me to the Kotel. No matter what prosaic thing I may be doing in the city, it’s always on the fringes of my consciousness. As I wander the streets of the Old City, inching ever closer, the pull becomes stronger.

As much for this reason as for any other, this is the essence of why I make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem every few years.

Finally, I approach the Wall in silence, if not awe. I enter the Plaza and move closer, keenly aware of those around me. Immediately I put my forehead against the Wall, my hands above my head, feeling the heat of the rock. I instantly marvel: “How many tens of thousands – hundreds of thousands – of my Jewish forebears have prayed here in this very spot?” Suddenly, I am – as I once titled a poem – “alone amongst them.”

Candidly, my thoughts quickly turn introspective and soon lead to grief. I unbury my personal pain, the pains of my loved ones, the pains of the world. I consider each in turn. My emotional response is far from unique. As David Wiseman wrote for the Israel Forever Foundation, “If tears could melt stone, the Kotel wouldn’t be standing.”

I bring little notes of prayer to place in the Wall. One is to my mother Doris/Devorah Leah (z”l), the other is to my father Gideon/Moishe Gidon (z”l). What I know of unconditional love, I first learned from my mother. She was sick for a long time, suffering in acute pain daily for many years. I have often looked for meaning in her suffering. I have still not found it. On my father’s 90th birthday, his last, I wrote him a card that said, “Whenever I have a tough ethical decision to make, I think, ‘What would my father do?’” It was true then. It remains true to this day. It’s a hard path. It has cost me. These are the mysteries of life, my road to travel. I consider the totality of their lives and speak my heartfelt prayers to them partially aloud, but sotto voce.

In this quiet period of meditation, I ask for guidance in solving my and my family’s problems, guidance on how to be a better man, a better father, a better husband. I seek guidance on how to best serve the interests of the Jewish community. It’s my career, it’s my calling, my hope is to do it the best I can. My single biggest remaining ambition is to bring my and my wife’s hopes for our Holocaust Awareness Initiative to full fruition. I pray unabashedly for help.

Time spent at the Kotel sobers me up a little. I start to breathe easier and become more cognizant of the peace of the place, more aware of the simple grandeur of this plain stone wall, a literal wreck for thousands of years.  I begin to sense relief. I have put down my burdens.

I finally remember to pray for the Mets to win the World Series. It can’t hurt. (NOTE: It didn’t work; eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.) I don’t bother with the Jets anymore. That ship sailed long ago.

My feelings now drift towards an increasing feeling of serenity and joy. Look at this amazing place. This phenomenal tradition. The spiritual power of this Wall calls people of many religions to dip their toes in the waters of Judaism.

I no longer think of myself as an especially “spiritual” person. Figuratively, I’m the man who blocks the door, while others behind me pray, at least temporarily but blissfully unaware of the looming threat of the outside world. I choose to be alert while others seek transcendence.

But in this place, just before we greet Shabbos, its transcendental for me, as well. It has also been written, again by Mr. Wiseman, “If hopes and dreams could make these stones fly, there would be a wall floating around somewhere in space.”

Eventually – I have no idea how much time has passed – I turn away.  The women of the wall (“My women of the wall”) have yet to emerge. I learn later my daughter went back to pray twice. My wife, who lost her mother just one year ago, finally emerges teary-eyed. I know precisely what she was praying about. But they are tears of joy. Her mother was a remarkable, powerful woman. My wife is the living embodiment of her mother’s very strong Jewish values. Ina Frey/Chaya Tsura (z”l) looms over our lives every day.

We leave, refreshed. Renewed. Reinvigorated. More inspired by our faith than when we entered. We exit the Plaza more committed to our cultural imperatives of Tzedakah (Charity) and Tikkun Olam (Repair the World).

Such is my “tongue’s poor speech,” as the 11th century Spanish Jewish poet Solomon ibn Gabirol wrote, on praying at the Western Wall.

David Drimer is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Ulster County (UCJF) and a co-founder of the National Holocaust Awareness Initiative (NHAIonline.org). He had been national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, (ZOA), and Associate Publisher/General Manager of the Forward newspaper. He had been a longtime executive and publisher at Knight Ridder newspapers and the Economist Group. He was recently named a Human Rights Commissioner by the Ulster County legislature. He also serves on the Ulster County Task Force for Preventing and Responding to Domestic Terrorism.

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December 12, 2022 · 6:00 am

The Rebbe’s Blessing

by Steve Meltz (Clifton, NJ)

It was a 98° Tuesday night in the summer of 1974 when my mother parked her green Ford Pinto along Eastern Parkway at the corner of Kingston Ave in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  

My mother, brother, sister and I were headed to 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (of blessed memory) with whom we were about to have a one-on-one meeting called a Yachidus (Yiddish for “At one with”).   

This was arranged by a friend of my brother Dan’s named Yossie who he had befriended at a religious summer Camp we had both attended in the Catskills called Gan Israel. The camp was run by the Lubavitch (also known as Chabad) who are a Brooklyn-based Chassidic group whose leader we were about to meet.          

Dan had casually mentioned to Yossie, that I was unable to have my bar mitzvah in our own synagogue. I was 12 at the time and had also met Yossie at Gan Israel and was taken by how kind, gentle and genuine a person he was and at summer’s end we said our goodbyes.   

What I did not know at the time was that he was from one of the most prominent families within the Lubavitch community and had arranged for this meeting, a great honor. Normally one would have to wait over three years to have an audience with the Rebbe and Yossie had arranged it in less than three months.

I later learned that among the Lubavitch community, having a one-on-one meeting with the Rebbe was like having an audience with the Pope and was among the highest honors one could be given within that community. I suppose because it was arranged so quickly and easily, I did not realize at the time just how big of a deal it was. 

770 Eastern Parkway (referred to as just “770”), was originally a three-story Gothic revival mansion built in the 1920s. Over the years, as the Lubavitch community had grown, this building and a large apartment house next to it on the corner were joined. Thankfully this original structure had remained intact and had been added to rather than torn down and replaced.  

The evening sky had turned dark, and the only available light came from a few evenly spaced streetlights. As we approached 770, the light grew stronger as it came into view in all its splendor. It was dramatically lit from below and looked like a structure from a medieval university. 

As we entered the upper level, we walked through a small vestibule with a 15’ ceiling and a single naked bulb high above our heads. To our right were two adjoining rooms each with long wooden tables and benches that had clearly seen better days. The tables we piled high with books of all kinds scattered everywhere. At those tables were 35-40 men engaged in the study of Torah, Talmud, and other sacred texts. Typically made up of small groups of 2 to 6 men who ranged in age from 20 to 70, these study sessions often turned into debates about interpretations of passages and texts and were often loud and lively and at the same time very passionate and exciting.

I had only been active within the community for about two years and in that time had visited Crown Heights many times for Shabbat weekends and had prayed in 770 many times before, but being here now felt very different. 

As we walked through that entrance usually reserved for men, I could feel the eyes of those around us. Looking in our direction and no doubt thinking, they must be important if they’re getting to meet Rebbe, and I was thinking the same thing.

The Rebbe’s private office was on the floor just above ground level and he usually met people on Tuesday evenings throughout the year. 

As the leader of a worldwide religious movement who was also a brilliant rabbinical scholar and fluent in 17 languages, he was consulted regularly by his followers on virtually all matters affecting their future.  

Questions like: “who should I marry?” or “should I start a business?” or “what profession should I pursue?” or “what course should I take in life?” were just some of the questions the Rebbe was requested to answer six days a week.

Because this was (and still is) a society in which arranged marriage is practiced, anyone within the community who was contemplating marriage (both male and female) would write to the Rebbe for both his guidance and his blessing. 

We were led to a dimly lit corridor with some 20-30 other people and were left standing in a 5’ x 25′ hallway meant to accommodate no more than 15 at most. There we waited with Yossie who had met us on our way in. For close to an hour and a half we stood in relative silence and only whispered so as not to disturb the meeting currently under way as a steady flow of men and women were ushered in and escorted out of the Rebbe’s office in 15-to-25-minute intervals. As I stood there, my mind turned to… What if?

I had noticed on several prior occasions when praying in the great sanctuary hall on the floor below that every time the Rebbe entered or left the sanctuary, men of all ages would scatter and hide from his gaze. When I asked a friend why, he said it was believed that the Rebbe had the ability to see into a person’s soul just by looking into thier eyes.  

It had suddenly occurred to me that in a few minutes I would be looking directly into those eyes. What if it is true? What if he could see into my soul?  What would he see? Even at the tender age of 12, I knew I was no angel and was certain I had broken at least two of the ten Commandments. Seeing the righteous flock scurry like cockroaches as he entered and exited a room only magnified those fears. After a quick and reassuring look from Yossie, the Rebbe’s office door opened, a couple exited, and we were waved in.

My mother and I sat in the two chairs directly in front of the Rebbe’s desk and my brother and sister sat in two chairs placed against the back wall of his office. The Rebbe was standing as we entered the rather small room with a 1950s style florescent desk lamp as its only source of light which gave the room an eerie, film noir quality. With him were two assistants who stood in the shadows. 

As he began to speak to my mother, he looked directly at me. I found myself focused not so much on his words, but on his face which looked like the face of Moses. He had piercing blue eyes and a very full, almost entirely gray beard that fell to the middle of his chest.

Even all these years later, it’s hard to explain what I was experiencing. I knew instantly that I was in the presence of a truly great man. He gave off an aura that was nothing short of holy and angelic and wore a traditional long black coat (1860s style), a white shirt, and the signature Fedora worn by nearly all his male followers.  

While still looking at me, the Rebbe, in a fairly deep and slightly Yiddish-accented voice, said, “So, Mother… You look like you have a heavy heart.” It was at that moment that I began to believe that he really could see inside a person’s soul.

I should explain that the reason I could not have my bar mitzvah at my hometown synagogue was that my mother, a divorcé and mother of three, had been engaged in a long-term affair with the rabbi of our congregation in a small town in northern New Jersey. We had been active members of the synagogue and been welcome at all religious and community events until the affair was made public. Once it was discovered, we found ourselves virtually excommunicated from the synagogue and the Jewish community. As a result, I was without a place to have my bar mitzvah. 

In my mother’s defense, the rabbi (who was also a practicing psychologist) had been “counseling and comforting” a fairly large number of divorcees within the community and many years later it came to light that he was by legal definition a serial sexual abuser and had taken advantage of both of his positions as a rabbi and therapist by having had many such affairs with similarly vulnerable women. Many years later, I found out that he had been defrocked and his titles (both rabbinical and doctoral) were stripped away from him. Sadly, there were no apologies to any of those he had wronged or to the families whose trust he had for decades betrayed.  

In trying to respond to the Rebbe, my mother spoke in a restrained and strictly measured, barely audible voice, no doubt trying to figure out how she would explain the salacious and sordid details of the situation to the Rebbe… 

“Well, you see there is a problem…,” she began, pausing to take a deep breath as though she were taking a looooong drag of the cigarette. She was entirely on her own. I sat about two feet to her left facing the Rebbe’s desk and dared not look at her. I had held my breathe for so long that I was forced to take in a breath so deeply that I sounded like I was genuinely stunned. 

The room was so still and quit, it suddenly seemed even smaller to me. What could she reveal in front of her children and what, if anything, did we know? 

What could she admit to the Lubavitcher Rebbe about the affair she had had with our Rabbi at home? She was an adulterer and had to own up to it. 

Would she have the courage to confess to the sins she had committed, even if it was by coercion? This was an absolute defining moment for my mother and might have signaled a turning point in her existence. I glanced to my left ever so quickly and saw only the silhouette of her chest rising and falling rapidly. 

After what seemed like an eternity, she slowly began… “You see,” again a long pause… “My son cannot have his bar mitzvah at the shul in the town where we live, because…  because… “

 I shot a quick look over my shoulder and saw my brother and sister out of the corner of my eye, but there was not enough time or light to make eye contact. 

It was obvious that she was struggling to carefully choose what to say next when the Rebbe who had sat down behind his desk, leaned forward, placed the palms of his hands on his green desk blotter, slowly pushed his chair backward, and once again stood up. His measured and deliberate movements seemed to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. Slightly slumped, he walked slowly to the front of the table and leaned against it in a decidedly reassuring and connected way. Standing only a few feet from us both, I could barely see his face but there was a glow that reminded me of Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments standing at the burning bush as God spoke to and through him. 

He slowly crossed his right arm over his left and wrapped his right hand around his voluminous gray beard and began stroking it in a downward motion. His hand was slow and soothing as if he were petting a cat or caressing a loved one. 

Though he was not particularly tall, looking up at him from my seated position he seemed larger than life with his shoulders slightly slumped forward, but despite his less than perfect posture he had a very real presence about him and it was clear to me that this was indeed an honor.

It was obvious that my mother was struggling for the “right” words and the Rebbe picked up on it. 

“So,” the Rebbe said in a low empathetic tone deeply connected to the obvious difficulty my mother was having. “So,” he again repeated, “he’ll have it here,” he said in a tone of voice so matter of fact that it seemed to answer a great ancient riddle. 

“Excuse me?” my mother said in a voice that immediately betrayed her surprise and relief at the same time. Her voice, which was usually very deep and akin to Lauren Bacall’s, jumped a full two octaves higher. 

“When you say here, where exactly do you mean?” she asked slowly and deliberately in an effort to clarify what she was sure she could not possibly have heard. 

“He will have his bar mitzvah here at 770,” the Rebbe repeated. And in those nine words it was as if all of her problems were resolved and in some odd way she was absolved of the sin which which led to our being here, at least for the moment. 

With those nine words, she was effectively let off the hook, and with that realization she began to cry uncontrollably.

In my mind I was thinking, did this just happen? Did the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the head of a worldwide Chassidic movement with thousands of followers, just offer to let me have my bar mitzvah at 770? 

The enormity of this kind of honor is difficult for one who is not Orthodox or Chassidic to grasp and would be equivalent to the Pope offering to perform my confirmation himself.

 I too felt the sudden urge to cry as I looked into the Rebbe’s eyes with abundant gratitude but held back my tears knowing that it would not be befitting for a boy who was soon to become a man. 

My mother’s tears finally subsided and the meeting, which has lasted for only about 15 minutes and which felt like suspended time, came to an end. It was during those 15 minutes that I knew he was going to be my leader and that I was going to be one of his disciples.

For almost a solid 5 minutes of the full 15, the Rebbe stared directly into my eyes, but I didn’t feel exposed or scared. I felt connected to him in a very real and spiritual way as though he were my grandfather or King Solomon the wise. His eyes were the kindest and most compassionate I have ever seen before or since.

At the meeting’s end, my brother and I stood and shook the Rebbe’s hand as we turned to walk out the door. My mother had to use all of her power to restrain herself from throwing her arms around the Rebbe and giving him a giant kiss (which was strictly forbidden). 

The irony was not lost on me that I was going to have my bar mitzvah at 770 instead of in the town where I grew up because that rabbi couldn’t keep his hands off of women who were not his wife.

As we left the office, I felt physically lighter, as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I could tell that my mother was still in shock as I saw Yossie standing in the hallway with a big smile on his face. 

I smiled back but couldn’t speak. “So, nu? How was it?” he asked as he escorted us out of the vestibule and through the doorway that led back out onto the street. 

“He’s absolutely w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l”, my mother answered with a genuine hint of awe in her voice that I–and I’m certain no one else–had never heard before.

“Steven will have his bar mitzvah here at 770,” she said, with a voice still in a relatively high octave, which betrayed the fact that she was clearly still in shock. 

I could see that Yossie had a hard time comprehending what my mother had just said and he too became silent. As he walked us back to the car through the humid night air, the look of surprise and happiness for me never left his face as we said our goodbye’s and drove off into the night. 

It wasn’t until several years later that I came to fully understand why. In all his years as Rebbe, he had only done this a handful of times and it was usually an honor reserved for lifers (those born Lubavitch) so, as it turned out this was a VERY big deal.

And so it was that on Thursday, September 28, 1975, my actual 13th birthday according to the Hebrew calendar, at the regular weekly Thursday morning prayer service at 770 that I, Simcha Yosef Ben Dovid Levi Meltz, was called up to the Torah and given the aliyah just before Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson… the Lubavitcher Rebbe (may he be of sainted memory). 

All in all, there was very little pomp and circumstance or fanfare as I completed this central and essential rite of passage in the Jewish religion which officially signified my becoming a man. I would from that point forward assume full responsibility for my actions as an adult according to Jewish law. 

I was not dragged from a hut and banished to the bush to fend for myself against wild and ferocious animals for a week with nothing but a dagger, nor was there any body-piercing involved whatsoever. I had not crossed a physical line between childhood and adulthood, but a spiritual one and I felt somehow different, like I was closing a chapter on my my old life and was beginning another as a Lubavitcher Chassid.

Unfortunately, the service was conducted in the upstairs section of 770, which I had glanced only a few months earlier when we came to meet the Rebbe. Because it was in the Men’s Only section of 770, neither my mom nor my sister were allowed to attend. 

It still saddens me that after all the struggles and crosses my mother had been forced to bear that she was denied the right to see her own son become a man according to Jewish tradition. I knew how proud she was of me, but I can only imagine how much prouder she’d have been had she been able to actually see it.

As I look back now, that was the day I officially “became” a Lubavitcher Chassid, a member of the largest Chassidic group within all of Judaism. And it was on that day that I took a leap of faith and landed squarely in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Steve Meltz was raised from the early age of 11 in the Chabad / Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn receiving a traditional Orthodox education while attending yeshivot in Brooklyn and in Baltimore, Maryland. Parting ways with the Orthodox community while in his late 20s, he began a voyage of self- discovery, and in 2007 (at the age of 45) received his smicah as a Reform rabbi and teacher. He presently serves as an affiliate rabbi in a norther New Jersey synagogue where his voyage of self-discovery continues to this day. 

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June 13, 2022 · 6:30 am

friday night

by Rick Black (Arlington, VA)

june 17, 1977

i hear

my mother’s

last breaths

28 years 

later

in my daughter’s 

first laughter

time melts

like a Dali clock

and piles up

like dripping 

Sabbath candles

inside

Rick Black is an award-winning book artist and poet who runs Turtle Light Press, a small press dedicated to poetry, handmade books and fine art prints. His poetry collection, Star of David, won an award for contemporary Jewish writing and was named one of the best poetry books in 2013. His haiku collection, Peace and War: A Collection of Haiku from Israel, has been called “a prayer for peace.” Other poems and translations have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Midstream, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Frogpond, Cricket, RawNervz, Blithe Spirit, Still, and other journals. 

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May 2, 2022 · 6:30 am

The Passover Walk

 by Jacqueline Jules (Long Island, NY)

It was his idea to go to Central Park.

 “You love to walk, Mom,” he said. 

He was 26, in law school, and not as a rule, the kind of son who suggested outings his mother would like. I suspected he felt guilty for begging out of the second Passover Seder at his brother’s apartment on the West Side. I could have absolved him. Could have said that one Seder was enough for someone who’d been glancing at his phone under the table all night. He always suffered stoically at Seders, not being a fan of matzah ball soup, charoset, or the long service his older brother liked to lead. His only joys at Passover were the brightly colored fruit slices everyone else criticized as being full of carcinogenic dyes.

“If you can’t come tonight,” I agreed, “a walk this afternoon is a nice trade-off.”

The weather was glorious for early April. Sunny and sixty-five degrees. His step was uncharacteristically peppy, pointing out blooming flowers he said I’d like. I panted sometimes, trying to keep up, not daring to ask him to slow down, afraid he’d think I was too tired to continue. Time alone with a grown son was worth sore feet later on. 

He was a proud tour guide, insisting we visit Belvedere Castle, an attraction I hadn’t seen on any previous trips to New York. 

Reaching the balcony and the panoramic view, he grinned at me, sharing the small endearing space between his two front teeth.

“I knew you’d love this, Mom.” 

We leaned against the railing for a good twenty minutes, admiring the greenery, framed by the Manhattan skyline. I felt so full, so grateful he’d given me these precious hours.  

“When I’m old and gone.” I touched his arm, rock solid under his light jacket from lifting weights. “Remember how happy you made me today.” 

It was a year before his diagnosis. Colon cancer, stage four.  Neither of us ever imagined what kind of gift this day would become, how at Passover, I would be the one left to recall our animated walk through Central Park in place of his bored presence at seder. His strong legs striding beside me, still pulsing with life. 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications, and she is the author of 50 books for young readers including four Sydney Taylor Honor winners, two National Jewish Book Award finalists, and ten PJ Library selections. To learn more about her, please visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com.

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March 28, 2022 · 7:30 am

My Mother, A Jewish Southern Belle

by William Levine (Belmont, MA)

In a Yankee cemetery in 2006, my eulogy for my Atlanta born and bred mom, dead at 82, didn’t do her  justice. I didn’t play Dixie. I had contemplated using Elvis’s version from 1972, but my sense of political correctness trumped my Southern born and raised mom’s legacy.  

While I was growing up in suburban Boston in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Dixie was the only song my Boston born dad and my mom asked orchestras to play.  It was an anthem for mom.

Though mom lived over 5 decades in Massachusetts, and only two decades in Atlanta, she never stirred herself into the clam chowder melting pot.  She may have lost some of her accent over the years, but Atlanta and Georgia were always on her mind.  New England’s climate was always too cold and as were most of its inhabitants. She in turn always had that Southern graciousness so she fielded all her phone calls, from friend or foe, with a warm chatty, “How are you, dear.”  

Her real pet-peeve about Yankee living was the cost of it. She would often tout the cheap household labor in the South, not apologizing for Jim Crow.  Her well-off family always had live-in help and mom would sometimes sadly admit her maids raised her, an only child, as much as her parents did.  She would occasionally strongly suggest to my dad, an only moderately successful dentist, that we hire a maid.

Once as a precious elementary schooler, I told mom about the amazing Mount Rushmore in the far away   South Dakota with humongous carvings of the presidents.  She countered with Stone Mountain in Atlanta in which Southern heroes Stonewall Jackson. Robert E.  Lee and Jefferson Davis were carved into immortality.  What’s more she had actually seen Stone  Mountain in person. Whereas South Dakota in the early ‘60s might as well have been on the moon.

In the early 1960s, I asked mom about the two senators from Georgia, Richard Russell and Herman Talmadge. This inquiry most likely came after I had devoured the paperback, Meet the Senators, and wanted to get her informed opinion. I remember that mom extolled both legislators as Lions of The Senate types, ignoring their arch-segregationist credentials. 

Occasionally, her Yankee family would take a gentle swipe at her beloved South. Mom would then sometimes counter with “The South Shall Rise Again,” mostly joking.

Of course, I am raising the point that my mother sounded more like a Daughter of the Confederacy, than the grand-daughter of Russian empire Jewish immigrants, who arrived in Atlanta about 25 years after it burned down. Mom’s paternal Jewish family was large and well-known. Her father was one of 11 Bresslers and the spot of his department store in Atlanta is a registered neighborhood historic site.  Her uncle was president of Atlanta’s conservative synagogue. My mother, Irma Bressler, immersed herself in the clannish world of Atlanta’s Jewish population.  This world of temple, Jewish social events, Jewish organizations dances was the impetus for her happy teen years. She didn’t date Rhett Butler types, but was instead very happy to be popular with the boys at Georgia Tech’s Jewish frat. 

Her Jewish insularity most likely softened the antisemitism of 1920s and 1930s Georgia.  Mom was born in Atlanta in 1924, just 9 years after the infamous lynching of the Jewish pencil factory manager, Leo Frank, wrongly convicted, due to antisemitism, of murdering a young girl employee.  The Frank Case drove 3,000 worried Jews out of Georgia, though mom’s future parents were not among them.  When mom turned 1 in 1925, there were more Klansmen than Jews in the US.  The New Georgia Encyclopedia says about the post Frank trial years in Georgia, “During the succeeding decades Jews were attacked by the Klan, the Columbians, and other right-wing groups. They were tolerated but also singled out as different.”

It does seem ironic then that mom, a Southern outsider, embraced the Southern culture’s uber-maxim of “The Lost Cause” that emphasized the honor of the valor of a Confederacy fighting for states rights and home-turf protection and not slavery.  But though her innermost concentric cultural circles were Jewish, the larger, peripheral concentric circles advocating the Lost Cause were hard to ignore. Most likely she first learned of the War of Northern Aggression in the textbooks at the historic Spring Street school in the early 1930s.  From then there was Confederate Memorial Day, the statues of Civil War heroes, and social norms to reinforce her regional pride.

My mother’s racial biases were more societal than personal. Thus, she was easily awakened to the Civil Rights movement’s goals, I remember her being excited to attend a lecture by a Southern civil rights journalist in the late 1960s.  She always voted Democratic, as the South moved Republican after 1960. Most tellingly, I don’t know of any band playing Dixie for her, after a Bar Mitzvah my family attended in 1964.

Before Alzheimer’s locked down mom’s brain when she was 75, she understood that “Dixie” had become an anthem with many negative connotations. My sister and I also understood this, but we also understood that Dixie was a short-cut to her treasured Southern identity.  In 2014, we unveiled my dad’s grave marker.  Dad and Mom are buried in the same plot.  The gathering was just my son and I, and my sister and her two kids   We recited a few required prayers. Then we added our own flourish. My nephew, amped by his IPOD and Elvis, sang a few bars of his version of “Dixie.” To our family  this memorial requiem was not Lost Cause specific, or callously played.  The song just defined who mom was, a Jewish Southern Belle, for better or worse.  

Bill Levine is a retired IT professional and an active freelance writer residing in Belmont  MA.  He still prefers pecan pie to  Boston creme. 

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March 29, 2021 · 8:52 am

Shabbat Dinner Memories

by Aaron Wertheimer (Irvine, CA)

 I remember as an eight-year-old how every Friday night our car would take us to my Aunt and Uncle’s house off Greenspring Avenue in Farmington Hills, Michigan where we would slip out of the car, slithering like snakes, and I would wriggle  free from my brother tickling me (my punishment for throwing a ball at him).

“Jason, stop it, come on!”

“I’m going to squeeze all the funnies right out of you with my bare hands!”

He’d chuckle as he, too, sported the same sheepish grin that I saw on my mom’s face.

By the time we laughed our way on to the snow, dirt and ice spilling down our shirt sleeves, my mom had picked both of us up off each other. 

“Tov, we are ready!” she would say. “Wipe that snow off your face, luvadahling!”  

How I loved that word she would use to describe how much she loved us.

We wiped our boogers off, threw on our puffy jackets, which made us look like Michellin men and duck-walked our way over to the doorbell before ringing it. 

“Whoooooooooo issssss ittttt?” a sing-songy, lilting voice deep in the house would call, moving closer and closer, sounding excited and eager to open the door. 

The voice from within always seemed to feign ignorance about the giggling guests at his door, as if each time it heard us, it was the most exciting surprise it had ever heard.  This game of “Guess who?” was our little ritual between my brother and me and our uncle, whose excitedness and and eager “Who is it?” question reminded us that Shabbat was beginning with surprise, wonder, mystery, and joy. 

The only other magical surprise (that never seemed to surprise us) was when the door would fly back with such swiftness, revealing my uncle’s smiling face, just like mom’s, with the same excited smile, like he was ready to eat us all up in one delicious bite.

“Uncle Mark!  You know it’s us!  You can tell by our laugh and voice.  Come on!” we chided him. 

“Oh, I know sweetie.  Come here!  Let Uncle Mark give you a huge kiss and eat you up!  Look at that punim.  How did you get that cute?”

“I was born that way.”

“Then, what happened?”

“I don’t know.  I just want to eat!”

Inevitably, we would bust up laughing.  And the fun did not stop there. 

We would continue to hear small explosions of joy, like a pinata rupturing and gushing laughter raining down from the sky for everyone to collect and smile about, different colors, sounds, and breaths filling the room.  Shabbat was the end of the week, a time for us to eat, smile, laugh, and have time to sing songs like Shalom Aleichem and Lecha Dodi at the dinner table with family.

Every week, we would eat roasted chicken with green beans and mashed potatoes, and chicken soup with matzo balls as large as your face, food that would leave your stomach feeling as heavy as rocks, a full basket of rocks!   

On other nights of the week, we ate Kraft macaroni and cheese, bologna sandwiches, or kosher microwaveable chicken tenders.  However, on Shabbat, our family dined like kings and queens: macaroni and cheese suddenly turned into lasagna with pesto sauce, bread-covered sandwiches became braided, baked, and cinnamon sugar-dusted challah bread stuffed with raisins, cranberries, and chocolate chips, and with salted butter slathered on each slice. Most of all, chicken tenders became, melt-off-the-bone chicken cooked in pan-seared chardonnay lemon garlic sauce drizzled with parsley.  In a way, because the food was elevated, so too were we, and our house became that of a kingdom of royalty, making Shabbat a time to feel elevated and elegant.  On Shabbat, I never felt like anything less than a king.

As little kings and queens, my cousins and I would run through the island kitchen playing “Spy on the Parents Club,” a game during which we crawled on the ground like detectives spying on the parents without the parents seeing us, and, of course, we played Tag in a crowded house of 20 plus people. 

Grandma (Bubbie) was there, Grandpa (Zaydie) was there, cousin Sam and Joe, Mom, Uncle Mark, Uncle Eric, Uncle Michael were there, and even non-Jewish friends of my family would attend on occasion. On the Sabbath, I felt like I had total freedom to allow my imagination to run wild with my kid-cousins, and I felt like I was building something larger than life: a community of people from all walks of life celebrating the joy of being together.

I was happy, just as long as it was Shabbat, and I was playing and talking with family and friends.  Shabbat was a holy time to count our blessings, be grateful, and of course, throw more spongy balls at my brother, my cousins, and family under the dinner table.

It didn’t matter that my kid-cousins and I were running around underneath the dinner tables where, of course, no 30-40-50-year-old adult could have seen us.  Shabbat was a time to be in the moment, to look at the large Evergreen pine trees outside, to feel the cold crisp air, to smell the frosty grass outside, and inside to smell the barbecue coals, olive oil, and lemon garlic champagne sauce drizzled over fall-off-the-bone tender drumstick chicken.

Shabbat made me remember why I was alive: to savor each moment of life with those we cherish and to bring as much of that flavor into the rest of the week. 

Although I am 29-years-old and no longer a child throwing spongy balls at the dinner table, I am reminded of how all my detective work from “Spy on the Parents Club” helped me learn much more than simply learning to share a delicious meal with friends and family.  These Shabbat evenings were gifts from my family on how to consecrate what is most important to us all: having family and friends around, adequate health, a generous portion of laughter, and maybe a bissel food and drink, too. 

Perhaps, this is why I continue to celebrate Shabbat each week, and why I hope to continue to do so for the rest of my days. 

Aaron Wertheimer lives in Southern California, but his heart still lives on the slushy snow-scraped streets of suburban Detroit, Michigan.  In his free time, he loves to celebrate Shabbat each week by running, surfing, playing piano and drums, meditating, and dancing with friends and family.  If you would like to see more of his writing collections and creations or just chat, check out his Upwork.com portfolio page here.

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May 27, 2019 · 6:20 am

As Our Father Neared Death

by Herbert J. Levine (Philadelphia, PA)

As our father neared death, his mind raced
between fantasies and the facts of his life,
his speech like the black box of an airplane that had crashed,
the record of its journey jumbled beyond reconstruction.
My brother and I cared for him, sometimes
feeding, sometimes reading to him
from the Book of Psalms. I led him
beside green pastures and still waters
when he, in a soft voice, as if from far away, blessed me:
May God bless you and keep you. May God shine His Face upon you
until its end. Am I not the brother who wrapped himself in a tallit,
who stood before the congregation on Shabbat and holidays
to lead it in prayer to an improbable God? But all that ritual
razzmatazz fooled my fond old man and me.

After his death, my brother came every Shabbat and holiday
to say Kaddish with our mother.
She said to me every Sunday when I visited her,
“Your father would be so happy
that your brother is saying Kaddish for him.”
Thus my brother received her blessing for the great kindness
he did her, a kindness that only the living can receive.

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/

Note: “As Our Father Neared Death” was first published in slightly different form in Words for Blessing the World  (Ben Yehuda Press, 2017). The poem is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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September 12, 2016 · 9:14 am

Sabbath Candles

By Rick Black (Arlington, VA)

I tell myself these are candles of joy.
Of peacefulness, quiet and repose.
Of blessings, rejoicing
and song.

Usually I light yahrzeit candles,
memorial candles, Yom HaShoah candles.
And they rekindle memories
of those I have lost.

But tonight I light
the wicks of Sabbath candles.
The scent of their smoke lingers—
the smoke itself, too.

I recall my mother,
lighting candles years ago—
closing her eyes to usher in
the angels of peace,

the living and the dead.
Indeed, how many years is it?
The Sabbath candles alit
and their glow.

Rick Black is a prize-winning poet and book artist. To read a few poems from his award-winning collection, “Star of David,” please visit http://www.turtlelightpress.com/products/star-of-david/  Currently, he is at work on a limited edition artist book of Yehuda Amichai poems entitled, “The Amichai Windows.” You can learn more about it at his blog, www.amichaiwindows.com.

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