Tag Archives: Shabbat

June 15, 2015 · 8:30 am

Growing Up Jewish in the South

by Jerome Massey (Fairfax , VA)

Interviewed by Rick Black (Arlington, VA)

(Rick Black and Jerome Massey met through Olam Tikvah, their shul in Fairfax, Virginia. This is the first of a two-part interview.)

RB: What was your bringing up like being Jewish in the South?

JM: I was born in Norfolk, VA, 27th of July 1922. My mother, Mollie Leibowitz, came from Latvia when she was maybe 10 years old. My father was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1900 and they got married in Norfolk, Virginia, probably around 1918-1919.

My Dad was apprenticed to a tinsmith when he was, I think, maybe 12,13,14 years old and when he was 16 years old, he finished his apprenticeship and was considered a mechanic. He claimed that he was the youngest tinsmith-mechanic on the Atlantic coast. He stayed in that kind of work til the 1920s and then he went to several other businesses.

The economic times in the early 1920s – things were good and things were bad; people made fortunes and lost fortunes. He ended up in the shoe business and worked for Hofeimer’s – that was a chain of shoe stores. He worked for them for a while and then he came up to Washington and worked for Hahn’s Shoe Company and another shoe company and then he went into business for himself.

My mother and he broke up, he remarried to Henrietta Driefus over in Alexandria, and my sister and I spent part of the year in Alexandria and part of the year in Norfolk – that went on for quite a few years. My mother remarried to Joseph Hecht, who was a watchmaker and jeweler, so I was raised by several different families. I was raised by an Orthodox family, a Conservative family and a German Jewish family.

RB: Was your mother the Orthodox side of the family?

JM: Yes, my mother came from an Orthodox family and my father’s family was Conservative. But I guess I might be what they call a universalist. I believe that all religions are basically the same and they all teach you to be a good person. And if you follow the Bible, the Pentateuch or the Koran, they are all teaching tools to teach you to be a good person. And to teach you that we’re all human. We all make mistakes but we’re all human and God put us on the earth to take care of it and make it a better place.

RB: Did being in the military influence your faith at all?

JM: I guess so. You have some very, very bad experiences and then you wonder why you’re still here and then you finally come to one conclusion: that God puts everybody on earth for a reason, to accomplish something, and when you’ve accomplished that, it’ll just be time for you to leave. That’s more or less my thoughts on that.

RB: Did you used to have family seders?

JM: Oh, of course, we had seders all of Pesach, the first and second seder and the last seder at my grandfather’s house. All the big family was there, all my aunts and uncles and all their children. It went on from sunset to midnight. And my grandfather made his own wine. He had two kinds: he had some for the children and women and he had some for the men. I don’t know what he put in the men’s but it was much stronger than what he gave the children and the women.

RB: Did you ever help him make the wine?

JM: A little bit. He had these five gallon jugs – you know, these big five gallon jugs? – he used them. But there was never a shortage of bronfen at my grandfather’s house.

RB: What’s bronfen?

JM: You don’t know what bronfen is?

RB: No. Is that Yiddish?

JM: Bronfen is . . .

RB: Liquor?

JM: Yes.

RB: I never heard that term.

JM: It’s rye. Rye whiskey. There was never a shortage. When I was little I lived across the street from my grandmother and grandfather, so I would go across the street to their apartment and go with him to shul and he was the hazzan at the shul. I was the only grandson that went with him to shul. The other grandchildren didn’t live close by. Every Shabbas I went with him – Friday night, Saturday morning. I’d spend Friday night with him and then at the services on Saturday morning, they called him in, he would sit at this long table and discuss – I guess they were discussing the parsha of the week – I don’t know; I didn’t understand what they were talking about.

RB: In Yiddish or English?

JM: Yiddish.

RB: Did you understand Yiddish?

JM: Yes. It’s mostly gone now but at sundown, well, after services you would go back home and rest, and after sundown we would walk down to his store which was maybe eight blocks away, and open up his store, his grocery store. And he would keep that open, I guess, til 10 o’clock at night.

RB: On Saturday?

JM: Yes. You know, after sundown you can open . . .

RB: Yes.

JM: He sold live chickens and he had a shochet in the back – you know, to kill the chickens – and he had people in the back to take the feathers and everything off the chickens. You know, it smelled bad back there. And the shochet, I don’t know, I think the shochet charged him twenty-five cents or whatever it was. But that was normal in those days.

And my mother remarried to Joseph Hecht – a fine gentleman, my stepfather. He was very mechanically inclined and so he taught me how to use all kinds of tools. He said, ‘You could do anything you want to do and if you don’t do it right the first time, do it over again and eventually you’ll do it right.’ So, he would work on automobile engines or a watch – it didn’t make any difference, he could work on anything – and I learned how to do all these things. So, I was spending part of my time in Norfolk – my sister and I – we spent part of our time in Norfolk and part of our time in Alexandria.

RB: Was it much different up in Alexandria?

JM: It was entirely different because you went from more or less Ashkenazic, Russian or Latvian Jews to German Jews who had been in this country since, oh, some of ’em prior to the Civil War and right after the Civil War. So, you had – I think the word is nouveau riche – you had the rich German Jews and you had the people that had just come over from Russia. I guess just like the wetbacks who come up from Mexico, just finding their way around. So, you had two different civilizations, you might say. When you had dinner with the people up in Alexandria, always white linen tablecloths, white linen napkins, beautiful silverware, glassware and someone to serve the food to you. And your table manners had to be perfect; everything had to be perfect cause that’s the way they were. While the people down South – you might say almost, well, they weren’t peasants but there was a difference in their whole outlook. The people up in Alexandria were bridge players; the people in Norfolk were poker players. I mean, you’ve got different stratums of society.

RB: Would you go to shul up in Alexandria, too?

JM: In Alexandria, we went to the Beth El Temple. They had a rabbi that they had brought over from Germany while in Norfolk we had both the Conservative and the Orthodox shuls. We went to both of them, or all of them, and it was strange. When I went up to Alexandria, I’d never tasted bacon. I didn’t know what bacon was. Didn’t know from pork or bacon or anything like that. And they served bacon for breakfast. I didn’t even know what it was. It was an entirely different lifestyle.

RB: Did you like it?

JM: No. But it was just an illustration.

RB: But, I mean, were you aware it was kosher or not?

JM: I didn’t know. You take a six or seven year old boy and you don’t know. It was just a whole different culture. So, as I said, I grew up and eventually I went to grammar and junior high school in Norfolk, and then my father bought a house over in Chevy Chase, DC, and my sister and I came up here and we went to high school here.

We went to the best high school in the Washington area. In those days – in the 30s and 40s – people in Virginia and Maryland, a lot of them sent their children to school over in Washington because the schools in the District of Columbia were way superior to those in Virginia or Maryland. So, my sister Shirley and I both graduated high school in Washington, DC.

RB: Did you get Bar Mitzvahed?

JM: No, I never got Bar Mitzvahed. I didn’t but – well, it depends what terminology you mean. I went to Beth El temple and the rabbi handed me a great big Torah on one Sabbath that would have been my Bar Mitzvah Sabbath. He made me hold the Torah for the whole service, which I did. But as far as . . . I can’t remember reading anything. He made me hold the Torah that day, that Sabbath. When I got back home that day, my mother handed me a prayer book, which I still have in my library. She gave me [that prayer book] on my 13th birthday. It’s a little worse for wear, but I still have it.

Lt. Col. U.S. Army (Ret.) Jerome L. Massey won numerous commendations in his service during World War II and in subsequent years. He will be 93-years-old in July.

Rick Black is a prize-winning poet and former journalist for The New York Times who owns a poetry and fine art press in Arlington, VA. You can see his work at www.turtlelightpress.com

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May 11, 2015 · 6:24 am

I Changed My Mind

by Helga Harris (Sarasota, FL)

I hated you.

I didn’t hate you at the beginning.

When I was a little girl … I guess you were pretty. I didn’t notice. I took you for granted.

Every Friday night, from the time I was old enough to sit with my family at the dinner table, which looked the same each week—white linen, matching china, glistening silverware and sparkling glasses—there you were in all your splendor, the two and a half foot silver candelabra in the center of the table. With your graceful four ornate sculptured arms and the eagle at your center reaching to the heavens, you looked ready to soar. That was you. I was too young to appreciate you or your age.

You were conceived, hand crafted, circa 1860, in Austria-Hungry. My father, the youngest of five children, inherited you. He brought you into his marriage and treasured you, his only family memento. You were old the first time I saw you but what did I know?

Before sunset each Friday, my Papa came home with a bouquet of flowers. My older brother and I washed our hands and sat at the Shabbat table. Mutti lit the candles, said a prayer; Papa followed, cutting the chalah and chanting the appropriate blessing. After the amen, we ate the customary meal: gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup and of course … the roasted chicken. The vegetables varied from week to week and so did the dessert; usually it was stewed fruit compote, apple cake, cookies and tea. Cold seltzer in a spritzer bottle (it was fun to pump) and wine for the adults was always on the table.

I didn’t hate you when I was little. You were just there … like a piece of furniture or a painting on our dining room wall. I had no personal relationship with you then. That changed when I became a teenager.

The chore my mother gave me, from the time I was thirteen, was to polish you every Thursday afternoon so that you would shine on Friday night when the four candles on your winged arms were lit. By then I was old enough to see how grand you were. But polishing you was another story.

It was not fun. Did you realize that the candles dripped on you and hardened? Your body had over a dozen pieces that fit into each other. Polishing you took over an hour. I wanted to do other things … even homework. But my job was not negotiable. I had to keep you shining for the Shabbat. And I did; until I got married, left my childhood home and you. One of my wedding presents was a beautiful, contemporary candelabra.

Of course I saw you whenever I visited my parents. By then I was an adult and admired your beauty. You were and still are stunning. Who polished you after I left? It was no longer my concern. I was free.

But nothing is forever. Many years later, after my mother died and my father remarried, he presented me with his family heirloom. Papa wanted you to remain in our family. I was overcome by the gift. At that time I was in my fifties and lived in an apartment in Miami, facing Biscayne Bay. The view was breathtaking. I displayed you in my living room on a beautiful oak cabinet that my son, Jeffrey, had built for me. You stood out like a prized possession, which you still are. People took notice of you the moment they stepped into my home. You were gorgeous.

My freedom didn’t last. I was back to polishing you. However, the feeling was different; I was older, smarter and loved you. But … there is a big “but.” After two years, the salt air from Biscayne Bay damaged your silver. It pitted you like a skin rash. You looked sad. I wasn’t going to ignore your condition. I was your caretaker. Through research and recommendation I found an expert who came to my aid. In 1975, I paid $400 to have you re-silvered and treated. The maven promised that I would never have to polish you again. That sounded like beautiful music.

Decades passed. I became irreligious and didn’t light your candles weekly. But you retained the place of honor in my home. I always loved Jewish traditions and on each holiday you glowed. My favorite simcha is the Passover Seder when I invite eighteen people to dinner. (The number signifies life in Hebrew.)

When my daughter, Susie, realized your monetary worth, she recommended that I store you in the attic in case of theft. I wouldn’t hear of it. What is the point of having something so beautiful and not being able to enjoy it?

This week I polished you. On Saturday I will again have eighteen people at my Seder table. All the food and desserts are homemade … with love.

I took a serious look at you while I was sprucing you up. I, almost half your age, am of advanced age. You’re an antique and I, an octogenarian. We have a common bond … we’ve aged. Your arms are shaky and my legs wobbly. You, newly polished and shiny, and I, with makeup and extra mascara, are still good looking.

I love you.

Helga Harris was born in Berlin, Germany, and moved with her family to New York City in 1938. She attended Brooklyn College and graduated from Pratt Institute and worked as fashion designer for forty years.

A writer as well as an artist and designer, Helga has published a memoir, Dear Helga, Dear Ruth, as well as articles in The St. Petersburg Times, The Sarasota Herald Tribune and The Tampa Tribune. She has also contributed stories to anthologies, including Dolls Remembered, Doorways and various magazines. The most recent collection, We Were There, was published by the St.Petersburg Holocaust Museum. Her latest memoir is Susie … WAIT! and her first collection of nonfiction short stories is Nothing Is Forever.

She is currently co-leader of a writing program at The Lifelong Learning Academy (offered at the University of South Florida’s Sarasota campus).

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December 15, 2014 · 9:30 am

My Chanukah Miracle

by Eleanor Wachs (Sarasota, FL)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ma. Ma? MA?”

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

“What is it, Eleanor?”

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

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

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

“Please. I will take care of it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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August 25, 2014 · 7:48 am

Worms in the Flour

by Jacqueline Jules (Arlington, VA)

The sweet smell of baking bread
widened your nostrils, then your eyes.
“A girl who bakes bread!” Your face,
a nomad finding water in the desert.
It was the seventies.
Men were afraid to open doors, afraid not to.
You were ten years my senior.
“Challah,” I corrected. “Sabbath bread.
An expression of faith.”

When time allows and mood demands,
I still set out bowls and measuring cups,
yeast, eggs, and flour on the kitchen counter,
determined to knead a sticky white mess
into something smooth and solid.
It’s a noisy process. The first time
you heard the sound
of something being punched and beaten,
you ran to the kitchen to watch.

It requires more strength now,
in the house alone.
Finding the cabinet empty of yeast,
I can’t ask you to put down the newspaper
and run to the store. I almost quit today—
opening the flour tin, finding worms.

But there were empty bowls
on the counter, waiting
beside sugar, yeast, and eggs.
They taunted me, dared me to continue.
I grabbed my coat and keys.

Not long after, I came back
with new flour, ready
to start over.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of many Jewish children’s books including The Hardest Word, Once Upon a Shabbos, Sarah Laughs, Miriam in the Desert, and Goodnight Sh’ma. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com

“Worms in the Flour” appears in Stronger Than Cleopatra, a collection of poems about going forward in the face of loss. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author. For more more about the book, visit: 

http://www.booknook-eljpublications.com/store/p4/Stronger_Than_Cleopatra.html

 

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July 28, 2014 · 3:24 pm

Inheritance

by Bonnie Widerman (Irvine, CA)

There is a hole in the fabric of my Jewish childhood,
something missing, gone, nowhere to be found,
though I’ve searched my childhood home high and low—
Not for a beautifully crafted Tallit left behind.
I was never given one—no girl was in those days.
Not for a handmade Challah cover,
embellished with my awkward scrawling and designs.
Surely that fell apart years ago.
Not for my mother’s Shabbat tablecloth,
white patterned fabric with a neatly scalloped edge.
All her tablecloths lie exactly where she kept them
when she was alive.
No. The treasure I inherited and lost all at once
was the very fabric of my mother’s Jewish life,
embodied in her Shabbat candlesticks—
A wisp of white smoke threading through the air
from an extinguished match.
A blessing in two voices, intertwined.
Two dancing flames casting shadows on the wall,
knitting our family together in Sabbath peace.
After my mother passed away, her candlesticks vanished
as if they were that matchstick smoke.
When I stand in her kitchen and look up at the shelf
where those pillars of blue-green enamel and brass once stood,
I feel the weight of their absence—and hers—in my heart.
I cannot bring back what is gone.
But the pattern of lighting candles with my mother
week after week, year after year,
is woven into the fabric of my life.
It unfolds into blessing every Friday night
as I light Shabbat candles at my own family’s table
with my daughters by my side.

Bonnie Widerman is the Director of Marketing & Communications for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, a national non-profit organization. She has been a professional writer and corporate communicator for more than 20 years. In her free time, she writes stories and poetry and her work has appeared in Ladybug magazine and Fandangle. Bonnie is currently editing a manuscript entitled, Her Kaddish: A Jewish Woman’s Journey through Mourning, which she wrote during the year she spent saying Kaddish for her mother, and which she hopes to share with others facing a loss.

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February 11, 2013 · 9:03 am

Shabbat in the House on Saturn Street

by  Bonnie Widerman (Irvine, CA)

When I was very young, my parents would drop me off on a Friday night at my Auntie Ann’s house in the heart of the very Jewish Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles and go off to the movies. Auntie Ann was a petite, gray-haired woman in her 60s who was not my aunt at all — she was my father’s second cousin by marriage. But for all practical purposes, this strong-minded woman, poet, and Orthodox Jew was my West Coast grandmother. And in her home, I had my first exposure to observant Judaism.

Auntie Ann lived in a yellow stucco house on Saturn Street with her beloved terrier, Penny. It was a fascinating house for a young child, with rounded ceilings and doorways thick with mint green textured plaster that made me feel as if I was stepping inside a birthday cake. “Come, let’s bench,” she’d say as the sun began to set. I’d stand beside her in the muted dining room as she lit two thick, white candles in a simple, multi-branched candelabra and recited a blessing over them. The flames made shadows dance on the walls and I remember feeling safe and peaceful there.

Auntie Ann and I would eat Shabbat dinner together in her spacious kitchen where the sink was always full of plants, the oven doubled as a breadbox, and the light bulb in the refrigerator was loosened to avoid turning on a light on Shabbat. When it was bedtime, I’d crawl under the crisp white sheets of a pull-out bed in the brown warmth of her study.

In the morning, we’d walk to Mrs. Van Gelder’s house for “Shabbos Group.”Peeking over the edge of the serving table, I’d marvel at plates loaded with pickles and sweets and other delicious-looking foods I’d have to wait for while the women talked in the living room. I’m not sure what they talked about–the week’s Torah portion or the Vietnam War or Israel–but I will always remember the way my Auntie Ann spoke. Although she had emigrated from Russia to Philadelphia when she was a toddler and spoke English like any other American, her speech was peppered with enough “Jewish” (Yiddish) that it sounded like secret code to me.

Late in the afternoon, we’d walk back to Auntie Ann’s house, where she’d doze in her yellow arm chair with Penny curled up in her lap as the sun began to set. When Shabbat was nearly over, we’d sit in darkness until her timer clicked loudly and turned on the lamp. Later, we’d turn on the TV news to catch up on what had happened in the world until my parents came to pick me up.

On Friday nights at home, my family also had a special Shabbat dinner together and lit candles. But it was different. Being Jewish was very important to us, even though we were not very observant. But it didn’t quite permeate every moment of our lives the way it did in my Auntie Ann’s home. And although Auntie Ann is gone now and so is the house on Saturn Street, the memory of the way being Jewish wrapped around us in that house has stayed with me over the years and has inspired my own Jewish observance in so many ways.

Bonnie Widerman has been a corporate writer and communications manager for more than 20 years. She also writes stories and poetry and has had poems for children published in Ladybug magazine and Fandangle. Bonnie is currently seeking publication for her book-length manuscript chronicling the year she spent saying Kaddish for her mother, who passed away in 2008 from ALS.

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December 3, 2012 · 8:38 am

Black Hat

by Chaim Weinstein (Brooklyn, NY)

At the close of the Rosh Hashana service the rabbi asks us to be seated.

He knows our kids are squirming and hungry but he has a plan. Smiling securely in our modern orthodox Jewish building, the rabbi deputizes each of us to reach out to our increasingly right-moving Jewish community shuls. Our mission, as the rabbi explains it, is to become friendly and join a minyan and style of davening different from our own. We are to break the barriers, say hello to black-hatted strangers, go to a yeshiva minyan, shukkle, mingle and daven. We are to begin this the very next Shabbat and help bring Jews closer.

I make my way through Brooklyn streets in the fading light of a cold Friday afternoon. Hurrying in my knitted purple yarmulke, camelhair coat, and oxblood loafers to a small synagogue, I feel like I’m a robin among penguins, a rose-vine in a field of black orchids, a square peg in a grid of round holes.

I am in a black-hat neighborhood and it feels like enemy territory, even though we are all Jews.

Despite my discomfort, I smile and wish “Good Shabbos” to passersby, but their eyes merely flick past me and dismiss me with mumbled responses.

I hang my coat on the pitted aluminum coat rack in the rear of their small shul and smile: when I leave, my coat will be easy to find in this field of black cloth and marbleized buttons. Like a rebellious peacock, I parade my colors before these plain-garbed men. It is the very choice of my clothing, I know, that fences me off into self-imposed alienation. But it is only in a shul like this where I feel the need to cover my stylish clothing, to conceal my wedding-banded finger with my right hand. I resent feeling like this.

In this overheated large room of white cloth-covered tables and metal folding chairs, these Jews stare with a brazenness unbecoming true knights of the Torah and defenders of the faithful. Though I am a stranger in their strange land, and the Torah demands that they love me, these Jews stare at me instead with pity and condescension, instead of love and concern.

I pull an Artscroll English siddur from the shelf and move toward an unoccupied table. I’m ready to pray and freeze their antisocial stares with one of my own.  So I stare back at them until they look away first, and I am as pleased with my win as a petulant child.

Most congregants pray and chant, though some talk and gesticulate, ignoring the open prayer books before them. Others weave through the mass of tables and chairs during prayers, removing scholarly tomes from crowded bookcases during prayer. Their brows furrow in concentration, poring over tiny print. They are learning Torah.

I don’t understand how they can do this during prayer, from whom they receive rabbinic approval. If I had an audience with the American president or with a king, I could not read a book openly in his face during that time. How can studying during a prayer session with the king of kings, even learning Torah, be justified? Their talking disturbs me for the same reason, but I am just a visitor so I keep my thoughts to myself.

The time for evening prayer arrives, and when the sexton asks me to lead the services, I am shocked, but I simply smile and nod slowly. Some skeptics here will now hear their first-ever modern Jew leading services. Still, I give them credit for trying me out, me, with my pale-blue shirt and striped tie and unblack shoes and colorful, little knitted yarmulke.

I know my davening surprises them because it sounds authentically East European. They can’t figure me out, and that pleases me: I like being mysterious.

When finished, I get heartfelt back-slaps and smiles from some worshipers. But others are suspicious. One asks me pointblank, “What is someone who looks like you doing in a place like this?”

I am stunned but say nothing, remembering a Torah teaching about not judging a wine by its bottle.  In this shul, my Jewish worth is measured by my clothing and the style and length of my hair. But for me,  Jewishness is in the soul, in memories of childhood, rituals and laws forsaken or embraced.

A young man blocks the return to my seat. Arms across his chest, he blurts his demand: “Why didn’t you wear a black hat when you led the services? Why that tiny Pepsi-Cola cap on the back of your head?” I feel like slapping his arrogance, his holier-than-thou aura. Thoughts furiously bounce around in my head. I want to scream: “If you are all so scrupulous about keeping commandments, how could you ask another Jew such a question? Why do you ignore the dictum ‘love your neighbor as yourself’? And where are your manners and observance of commandments between man and man?”

I feel sad that I must submit to my rabbi that his class experiment was a failure, that some fellow Jews  shunned and mistrusted each other. I can forgive their social  backwardness but not their hypocrisy. I am stone-silent as I think of a song: “It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile,” so I do, and still smiling, I wish him good shabbos.

Then I replace my siddur, retrieve my easy-to-find camelhair coat, and walk out uneasily, disconnected, into the cold night.

For more than thirty years, Chaim Weinstein taught English in grades six through college in New York City public schools as well as in several parochial schools. His poems and stories have appeared on The Jewish Writing Project, and his short story, “Ball Games and Things,” was published in Brooklyn College’s literary magazine, Nocturne.

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April 23, 2012 · 7:12 am

Shabbat: Our tool for attention literacy

by Beth Kissileff (Pittsburgh, PA)

At my book group last night, one of the members told us that she had to fire a student working in her lab the next day. It was not a task she relished, but he was not performing his assigned tasks. Instead of following directions, he was checking his email or texting on his smartphone.

“I don’t understand it. He has a degree in molecular biology. He’s not stupid. But he just does not know how to pay attention. I can’t have someone like that working for me,” she explained.

We were regaled with other tales of people oblivious to those around them— a job candidate who spent the whole time checking his email while he was being given a tour of his new potential workplace and taken to lunch (guess who did not get that job), and a panel where one of the three people on the panel, speaking to a large group, had his laptop open, typing, during the time he was supposed to be a panelist and engage with an audience.

Where has our collective attention gone? How can we learn to exert some degree of control over these devices that are everywhere in our lives?

There is a simple and ancient low-tech answer: Shabbat.

Shabbat is a time to simply exist in the world, not to engage in any of the 39 rabbinically described forms of work that make a mark on the world, but to appreciate and accept what is. The enforced rest of a traditional Sabbath, with a break from the electronic distraction of emails and iPhones, creates an ability to focus and notice the world from a sensory perspective in real rather than in virtual time. It helps with endurance because even if a week is crazy, you know there will be a day off to look forward to. A stoppage of time, a cessation from work. In my Shabbat world, people take time to prepare special food, to sit and eat meals with each other, to be nicer than during the rushed work week, to converse, interact, and learn a bit of Jewish text.

Shabbat is a way to gain what writer Howard Rheingold calls “attention literacy.” http://blog.sfgate.com/rheingold/2009/04/20/attention-literacy/ The ability NOT to multitask (which has been shown by all measures to fail horribly at getting the requisite tasks done because all are done more slowly and less well when one’s attention is focused on multiple variables) will soon become a rare and sought after ability. Employers will flock for potential employees who are able to master the self-control to put down their devices and pay attention. Those of us able to turn off and unplug will be in the minority in the 21st century and valuable to both ourselves for our unusual abilities to focus, as well as to employers for our unusual skills.

The other advantage of turning off electronics for 25 hours is that it allows us to be present to those in our physical orbit. I worry about how my children are learning (or, rather, not learning) to interact with others. Although my daughter can spend the whole day texting, I don’t know whether this deepens her relationships and adds to her friendships. When complaining about this to a psychiatrist friend with a daughter the same age, she said that teens are “connected but at arm’s length.” That is it exactly, the distance that a text or an email puts between people. It is not the same as a letter with the physical imprint of another.

I spent hours as a teen swooning over letters from boys, felt a thrill to see my name written by him. Hearing someone’s voice directly on the phone is a completely different process from the impersonal one of seeing pixels on a screen, whether on a laptop, iPad or cellphone. If you use no electronic devices for a day, Shabbat forces you to be in relationship with those around you. It is the only time during the week my family of five can be found in the same room, reading, together without risk of a phone to disturb us.

I have been riding a bicycle as my main form of transportation for the last few months. Recently, there was a problem with my bike’s brakes. I didn’t realize it at first, but, gradually, I noticed that no matter how hard I squeezed, the bike would not come to a complete stop. I finally knew that I absolutely had to get the bike fixed when I was going down a steep hill which had a well trafficked street at its base. I clutched the brakes and panicked, realizing I was still careening madly down the hill with no hope for stopping as I was getting closer and closer to the hectic intersection with its whizzing cars. I finally jumped off the bike, banging up my middle-aged knees, in order to get the bike to come to a stop.

I went to my local bike store the next day. When I rode down the hill with $73 of mechanical work on my bicycle, the experience was totally different. I was in control of the ride because I knew that I could stop when I wanted. The pressure of my hands on the brakes slowed me down, and I came to a complete stop, at will. I felt so relaxed and in complete control of every aspect of my trip because I knew that I could control my ride.

For me, this is the perfect metaphor for Shabbat. It’s a day that gives us control of our week knowing we can put some brakes on and stop all kinds of distractions and work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Shabbat allows me to stop and think so I can manage my to-do lists. Stopping clears away small things so I can focus on larger ones. That kind of attention literacy is something we all need.

Beth Kissileff is the editor of the forthcoming anthology Reading Genesis (Continuum Books, 2013), and has received writing fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo and the Lilly Endowment. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in JewishFiction.net, Tablet, Shma, Zeek, the Jerusalem Report and Jerusalem Post, Moment Magazine, the Forward, the New York Jewish Week, the Jewish Review of Books, Hadassah Magazine, Slate.com, and the News and Observer (Raleigh, NC). She uses her brakes in Pittsburgh, PA where she lives with her family.

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February 20, 2012 · 9:34 am

My Neshama Yeterah

(the extra soul you acquire on Shabbat)

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

I welcome her, weekly,
later, in the summer, so I can hold on to the sun,
earlier, when it’s cold, to get away from winter’s bite.
She’s always on time,
bringing what my mother would call a “hostess gift” —
some painted daisies, or cider, or a seasonal pie.
We both wash off the day before dinner
and chat about bits of this-and-that to reconnect
before we join the others around the table.

Everyone welcomes her warmly
with the embrace you give to someone’s frequent friend.
But she’s there for me, alone,
until the next day wanes,
always by my side:
my shadow, smelling like lemon verbena,
my velvet soul,
my sister, the one who I never knew I wanted.
She holds my hand at the table
knowing it comforts me
and fiddles with my hair like hope.
She tells me not to fill up on challah,
and to breathe in this moment,
and appreciates my conversation
even when I’m silent,
even when we’re all alone.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes — including journaling and creative expression — at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania. She leads a non-fiction writing group and works with individual students, and is continuing to write Jewish-themed readings for what she hopes will become a book, In the Spirit of the Holidays.

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April 5, 2010 · 5:00 am

The Sabbath Snowstorm

by Barbara Waxman (Cherry Hill, NJ)

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”  This is one of the Ten Commandments, but how many of us “remember”?

I woke up on a recent Saturday morning around 3 a.m. feeling like a child as I looked out the window.  At first all I could see was white. The snowstorm had arrived, and so, too, had the Sabbath.

In preparation for the storm, we had gone to the food market on Thursday evening.  The lines had been long, the shelves had emptied rapidly.  People had been patient.  But there was an air of excitement. A snowstorm had been predicted!  So many times in the past the predictions had turned out to be nothing more than exaggerations. This time was supposed to be the “big one.”

On Friday, we made two more trips to the store.  We had to prepare.  On my last visit, I only had to get lettuce so I didn’t take a basket.  The celery looked good, and a mild onion would enhance the salad.  The pre-cut cabbage would make a wonderful slaw.  A few other unexpected items and my arms were full.  I stood in the express line. The woman in front of me offered to share her basket. We formed a bond talking about the preparations for the storm.

At home, I cooked and cooked.  I had food for dinner and beyond.  I was tired but satisfied.

As the sun set, I lit my Shabbat candles.  We said blessings, offering gratitude for our safe haven in the storm.  After dinner, the snow came  down lightly.  We went to sleep.

In the morning we could enjoy the gift of the Sabbath: the snowstorm.  We stayed home and cherished the day.  For the first time in a while, we weren’t pulled to rush around doing “things.”  We could just “be.”

Sometimes we need to be reminded.  Sometimes we need to remember that the liberation of the Sabbath is a gift to be enjoyed.

Born in Philadelphia  and now living in Cherry Hill, NJ, Barbara Waxman is a wife, mother, grandmother, and business person.  She has always been a student and teacher in the school of life.

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