Tag Archives: tradition

September 4, 2023 · 6:30 am

What’s In A Name                            

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

Annette.
Yes, that’s right.
Like Annette Funicello
if you are old enough to remember
the most popular Mouseketeer’s
television career.

Yes, named after my grandmother,
Hannah, or, in English, Anna.
A Jewish tradition,
naming for the dead,
so their memory and names are not lost
like forgotten pages in time.
Annette is “little Anna”
but definitely not French.

Ancestors from what is now Ukraine.
Before that Russia.
Before that Poland.
Before that a genetic mutation
hurtles me back in time
to the First Temple
in Jerusalem.

We Jews assimilate
but carry our names and histories
with us where ever troubles
and travels take us.
Our names, reflections
of double or triple identities.
In Hebrew
my name is Channah Bat Shayna
and Bat Lev.
Channah daughter of Shayna
who became Jean,
Lev who became Leo
when they crossed
the Atlantic sick in steerage.

We carry our heavy histories,
sometimes unbearable,
fastened on our backs.

I asked my mother once
why she never named me
for her sister Mae,
killed by the Nazis in Poland.
She said there were too many tears
that soaked that name.

But my new great niece
is named Paisley Mae.
A red-cheeked North Carolina baby
who carries the past
as a piece of her
like a pure white pebble
perhaps smoothed over
by the passage of time
until the rough edges
of history disappear.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.

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July 24, 2023 · 7:00 am

Caught in the Middle

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

I am lucky enough to have

friends on either side

of the religious diamond, 

fundamentalists who swing from the right,

and atheists who bat from the left.

I stand squarely in the middle,

unsure which side to root for,

let alone play for.

I am caught between 

piety and protest, tradition and rebellion.

There are so many teams,

as there are so many religions.

For which team do I sign a long-term

contract on the dotted line?

The Pittsburgh Protestants?

The Boston Buddhists?

The Miami Muslims,

or the Jersey City Jews?

Doesn’t God pitch for all the teams?

Who is to say which team is best,

which team is strongest,

which team leads the league?

We are all essentially on the same playing field.

We are all part of the same cosmic lineup.

We need to feel connected,

no matter which team we play for.

We do not wish to be wandering alone.

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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December 19, 2022 · 10:32 am

The Chanukah Candles Challenge

by Dvora Treisman (Figueres, Spain)

In 2001 I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area with my cat and husband to live in Barcelona, his hometown. After a couple of years we moved to Tarragona, then further south to L’Ametlla de Mar, and then we divorced. At that point I moved to Figueres near the French border, the birthplace of Salvador Dalí. For all those first few years, I would go to the kosher shop of a synagogue in Barcelona to buy Chanukah candles. One year I made the trip, an hour by train from Tarragona, to find that they were sold out. I made do with votive candles. The next year I found that Chabad-Lubavitch had set up in the center of Barcelona, so I headed over to their shop to get my candles. One year a friend who came to visit brought me two boxes, so I was set for a while.

It was 2012 and once again I was on my yearly quest to find Chanukah candles. This was not like California where any supermarket would have them sitting on the kosher foods shelf next to the gefilte fish. I was now living in Figueres where, I am sure, I am one of only two Americans and the only Jewish person. I knew of the two places that sold them in Barcelona, but Barcelona was two hours away by train.

Girona, being only about 30 minutes away, seemed like a better bet. In medieval times, Girona’s Jewish community was an important center of Jewish mysticism. There are no Jews left, but there is a Jewish museum in the middle of the historic district. This is what was, in the middle ages and before the Expulsion, the Jewish ghetto, the area just bordering the cathedral. The museum has a shop with books, mezuzzahs, menorahs, and chanukiot, and would surely have the candles.

The entrance to the museum didn’t look how I remembered it from my visit twelve years before. When I entered, the spacious reception area was empty, except for the two young women sitting at the reception desk. Neither looked up as I approached, so I said “Bon Dia” and that roused one of them.

When I had visited before, the museum was called the Center Bonastuc Ça Porta. Bonastuc Ça Porta is one name used to refer to the famous rabbi, philosopher, and kabbalist of Girona, Moisès ben Nahman, also known as Nachmanides, also known as Ramban. Kabbalah uses ciphers among other methods in its mystical interpretations of the Bible. Maybe that accounts for why this rabbi had so many names. I asked if this was the place where the famous rabbi used to live. Apparently I had that all wrong. This was the Jewish Museum, the young lady informed me. It’s not a house, it’s a museum. It seemed she didn’t suffer fools.

Clearly this woman was not interested in welcoming me into whatever there was on offer, rabbi’s house or not. So I asked where the shop was and headed in there hoping to find more tolerance and, more importantly, candles.

The shop looked just as I remembered it. It has a dark, old fashioned bookshop feel, overflowing with books, and other curiosities, among them many menorahs and chanukiot. I asked the man if he had any candles for the chanukiot. No, he didn’t. I asked if he could direct me to where I might buy some. No, he had no idea. Probably nowhere in Girona, he told me. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that those decorations he was selling have a use, and he evidently had no interest in what someone might do with the candelabras if they bought one.

At that point, I felt disgusted with this Jewish museum that doesn’t welcome visitors and the Jewish shop that doesn’t stock candles for the menorahs it sells. It was time to move on.

I had met Jaye through my blog and we became friends. She was a New Yorker living in France near the border and we sometimes would get together up there or down here in Figueres. This time I took the train up, she hopped on at her station, and we went together to Perpignan. Her agenda was to go to an Asian grocery to pick up some ingredients, and mine was to find the kosher shop where I planned to buy those elusive Chanukah candles.

When we arrived in Perpignan we went first to the address I had found for the kosher shop. I was a little doubtful because when I looked up the address on Google maps street view, it showed a car repair shop. But I had some vague hope of a Chanukah miracle.

It really was a car repair shop. So on we went to do other things, saving the Asian grocery for last. Once there, while Jaye was collecting her cooking supplies, I began browsing around. I was enjoying myself going up and down every aisle when all of a sudden, zap! There were packets of candles that, although they didn’t have Hebrew on the packaging and didn’t come in mixed colors, seemed to be the same size as Manischewitz candles.

My Chanukah candles that year were all white, they were made in Thailand, and they fit my chanukiah perfectly. Two friends in California had offered to send me candles, but no need. I travelled two hours to a city in France and, in an Asian grocery, found the perfect candles that were made in Thailand. For modern times, modern miracles.

Dvora Treisman was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Los Angeles.  She moved to Berkeley in 1971 with her first husband where he attended graduate school at UC Berkeley and she found a job there in administration.  Years after their divorce, she married again — a Catalan from Barcelona whom she met while salsa dancing at the Candlelight Ballroom, and in 1999, at age 52, she, her cat, and her new husband went to live in his hometown.  This essay is excerpted from her recently published book No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia.  It can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online retailers, and can be ordered from your favorite bookshop. https://www.amazon.com/No-Regrets-Catalonia-Dvora-Treisman/dp/B0BM3SWN93/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YWBQOOKV14B1&keywords=no+regrets+a+life+in+catalonia&qid=1670865953&s=books&sprefix=no+regrets%2Cstripbooks%2C170&sr=1-1

She is also the editor of the book Ken Nirim: Reflections and Stories, a Collaborative Project of Former Members of Hashomer Hatzair in Los Angeles, available from Blurb. https://www.blurb.com/b/11400592-ken-nirim-reflections-and-stories

And she has a blog called Beyond The Pale:  https://beyondthepale-dvora.blogspot.com/

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February 7, 2022 · 7:30 am

A Brief History Of One Jew

by Gerard Sarnat (Portola Valley, CA)

15 years ago, we flew south to be around during our 1st grandchild’s birth, then stayed a decade which included our eldest’s #2.

5 years ago, my wife and I returned home up north that night #4, of eventually 6 grandsons, arrived at a nearby hospital.

Every Friday, when both family tree branches are in town, as well as friends, we now gather at our younger daughter’s welcoming house for Shabbos.

Although meditation may offer inklings or glimmers of some higher spirit, I am a hand-me-down true-blue once-hostile Stanford community atheist.

But since others seem at least sorta believers, it’s become much easier to hospitably sit back eyes closed while enjoying my Israeli son-in-law’s gorgeous chanting.

Perhaps particularly since those Hebrew words oy remain absolutely Greek to me. Plus who could ever get enough of multi-millennial traditions 

Such as three generations lighting candles, drinking from the grape, breaking bread, drumming together on this week’s most festive well-appointed table?

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award, plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry’s work has appeared in numerous journals and publications, including Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Northampton Review, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times, as well as in books published by university presses such as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and University of Chicago. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles, Disputes, 17s, and Melting the Ice King. Gerry is a Harvard-trained physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized, as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting his energy and resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit his website: gerardsarnat.com

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December 21, 2020 · 12:12 pm

On Watching “Fiddler” Once Again

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Like a petulant child,
I have spent much of my life
railing against the constraints,
as I saw them, of Jewish practices,
advanced by my father who came
from an Orthodox upbringing.

I protested vigorously against
Hebrew school interfering with
afternoon baseball games with friends,
the getting-up-and-sitting-down
for long hours on important holidays, 
and most notably, that my Bar-Mitzvah
was less for me than my extended family.

Yet, despite all those objections,
I am drawn back to my roots by the
familiar opening strains of “Tradition”
in “Fiddler” in a PBS special
on the making of the musical.

I have seen “Fiddler” many times, even in Yiddish,
and each time it brings me back to Anatevka,
a village not unlike my father’s birth place,
which makes me believe I still hang on to
an emotional lifeline to my father, to his faith.

I may have spent years running, but
a simple score I know so well, brings me,
with tears in my eyes, back into the fold.

And I’ve come to realize I am never that far away from the village, 
never that far way away from my father 
and from my own faith.

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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July 8, 2019 · 9:11 am

Lion of Hope

by Brad Jacobson (Columbia, MO)

Black stocking feet and no shoes.

Blue and white prayer shawl
wrapped around his head and arms.

He stands in front of the ancient Wall,
his face hidden.

Large as a lion, he raises his hands
like a street performer before the worshippers.

He sweeps his arms above
the old man in white,

above a boy
in a blue baseball jersey,
#32,

above the rabbi
in back of the Torah.

The Lion of Hope roars, and
his prayers speed like Lefty’s fastball,
soar to the top of Mt. Moriah,
pure as tears protecting a child’s prayer.

He steps slowly to a chair by mine.
I touch the Wall and hear
the Big Man whisper,
I am exhausted.

After prayers we walk together
to the Kiddush table by the stairs.

The Rabbi raises a cup of wine.
Big Man turns to sing sweet
Shabbat songs to Chinese tourists.

He shakes my hand.
Shabbat Shalom.
Be healthy. Have peace.

Brad Jacobson is a volunteer every summer in Israel in the SAREL program. He teaches TESOL at the Asian Affair Center at the University of Missouri, where he has an MEd in Literacy. In the summers he enjoys exploring places with his camera like the Old City of Jerusalem, Tzfat, and the Red Sea where he scuba dives. He has been published in Tikkun, Voices Israel, Poetica, Cyclamens and Swords, and the University of Missouri International News.

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April 3, 2017 · 9:08 am

Regarding Passover

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

I recently learned from
my religious friend, Chaim,
that “seder” means “order”.
He has no way of knowing
what passed for Passover at my house
when I was too young
to rebel against the tradition of
eating and reading, eating and reading,
while waiting hours to actually dig in,
and wanting to escape the arguments
that boiled over between my parents.
All I wanted then was to quickly
devour my meal and head for the TV,
to avoid our relatives who were
too loud discussing topics alien to me,
and asking me questions about my future
I was in no position to answer.
The whole world seemed chaotic.
Even so, my seven-year-old self
made quick work of the Four Questions.
“May I be excused,” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” my father answered,
while diligently explaining all
the fourteen steps of the traditional meal.
“Children have to be told the Passover story,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I heard the story last year,” I said.
At that age I had my own problems,
school yard squabbles and the like,
and was stressed about other things long forgotten.
His stare silenced me.
Now, mired in my seventies,
with my own children,
grown and far-flung,
I wish I would have had
a little more respect for the Passover tradition.
It could have provided more order to my life.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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May 16, 2016 · 6:20 am

Sacred Memory

Martha Hurwitz (Barre, MA)

This past Yom Kippur I was invited by the Rabbi of our synagogue to share memories of someone I loved as a segue into the Yizkor service.  I immediately thought of my mother because my memories of her are happy ones and I credit her for any good and admirable qualities I may have. 

However, I heard an internal nagging voice that said, “What about your father? What memories would you share of him?”  This was not a question that I wanted to hear or to answer.  My father was not an easy man to love or to live with.  Personal relationships and sharing emotions were very difficult for him.  He needed to be the center of attention and the one who was always right.  He believed that women should take a supporting role and made it clear that, while I should aspire to become educated and “polished,” it was in order to become a suitable spouse to a professional and successful husband, not to showcase any accomplishments of my own.

In the 20 years since I became a Jew, I have struggled with the liturgy surrounding memory of loved ones because it seems to be about the excellent examples of those who have died and how their memories are a blessing.  Clearly, memories are not always positive or, at best, may be conflicting and difficult, but in a Jewish context are considered sacred.  How can memory be a blessing or be considered sacred when it still causes sadness and confusion? I waffled back and forth, trying to convince myself that it would be just fine to go with the positive and glowing eulogy that I had prepared when my mother died.  In the end, I gathered my courage and decided to risk being vulnerable and share my struggle with the memories of my father.   I calmed my fears by assuring myself that I certainly could not be the only one who wrestles with this question.

 As the Rabbi prepared the congregation for Yizkor, I sat in a heightened state of nerves, barely able to absorb what he was saying. Fortunately I managed to retain his statement that alav ha-shalom is meant as much (or perhaps even more) for the living than the dead.  With shaking voice and trembling knees, I shared my struggle and memories of my father.

In the end, of course, it was a powerful experience both for me and for the members of my congregation.  It is clear that I am far from the only one who struggles with memory and how to integrate it into the sacred liturgy.  I ended my thoughts with “Dad, I forgive you and I love you.  Alav ha-shalom.” My father died in 2001, but it was not until that day, 14 years later, that I was able to begin to mourn for him. 

Since then I have thought a great deal about the liturgy surrounding memory and what may be the purpose of such ritual. I have begun to see that it is not so much to suggest that memory by itself is sacred or that those who have gone before us were perfect. Rather it is an opportunity to take all memories, difficult or not, and place them into a sacred space.  I know there are some memories that may be too painful and negative to ever be resolved in this way.  But remembering within the context of Jewish ritual and tradition is a way that sadness and confusion can be eased and even those who were flawed and left hurts behind can rest in peace within us.

Martha Hurwitz grew up on a farm in upstate New York and was raised in the Society of Friends (Quakers). She married into a lively Jewish family in 1983, converted to Judaism in 1996, and has enjoyed learning and studying Torah ever since, both in study groups and by reading various sources at home.  Having always enjoyed writing, she recently started a blog called “The Golden Years Revisited,” (www.cultivatingdignity.com) to explore and share the experience of getting older and poke fun at some of the myths and stereotypes regarding old ladies!

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April 4, 2011 · 7:40 am

Cousins

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Ashamed of my father’s family,
heavy accents and old European ways,
I had ignored my ancestral roots and
clinging branches that urged me to reconnect
to the shetl stories I had heard so long ago.
But when two long-lost cousins,
one a psychologist and one a rabbi –
two professions not dissimilar from each other –
invited me to their play on the Lower East Side,
where one performs and one witnesses,
I felt a gentle pull from the stage lights
back to my cultural and religious heritage with
a sudden flashback to my bubbe’s chicken soup.
Why am I attending this very Jewish play,
with dialogue in Hebrew, Yiddish and English?
The answer came with one commanding
sweep of the talis thrown over the shoulder
of one of the actors, my cousin
who now draws me back to my four year old self
when I sat with him in the summer sun
on a fire escape in Brighton Beach
and swapped childhood secrets long since forgotten.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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