Rediscovering my religion

A while back I wrote a post about feeling disconnected with Judaism. The responses from you all really made me sit back and think about how to reconnect to the part of me that is yearning for this sense of community or, as some of you mentioned, a connection with God.

I remembered how every Friday, after I came back from Israel, one of the rabbis from my birthright trip would write to us. He would summarize the weekly parsha, wish everyone a good shabbat and end the e-mail. I can't tell you how much I looked forward to receiving these e-mails. They made me stop for a moment, think, and in seconds I could see the connections to my own life.

Months after being back in the states, the e-mails became less frequent, and soon non-existent.

I remember one specific e-mail he sent after the holidays. He mentioned that we all have survived the holiday season, which ends on Simchat Torah. He talked about how this is not only the end of the holiday but also when we read the last parsha of the Torah. Most books, once we've completed them, we put on a bookshelf, and that's usually where they sit until we maybe lend them to someone or reread them.

The Torah, however, is different. We immediately finish and restart from the beginning. With this I find it only makes sense for me to start at the beginning as well.

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A tale of two brothers

It's a strange thing that death brings people together. And although it does make sense, reminding people about what is truly important in life, it's also sad to think it's possibly one of the only ways to mend broken bonds.

Imagine two brothers. Two brothers who were so close you couldn't find one without the other. Two brothers who, when younger, played with each other, shared secrets, and hugged. Then something changed. One became an orthodox rabbi and the other didn't.

In the beginning, neither of them thought it would break their bond, but when the unorthodox brother married a non-Jew, their once tightly knit relationship unraveled.

"“It's like drugs," the rabbi said. "If David had a drug problem, I wouldn't continue my relationship with him because what he was doing was wrong. I wouldn’t want to encourage him."

So for years the brothers went without speaking to one another, and in turn affected the entire family. Is this right?

First of all I should mention this is a true story, it's not a hypothetical case I put on the page to bring up a dialogue about how religious beliefs can negatively affects families.

I'm also not saying that religion always has a negative impact when it comes to family, because it often acts as an ingredient to bring families together. However, in the above scenario, it saddens me to think that because of a belief one could turn against his or her own sibling. Does religion truly turn everyone into an "other"?

Part VI: Love and loss

This entry is the sixth in a series of an oral history I did with my grandmother before her passing. In her stories, she speaks of  her parents' immigration to America from Russia, growing up Jewish in a German neighborhood and simply being a Jewish girl in the Midwest. Here are the entries in the order they were written and the continuation of her story below

• Part I: Midwest Judaism in the 1920s
• Part II: Jewish in the Midwest during WWII
• Part III: Adjusting to Jewish life in the 1930s
• Part IV: WWII and the rise of anti-Semitism
• Part V: Children and parents

Not going to college was never an option in our family. It was expected of all four of us. I wasn't allowed to go far away from home and ended up at Ohio State University.

I met this gal who was visiting one of her relatives in Columbus. The gal was working in a hospital as a medical technician. She told me all about it and I thought to myself, wow, that sounds like something I would like to do.

My father wouldn't let me go to medical school. He said, "Jewish girls don't go to medical school to become doctors. They can't be too intelligent or else nobody will marry them."

I majored in Bacteriology and Chemistry. Then I spent a year at Children's Hospital for lab technician training. I took the national exams and I passed. I got a certificate and everything.

The big thing in college was joining the Communist Party. I never joined but my brother Ruby got swept up in the whole thing. They weren't really communists, but they were sympathizers. It got them into big trouble with the government and people had problems finding jobs because it was on their records.

Part V: Children and parents

This entry is the fifth in a series of an oral history I did with my grandmother before her passing. In her stories, she speaks of  her parents' immigration to America from Russia, growing up Jewish in a German neighborhood and simply being a Jewish girl in the Midwest. Here are the entries in the order they were written and the continuation of her story below

• Part I: Midwest Judaism in the 1920s
• Part II: Jewish in the Midwest during WWII
• Part III: Adjusting to Jewish life in the 1930s
• Part IV: WWII and the rise of anti-Semitism  

The first time my water broke, I was staying at my mother's house. I put a towel between my legs and off we went. When I was having Barry, Mama and Harold's mother took me to Grant hospital. But when Debby and Danny showed up, Harold was right there waiting with the suitcases in hand. The doctors gave me something to ease the pain but I don't know what it was. All I know is that it worked and I had normal deliveries. After I had Barry, I had to stay in the hospital for a week, and when I got home, my mother had hired a woman named Bea to take care of him and me. It seemed that once we had one child we kept having more. Debby came next. She was the first of the babies to be in the new house, and then we had Danny.
    

WWII and the rise of anti-Semitism

This entry is the fourth in a series of an oral history I did with my grandmother before her passing. In her stories, she speaks of  her parents' immigration to America from Russia, growing up Jewish in a German neighborhood and simply being a Jewish girl in the Midwest. Here are the entries in the order they were written

• Midwest Judaism in the 1920s
• Jewish in the Midwest during WWII
• Adjusting to Jewish life in the 1930s

We lived on the South side of Columbus and most of our neighbors were German. 890 South 22nd street, which was my house, was one of the only Jewish houses on the block. Our house was red brick and we had a kitchen, living room, basement and one bath for six people. The kitchen had a refrigerator, stove and table. We didn't really play in there because that was Mama's space. So we took over the living room. There was one brown table in the living room but the best part of the room was the sofa and chairs. The sofa was dark mohair and the chairs were soft and fuzzy. The bathroom was in the hall from the kitchen to the living room and Ruby would always yell at me to get out because I was taking too long, and then I would yell at David and David would yell at Martie. The basement was where we had a double dexter washing machine, coal furnace and the bathtub. The bathtub was my favorite. It was white and was held off the ground by four claw feet. The basement was were we would always hang our clothes and bake liver in the furnace.

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Adjusting to Jewish life in 1930s America

This entry is the third in a series of an oral history I did with my grandmother before her passing. In her stories, she speaks of  her parents' immigration to America from Russia, growing up Jewish in a German neighborhood and simply being a Jewish girl in the Midwest. For the first entry, Midwest Judaism in the 1920s, click here, for the second entry, click here.

Food in our house served many functions, but it was especially a way for Mama to express her religious and cultural identity. In Russia, Mama's identity came from the food, and when she came to the states, it was a way for her to hold on to herself.
 
Because we are Ashkenazi our meals were different from Sephardic Jews. Although our practices were different, we still incorporated their style with ours. The most important food is fish because it is the oldest Jewish dish mentioned in the Torah. Another extremely important food in the Jewish cuisine is bread. We learned in Sunday school that bread was the basic food in Eretz Yisrael, and that it accompanied sacrifices and offerings in Biblical times. Well Mama's challah was made out of five grains wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye. On Shabbat we would recite Ha-Motsi over the two-challah loaves and my father would tear off a piece of bread and pass it around the table. Each one of us would tear off a piece until everyone at the table had a bit of bread on his or her plate. On Rosh Hashanah, my mother made the two loaves of bread into different shapes.

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Jewish in the Midwest during WWII

This entry is a continuation of an oral history I did with my grandmother on her parents' immigration to America from Russia, growing up Jewish in a German neighborhood and simply being a Jewish girl in the Midwest. For the first entry, Midwest Judaism in the 1920s, click here. 

So sixteen was a great year for me, starting with my first kiss. Then Harold taught me how to drive. My brother Ruby started driving when he was thirteen because there was no legal age, (nor was there such a thing as a license). I didn't have my own car so I would use my father's. Papa had an old brown and beige Studebaker station wagon with the panels on the sides. When it would rain, we would have to go and nail them down.

Although things between the Germans and the Jews in the neighborhood were tense, they intensified at the start of the war. Women that had always been friendly to my mother on the street began to ignore her. The ill comments and cruelty did not affect my parents; they never once doubted their faith. As the war continued the neighborhood began to clear out. First the family on the right corner, then their neighbors, soon the entire neighborhood was barren. Each day we would talk about what family had left their home and my mother and father would shake their head in disgust, as the Germans in the neighborhood fled to Germany to help fight the war.

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Midwest Judaism in the 1920s

For the next blog entries I'm going to be sharing with you the oral history I did with my grandmother. Many people forget, or simply don't know, that Columbus, OH has their fair share of Jewish grandmothers. The following story will introduce you to Judaism in the Midwest and give you a sense of what it was like for a Jewish female growing up with Russian parents in the 1920s. My grandmother's story is juxtaposed with my story, to show the difference in generations and to show how Judaism has changed within my family over the years. The blog will alternate between my grandmother and my own story. 

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I was born on May 20th, 1919 in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. I turned out to be the second eldest child, but the only daughter, of Bessie and Benjamin Greenberg. My parents were immigrants from Russia who came to the US separately in 1917. When Mama came over, she brought her three sisters, Rose, Molly, and Alta. Mama also had a brother who had decided to stay in Russia because he was in the army.  

During this time, a lot of Jews in Russia were enlisted in the army and it was safer for them to stay than for others. He didn't know what would happen to him if he left, and he was scared of what could happen to him in 'The New World.' Mama never saw her brother again. They sort of kept in touch, but Mama wasn't very good at writing. All she could do was send him money.

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A community of one

I haven't written in a while, and I apologize. The reason, however, is that I've been feeling a bit disconnected from Judaism these days. Living in Madrid for the last year and a half, the only Jewish types of things I've done have been Yom Kippur services (where I had twenty euro stolen from me) and a Rosh Hashanah dinner in my apartment.

When my grandmother was alive, and I lived closer to home, I felt a strong sense of Jewish identity. Now, living far away, and not having a Jewish community, I'm feeling, well, less Jewish every day. I'll be honest, and I hate to admit it, but I didn't even remember when Passover was this year.

I've already felt like a different kind of Jew because of dating outside my religion, and now I'm feeling like a lazy one because I'm no longer involved, even on a very traditional level. This is the farthest I've ever felt from being Jewish.

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Labels and Jewish identity

Each time I meet someone, and they find out that I write about Jewish identity, or what it means to be Jewish without being religiously Jewish, all of a sudden the only thing they want to talk with me about is Judaism. We could be having a conversation about birds, and that then brings up different places where birds migrate, soon we get to Israel, and then I'm being told that it's possible there may be Jewish birds. Or we could be talking about maybe taking continuing education classes somewhere to keep our minds active, and they ask me if I'm interested in taking Hebrew language classes, or they recommend a great Jewish film, book, etc. Of course, don't get me wrong, most of what my friends and strangers say about Judaism, or recommend to me I have an interest in, but when did having an interest in something become the only thing you are?

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