Night of Awe-A Mother at Kol Nidre
HIRSHAN, MARJORIE SCHONHAUT
Inter marriage NIGHT OF AWE A Mother At Kol Nidre MARJORIE SCHONHAUT HIRSHAN I've come to Washington, D.C., to be with my daughter and her new gentile husband— to join them for Kol Nidre. I...
...He urges synagogues and Jewish communal organizations to open their gates to these Jewish individuals who have fallen in love, and, in the words of Martin Buber, are making of one's "existence a co-existence...
...Finally, they left for America...
...his eyes are closed...
...They are willing to stand for hours, holding their children in their arms through the entire service, for elsewhere they have found gates closed to them...
...They dreamed of a better world as they went to secret gatherings in the woods at the edge of town with other young people who longed for new answers...
...ol ni...
...Rabbi Harold White, who honors Georgetown University with his Jewish chaplaincy, is one of the few rabbis in the nation's capital who addresses their existence, who counsels them, who embraces them...
...Students in faded dungarees and sweatshirts continue to enter hastily, and burrow into the crowd, making places for themselves against the wall, alongside the festively clad men and women, next to the newlyweds, near the young parents holding wide-eyed toddlers and squirming infants...
...Behind me stands a dark-eyed, curly-haired young woman, a sleeping infant in her arms...
...A slight young man, in a Yemenite silver-embroidered yarmulke, holds the nervous hand of a petite, pug-nosed, strawberry blonde who reticently reads the prayers...
...In my runaway imagination, I see my pious ancestors, parading apparitions, bearded and swaddled in their long tallesim...
...Pesheleh disappeared mysteriously on her wedding night...
...The couple to the right of them appears timid...
...Here they are considered, as couples, Jewish...
...Around her neck, a delicate chain holds a Star of David with an insert of a tiny cross...
...They turned their backs on the God of their parents and attended meetings of the Bundists, of the Zionists...
...It is standing room only in Gaston Hall this chilly eve of Yom Kippur, so crowded with young Jews that they must share machzorim (high holiday prayer books) with their neighbors on either side...
...I have to be Jewish in my own way...
...I look at my daughter, radiant, reading with Tom every word in the prayer book...
...They burst forth, like shooting stars on the bimah before me, and they point long, chastising fingers at us as they descend the low steps to parade with the Torah...
...Gently, I squeeze her hand...
...It will help me express my Jewishness...
...I am not turning away...
...My grandfather, the stately chazan, leads them in song as they float close to the ground, circling the shul so the congregants can kiss the Torah...
...I feel the pulsing warmth of her blood, my blood, flowing...
...It is crowded and we sit, thighs touching, high above the bimah in the majestic balcony of steepled Gaston Hall, the drafty, usually Catholic, chapel at Georgetown University...
...Armed with the literature of I. L. Peretz, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem and the Yiddish poets, I followed in my parents' footsteps, working for Jewish organizations and believing passionately in Jewish peoplehood where every Jew, anywhere on earth, was my sister or brother...
...dddrrre...
...his voice is sweetly nasal, like an Israeli reed flute, and its cry pierces me as my grandfather's did when I was a child...
...She wears his thin gold wedding band...
...The chazan throws back his head and sings to the heavens...
...I am drowning in youthful memories, sweet as apples dipped in honey...
...He is speaking of his dedication to the importance of the individual...
...I try not to sob as I cry softly for them...
...I am not turning away," she tells me again...
...I clutch at my thin fall jacket for some warmth, holding it together at the neck as I remember the sizzling radiators in the overheated Brooklyn shul of my youth...
...I sit next to her, the lovely and beloved flesh of my flesh...
...I, the granddaughter of Gitl Soifer and Yankl-Mekhl-Khazn's, was over-caressed and carried as an infant, nurtured on warm stories of my grandparents' raggedy, glorious shtetl in Galicia...
...There was Pinyeh der Roiter Shadkhen (the red-bearded matchmaker), who deserted his family and ran off to America...
...The drama of the stories flamed inside me and touched my young heart, binding me to the soul of Skalat, the shtetl...
...I begin to understand the congregation...
...Because of my attachment to secularism, tonight, sitting in the chapel at Georgetown University, is the first time I have been to shul in more than three decades...
...At the same time I was hoping my children would form a bloodline from past to future so that as adults they would carry forth the values of justice and community caring inherent in the words of our prophets and kings...
...I am fasting this year, Mama, even though we never did at home...
...Nothing, no one, no woman or man, no God, is stronger than this touch...
...however, it was said that every evening at twilight, the wind sobbed at the rabbi's door and his windows turned opaque, clouded with the intense heat of her tears...
...Here they are welcome...
...Times are changing...
...These individuals should not be forced to choose between love and religion, he continues...
...My daughter reaches for my hand...
...Surely, I decide, I can join the fight for her right to sing Kol Nidre...
...I look into my daughter's eyes, shining with sensitivity and intelligence, with conviction and hope and love...
...She is my tomorrow...
...Pretty Pesheh-Raizl's die Toibe (the deaf one), who pined for the rabbi's son, was given to Lazar, der Alter Shneyder (the old tailor), a stingy, wrinkled old man...
...Many wearyarmulkes...
...As an adult, I taught only until three "I am fasting this year, Mama, even though we never did at home...
...Throughout their early lives together they probed the changing values in the surrounding society...
...Back in the Georgetown chapel, I struggle to fight the tears...
...Scattered through the hall are Jews who choose to express themselves by wearing traditional tallesim...
...Feivish der Krimer (the cripple), who mangled his own ankle to avoid having to serve in the army where you were forced to eat chazar (pork...
...I am surrounded by young Jews and their spouses, overflowing this Elizabethan hall, couples who have come to pray where they feel welcome...
...The romance of my parents, Sarah Esther and Shimn Dovid, whose youthful love affair never ended, was the envy and romantic fantasy of my cousins...
...My eyes continue to survey the hall...
...o'clock, and that gave me free time to work for the education of the next generation—to breathe life into Yiddish a while longer and perpetuate Yiddish culture...
...The joy and pain of these tattered people I never met was real to me, more colorful than my commonplace life growing up in Brooklyn...
...eyes aglow with dedication and jaw set with determination...
...The passing on of stories, one to another, forged the goldeneh kayt, the golden chain that binds all Jews...
...here they can express their Jewishness...
...Sarah Esther and Shimn Dovid were distant cousins who met as children in Skalat...
...Even though Tom isn't Jewish, I still feel strongly that I am a Yiddisheh tuchter (daughter) who will emphasize meshpo-cheh (family) and loyalty and Yiddishkeit in my home, and it is very important to me that you know that I am not turning away...
...Tom and I can do it...
...Her husband holds their two-year-old, and with his free hand he clasps their shared machzor, reading the English in the prayer book along with her in his Irish brogue...
...The woman is beautiful, and could be chosen for a poster of a prototypical Israeli sabra...
...I was formally educated in - the political philosophies of my parents...
...Their quick minds yearned for secular readings and new philosophies that were forbidden them...
...The slender chazan is a tenor...
...It will help me express my Jewishness...
...Although the shtetl no longer exists and I never walked its crooked streets, I knew then and remember still the details of its meager houses, the bustle of its marketplace...
...I see the young faces intently following the service...
...I knew the strengths and weaknesses of each of its hearty inhabitants...
...Often I have felt that if called upon, I could give my life for her...
...He tells us that he rejects the notion that the survival of the group requires stifling the unique individual soul...
Vol. 12 • January 1988 • No. 10
