Ring Out Your Jewishness ....

When you become "a woman of a certain age. . ." you have yearnings for a sense of community that you don’t seem to have time for at an earlier age. Often, the "sense of community" is triggered by childhood memories (which visit more often as you age) of the things that formed you.

In my case, it led back to the temple and the Jewish community in my big "small town" Florida, which has had the fastest growth of any of the rootless towns of Florida. If you’re not a white bubba (a particular male type with links to the old boy network) or bubba descendent, and if you are a Jew along with it, there’s an awkward welcome for you in the community of daily life. So I rejoined a temple that I had been a member of in the past, and started having dinner on Tuesday nights with twenty or thirty of my fellow community members (The number depends on how good the restaurant is – the Jewish culture leans generously on food, but it has to be good, like the new Blue Water Grill and Tavern with it’s singularly unJewish Lobster Bisque with grilled garlic bread. It may not be Jewish, but for our town it’s wonderful.)

Last Friday night there was a special Chanukah service at the temple. Our congregation, most of whom have also reached "that certain age", particularly value services where children and young families attend, because we know they are the future. Most of us older ones come out of a ghetto tradition, with Jewish grandmothers and maybe (like me) memories of being beaten and spat on as a child because you’re a Jew, of years as a child in a dim overheated synagogue hearing the sounds of a strange language while you struggle to learn it; all the Christmas carols they forced you to sing while there was no mention of a holiday called Chanukah; all the many things that help you know you are a Jew.

There’s a cost you have to pay if you’re going to insist on publicly being a Jew. Today there are fights over the school board sponsorship of opening meetings with prayers to Jesus, and public contempt for the Jewish couple who were offended when they went with their son to receive an award, who had the nerve to file suit actually demanding non-sectarian prayers. Those kind of reminders are all around you in case you start losing track of who you are.

So on Friday night I sat with my daughter and grandson at a service largely conducted by the children, with the light from a hundred menorahs lit by the congregation twinkling through the temple and reflecting from their eyes. I heard their thin young voices reciting a play and singing hard-learned prayers and songs while they wore funny home-made hats and acted the parts of Chanukah candles. They were having a good time, and so was I.

Then we went home to sample the latkes I made – not only the traditional potato latkes, but the new recipes of sweet potato latkes with spiced maple syrup, and the zucchini latkes with feta cheese. My grandmother wouldn’t have made those, but every generation gets to start new traditions, and the warm steamy kitchen and wonderful smells are the same in every generation.

My daughter said it awakened memories of Christmas and Chanukah in our interfaith household. My husband, the former Methodist minister, says something like "To be a good Christian you have to appreciate your Jewish heritage. That’s where it all came from

In past years, our family gathered around a Sunday high tea and brought out all the lovingly saved odds and ends – empty spools, empty bottles, bits of cloth and wood – and made ornaments. My son Mark made an army of Macabees out of dowels with walnut heads;

Normay, (who doesn’t speak to us any more,) made an imposing bishop with a fat-bellied Manishewitz wine bottle body, wrapped in glamorous red velvet from an old dress of mine, carrying a candle that was actually a cigarette, with a regal hat made from construction paper and half a styrofoam ball; Methodist Bill made a busty angel with cotton ball breasts for the top of the tree. I don’t remember what I made, but I remember the feast I prepared, a high-tea party: cakes and cookies, pots of steaming tea, buttered scones.

All of our children – the ones who celebrated Chanukah and the ones who celebrated Christmas – received a present each of the eight nights of Chanukah AND presents for Christmas. Chanukah is a celebration of freedom, because the Maccabees fought a revolution for it, so the presents are pretty secondary. For most Jews it’s sox and a sweater, Chanukah gelt...gold-covered chocolate coins, maybe some dime-store toys. For Christmas, because we had six children and not a lot of money, they got frivolous but mostly inexpensive things. Our children know they were lucky to be growing up in a time when that was both possible and desirable.

I worry about the young children in the temple, who live in exactly the same kind of developments as everyone else – those who celebrate Christmas, or Kwanza, or nothing at all. If the Jewish children don’t get cursed and spat on, can buy a house in anywhere they want, are never asked their religion on a job application, will they still retain their Jewishness? Does it take a fierceness about who you are to make you recognize the importance of your religion and culture and want to pass it on?

In my ghetto I was taught about the generations who came before me, who gave their lives to pass this tradition on to me, and that I owed it to them to pass it on. How many of these children at the temple have Jewish grandparents around to tell the stories, cook the special foods, remind them of who they are? Thank goodness for the Sunday school that teaches them the songs and stories. They carry a precious burden.

When the carols overcome you after playing since before Thanksgiving, and there’s nothing on television but cloying Santa Claus plays, and romantic miracles, when the church bells are ringing calling the faithful to services, ring out your Jewishness. It’s an effective antidote.

by Binnie Williams

Latkes Recipe