Tekiah: A safer, simpler time

Holiday memories remain

SARA NUSS-GALLES

As summer wanes and high holidays approach, I examine my deeds and thoughts of the year as we Jews are obligated to do. Optically I am far-sighted - my vision improves with distance. And increasingly, this describes my perspective on life, as well. Each passing year brings life into sharper focus.

Back in the 1950s, when we came to America from a displaced persons' camp in Germany, my parents and we four children settled among first-generation Christian Poles in Chicago. They believed that speaking Polish would enable them to earn a living in the New World. Chicago's little Warsaw, with its kielbasa-eating, blue-collar workers and babushka-clad hausfraus, was my parents' America.

My America was something else. I fell hard for the white bread world of "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Father Knows Best," where accents, immigrants, and Jews were nonexistent. Ricky Nelson never had peanut butter on rye bread with seeds (mit sids, my parents said). His mother, Harriet, never "pooh, pooh, poohed" her children to ward off an evil eye. And churches on these sitcoms were a far removed from the chaotic shul where I languished each yontiff (holiday).

During Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we found our way to an ancient, dilapidated synagogue with ancient Jews, remnants of a once-bustling Jewish neighborhood. My father and the other men davened loudly, each at his own pace, while my mother and other women followed along. Page numbers were never announced and it was sheer mystery to me what was being said. But my job was to "shaa shtil," keep quiet, and the notion of making services relevant to kids would have been dismissed as nahrishkeit, nonsense. So, before I began Hebrew school, I just endured.

Young as I was, I observed that American New Year's entailed parties, streamers, sequined and spangled dresses and staying up late. In fairness I did observe that both traditions had countdowns. Americans counted to midnight, when champagne corks popped, people kissed and I twirled my Purim gregger at the television screen.

But the Jewish countdown, an inventory of sins and pleas for forgiveness, was less compelling. I knew no Hebrew, so even the sins failed to intrigue me. It was not until I wandered off and unearthed a siddur with English that my interest piqued. I skimmed the transgressions savoring those I deemed most foul. And throughout, ever captivated by drama, I beat my absent breast.

Ironically, the service that interested me was the one I had to miss, Maskir Neshu-mas, the memorial service. Each year, as if demons pursued her, my mother suddenly gathered us up and hustled us out of shul. We were warned to remain outside.

We waited and told ghost stories and waited and frightened ourselves. I imagined that the souls of my parents' families, who had died during the war, entered the old sanctuary and floated through the air, like ghostly figures in a Chagall painting. Both thrilled and terrified, I feared that the spirits might snatch me back to Poland.

Eventually, my mother returned. She was subdued and it appeared that she had been crying. Was she upset that she would not see her family for another year, I wondered? We did not speak of such things.

Eventually, we left shul, and returned home to our yontiff meal. My father made kiddush and we ate apples and honey for a sweet year. Then my mother's bounty began. Sweet gefilte fish crowned by a carrot ring, biting horseradish, and golden chicken soup with hand-made lokschen, egg noodles, elixir for this worship-worn child.

Then, fork-tender brisket, roasted potatoes and carrots, and challah to sop up the juice. My belly was near to bursting, but holidays meant dessert, a rare treat in our house, so I persevered. A compote of plump, juicy dried fruit, heavy on prunes and raisins, light on costly apricots, and accompanied by light, rum-laced sponge cake. Throughout this feast my mother served, carried, cleared. Only when we had nearly finished did she sit down to eat. And, one by one, we wandered off to digest.

My parents are gone, my siblings scattered across the continent. Despite miles, decades and quantities of apple and honey, those early years and holidays remain vivid for me. Happily, my parents' America and mine have intertwined and melded in the foods and smells and traditions that now sustain my husband and me and our own children.

We Jews are blessed with talents born of necessity. We move in the world, the world changes around us, and still we maintain tradition. In this tradition I wish you Shana Tova, Happy New Year, and may all be inscribed in the book of life.

NEXT>> Shevarim: Commemoration

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