ABSTRACT

The clearest, most lasting image of being Jewish that I have, even now when I am over fifty, is of Seder and High Holiday meals in my maternal grandparents’ spacious, low-ceilinged living room, where we ate Gram’s delicious foods in the company of our small, loving, hilariously funny family. On Pesach, Gram would say to my grandfather as he conducted the service, “Nate, hurry! The children are hungry!” People mattered, the little ones mattered, not a claustrophobic, unending, unbending edifice of ritual, much of which seemed (as we raced through it or, in later years, occasionally heard droning voices tell it in other people’s homes) to be about battles and sinning and retribution. Storytelling mattered. Laughing at oneself in the healthiest possible way mattered. In the corner of the dining room was the smaller table where we played Scrabble, Jotto, and other games of words and logic. At holiday and many other family meals, there was frequent talk about people in various kinds of need. Those joys of being together and sharing and caring and thinking and questioning were the things that I wanted for my children when I became a mother.