Yesterday was Easter Sunday. This year the holiday follows Purim.
And Passover is just a few weeks away.
We celebrate them all.
As a child, our world consisted of Jews, Jewish holidays, and the
Beth Israel synagogue center in Derby, Connecticut. We went there
every single Friday night. My mother had some friends who weren’t
Jewish, but mostly, Jews came over to the house. We ate together, and
celebrated life’s occasions- there were always many. Jewish holidays ,
Thanksgiving, birthdays, new life, and death. We lived in the
Naugatuck River Valley, in a town called Ansonia. For many years I’ve
tried describing Ansonia to people who asked. But I never quite nailed
the ethos of the town. It was a craggy place, small and industrial.
Not beautiful, but compelling and even a little mysterious.
A big ball bearings factory called Farrell Birmingham was one of the
town’s centers. The factory started in 1848. Today, they employee
about 100 people (it was much bigger in my childhood) and now they
manufacture plastics.
It’s always been a working class town, founded by Anson G. Phelps in
1848. He was wealthy man who started the Ansonia Clock Company.
I spent much of my childhood walking through town, over the bridge on
top of the Naugatuck River to the beautiful old library.
The main librarian, Julia C. Steele, lived next door to us. She was not an
easy person, but she loved books and I did too and that connected us
both for years. My mother too was a big reader.
She belonged to three libraries in the area, and she spent a lot her time
reading. The town, like many places, was a tribal place. Religion was
often the tribal glue: Italians went to their Catholic church. There was a
Catholic church that was Irish. Blacks went to a Baptist church. The
small Jewish population were members of a synagogue in the
neighboring town.
School was where we all mixed.
I would ask my school friends to takeme to their churches. I wanted to
see more of the lives I didn’t know.
After my Bas Mitzvah, I had a period of wanting to be More Jewish
somehow. But I wasn’t sure what that meant. Our Rabbi, who taught
Aramaic at Yale, brought scholars from other religions to speak to us
at Hebrew School.
Eventually I left, for college and then, to make a life.
There was so much about Judaism that I loved then, and love today:
especially the way that studying the religion was more about questions
than answers. I worked hard all my life to have friends who were
different from me: different ideas, different religions, different notions
of what life can be. In the eighties I married an Armenian, who didn’t
have much relationship to any religion. We decided early on that we’d
celebrate everything – or as much as possible, anyway. We adopted a
child from Chile, who married a colored woman named Chesray from
Capetown. We helped raise her niece, who calls us her grandparents.
And we have a second grandchild, given the Hebrew name AHAVA, a
name she heard in a black church where her grandfather was a pastor.
One of Ahava’s favorite books is The Story of Purim. We celebrate
many holidays with the kids.
I know now what I didn’t know then: there’s a strong connection
between gaining and losing. Mine is a rich and colorful world, and
I am glad to celebrate all that I can. But last week at a funeral at
B’nai Jeshurun, a gorgeous synagogue on the Upper West Side,
I remembered for the first time in years what it felt like to go to a
Synagogue every Friday, to know all the people in the room, to have
the same beliefs.
This Easter we had a meal that Noah called Thanksgiving light. At the
meal we celebrated that we were all together. Our new neighbors
came by. People who live in the post office. They met because their
respective spouses were cheating with each other. A local baker from
Burkina Faso, his native American wife, and their two small kids. A good
friend, a Jewish woman who left New York City and lives in the country
full time. A single mother with an adopted son from Ethiopa. A couple
from LA who live in the country part time. There we all were,
together for a meal. Celebrating difference, and
togetherness, and what we have in common. Hamantaschen was one
of the many desserts we ate.
I would like to call your blog “Some of the many reasons I’m glad I know Esther” 😊
Reading this warmed my soul… thank you. 💜
I love all the diversity in your family and among your friends. Creates a world of understanding and compassion.