Jews, Bas Mitzvahs, Eating

and Rosh Hashanah

September 16 is the day of my Bas Mitzvah, many (many) years ago, at the Beth Israel Synagogue Center in Derby, Connecticut.  My grandfather, Oscar Cohen, an immigrant from Lithuania by way of South Africa (were people more worldly then?  I wonder) was one of the synagogue’s founders.  The Shul started in Ansonia, Connecticut, and is now a black church.

The congregation wanted Something Modern, and they built a new house of workship in Derby one town over.  My father was the synagogue president for a while, and so was one of his closest friends, Jack Galen.  Women weren’t synagogue presidents.  They weren’t rabbis either.  Sally Priesand, the first female rabbi, was ordained fifty years ago in 1972 by the HUC.  Today, a quarter of all rabbis are women.

We all know the world was different then, but sometimes how different is hard to remember.

Our rabbi was Theodore Gluck.  He taught Aramaeic at Yale university, and was married to an Orthodox Jewish woman named Marilyn.  In the way of the modernization of the world, he moved away, later became a therapist, and married a yoga instructor.

So much of life is like a very good novel.

Every year, around the time of my Bas Mitzvah (I could describe my Torah portion, my sophomoric speech intended to incite the Beth Israel Synagogue Center to action, a hapless task; my dress, the meal, although even I know that those particular details aren’t of much interest to most people – I bought my dress on Chapel Street at Aldon’s parlor, in New Haven, and my shoes had Cuban heels).  Still it was a big day for me standing there wondering if I had something to say to other people, wondering if one day I would be clearer about what I wanted to communicate, and how I wanted to do it.

I think about Judaism too, and what role it’s played in my life at different times.

These thoughts especially occur around the Jewish holidays.  How we all celebrate, or don’t, is a marker of an aspect of identity that, for those of us living secular lives, doesn’t often come into question.

We celebrate everything more or less by eating. 

And eating inevitably involves other people.

For me, those other people could be friends or family or someone’s mother looking for a group to have a meal.

One year a dinner guest picked up hitchhiking 90 year old Communist Jewish woman named Edna who was hoping for a ride to a nearby McDonalds for Rosh Hashannah.  My friend brought Edna to us, two years in a row.

Ours is not a predictable life, and I’m often not ever sure who will join us at this table.

As a child I was continually inviting strangers inside.

I wish I knew how to explain.  Curiosity, first of all.  And the desire, all my life, to have room for everyone who’d walk in the door.

My parents, who were not like that, especially my father, who was a considered man, my parents accepted this desire, and did not say no.

This weekend, we started getting ready for the Rosh Hashannah meal. Cleaning the yard sale silver.  Buying good horseradish.  Stocking up on noodles for kugel, carrots and prunes for tzimmes.

Next Sunday night people will arrive, and we will discuss the New Year.  We’ll use some traditional rituals, and some we’ve invented.

And we will eat.

Our Alte zoom celebration for All Holidays will be on October 17.  Details soon.

Join us if you can.  There’s plenty of room at the table.

Shana Tova to all Altes everywhere

Love, Esther

Here’s Shlomo explaining Rosh Hashanah,