Bubbe's Place: Stories

Yiddishkeit

Women, like my mother, would not return to the synagogues of their youth. They had been exposed to another world where women could be equals. They had been exposed to a world where women could study, could vote, could be equal to men. My mother had lived in Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution. She was the youngest child in her family. She was the only child to get a secular education. She could not practice a Judaism that did not let a woman stand on the bimah, or touch a torah, or even sing out praises to the Lord. She knew that God had created men and women equal, just not identical. She was a liberated woman and she raised two sensitive, liberated daughters.

There were also Reform Jews. We did not know any Reform Jews. Everything we heard or read about them led us to believe that they were only a half a step away from the church. Men didn't wear a kippah or a tallit. In our crowd, men who themselves did not belong to a synagogue, or wear a head covering or a prayer shawl, were shocked by this. They were convinced, without knowing a reform Jew or entering a reform synagogue, that these people really belonged to a church. They called them apikorim. (An apikoros or epikoros is a non-believer) When I was in high school, I met many girls who were second generation Americans. They had been educated in Reform Synagogues. I was surprised to find that they were knowledgeable Jews.

In those days some Jews formed Ethical Societies, which practiced no rituals. These societies did away with what they called archaic traditions and superstitions. They met once a week. They had no Rabbis or ordained leaders. They believed that if you were a good person, an ethical person, you were a good Jew too. They did not have any schools and in time they disappeared. /p>

There was another large group of Jews. These were the gastronomical Jews. They were men and women who loved Jewish foods. For some it was Jewish delis. They needed a fix., .a corned beef sandwich or a pastrami sandwich. The sandwich would be accompanied with a knish or matza ball soup. These people did not keep kosher. Other gastronomical Jews loved the Jewish dairy restaurants. Philadelphia had the Ambassador Restaurant. New York had Ratner's on Delancy Street. There, Jews could eat blintzes, borsht, varenikas, and gefilte fish.

When I was a child most people that I knew did not keep kosher and that was O.K. What was scandalous then, (and today I see it as hilarious) were the Jews who kept three sets of dishes and three sets of pots. They had their dairy set, their meat set, and a third set for treif (unclean i.e. not kosher). They were open about it, and somehow saw themselves as more religious than people who had only two sets of dishes.

Zayde and I did not grow up as members of any of the above groups. Zayde and I grew up in the Yiddish world. This was a vibrant world of Jewish radicalism and cosmopolitanism. Its members spoke Yiddish and read Yiddish newspapers. As I prepared to write this I spoke to my contemporaries. I asked if anyone could remember an adult, anyone of their parent's friends, who did not speak Yiddish. None of us did. Uncle Irv gave this prize answer when he said that frankly he thought all adults spoke Yiddish. He was sure that all of his elementary teachers (none were Jewish) spoke Yiddish at home. He thought that one of the requirements of being an adult included fluency in Yiddish.

Yiddish speaking people fostered "Yiddishkeit". Yiddishkeit was a distinct way of viewing the world and being an activist in the world. Yiddishkeit came out of Eastern Europe where Jews spoke Yiddish and shared a common culture, literature, and history.