Yesterday, my husband Haim, Ivry , my three year old son and myself went to the head Yeshiva rabbi’s house for the Saturday lunch. Before the blessing of the matzah and the wine, the rabbi spoke about family on two meaningful levels: our extended family or Jewish history whose history has been underscored by their own sad plight, and second, where we come from – our roots. I have been trying on occasion to piece the two concepts of family together, but my own personal circumstances first get in the way.
My Polish grandmother escaped Hitler’s atrocities and when she died in 1995, she left a wealth of family geneology with her unexplored. Before I myself left Israel last summer, I made to find out about my Iraqi grandmother’s side who also fled from the British and crossed the Syrian border in the darks of the night many many years ago. In anaylzying it even closer, I noticed that the notion of fleeing, movement and wandering is a common concept for Jews then and now.
According to the Rabbi, we owe it to our children to explain to them our Jewish family roots and where we come from. I thought that was profound. After hearing the rabbi speak, I showed a few old black and white photographs of my grandmother from my mother’s side to my son who was entranced by them and asked me who they were. I explained over again, but that was all I could really do.
But it is when I am dishing out the gefillte fish and eating borscht that I come to hear her voice; her being through me trying to make sure she is not as silent as I remember her to be. The voices of our Jewish mothers and grandmothers from generations past. They weave a quilt of voices that I wish one day, to truly hear.