wendyo's Open Salon Blog

On Being Jewish

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:09:16 -0400

I was born Jewish to a family who's main identity was Israel. I was born Jewish in a suburb which was almost 100% Jewish. Everyone went to one of our three or four synagogues. I feel and have always felt more Jewish than anything else, more Jewish than even female for reasons I cannot explain. Especially because I could not fathom the perfect dress and amazingly "put together" women in my hometown. I could never and have never dressed this way and they scared me.

My father's father was a penny pincher who was beyond frugal. Except when it came to Israel. During the '67 six day war, as I've probably said before, he left the hospital where he had a heart attack, AMA, of course and got up on a stage at some fancy hotel in Manhattan, a little shtetl Jewish making an impassioned speach for everyone to give ambulances to Israel and then, on that stage, he dropped dead.

His orthodox learning was not passed down to me by my dad (who often slept through the High Holidays, as I had to shake him awake,) and my mother never seemed Jewish; she was more like the Queen of England coming from Austrian Jewish folks. But of course they went to our conservative and then the reform synagogues often. They were on the committee to pick a Rabbi. He was my age and married me and Eddie; the same week he two days later, married too. That was the end of June 1981 when Prince Charles and Diana married. Three divorces would follow much later.

My husband and I never went to synagogue after our marriage, because even the so-called hippest ones bored us. Yet we shared this profound Jewishness if in different ways. The year before he died--2 years ago today almost precisely-- his book called "Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean" was published to amazing success. He had worked on it, no joke, for 40 years.

My book on Coming Home to J'lem was never remotely admired as his. Jewish folks if I can generalize--prefer hearing upbeat and darring-do tales more than about how I found Israel to be both my essential home and my greatest political dilemma. The day I became most Jewish was not in Uplan nor making Aliya nor studying at Yeshiva but when I entered the Daheisha refugee camp--seven minutes from my W Jerusalem home. With another Jewish guy from Chicago and our classy Palestinian 'fixer,' I saw what was being done in our name, the Jewish name, and as this guy whispered "What are we? Imitating Nazis?" I felt that precisely and as most here know then I became immensely engaged in not only journalism but in the peace process on the ground. For Israel's sake!!

*******************

So, last night, with Eddie dead and out of long guilt I went to the Stephen Wise Synagogue on West 68th street in Manhattan. My foster daughter, black and Jamaican born, was with me. They wanted us to pay and yet we got in without paying, sitting to close to the first row at that. Here is why I chose Stephen Wise. He was counsel to Roosvelt and Truman and knew precisely what was going on, in the death camps. My grandfather and he became friends after Philip, grandpa, saved about 20 families from the Shoah. And that was Rabbi Wise's mission. Though my parents were not wealthy he married them, and my aunt and uncle too. That has always struck me as an honor.

*****************

I have never heard music so etheral and gorgeous in any other synagogue and this moved me to re-think my fear or avoidance (fear) of going back to my youth where the High Holidays were mandatory and scary, also hard. At about 9 or 10 years --during the ten days of awe-- I hand wrote so many apologigetic letters for any misdeeds to everyone I knew. Never did I get such a letter myself. Which I still find weird 'cause during those ten days it is to humans we must make Tikkun Olam. (Heal what is broken)

So we are sitting in this huge synagogue where the temperature is about 50 degrees F. and because we had not had dinner, I had a diabetic low which was handed easily and I returned just as the Rabbi stepped up to the pulput and gave his sermon.

If you are Jewish & even if you are not, you probably know that the eve of and today's Yom Kippur is the holiest day in Judaism. It is when you get written into the book of life or death. I felt my long dead family all around me and was thinking that a good syagogue would actually help me in many ways.

The Rabbi, at most 40 years old or maybe 35 got up to the pulpit to speak. The crowd looked rich and was at least half elderly. This place is known for outreach programs to suffering people, the world over, or so I thought. The Rabbi had a pleasant demeaner and I was all ears.

Here are his two themes. First he went on a rant about intermarriage. "You want your children to be good. But if your children are not Jewish they can never contribute as we do. (I have a foster and an adopted daughter, neither of whom are Jewish by birth.) He continued, "They may be very good but if they don't have a Jewish soul, that will not count."

Next: "Israel is our homeland. Instead of going to help poor Africans or work for Habitat for Humanity and the like, they must go to Israel to help the poor Jews there."

This somehow segued into the Holocaust in great detail. How every Jew must travel to Eastern Europe to see the concentration camps and here he mentioned the utter poignancy of Tereszin sp? before moving onto every other death camp by name, with stories about how powerful we were in Europe (tranlate rich) and now, duh, how there are so few of us left. And his greatest hope is that everyone take this tour to know what happened. Hmm? (In every city rife with us Jews PBS seems to think Hitler is breaking news. )

That last comment of his is what did it for me. We all know what happened over six horrendous year during which time I was born but the Shoah is politically over --if never personally over--as is imho is any Jewish victim game. And as I put my head down while we walked out, I was rattled. I could not believe his words. Only Jewish camps and only Jewish community service and don't forget or always remember what happened to us. Nu?

Maybe one or two here, if that, will understand my fury. I am an excellent public speaker and I have a thing or two to tell this Rabbi. But outside in the warm air a group of us, half black and half Jewish shared our disbelief in his racism. Maybe any Jews who happen to come here will not understand. But I understand. Israel right or wrong. Jews not having half-Jewish kids. Nothing about conversion to Judaism. Nothing about being kind to all others, the Other, racist as Stephen Wise was not.

Now for the finale, we walked home consumed by rage. And the punchline is that Jackie and I both thought of how Eddie-- not a leftie re: Israel, like me, but father to two non-Jewish kids and ritual and etiquette be damed, he would have stood up, during this holy ritual, and would have said in a loud voice just what I was thinking. Just imagining this made us smile.

Where is OurSalon??

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:07:51 -0400

And has OS gone down?

Healing while Sitting Shiva for Nora Ephron

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 01:07:19 -0400

I am much more a reader than a film fanatic and so it's her books I love. Pretty much memorized them all. She is, in my mind, the anti-Anna Quildlan. Wry not earnest. Self- degrigrating never self- aggrandizing. Funny and West Sider-- though she found the East Side was not the enemy. Wit-- never not witty.

So in between FIVE hour soaks (freezing water and vinegar on wash clothes, after aquafor was piled high on my face with long tipped Q-tips, think vaseline. smudging every reading glass--) done to perfection thanks to Jackie and also Keith, the great support system.

After one doctor's appointment I was fixated on the notion that had we ever met (and we missed a few times by a hair) she would know the best doctor for festoons, which means I would not be in Tampa where the medical centers advertize on billboards and TV from the doctor's office: "Can cure cancer-- any cancer-- in one week." Or: "Muscular disphrophy and PD and dystonia, gone in one month" --which did nothing to give me assurance about the skin- eye- doc and my festoons.

Though I can finally say now, today, returning from Tampa, I actually found the perfect guy and they are gone! though my face is swollen and will be so for a few months. (Thanks for the prayers. Send them on to Susie Lindau and Kenny1948.)

So on one of my check up days I went to B&N and bought among ten other books all of which I read, including her last book from 2011 "I Remember Nothing." It was a follow up to "I Feel Bad about my Neck" but weaker or so I thought at the time.

Now I read it through new eyes because unbeknownst to most, she was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006. So her book very cleverly hid her disease but put her in mind of death due to her best friends' horrid one and the fact that at our ages, she wrote it when she was 69, died at 71, we all face such losses.

Clever because? Because she knew that sooner or a bit later she too would lose her battle, so I was astouded to read through occluded aquaphor reading glasses that she had actually been writing her final book and that she ends it as many here know with two chapters. One is What I won't Miss which includes emails--twice--and Technology about which we are akin. Then she writes-- which at the time few if any picked up as her farewell.

WHAT I WILL MISS, her final chapter was was so tender--never sentintimental: in this list going downwards on the final page:

"My kids. Nick. Spring. Fall. Waffles. The concept of waffles. Bacon. A walk in the park. The idea of a walk in the Park. The park. Shakespeare in the park. The bed. Reading in bed. Fireworks. Laughs. The view out the Window. Twinkle lights. Butter. Dinner at home just the two of us. Dinner with friends. Dinner with friends in cities where none of us live. Paris. Next year in Istanbul. (get that?WO) Pride and Prejudice. The Christmas Tree. Thanksgiving dinner. One for the table. The dogwood. Taking a bath. Coming over the bridge to Manhattan. Pie. "

I found this so sweet especially the pie at the end-- so Nora--and then I decided to read no emails, not that reading forty books in two weeks was easy but absolutely necessary, and I decided in her honor to privately grieve for her by not reading a single email nor anything on the internet, an interlude long overdue.

I only went to the internet to check out her three sisters and her husband, who she adored, after two who were hard for her. Nick is Nick Pileggi which most will know. But he is also early Pisces, Feb 22nd and I do believe an early Pisces Italian sounds totally great and so I fell in love with him for her or with her.

You know how everyone says that when your parents die you are next in line? I never understood that, maybe because mine died when I was in my thirties and I wasn't busy dying. Nor did any beloved friend's death nor Eddie's make me feel that my turn was next or soon or any such thing.

Whereas this woman, a stranger but not, made me feel wretched and as if I was next in line though as said, I never met her.

So I was in Nora-land and in soaking- my -face & skin land and in Tampa- land until today when I got it that I am healing and not to sound superficial which of course I am and am not, the nicest thing today was when Toni, my pal at the Tampa eye clinic or as Jackie said, "the brains behind the man" told me after I asked exactly what plastic surgery she would suggest for me, a question we all ask each other, though the festoons were not cosmetic but necessary surgery.

Toni who has had everything done to her nice face, which in my wildest dreams I would never do--was so on point, telling me the single surgery I could do, nothing difficult that would make me really gorgeous which tip which made me happy.

I can't wait to have this done a year from now when I'll be 70+ with maybe only one more year to go out gorgeously & hopefully with an early Pisces Italian because she was so happy with Nick.

I know that Nora with her diligent beauty maintenance, which I do not do, would totally understand.

Nora Ephon is dead

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:06:39 -0400

I can't believe that Nora Ephron is gone. She was like a best friend i never met. How's this for weird:

I taught her books esp "Heartburn" the very first page because she did humor so damned well. I have read everything she's written because of her command of humor.

About five days ago, my old Toshiba, which is beyond repair, for the very first time began saying aloud, "You've Got Mail." I never heard this phrase from any of my computers. Weird that hearing that of course reminded me of Nora. I now believe that it was a pre-warning of Ephon's demise since it stopped that notification this, the hour she died.

She was a master writer and such a Manhattanite like myself, only two years older. I am in shock as will be many women of a certain age. She had a great public life but what recurs to me now, in Tampa of all nowhere places, is her line from "I Hate my Neck" where she said "I sometimes think that not worrying about my hair might be the upside of death."

She looked so healthy so we had no warning of her death except that oddly sudden phrase "You've Got Mail" which I truly believe was a ten year old computer's strange warning.

Surgery Done!!!!

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:06:10 -0400

Thanks for all the prayers. I almost did not go through wth it then I did so csnnot see yet bec of the eye salve so em say and just to tell you I am alive, it was an hour and I had the largest festoons by far b ut priase God i am en route or one dearly hopes to recovery in a few weeks love to everyone here you were so great. wendy herself