Festival of Candles

Celebrating Hanukkah—and my grandfather’s birthday—whether behind drawn curtains in Lithuania or openly in Canada

My grandfather, Yakov Milner, was born in November or December of 1915 in the Latvian town of Baltinava, at the edge of the Eastern Front. He claimed as his earliest memory the rumble and menace of artillery. The rest of his childhood memories were almost uniformly idyllic. Until the onset of the next war, he lived in a kind of a Yiddish fairy tale—a sweet, remarkably peaceful interlude between calamities. His father was a respected merchant who owned a general store and a boot-making workshop where Jews and Latvians cobbled amiably together. Family, community, and Jewish tradition ordered daily life. To the east and to the west the type was being set for a death sentence, but in Baltinava my grandfather went to synagogue, attended festive weddings, and observed the holidays. So deeply was he a product of this fading world that he, like others of his generation, only knew his birthday according to the Hebrew calendar. And although his passport arbitrarily gave as his birthday the 20th of August, we always celebrated the occasion on the proper date, varyingly in November or December, on the eighth day of Hanukkah.

I was born on June 2, 1973, in what had by then become the Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia. If my birthday coincided with a Jewish holiday, I do not know it. The Communist revolution had obviated Jewish religion and replaced it with the teachings of Lenin and Marx. Any attempt to uphold Jewish tradition was considered subversive and so most Jews relinquished the traditions and aspired instead to be model Soviet citizens. Ostensibly, my family was also composed of model Soviet citizens—university graduates, esteemed professionals, even a few Party members—but during Jewish holidays we gathered at my grandparents’ house, drew the curtains, and engaged in subversive activities. The main provocateur was my grandfather, whose commitment to Judaism never wavered. For Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Purim, and Passover, the curtains were drawn and the family gathered. And, every year, on the eighth day of Hanukkah, my grandmother fried potato latkes, the curtains were drawn again, and we celebrated my grandfather’s birthday. I was a child at the time, kindergarten-aged, and for everyone’s protection—lest I disclose the dark family secret—the nature and significance of these gatherings were never explained to me. Instead I was told that we were marking my grandfather’s birthday. Thus, to my childhood mind, my grandfather was singularly blessed with four or five birthdays each year.

Continue reading.

Lilith, Temptress of the Ancients

You've probably heard of Lilith: namesake of the women’s music festival and of the Jewish feminist magazine, but did you know that the feminist heroine was plucked straight from the ancient world? And that the Lilith of the ancients made an unlikely candidate for such a figurehead?

The earliest Jewish references to Lilith portray her as a demon--in the Song of the Sage, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, she appears—among demons, howlers, and desert bandits—in a list of creatures that God protects against. She's mentioned three times in the Talmud, each with a startlingly vivid description. Most memorably, in Niddah 24b, Rabbi Judah says that if a stillborn or aborted fetus bears traces of wings, Lilith must have played a hand in the conception. Other ancient Babylonian and Jewish references portray her as a demon or half-demon, with long hair and bestial features: a figure not so rife for adulation.

But—presumably unbeknownst to its writers—the Alphabet of Ben Sira, an 8th-10th century work of Jewish folklore, lays the groundwork for feminist reclamation. In the story, God creates Lilith as a companion for Adam, meant to be his equal. "I will not lie beneath you, but only on top," she proclaims. Adam rebukes her: "You are fit to be in the bottom, while I am to be superior." In reply, Lilith utters aloud the name of God and flies away. A thousand years later, in 1972, feminist theologian Judith Plaskow published "The Coming of Lilith," a rewriting of the midrash. The rest is feminist history.

How the Church Turned Jews into Moneylenders

Ever wonder how Jews became synonymous with usury? Is it just because they were always "good with money?" Or was it, as Roman Catholic doctrine held, the devil that made them do it?

Actually, it was the Church itself.

By the time Shakespeare introduced Shylock to the theater going world in The Merchant of Venice (1598), medieval Europe had already built up over four centuries of fear, loathing, and scorn for the ubiquitous Jewish moneylender. That so many Jews had careers in money lending was seen as yet more evidence of Jews’ craven nature, and another justification for humiliation, persecution, and in some cases, expulsion.

Lost in the fog of anti-Semitic fervor was the fact that Jews had become Europe’s moneylenders because the Church, in the 12th and 13th centuries, launched an intense and protracted effort to stop Christians from collecting interest from other Christians. The Church’s reading of the anti-usury passages of the bible, however (Deuteronomy 23:20-12), permitted Jews to lend to Christians at interest. Jews, who in Central and Eastern Europe were prohibited from landholding and handicrafts guilds, had an opportunity to make a living. And with the rapid economic expansion taking place throughout northern Europe, especially in France, the robust flow of capital became a necessity, and an opportunity.

The rest, unfortunately, is history.

Up The Down Staircase

In 1923, a 12-year-old Russian girl named Belle Kaufman immigrated with her parents to America and, not knowing a word of English, was enrolled in the first grade. She caught up quickly, and decided that she wanted to become a teacher, too. But Kaufman came from a family of writers—her grandfather was Sholem Aleichem, and her mother, Lyalya, also published widely in the Yiddish press. So when she began teaching at New York City public schools it was natural that she set aside time to write about her experiences.

In 1962, Kaufman—who had adopted the more androgynous  pen name Bel—wrote a warmhearted, satirical portrait of public school life, and submitted it to the Saturday Review of Literature. An editor saw in the short story the germ of a full-length novel. And so, Up the Down Staircase was born. The 1965 novel won immediate acclaim, became a bestseller, and was eventually turned into a movie starring Sandy Dennis.

In a new video, Kaufman, now 101, reminds us that the troubles afflicting today’s public schools are by no means new. "[In Up the Down Staircase] I describe the terrible situation in New York City public schools. The lack of communication, the bureaucracy, the gobbledygook." In Kaufman’s hands, the gobbledygook assumes a poetry all its own.