by admin
Jewsies, Jewosity & Identity Y om Kippur is that holiest of Jewish Holy Day s when Jews atone
for their sins. Usually I take the day off from work—arguably a sin in itself, because I’m not sure how Jewish I really am. I wasn’t raised as a Jew. I rarely go to temple. And my attempts to fast usually end at 1 1 :00 a.m. with a cappuccino and biscotti. I didn’t ev en know I was Jewish until I was well into my 20s, when my mother, Ruth, shared with me the stories of how she had come to learn, also as grown woman, that she was Jewish. She was hav ing coffee at an outdoor café in Paris with her y ounger brother, Michael, and a cousin of theirs whom they hadn’t seen in y ears. No one can remember his name, so I’ll call him “Max .” While they were reminiscing about their war-time ex periences, Max dropped a bombshell. “It must hav e been so hard for y ou two during the War—being Jewish and all.” Ruth and Michael were dumbfounded. “What are y ou talking about?” Ruth demanded indignantly . “We’re not Jewish!!!” “Of course y ou are,” Max responded. “Ev ery one knows y ou’re Jewish.” Ev ery one, apparently , ex cept my mom and uncle. They stormed back to the Chateau de Saint-Seine, a 1 7 th-century timbered masterpiece in V illepreux , outside Paris, that my grandparents had rented from a cash-strapped nobleman. There Ruth and Michael confronted their father, Dickie, demanding an ex planation. Dickie was short for “dictator”—which is how ev ery one referred affectionately to my grandfather, Otto Mandl. “Cousin Max say s we’re Jewish. Is that true? Why did y ou nev er tell us?” Dickie hesitated for a moment, and then came clean. Sort of. “Well, children, I am Jewish, but y our mother is not. We nev er told y ou I was Jewish because we wanted to protect y ou. Please don’t talk to Lili about this because it will just upset her.”
Lili was my grandmother, Lili Kraus, a world-renowned pianist who, during an uncharacteristic break from her grueling concert schedule, had suffered sunstroke after falling asleep sunbathing, and was in bed with a high fev er. Ruth and Michael tiptoed out of the castle and not another word was spoken about their father being Jewish and failing to tell them. Many y ears later, long after Dickie had passed away , my mom and Lili (ev en her family called her by her first name) were returning home to North Carolina after a trip to the May o Clinic, where Lili had undergone some tests for the rheumatoid arthritis that would soon end her illustrious career. Riding in a small commuter plane from Atlanta to Ashev ille, they were caught in a summer rainstorm and the plane began to pitch v iolently . My mother and Lili were both conv inced that they were about to crash. As the plane careened from side to side and thunder clapped through the wet sky , Mom reached for Lili’s hand. “Lili, in case this plane goes down, is there any thing y ou want to tell me? Any deep, dark secret y ou’v e been carry ing around—something that y ou want to share before we meet our maker?” My grandmother’s ey es grew wide. “What do mean ‘secret’?” she asked nerv ously . “What kind of secret?” “Oh, I don’t know. May be an affair y ou had…an affair with Szy mon Goldberg?” Goldberg was an acclaimed Polish-born v iolinist and conductor with whom Lili had recorded a series of Mozart and Beethov en sonatas in the 1 930s. It was rumored that their mutual passion ex tended to more than just classical music. Lili shook her head. “No, I nev er had an affair with Szy mon. I lov ed y our father.” “How about an abortion?” my mom asked. That had been another rumor. “No, nev er an abortion,” Lili replied grav ely . Mom tried once more. “May be that y ou’re Jewish?” Lili was shocked. “How did y ou know?” she whispered. The real question was: how did we not know? There had been so many clues. The fact that Lili and Dickie fled Nazi Germany with their children to escape from Hitler in the early 1 940’s might hav e tipped us off. Their names: Kraus and Mandl. Lili was boisterous, irrepressible, insanely talented and beautiful. She looked Jewish, with her wild, lux urious mane of jet black hair, her strong nose and her shimmering dark ey es. She was constantly wracked by guilt, and deeply superstitious. She was obsessed with the number 9, and considered any numbers that added up to 9, or one of its multiples, to be harbingers of good fortune. She hated the Germans with an unbridled passion and refused to buy any thing that was made in Germany . Like Lili, my mother was v irulently anti-German. She had been born in Berlin, where Lili happened to be teaching at the time, but she’d alway s lied about this, instead claiming V ienna as her birthplace. Starting at the age of 1 0 or 1 1 , I began to chide my mother for her deception and her rather skewed historical perspectiv e. I had seen The Sound of Music, after all, and so knew a little bit about history my self. “Mom, I get that y ou hate the Germans, but let’s face it: Hitler was half-Austrian and the Austrians pretty much rolled out the red carpet for him. If y ou’re going to lie about where y ou were born, at least pick a city that put up a good fight. Like London.” Mom did not like hearing this from me. “That is absolutely not true, Zazi. The Austrians hated Hitler too. They just had the good sense to bow to the inev itable.” And then, since she was the one who actually took me to see The Sound of Music, she would triumphantly conclude with, “What about Captain v on Trapp? He trekked ov er the Alps with his family , risking all of their liv es, rather than enlist in the Roy al Nav y !”
“I hate to argue, Mom,” (this was a lie: in fact I lov ed to argue), “but I think Herr Zeller and Rolf were far more representativ e of the Austrian mind-set at that time.” It was no use. I was nev er able to conv ince my mom to tell the truth about her birthplace. Uncle Michael, though, plainly more tormented by this fiction than either my mother or me, ev entually persuaded her. But “Berlin” still sticks in her craw whenev er she’s asked the question. Growing up in Appalachia, I didn’t know many Jews. It is sad that my grandparents were apparently ashamed of being Jewish, but, as I later came to learn, hiding one’s Jewish heritage was not altogether uncommon as fascism took root between the two World Wars. With Central and Eastern Europe engulfed in anti-Semitism, and Lili’s piano career beginning to take off, Dickie feared that their family might be targeted unless they concealed their Jewish identity . While Lili denied being Jewish, she alway s claimed to be v ery fond of Jews, affectionately referring to them as “the Jewsies”—a moniker whose play fulness concealed a disturbing condescension that was not apparent to me as a child. She was also full of pithy Jewish aphorisms. When I would complain to her about my big nose, for ex ample, she would slowly nod her head and proclaim sagely : “As the Jewsies alway s say , Zazi, ‘big nose, big character’.” These pearls of wisdom failed to mollify me. I did not want a big character any more than I wanted a big nose. I wanted a nice small nose and a nice small character to go with it, so that I would blend in with ev ery one else, instead of alway s feeling like I didn’t belong. When I got to Swarthmore College, though, I felt, for the first time really , that I did belong. This was largely because I was surrounded by Jews. My roommate and most of my close friends were Jewish, and, to my surprise, they all told me that I seemed Jewish to them, too. “Are y ou sure y ou’re not Jewish?” they would ask me, incredulously . “Y ou look Jewish. Y ou act Jewish. Y ou’re practically the most Jewish person we know. How can y ou not be Jewish?” “I’m flattered y ou think so,” I’d respond, truthfully . “But I was raised as a Christian, and baptized by a Lutheran pastor—Albert Schweitzer, no less—so I’m pretty sure I’m not Jewish.” It wasn’t until after Lili passed away that my mom recounted to me what Lili had told her in that stormy plane ride to Ashev ille y ears earlier. Mom doesn’t know why she didn’t tell me at the time, and I can only surmise. Perhaps she didn’t realize the impact of Lili’s “confession”—that Lili’s being Jewish made her children and grandchildren Jewish, too, and that may be this was an important piece of information to share with us. Perhaps she thought that since Lili had only rev ealed her Jewishness in the belief that they were both going to perish, she owed it to Lili to keep the disclosure in confidence, at least while she was aliv e. Or it could be that Mom found the rev elation so inconsequential—she had obv iously suspected the truth—that she simply forgot about it after the plane landed safely , only to dredge it up y ears later when we were reminiscing about Lili after her death. Mom’s rev elation had a greater impact on me, howev er, triggering many questions. Was I now, in my late twenties, supposed to embrace my newfound Jewish identity , and if so, how? Was I Jewish if Judaism had nev er been part of my life? Did I want it to be part of my life? What did it mean to be Jewish? Was it a religious affiliation, or a cultural one, or an ethnic one, or some or all of those? What if I didn’t want to keep kosher, or observ e the Sabbath, or go to temple? Would I be able to continue to use fav orite ex pressions like “for Christ’s sake”? What would happen to my treasured collection of Christmas tree ornaments? If I didn’t embrace Judaism was I guilty of the same Jewish self-hate that had afflicted my mother and grandparents? These questions took on ev en more significance after I had children. My husband, who is not Jewish, and in fact abhors organized religion of any kind, did not object to religious education for our children, but he made it clear that this was my project, not his. With our son, Jeremy , my attempts to instill a grounding in Jewish faith and culture were unev en at best, but after our daughter, Lili, was born—we named her after her great-grandmother—I decided
to be more proactiv e and we joined Sholem, a secular and progressiv e Jewish group that met weekly in Culv er City . I took Lili for a couple of y ears and she didn’t mind it, although I sometimes felt that the bagels and cream cheese they serv ed were the star attraction for her. When Lili was small, she inadv ertently coined the word “Jewosity ” as she was struggling to conjure up “Judaism” during a family discussion about religion. I wish I could tell y ou that I finally cracked the conundrum of my own Jewosity . But that wouldn’t be true. I’m not sure I’ll find the answers by going to temple, either, although I’ll continue to take the day off on Y om Kippur. Ev en if it means feeling guilty about it. I wish that my grandmother Lili were aliv e today so that I could ask her why she kept her Jewish identity hidden for so long, and at what cost. How painful it must hav e been for her. She was clearly consumed with guilt and shame. Why else would she hav e conv erted to Catholicism shortly before she died? I would hold her knobbly , v einy hands—still muscular from decades of glorious pianoplay ing—and tell her that it is nev er too late to come out of the shadows. That dy ing with a secret is worse than liv ing with one. And indeed, that our Jewosity is worthy of celebration.
Zazi Pope lives in Los Angeles. She is an attorney in the entertainment industry and an
occasional writer, artist and temple-goer. © 2011 Li l i th Magazi n e