When I first saw Martha on television, she usedexactly three sheets of The New York Times Business section to make aroaring fire. I considered myself an expert fire maker, but I neededthe entire Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. I watchedMartha and took notes.
My Aunt Illa, a woman capable of great charm and vast intrigues,was hated by both my mother and father.
By Father, because he believed that Illa was so jealous of the love between his brother Zoltan and himself that she prevented her husband from the frequent contact the brothers wanted. And my mother– well, because of the usual animus she held against the women in Father\’s family.
The story of a princess who did not live happilyever after had a familiar subtext. Somewhere in the midst of watchingthe same bashed-in Mercedes Benz again and again, a song played in myhead. It was the song that I had chosen for the first dance at myfirst wedding with my first husband: \”Someone to Watch Over Me.\”Don\’t tell Gloria Steinem.
Nothing was reserved for the sacred in my family.And everything was subjected to trial by humor. My grandmotherSarah\’s seven children formed a family-circle club and named it theGarnet Group — after the gemstone associated with January, the monththey decided to hold the first meeting more than four decades ago.
Among the Southland\’s some 1,500 Yemenite Jews, \”a conservative estimate is that every third or fourth family has a connection,\” says Eli Attar, 46, the president of Solomon\’s Children, a Yemenite activist group.
I confess. I have some prejudices. Example: I want my children to marry Jews. Beyond that, I am comfortable with other people. I try to avoid racial humor, even when there is a good punch line. I\’m a clinical psychologist and a professor, and I serve a multicultural population. Prejudice is not my thing.
When my kids were still preschoolers,young enough to be influenced by my every word, I used to have this spiel about marrying out of Judaism. It went something like this:\”It\’s an insult to the 6 million who died only because they were Jewish.\” I figured that you can\’t start early enough on the road to the chuppah. Now, both of my children are chuppah material. And I am spiel-less.
My mother called to give me an update on my aunt Ruthie\’s condition. She had a cancer-spotted kidney removed a few days ago,and the family Jew-Ex was hot with medical reports. My mother, whose curse it was to be the firstborn, was cursed a second time by havinga daughter who she used to liken to her sister Ruth whenever I stepped out of line — which was often, according to my mother.Ruthie\’s curse was to be born two years after my mother and to neverhave had a daughter.
There we were, my family, 11 anarchists cruising down to Ensenada for four days on the Viking Serenade, celebrating my mother\’s 85th birthday. I roomed with the birthday girl in one of those cabins where you have to yell, \”Watch out!\” when you exit the lavatory.
Rabbi Baruch and Michal Finkelstein are developing a sex-education curriculum for Jewish day schools.
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