The Renewal and Remembrance of Spring

April 18, 2020. June 6, 2020. August 22, 2020. Cancelled.

After three postponements as a result of COVID-19, Addison Carson became a Bat Mitzvah on April 24, 2021, in one of the early small-scale in-person gatherings in the University Synagogue Garden since March 2020. Instead of receiving kippot, 30 guests were gifted with sealed packages containing white cotton masks with Addison’s name, a pink heart and the date.

April 2021. The month when things began to turn around, when news that four million vaccines were finding their way into arms old and young. When many schools welcomed students back after a year. When many grateful grandparents saw their grandchildren for the first time in over a year. When cautiously and carefully and tenderly and anxiously, we began to return or planned to return to some versions of “in person life.”

The day was important to Ella Mandel (née Joskowicz), a 94-year-old Holocaust Survivor, who endured the Ghetto, Death March, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Mandel was paired with Addison through the Remember Us Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project (where I am executive director). Remember Us works with Bnai Mitzvah as they celebrate their Jewish life cycle event to also hold dear the memory of children that perished in the Holocaust and who might not otherwise be remembered. Bnai Mitzvah kids dedicate their simcha to the remembered child, say Kaddish and speak of their precious lives in their D’var Torah. Addison chose to remember both of Ella’s sisters, Lola and Zosia, who were lost in the Holocaust.

Ella is the only member of her five-person family to survive the Shoah. Her father Berek died in the Ghetto. It pained Ella’s family that he had not been given a proper burial, so they snuck out in the night, pushing his frail body in a covered wheelbarrow to bury him in a Jewish cemetery. Ella’s younger sister Lola was shot in front of her eyes. Her mother Hela was torn from her arms in line at Auschwitz. And in the final devastating loss, Zosia, her big sister, died of tuberculosis shortly after liberation. Zosia died alone in a convent hospital bed, isolated as part of quarantine protocols.

On Saturday, April 24, surrounded by 30 dear ones in person and loved ones on Zoom, Addison shared her words of Torah. She described the ways she lives with ritual and Jewish practice and how the mitzvot of baking Challah and preparing Shabbat dinner from her grandmother’s recipes was a soulful experience. She shared the blessings of proximity and the tactile sweetness and practices of our tradition. The recipes that we hand down, by hand. In real life. L’Dor V’Dor, generation to generation. The Synagogue’s Czech Torah, which was rescued from destruction during the Holocaust (another tactile miracle in hand), was passed from grandparent to parent to child.

Addison lifted up the memories and names of both of Ella’s sisters, Zosia and Lola. Chaotic times do not make the same space for tender occasions and the birthdays of young children.

In the garden where the service was held, there was a sense of love and promise, the annual holy offering of the blessings of spring. The soft song of birds and the hum of bees in the sun, arriving for the first time after days of humid gray and weeks of worry, darkness, dread and fear for what the end of coronavirus would look like. The softness in the garden was interrupted only by the occasional motorcycle posse’s revving down Sunset, a sound that made us all smile behind our masks.  

Addison invited Ella to step up to the Bimah and share a teaching and reflection of her own. Escorted to the podium by Addison’s father, Jon, and protected by a three-sided glass barrier, Ella stood before a group of people who were, at Addison’s invitation, sharing their love and goodwill with her. But most importantly to Ella, they were offering dignified space and Jewish ritual to the memory of her dear family, who died in ways and in settings that were inhumane and cruel.

And on that day, we surrounded Ella with all the grace and love that a Bat Mitzvah catalyzes in a family and in a community. The promise and the hope for our loved ones and the world. The joy of marking that hope in celebration and song. Breathing in the moment, even masked, is still breath and hearts beating together, sharing space and time and exquisite moments of joy.

Because of Addison’s act of remembrance, Ella’s family members were given holy space filled with Jewish music, Torah and uplifted prayers.

Because of Addison’s act of remembrance, Ella’s family members were given holy space.

May the memories of Lola, Zosia, Hela and Berek Joskowicz (z”l) always be remembered as a blessing and a teaching on the preciousness of family love and communal care. As Ella taught, we are each other’s keepers and we must take care of each other.

May the memory of the bewildering year we have experienced, many of us alone, as a Jewish community, as a nation, as a global community, remain keen.  May we move forward through the new days of spring with a tender understanding of the preciousness of our world, each other and of our capacity to support one another. May the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, like the children Addison Carson honored at her Bat Mitzvah, bless us with the commitment to always remember, to never forget, and to act with love and care for each other and our world. Zikronam Livracha.

Samara Hutman is the executive director of The Remember Us Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project. She is also the co-founder/ director of The Righteous Conversations Project, which focuses on dialogue with Survivors in workshop cohorts of teens, educators and artist mentors.