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February 23. 2006
On bubbies and zeydes, a personal reflection
by - Rabbi Philip Cohen

In a certain way my grandmother was the greatest influence on my life. Lena Gelber immigrated to the States at the end of the 19th century from Austria. She brought with her an attachment to Yiddishkeyt that was buried deep in her bones. She and Yiddishkeyt were inextricably bound up with one another in a way that most Jews in my experience growing up the in suburbs lacked. She kept kosher. She cooked and baked as if she were born to the task. She had a powerful love of Israel, and visited there on the eve of the Six Day War. Of course she spoke Yiddish and never lost her accent nor ever entirely mastered English.

She was Jewish to her core. But she was also a classic grandmother. She loved her grandchildren unconditionally. (Later in life all the grandchildren insist that each of them was her favorite. I know for certain that I was.) On the occasion of my Bar Mitzvah, she schlepped, and I do mean schlepped, some twenty pounds of strudel that she had baked in her tiny Bronx kitchen to the suburbs. That meant baking the strudel, boxing it, getting it to the Port Authority by subway, then to the suburbs where we met her with our car and brought her and her baking to our house. She always gave us a couple of dollars. Even in the hospital she insisted that her brother Louie, the butcher, give me a twenty.

She died thirty-five years ago this year, and I am still able to conjure up memories of her. She never knew I became a rabbi. She never knew that I would attempt to adapt Yiddishkeyt to my own life. And yet my relationship with her was one of the main reasons I went in this direction.

We know the ups and downs of parenting. We love our children, work hard on their behalf, continually worry about their welfare because they're our children.

I do not know firsthand the joys of grandparenting. Many of you out there do. But I see those joys, and hear about them from grandparents. Skipping a generation does something to a grandmother or grandfather. There's a kind of freedom with the grandchildren on the one hand, and a kind of revival of all those feelings of parenting a baby or young child. Grandparents can be loving, generous, and grateful to have new children running around. Kindness naturally flows from grandparents to their grandchildren. Also, when the little tyke gets to be too much, there is always the privilege of retuning him or her to the rightful parents.

I guess my ruminations on my grandmother lead me to think about the opportunity that grandparents have. Grandparents, along with everything else they can do in that role, have the chance to be loving transmitters of culture. Specifically, grandparents have the same opportunity as my grandmother had to transmit a love of and respect for Judaism. You don't have to schlep twenty pounds of strudel to your granddaughter's Bat Mitzvah on a Greyhound bus. But you can, just by being who you are, be a model of Jewish living.

This is my prayer, that grandparents and grandchildren will grow in love for each other, and that, with God's help, grandparents will be Jewish models for their grandkids, just as my grandmother was for me.