What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Each summer I look forward to buckling the safety belt in my space ship and returning to my planet of origin, the state of New York. Accessible in under a mere twelve hours, this alternate universe is a source of great spiritual juvenation for my Israel-weary soul. Amongst my chief pleasures are the daily education of the morning New York Times, the no-questions-asked, full-refund return policy in all the stores at the mall and bike-riding along the Hudson River on a flat path beneath the gentle rays of the sun. (This year, honorable mention goes to the Orangetown Jewish Center for Adon Olam sung to the tune of "The Sloop John B.")
An environment as relaxing and as nurturing as this one often spurs a reconnection to my American Jewish roots which, although impossible to deny, are often eclipsed by the dominant Israeli reality in which I've chosen to make my home.
A book which brought me back deep into my native milieu this summer was "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," an enormously entertaining concoction by Michael Chabon who, although only in his mid-forties, retains a hard-core Jewish sensibility uncommon to our generation. His story tells of a classical noir detective in search of a murderer in a fictional Jewish colony established in Alaska after World War II. Chabon masterfully marries the Jewish and the American, infusing a well-worn literary genre with a zany but believable cast of Yiddish-speaking characters representing the best and the worst of the Chosen People. Only trueblood members of the American subset of the Mosaic tribe possess the keys to unlock the full meaning behind the cultural innuendos and sly one-liners that pad the story line. To read it is to feel part of an exclusive, clandestine club formerly persumed doomed to extinction but now revealed to be alive and well.

Another powerful reminder of my roots this summer came in the death notice of Carolyn Goodman, a lifelong activist who was arrested at a protest against the police killing of an unarmed immigrant in New York when she was eighty-three years old. Perhaps more notably, Carolyn was the mother of Andrew. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were two Jewish young men from New York who travelled to the southern United States in the summer of 1964 to help register black voters. Together with James Cheney, a black Mississipian, all three were abducted, murdered and buried in a dam by the Ku Klux Klan. Although the principal perpetrator was acquitted by an all-white jury in the '60s, the case sparked the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Despite its shocking and tragic end, I believe the journey of those two boys represents the quintessential expression of being Jewish in America: the privilege and the duty to ensure freedom and equality for all those as oppressed and unfortunate as the Jewish people once was before arriving in this great country. I find their story to be a source of continuous pride and an inspirational example of the fulfillment of the responsibility of being Jewish.

Where do we come from, and where do we go? My last story took place over a trip with my two oldest childhood friends. We drove way into upstate New York, to the Finger Lakes region, to spend a weekend hiking, boating and touring. One night we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast deep in the countryside near Ithaca. Hundreds of miles from New York City and set back from a lonely country road, the inn was as remote from my regular world as I thought possible. The house, decorated in classic Victorian style, was built on land that came into the owner's family at the time of the American Revolution. The proprietress, an elegant older woman, served a breakfast of apple pancakes, sausages and homemade blueberry bread by candlelight. We learned that she and her mother had both grown up in this home, but it turned out that she had a daughter living in Jerusalem, just a few blocks away from me! Here's her story:

The innkeeper, the mother of three boys and five girls, flew to Israel a number of years ago on business and took her youngest daughter with her, who was then nineteen. Attractive and outgoing, the daughter made friends quickly with Israelis her age she met in Jerusalem and was out with them each day, returning to the hotel around ten in the evenings. On their last day in Jerusalem she met a soldier on guard duty at Damascus Gate. When she finally arrived back at one am she informed her mother that she was in love and that she was staying in Israel. (And her mother let her!) The husband was Jewish, of middle-eastern background and early in the relationship they argued frequently about Yeshua (Jesus, in Hebrew). Then one day the husband had a religious experience, converted to Christianity and has since become a preacher in the church. All this, within minutes of my house on Gelber Street. Who knew?

There's no place like home...