The Family Secret

Reflections on a Jewish Childhood

My paternal grandparents were Russian Orthodox Jewish immigrants (they still had accents). It was they who pressured my parents to send me to an Orthodox Jewish Hebrew school (a Yeshiva). After all, there is nothing more prideful than having a family member who was a Rabbi. I don’t think my parents really cared, but they bowed to the pressure. It was a serious mistake. I hated my 8 years there (to be fair, I probably would have hated any school I went to).

There were a lot of things I had to learn that my friends didn’t. Besides, since we didn’t go to the same school, we couldn’t complain about the same teachers! Also, I took Hebrew classes in the morning & standard English classes in the afternoon, & my day ended later than public school. So, I met up with my friends later than they were available.

My parents weren’t very religious, only attending High Holidays, & religion wasn’t discussed at home. They cared about my earning good grades, not where I earned them. But they respected the dogma I was taught, especially regarding food. Orthodox Jews couldn’t eat pig-meat or shellfish. So, for weekend breakfasts my mother really spoiled me (guilt?) & made me whatever I wanted. My favorites were waffles, pancakes, & white liver & eggs. Even my father didn’t receive such special breakfast treatment!

It was a practice I never questioned—why would I? Until one day my friends & I happened to be talking about what we ate for breakfast. I proudly revealed my three favorites. Then, one of them asked me: “What is white liver?” I was surprised by the question. I assumed they ate white liver too. I was also embarrassed because I didn’t have an answer.

So, I told my mother about the incident & asked her what white liver was. Somewhat embarrassed herself, she reluctantly revealed the family secret. White liver was bacon! She sneaked it into my menu & found I liked it, & she didn’t want to tell me the truth, because she knew that once I knew, I wouldn’t eat it anymore, & she didn’t want to deprive me of something I liked. Even though I was shocked to learn I had been eating “treif” (non-kosher food) & that I had been lied to for years, I don’t remember having a strong negative reaction either to the revelation or to my mother. By that point, I wasn’t about to give up one of my favorite foods no matter what it was called.

I have loved eating white liver—I mean bacon—my whole life. Unfortunately, although I have intellectually rejected the orthodox practice of not eating pig-meat or shellfish, I have not been able to overcome the emotional effects of the dogma I was taught. As a result, my menu has been rather limited over the years. The only meat I eat is chicken & ground beef (actually, I wish I had the courage to be a vegetarian, but, as you now know, I’m not one to give up food I love).

Outside of my emotional rejection of treif, I have rejected religion of any kind & I am an atheist. I identify as a humanist (I hope that is considered kosher).

--30--

The One True Sentence

The pickup’s almost packed and we’re almost ready to go. Goin’ north, up into the northwoods, “da’ U.P.,” where Capone went to hide out when things got too hot in Chicago. I’ve been to da’ U.P. before. I came from there. Born in the northwoods in 1948, in the shadow of destruction by the light of a Rising Moon. I’ll know how to fit in and not look like a tourist. I’ll wear a disguise. Got my Packer hat and a Paul Bunyan flannel top.

North.

Plains Indians had names for the four directions. South was abundance. East was knowledge. West was wisdom. North was clarity — the white clarity of winter snow. Northern Lights. Twenty below. Frozen toes. It’s perfectly clear that nature’s the foe. Everybody got thick wool socks for Christmas.

Mom and Dad are still up there, in assisted living. He’s 97. Mom’s not far behind. My brothers and sister are still up there, and most of their kids and theirs. The family’s been up there for generations. I’m the one who took off to make the world my home.

My new home is not like the neighborhood where I grew up on D Street in Iron Mountain, a bike ride away from grandparents and great-grandparents, walking distance to school and fields of dreams. Father worked in a factory. Mother was always home. Stay out of the kitchen when mom’s waxing the floor.

My new home in the world has neighborhoods, too. Many are troubled. Some unimaginably so. You can read all about it in the news.

What to do? I get confused.

We’ve got all the abundance, knowledge and wisdom we need. All that’s missing is to make it perfectly clear.

The U.P. is famous for its pasty’s (that’s the way the plural of pasty is supposed to be spelled up there). The recipe was the cultural gift of 19^th century Cornish miners who’d left their villages and neighborhoods where they’d grown up in southwest England to cross an ocean with their recipes and lore to work the iron-rich landscape of the Mesabi Range, beneath the Northern Lights — the dance of space, itself, made perfectly clear.

Maybe I’ll find inspiration and write — as Hemingway put it — “the one true sentence,” the one I keep looking for, year after year.