Sounds of my Childhood

Although I grew up in the United States in the 1960's my childhood experiences were not typically American. My parents were deeply moved by the establishment of the State of Israel. They decided to raise us as Hebrew speaking children, in Quincy, Massachusetts.

As you might surmise, the Hebrew speaking population of Quincy was small. It would be a fair guess to assume that while I was growing up the Hebrew speaking population of Quincy was maybe ten. We were a family of five. My parents had to create a Hebrew speaking oasis in the City of Presidents.

Aside from the difficulties my parents had learning every day Hebrew, not academic , prayer book Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew, there was also the issue of how to create a vibrant cultural life for us kids in Hebrew.

We owned lots of children's books from Israel. we had several thick books of poetry and stories in Hebrew printed on soft porus newsprint. My father used to read to us the adventures of terrible twins who played horrible tricks on people and the came to a terrible end. This book was written in verse. I'm sure it was translated from German. We read Golden Books, translated into Hebrew. Those translations though were taken directly from the Grimm versions of fairy tales and were far more grisly than their American counterparts.

Given that my father was a Hebrew school principal, lots of our reading materials and records were produced for the Jewish educational market. I'm ashamed to admit that my imaginary playmates were Uri and Riva from the Hebrew language primers. I would guess that those are the two most boring imaginary friends on the planet. My imaginary palymates were terrible line drawings. I find this very sad.

My sisters and I also spent lots of time listening to records. Some were from Israel and were geared to Israeli's. Others were geared to the American market.

I just found the Judaica sound archives and found the lost sounds of my childhood.Menora's Little Seder . The singer for the Seder portion of the recording is Rabbi Morton Leifman, a dear friend of my father's and probably the best story teller and nicest man in New York City. You ought to also listen to track 5 for it's sheer kitch factor.

Our other great brush with celebrity was this album, Israeli Hootenanny. My first cousin David Haber was the pianist on the album. I always imagined that the guitarist on the cover was my fabulous musical cousin David. I love hearing the Brooklyn in the singers' voices.

This record was a big part of my childhood Shiru li Shiray Yiladim, as was this one Jewish Children Sing. I know these records sound awful and stilted to our ears, but I don't know how much better they were than say, Peter Ponsil

This record was not part of my childhood, but had me guffawing Bet Ha Sefer. We owned a similar record that taught Yiddish to kids.

I don't know if any of these records will resonate with any of you. Bur for me, listening to those recordings had me lying on the floor of my bedroom with my face in the speaker of our little brown portable record player

smelling that dusty electrical smell .

So now, you have a bit of of aural memory in your head.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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