עטרת ראשנו נפלה מעלינו

This morning, just as I was taking these photos from my living room window, my friend Herta breathed her last breaths.

Herta was 95, she would have turned 96 in August.

I met Herta in 1986 when I began working at my synagogue. I was warned about Herta before I met her. I was told that she would find every error that I would make and call me on it. I was also told that when she complained she was nearly always right, and that it made good sense for me to listen to her.

The advice I was given was correct. At first, frankly, Herta terrified me. Eventually she became fond of me. I always thanked her for correcting my errors.

Herta was born in Berlin. Yesterday her niece told me that in the family they used to say that Herta was brought up by the German army, that is her mother and her aunt, who were much fiercer than Herta was.

Herta’s Hebrew tutor was Regina Jonas. Regina Jonas asked Herta if she wanted to have a bat-mitzvah. It would have been the first bat- mitzvah in Germany. Herta declined. She said “ What do I need to do it for? The presents? Forget it!”

After Hitler came to power Herta’s father got the family to Shanghai where Herta lived from the time she was 18 until she was 28. While there were many hardships during her time there. She was often hungry. Herta also clearly had a blast during those Shanghai years. She told me about a birthday party where her fellow refugee friends all chipped in and bought her an ounce of coffee. They made that ounce into a giant pot of coffee and they all pretended that it was the good times back in Berlin.

Getting to the States after the war was difficult. Herta spent her first several months with the widow of one of her uncles, in Madison, Wisconsin where she worked as a waitress.

Eventually, Herta made her way to New York. There she met Lester, who like Herta had also spent the war in Shanghai. No, they didn’t meet in China, they traveled in very different circles. Lester was older than Herta, much less cosmopolitan and deeply deeply sweet. He adored Herta. She loved him.

The two created a full life together. They became parents to Linda. They were when I worked for the synagogue one of the most important families there. Not because they gave the most money, but because hey worked hard to make the synagogue the best it could be.

Herta was also the source of lots of truly dirty jokes. She used to send me really filthy jokes via email. Most of them are too dirty to post here. They were however, very funny.

Herta has been ill for the past few years.

I will deeply miss my smart, sharp tongued friend who was so right about so many things.

Comments

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

Search This Blog