Purim songs and Pesach fire

So we had our Purim seudah this year at G’s Aunt C’s house, and I think I gained my Pesach weight early. Heheh. Those Rabinowitz women sure are talented with the food. Excellent food, excellent company, and plenty of cousin action, for adults as well as kiddies. But none of that is my favorite part, not even Cousin R’s famous salads or my mother-in-law’s famous corned beef, or my children’s famous shrieking over who gets to sit where. My favorite part of the Rabinowitz Purim is the link between past and present — a link of blood, and of time.

This is G’s great-great-grandfather, the Monestrisczer Rebbe (this is my cell-phone camera taking a picture of a picture on the wall, hence the unfortunate lighting):

A somewhat troubled face, no? G’s cousin Z says he can’t have that picture in his house, because he feels like he can’t do any aveirot when the Rebbe is looking at him like that. I assured him that it is in fact possible to do aveirot even in front of this portrait — I am living proof of this — but it is true that it’s difficult to look away without feeling the intensity of that gaze.

Onward.

This is the Rebbe’s eldest son, G.A. (and in this one, please enjoy, at no extra cost, the small bluish reflection of my cell phone screen on the glass):

That’s the only picture of him. Like, in the world. I had the unimaginable blessing of knowing three of my great-grandparents; when I look at their pictures I hear real voices and remember real conversations. Dozens of pictures, dozen of memories; but this is the only visible remnant of G’s great-grandfather, anywhere. And this is G.A.’s wife, P. (glowing blue square to match her husband’s):

There’s one other picture of her in existence, but we don’t have a copy. And quite frankly, after what I went through getting copies of the three of these, as much kinship as I feel towards this woman, I think I can do without the other picture.

Hey, that reminds me – want to hear something rude? When I went to get this copy made, the dude behind the counter told me she looks like — wait for it — Cher. Like, that really skinny man-woman with all the hair and the throaty voice. Um. Ahem?? I BEG YOUR PARDON, DUDE. SHE DOES NOT.

So, as I was saying. G.A. and his wife P. were both murdered in a pogrom in the Ukraine, in 1919, leaving G.A.’s parents, the Rebbe and his wife, to raise and care for their three orphaned grandchildren, one of whom was my husband G’s grandfather, Zeidie (no, that was not his actual name).

These are G’s grandparents, Zeidie and Bubbe T. (same blue square, same bad lighting, a little bit blurry, yadda yadda yadda):

That’s at G’s cousin’s wedding. That cousin has four kids now, and in fact one is named after Bubbe T and one is named after Zeidie. G’s same Aunt C of the Purim seudah had copies of this picture made for each of us, and wow, am I grateful. I love it. It occupies a place of honor in the center of my family portrait wall in the dining room, and I think it’s perfect. The picture is a 5×7 — not at all the largest on the wall — but the center, right above the pictures of my kids, is exactly where it belongs. Bubbe T in particular belongs right next to my kids. They were everything to her, even just the idea of them. “My future,” she said, beaming, when I showed her the ultrasound image of RS. Wow, I miss her so much. But we’ll do her another time. Promise.

So. Like I was saying. Zeidie’s parents were murdered in a pogrom when he was 9 years old. If I recall correctly, he and his aunt stayed hidden, reciting Tehillim, until the fighting was over. Fighting, was it? Is that the right term to describe armed murderers storming through a town butchering people? I mean how much “fighting” could there have been, really? But in any case, they stayed hidden, davening, until it was safe to come out. “Safe.” A relative term in that time and place.

So Zeidie was brought up by his grandparents, and they brought him to America, and he became a pulpit rabbi, and a teacher, and he had five children, and I know, because I’ve heard it said by all sorts of people, that he inspired and impacted so many people in so many ways over years and years. But I think it might be that the one he impacted most was my husband.

Everyone talks about the seder. Everyone. You can’t mention one without mentioning the other. It’s like Zeidie’s seder was an extension of himself, more a part of my husband than Zeidie was, I think, because the seder could enter into you and alight your senses in a way that a human being can’t. Zeidie’s seder was a surreal out-of-body experience that exuded fire and song. Not normal song, either. Normal song is what birds do; “song” is the sweetness of RS’s chumash play, where I choked on an inner swirl of emotion when I heard all those little voices singing “אנחנו מאמינים בני מאמינים….” (ok, I don’t know why that ellipsis won’t go where it belongs, at the end of the Hebrew. I’ll never figure this stuff out.) 

G, by the way, whose YU upbringing continuously defies his Hasidic roots, wasn’t moved by that moment in the chumash play at all. Humph. What’s that about, anyway?? Dozens of cute little children, one of them his very own daughter, celebrating the beginning of their Torah learning, singing “אנחנו מאמינים בני מאמינים,” and he feels nothing? No linkage to the past, no imagining the future, no being overwhelmed by our link in the chain? Feh. He’s not really Hasidic, I tell you. He’s got nothin’.

But back to the seder, and song. “Song” is something that can flow through your soul and sweeten your ears and transport you to another time and place, yes. But Zeidie’s seder was not just “song.” Zeidie’s seder was fire. It attacked every neuron and lit up every human faculty or instinct that you imagined you had. Zeidie’s seder was like the manna in the desert, combining every flavor into one, tasting and touching and feeling every sensory experience that our human limitations can absorb. You didn’t know where you were. You didn’t know what you were doing. All you knew was that it was exquisite and fierce and alive, and you could see and hear and sense people and things that weren’t there, and you never wanted it to end.

I was only there once. I hardly knew Zeidie. G and I have been married 12 years, and I was at Zeidie’s seder once. It was the first year we were married. G had an instinct, I think, that he had to bring me as soon as possible, or I may never get to see it. Zeidie was already on the decline, supposedly; the stories I hear make it clear that the formidable, towering presence I knew for a few years was a shadow of his former self. Story after story, always told with laughter and love, of the toughness, the temper, the thundering voice that made you tremble from miles away. It isn’t difficult to imagine. I mean, look at his face more closely:

It’s a super-cruddy image, of course, taken at an angle through glass by a cell phone, but you get the idea. That wasn’t a sneer on his face. That was just who he was. Powerful and severe. He didn’t have to put on an act to get anyone to take him seriously, he never had to play a role. He was what he was without apology or weakness, and when I, at least, was around him, I felt awed into reverence. Loving reverence, humbling reverence, not scared reverence. That’s what I felt. I think G did too.

That wasn’t all, though. There was another side to Zeidie. I think I can describe it best, or at least my own experience of it, by describing what my mother-in-law and her siblings were like when he was sick, and dying, and then when he died. Now you have to understand the type of people my mother-in-law and her siblings are. There are five of them. And each one is an incredibly accomplished, incredibly impressive, and incredibly talented human being. All of them naturally rise to the top of everything, wherever they are. Brilliant, highly educated, powerful personalities with natural and inescapable leadership skills. By which I mean they can’t even escape them themselves. My mother-in-law was talking to me a few years ago and she mentioned something about retiring at some point, and I laughed out loud. “You? Retire?”

“Sure,” she said. “Of course, some day I’ll retire.”

I laughed again. “Yeah, right. Then what are you going to do?”

She got defensive in a “how-can-you-tease-me-like-this” sort of way, and she said, “Well, I would love to maybe volunteer somewhere, in a program that teaches kids how to read….” Her voice trailed off.

I kept laughing and said “Yes, and within a month you’d accept the job as the one who runs that program.”

When I told G about this conversation he cracked up, and said to me, “That was very good.” Because of course I was having fun teasing my mother-in-law, but I was also being serious. Because all the Rabinowitzes are like that. They rise to the top and take charge, because they have to. They don’t even realize they’re doing it. It’s in their blood.

So imagine the difference, five adults like that, the oldest (my mother-in-law) already a grandmother, two of the others expecting their first grandchild (there were four of us pregnant at the funeral), all of them super-accomplished, formidable human beings — and suddenly all five of them had gone. When Zeidie was dead and we were at the funeral, there were five lost and frightened children in their places. Heaven and earth had turned over, the ground had been pulled out from under them. Of course we’re never ready to lose a parent, ever, no matter how old we are, but that was the first time I discovered that when it comes to our parents, we are all still children, even my mother-in-law and her siblings. Their eyes were wide and afraid. Their world made no sense anymore. They were lost.

And that’s when I started to wonder about Zeidie. What kind of man was this, I thought, who created these five adults? Five distinct personalities, all of them highly independent, respected, powerful and impressive people, and yet here they were, lost and vulnerable and afraid with him gone. They loved him so madly, all of them, and when they talk about his fierceness and his temper it’s always with affection and warmth. So he wasn’t all toughness, he wasn’t only severe. I’d heard about and even encountered his famous sense of humor. But there was softness and tenderness, too. I remembered I’d seen it. I’d seen it when I spoke to him and Bubbe T on the phone when G and I got engaged. I wish I could remember what exactly he said — I’ve squeezed my brain as hard as I can and I can’t scrape it up — but it was something funny and warm, something self-deprecating, something about my being excited to meet them, or not having met them yet, or something related to that. I don’t remember what it was. But I remember it was unexpected, and funny, and it was embracing, as I think it was meant to be.

I also saw that side of him when Bubbe T was sick. The first time, when she was in the cheesy little hospital with the bad MRI machine that her doctor couldn’t even read. G and I picked Zeidie up and brought him to see her. See that face up there, again? Stern and scary, right? But it was gone when we entered her room. He saw her and he melted into gentleness. Softened all over, way into his eyes. There was no formidable father, there was no former shul rabbi with the thundering voice. There was only a gentle old man, gazing at his wife. And at the funeral I remembered. I saw my mother-in-law and her siblings and I remembered the sides of Zeidie that I’d seen.

I feel sort of silly, writing about him this way, not to mention scared of what the Rabinowitzes might do to me if anything I say here is wrong. Heheh. As to Zeidie and me, I knew him for three years, and he’s been dead for about nine. But the truth remains that I formed impressions during that time, and they’ve been built on ever since, and these are the impressions I have.

So at the Purim seudah every year, we always sing two family versions of שושנת יעקב. (And then my husband usually treats everyone to a solo rendition of the Modzitz Shoshanat Yaakov, the quality of which tends to mirror the amount of alcohol he’s consumed by that time, but that’s a different matter.) One is my father-in-law’s, and it’s lively and fun. The other is one that was written for G’s great-great-grandfather the Monestrisczer Rebbe, a million or so years ago, in Europe. And it’s absolutely stunning. It goes on forever and ever — there’s no chorus or anything repetitive, each line is sung differently, and then sung differently again — and it’s the most beautiful, elegant song I’ve ever heard. It’s fun and serious and lively and dirge-like all at the same time, and I was so thrilled when I finally mastered it, and singing it together with as many Rabinowitzes as possible infuses something into Purim that cannot be described. G told me the first time he sang it to me, when we were engaged, how happy Zeidie would get when he heard everyone sing it. We were at the Purim seudah with him twice, I think, and I remember the last time, when everyone sang it and he beamed, and when it was over he said “You learned it!” He had Alzheimer’s already then, and it was sad that he didn’t remember, at that moment, that we’d known it for a long time and hadn’t just “learned” it, but it was wonderful to see how pleased he was. It’s such a fantastic song. I look forwad to it all year.

So I remember Purim last year, when I was pregnant with the Boy, and there we were at Aunt C’s. I knew that if I had a boy, we were going to name him after Zeidie. And I’d also realized, years before, that my son, should I be so blessed, was going to be even more connected with Zeidie than I realized at first — because G is named after Zeidie’s father. The one from the picture up there, G.A. who was murdered in the pogrom. I realized years ago that if I had a son, and we gave him that name, that his full Hebrew name would be .ב.מ. בן הרב ג.א – which was precisely Zeidie’s name. And there I was, at the Purim seudah last year, and we were singing the stunning Shoshanat Yaakov (I don’t know why I keep switching between English and Hebrew), and I felt the same elation lifting me up inside, and I thought about Zeidie, and about the baby inside me. And then I thought about Zeidie’s mother P., who was also attacked in the pogrom and ended up dying a while later, on Yom Kippur. And I wondered what it was like for her when she was pregnant with Zeidie, and if she was pregnant with him over Purim, and if so, on that Purim, did she listen to this song? Were the men singing it in the other room, surrounding her father-in-law at the table, while she and the other women did whatever they were doing (dishes, probably)? Did she listen? Did she peek into the room to watch the seudah, or did she stay hidden in the kitchen or wherever, like a proper future rebbe’s wife? Was she sick from the pregnancy? Was she afraid? What was it like to be her, in the Ukraine, pregnant with what would ultimately be her third and last child, married to the man who would be the rebbe some day, surrounded with the beautiful things that I saw in the curio in Zeidie’s house, hearing (how many voices? dozens? hundreds? how many people came to the Rebbe’s Purim seudah?) the men’s voices, probably drunk, or getting there, singing this song in a town full of Jews, surrounded by enemies on the outside? Did they scare her? Did she imagine getting out, and going somewhere else free of worry? Did she know such a thing was possible, that she could raise her children free from fear? How many times was she pregnant, anyway? Child mortality was no good back then… I imagine she lost at least one pregnancy, maybe more, maybe she’d had children who died. The aunts and uncles probably know; I should ask them. Was she worried about the pregnancy, when she was pregnant with Zeidie? Did she already know what they would name him, if he was a boy? And I thought about her, as the song went on, married to הרב ג.א, carrying a son inside her, hearing this very same music, and I wanted to reach out and touch her. And I realized then, sitting there pregnant, knowing what the name might be, that this moment, at Aunt C’s table with my three daughters running around, and all of us — men and women, siblings and cousins — singing together, in the most free country in the world, that as different as my world is and as different as this moment was from any moment she ever knew, that I was closer to Zeidie’s mother than I had ever been before. I thought of her picture on my wall at home, and I looked around the table and I thought about Zeidie, and my mother-in-law and G’s cousin who are both named after Zeidie’s mother, and G and his cousin who are both named for Zeidie’s father, and the two little boy cousins who had already been named after Zeidie, and G’s aunt who is named after Zeidie’s grandmother, and G’s uncle who is named after the Rebbe, Zeidie’s grandfather. And I thought to myself that maybe our worlds aren’t really so different, and that maybe I could reach out and touch her after all.

So that was last year. And this year we were there again, and my son was there too, .ב.מ. בן הרב ג.א, scooting around on the floor and screeching loudly. He sat on my mother-in-law’s lap during the song, and he loved it. And there was another cousin born this year who was named after Zeidie as well, and he was also there, and another one named after Bubbe T, bringing the total to four named for each. And I thought about P. and G.A. and the intensity of the Rebbe’s gaze, and I thought about the people who had killed Zeidie’s parents, and I hoped that all of them could hear us singing this song.

Tags: Holidays, Husband