The earliest memories I have of Yom Kippur are from my childhood, in my uncle, Shep Gerszberg’s home, where his sons were more brothers than cousins. I recall his great disappointment upon coming home during the break to find us playing Risk. I did not bear the brunt of his wrath. Whether that’s because I was a bit younger or because I was a girl, or because I hid behind the sofa, I’ll never know.
But I felt the shame of disappointing him just the same. He was not someone you wanted to let down, for he loved with his full heart. Evidence of this was left on my face after the millions of kisses he rained upon me whenever he greeted me.
Indeed, I remember asking him once (I must have been 10 or so) if — hypothetically — one needed to wait six hours between meat and milk if the hamburger one ate was not kosher. Even through the phone, and even though he’d never say it, I felt I’d let him down. And it hurt.
My family was not religious, growing up. He and my mother were brought up in the same house... but perhaps not the same home. Their parents were Holocaust survivors, each on their third marriage, brought together because one needed a wife and the other a husband, to prevent their remaining children from being sent to an orphanage. (That’s what happened in the United States if you couldn’t prove a stable home. And what could two destitute survivors who had lost children and spouses to the Nazis prove?)
True, they spoke five languages each, but English was not among them. And yet, together they built a home and raised my mother, her brother, and her sister who, while not related by blood, is woven into the family unit just as tightly. Two older brothers were out of the home already. Only my uncle was sent to yeshiva.
It was likely a matter of practicality and finances. But this doesn’t explain why the girls were not even taught the blessing over the candles. So, despite being fluent in Yiddish, they cannot read the alef bet. We never understood that. Then, a few years ago, I met a woman who specialises in Holocaust survivor trauma.
I asked her how it could be that one child got a rich religious education and the others nothing. She explained that many survivors separate their past and their future, often imbuing one child with the past, their history and heritage, to ensure it doesn’t die. In the others, they invest the future, a clean break in a new place, to ensure they live.
My mother was determined that her children not be ignorant of their heritage, as she often felt. So, she made two conditions upon marrying my father, who was not from a religious background. One was that the home be kosher. The other was that we had a Jewish education. And so it was that I often spent shabbat or holidays with my cousins, aunt and uncle. At the Shabbat table, my uncle would bless me as he blessed his own children and while his sons teased me mercilessly, I always felt at home.
When he died at 41 of a sudden heart attack, it shattered the family.
My grandparents, who had suffered so very much and who truly did not deserve to suffer any more, never really recovered.
In his honour, my family kept shabbat for the following year. And I learned to respond to the mourner’s kaddish at the age of 12.
After that, for as long as he was alive, and until I moved to Israel, I spent Yom Kippur at my grandfather’s side, praying with him at the conservative shul across the street.
His granddaughter davened beautifully (so said the other survivors in shul).
Yom Kippur is a terrifying day. It is when we reflect on the frailty of life. And while those who have lost need no reminder, we can all benefit from recalling that life is precious, that those we spend it with are dear, that social media and emails and phone calls and meetings can wait but the people we love might not.
My blessing to us all this year is that we internalise the preciousness of every moment, remembering to pick up the phone and call the ones we love.
Nothing is as important as knowing that you are truly loved, and truly loving in return.
