Homage to My Bubbes*

During March, Women’s History Month, I remember with hakarat ha’tov (gratitude) my two grandmothers whose history shaped my life in countless ways.

While I knew Grandma Anna, my maternal grandmother, much better because she lived into my adulthood, I have been learning more about Bubbe, my paternal grandmother, in the last few years from my 97-year-old Aunt Ida, Bubbe’s youngest.

Bubbe died when I was eight, so I don’t have many of my own memories. My clearest one is when our family went to visit with my newborn brother. Bubbe’s heart was failing, and she was bedridden. Curled up on a cot in the living room, she looked ancient although she was younger by a decade than I am now!

Speaking in a whisper, Bubbe said in Yiddish, “Give the baby a spoon of honey, so he should have a sweet life.” I have faithfully adopted that tradition, sharing apples and honey with my children and now grandchildren every Rosh Hashanah to wish them a good year.

Bubbe, daughter of a rabbi, grew up in a shetl (a small Jewish town) near Lomza, Poland. I recently learned that one of the first yeshivas dedicated to Mussar (Jewish ethics) was founded in Lomza in 1883, just four years before Bubbe was born. No wonder Mussar has become such a vital part of my life! It’s in my DNA.

As a young girl in Poland, Bubbe was chased by armed Cossacks as she gathered potatoes from a nearby field. She escaped from the pogroms in the early years of the twentieth century, arriving at Ellis Island with her husband and two young sons in tow. She knew only Yiddish yet established a full life in a Brooklyn Jewish ghetto where she had three more children, including my father.

Bubbe raised her five children in a fifth-floor apartment, located in a project of nondescript high rises where the elevator was often unreliable. (I remember the doors closing on my family as we got on in the lobby, and the elevator refusing to move. The door wouldn’t re-open, and we were stuck for several minutes as I began to panic – the onset of my claustrophobia?)

A housewife, Bubbe cooked, cleaned, and taught her children while my grandfather, whom we called Zaida, worked in a sweatshop as a presser. Aunt Ida told me that when she came home from school, she often found rabbis sitting in the modest living room overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue discussing the Torah with Bubbe. “My mother was brilliant,” Ida says. “She sat in the women’s section of her Orthodox synagogue and was the informal leader. Many of the women couldn’t follow along in the Hebrew prayer book; she helped them.”

One day when Aunt Ida arrived home from school, her mother was sitting shiva (the Jewish ritual of mourning) on a wooden box. She had learned that the Nazis had wiped out Lomza, exterminating all the Jews.

Bubbe was so well respected that when she died, the rabbis marched with her coffin in procession down the streets of Brooklyn to accompany her body to the funeral home, Aunt Ida recalls.

While I certainly cannot claim the Biblical scholarship of Bubbe, I unknowingly followed her by taking a leadership role in my synagogue and becoming an avid student of Mussar. Coincidence or a gift of inheritance?

My Grandma Anna, who came to the US from Russia as a baby, and her six sisters grew up in the shadow of their only brother’s death. He was playing in the street near their Brooklyn home when the neighbor kids built a fire and dared each other to jump over. When he attempted it, his clothes caught on fire. Trying to run home for help, he became engulfed in flames. He didn’t survive, and the tragedy became a pivotal moment in our family history, oft repeated as a cautionary tale in an effort to keep the future generations safe.

Anna gave me the gift of devotion to family. She and her sisters were a tight-knit group who raised their families together, living in proximity in Brooklyn. Though Anna only had two daughters, the extended family of cousins were like siblings and best friends. My mother remembered fondly how every evening after work, my great-grandfather (Anna’s father) would stop at the apartment of each of his daughters. Opening the door and peeking in, he’d ask, “All good?” and then move on to the next one.

As Anna’s first grandchild, I received special attention. I remember spending Friday nights at her house, and she tied my long curly hair in white rags to create ringlets while my grandfather played pinochle and smoked cigars with his cronies. She made me cinnamon toast and always had a sweet to enjoy with Lipton tea, served Russian style, with lots of sugar, in a glass mug. Following her tradition, I host my grandchildren overnight frequently, and we are creating memories with game nights and movie nights.

Both Bubbe and Grandma Anna spent their adult lives with volatile, domineering men. Yet both had a quiet strength that carried them and their children through tough times, including the Great Depression, WWII, antisemitism and personal tragedy. While I may have inherited my grandmothers’ traumas, I also inherited their strength.

So as we celebrate Women’s History Month, I express my deepest kavod (honor) to Bubbe and Grandma Anna, two courageous women whose lives shaped mine in both known and unknown ways. May their memories be for a blessing.

*While both my parents grew up speaking Yiddish, I just learned a few words. Bubbe is Yiddish for grandmother and Zaida for grandfather.