Script for Mothers of Jews, 1964-2006

MOTHERS OF JEWS Judith: Here I am, Judith Davidson, habitat: USA: age 21; condition: ?? just out of college - and wondering where I am going at a worrisome age in a troublesome time . I resist decisions because the decision may set me on rstb-le path which may be wrong for me and my time. My mother says, settle down. But she says it hesitantly^ because she is not if.hur ftrlihn in iinllil -rrr tvmn if.ahr haa thr right-fr" giwa . She, too, got out of college at 21; then she married, had children. And where is she now? How relevant was her education? What did her life mean? What did she contribute? That^s npt jfgr .me. I have to be in the center of life, not on its pe**p&ery. Being wife and mother is not enough. But what is? The world is a mess. It could end tomorrow. I may be the ultimate product at the end of 10, 000 years of civilization; nay -would insist that I say - the <j>jad.nf 4,000 yeo>B of Jewiok^Ufe. It can't be - yet our (7^ v ' situation is desperate, our problems unique. My mother, ? o / J grandmother, great grandmother going back to the beginning did not know, feel, experience what my generation knows, feels, experiences w w . Or did they? If only they could tell us. _ ra n Zipporah: Let me begin the telling. I am Zipporah Jawt Haran, wife of feeZHV Bishai, in the year 3319 - a-most troublesome titwe . And I am the great, great, grandmother a hundred generations removed of Judith who speaks so lightly of beginnings. When was the beginning if we do not want to go back to Mother Eve? There was a beginning m Un?> of-the-Ghaldeee, with Abraham our father. There was a beginning in the Wilderness with Moses thio Jpgaphot. There was a beginning in Jerusalem HMh Dayid-omr-Kiog., and another beginning in Babylon that Isaiah foretold. My own beginning was when Cyrus of Persia . ? . lifted the exile and we returned to the land that was given us by God. We live in Gibeah, where the winters are very severe. But the land is good for our goats, -the goats wh-ieh a?a.?M? liveliht>?d. We make cheese far vllhrgers and Wi wrtkc wine-skins for the Jerusalem trade. It is a hard life, but a good one. The children tend the goats and the women milk the goats and the men make the cheese. Each to his task, as it should be. But when we make.J)ig wine-skins we work together, the men and the women. It is better when the work goes well and all is merry. But when a woman's -2- Zipporah: stitch is too loose so the wine leaks out, the men are angry. And (cont.) when the skin is not softened enough by the men and the needle does not go through readily, then there are harsh words from the women. But in neither case is anger carried into the house after work is done. Life is hard enough without bringing the quarrels of the workshop into the home. But can I add that it is more often the women who forget the anger than the men. Perhaps peace is women's work - at least in the home. Judith: Miriam: Judith: Miriam: Our pressing problem is the Samaritan women. They seek out our men, and our men lust after them. Ezra and the Assembly commanded that our men give up their Samaritan wives. What a to-do! Some were glad to get rid of those foreigners. Some refused. And some appeared to give up their Samaritan women but hid them away where they could be visited in secret. Even today, the young men ask why they cannot marry whom they wish, even Samaritan women. It is a problem, this intermarriage, even in these modern times when the world is ruled by the great king from Babylon and even the Syrians act almost civilized. So speaks Zipporah, my grandmother a hundred generations back. Ifhil imn. nlir ' ^ - J Q I T ^ She speaks of peace in the home and intermarriage in the community. What did I say about our present problems being unique? Has nothing changed? Yes, things have changed. But for the worse. I am Miriam, wife of Uriel. We have no problem with intermarriage in this year of 3422 - unfortunately. I would be better off had my husband Uriel married a Syrian or an Egyptian. q J ^ ^ & K a ^ J & ^ O Miriam, another great, great grandmother, l i v e d * i n . a f e g m t 340 BCE gyVg-TOmil Un years* Which would be about the time of Alexander the Great. J Let me continue. My father Merari is a camel driver and my husband Uriel is a camel driver. Gone two or three months at a time and when they return, they bring one month's earnings. Then they sit about drinking wine and lying to each other while they wait for the work to come to them. My grandfather Jorah, who came here from Gibeah, was a learned and pious man. Ke blew the shofar that called the village from work on Shabbat eve. On the second and fifth day of the week, he helped read the Law. But his son, my father Merari, had to have adventure. So he became a camel driver. And, of course, married me to one of his drinking companions. -3- Miriam: Just yesterday my husband returned from Jerusalem where he (cont.) carried stone for the great cistern that Simon the Just is building to hold the waters from the pools of Solomon. Imagine, a great well of water in the middle of the city. We have to walk to the bottom of the hill - and back again - for our water. You would imagine that Uriel himself had thought up this plan and engineered it. He only carried stone for the masons, just like his camel. Men! They go off and enjoy themselves while we stay home and cook and clean and weave and care for the babies they make almost as an after-thought. Miriam's complaints have a familiar sound. The women are tied to homely things while the mtn concern themselves with the things of the world. Apparently she was already forming the ideas that Women's Lib invented. All that's missing is war and ( k r a m w . t o i & I'll tell you about soldiers. I am Huldah and am the wife of Joel the captain of a hundred. We live in Modin and have some land and a watchtower and a well. Good you say. But even before I was married to Joel he had served under Jonathan ben Absolam at Joffa and under Simon Maccabeus when they took Gaza. Since we were married he helped storm Shechem and was the first to set fire to the temple the Greeks built on Mt. Gerizim. That was a campaign to worry a wife to death. Not the danger - a soldier's wife accepts that - but the spoils. He came home from Gerizim with, among other spoils, six bolts of silk and two Syrian women. The silk I sold. But he wanted to keep the women in the house - to help me, he said. I wouldn't have any of that. We sold them to some Romans. And where is he now my hero? In Alexandria. He is protecting some ambassador sent from Jerusalem to Egypt on some made-up pretext. My husband insisted that he was commanded to take the post. I think he volunteered. And if I find out that he did, he'll die here by my hand, not in glorious battle for the king and Judea. Judith: So in the time of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, jfcuul 150 my ancestress Huldah had^roblems^with soldiers and war and the booty of war. Is it ?igrulioanfr that the problems these great grandmothers speak of are the universal problems: peace and war, marriage and the small problems of the home? What is Jewish about them? Or has the stage of history not yet turned to the more particular problems of these mothers of Jews? The great change came with the and of the Jewish state, with the destruction of the Temple. My ancestress, Leah bat tpo"f~ Beitf, lived in that 1st century of the Common Era. Judith: Huldah: -4- Leah: It is two years now that the City of David, the center of the world, fell once again to the Romans and the Temple was destroyed. But it was dying before the Romans put the torch to beloved Jerusalem. We, ourselves, had torn the city and the community apart. Sadduccee against Pharisee, Zealot against Sicarii, rich against poor, Hellene against traditionalists. If a division was possible, we found it and cursed the other side of the argument. Our family was Sadduccees; what other party for Leah bat Beri? A quiet has come over Israel with the Temple in charred ruins. I have not seen them, we escaped to Beth Shamesh, but all Israel feels the desolation. The Romans - yes, and the Jewish naysayers-say that Judea is no more, that the Jews will disappear into the Roman world as salt disappears in the Roman sea. It is not so. Yesterday, it was the 15th day of Tammuz in the year 3831 since the creation of the world, we heard that an academy of the Law had been established at the village of Yavne'n. My son David will go there. It is a kind of fulfillment. When David was born, my husband insisted that he be called by a more fashionable name - Marcus, or Paulus, or Aullus, or some other Greek name. I don't know why, but I would not allow it. Whether because of foresight or deep memory, I acted the Pharisee fishwife rather than the Sadduccee patrician that I am - no, that I was. And now David, my son, who only four years ago was dressed like a Roman senator, and spoke with a Roman lisp, and played at Roman games, wll go to Yavneh and study the Law with Yochanon ben Zakkai and the sages of Israel. The Temple is destroyed, but we shall build a new Temple in our hearts and minds. True, it is the men of Israel who will study, but it is the women of Israel who must make the path to the inward Temple smooth and inviting. Rebecca: My tale is of the past for there is no future. I am Rebecca and I have no husband, nor shall I have. We lived in Beth Shemesh and had vineyards which my great great grandmother Leah bought with the jewels she had hidden when her family escaped Jerusalem. In the second Roman war the vineyards were taken away and sold to an absentee landlord in Syria. So the terraces crumbled, and the waterways dried up and the land lost its goodness . -5- Rebecca: (cont.) Judith: Ruth: When the messengers from Akiba came to Beth Shemesh, my father Zadok listened. And he followed Bar Kochba as Akiba said. When Betar (bay-TAR) fell, in the year 3894, my father fell also. We hid, but the Roman soldiers were like locusts - both in numbers and in destruction of the land. Last month I was captured during that night of horror. Most of the women died - eventually. Why I did not die I do not know. But I was dragged to Jaffa with the older children and the few men who did not die. Mow I am on a ship bound for Alexandria - where I will be sold as a slave. Oh God, full of compassion, prepare a kindly way for Thy servant Rebecca. Judah is no more and Thy people are dispersed, who are not dead. Again, we return to Egypt as slaves. Send a new Moses to lead us once more to freedom. It is hard to accept --atx^aeooptLng, comprehend - that those ancient ladies were of one line, one family, one blood with mine. That was my grandmother, so many times removed, who argued about the Samaritan wives; my grandmother who waited for her soldier husband to come back from the Maccabean wars; still my grandmother who sent her son off to Yavneh to study with the sages who compiled the Mishnah. And the grandmother Rebecca who returned to Egypt a slave m Ikaidad - how relevant were her problems to mine? This family of mine next lived in Carthage and Rome, then Ravenna, till we come to Ruth who lived in Narbonne in the beginning of the 7th Century. We are a much-traveled family, like all Jews. Each new century is marked by a new land with new problems. Is that what's the matter with us, that we're fairly new to America? The Romans called this place Narbo Martius and the Franks call it Narbonne. I, Ruth bat Manasseh, call it home. And it is a goodly place. My father thinks it's sacreligious to make the comparison but I wonder whether the vineyards of Judah were as pleasant as our vineyards. My father is a scribe, but he spends most of his time trying to reconcile Greek philosophy with our own ancients. He has a problem, however,. The people on this land, even the nobles, are an illiterate lot. And who does father have to talk to? Why only yesterday he agreed to teach a monk from the abbey how to read Greek. A monk! The abbot brings manuscripts for father to translate. Father says that but for the Jews, the Christians might forget how to read their own sacred bible. But things are about to change. Next week my betrothed arrives. He is from -6- Ruth: Auvergne. I have never really seen him, but they say he reads (cont.) all the languages of the world and is very learned. Did my father choose him as a husband for his daughter or as a companion for himself? I know I'll like him. My mother never saw my father until they met under the chupah, and they love each other. Judith: Again the Jews of my family found a green and pleasant land. This time in France. It was to remain hospitable to our people until the Crusades. But even in that f a c i e i time and place, my ancestress Ruth questions the tradition. Shouldn't her father select her husband? In the next 500 years or so my family made the great circle of the civilized world, a journey that would have meant the end of a people - except for two great strengths inherent in their life the strength of their inner life centered on faith and the wonderful strength of their family structure. From France my family went to Baghdad, .thitmea fc^fcha m ?>a n%niwhafc im mv ir Southern Russia; to Egypt o#-M?imem*e6, to Constantinople, and back to Christian Europe. They were expelled f r om Spain and went to the Netherlands. Finally, in the 1600's to Poland which was to be the center of Jewish lifeibr 400 years. For six centuries, from tihirf ntwa?frww Babylon to the destruction of the Jewish Commonwealth by the Romans, the problems of Jewish women were intermarriage making a living, wars that took their husbands nod that took their*lau!i,yj and, of course, the problem of children who want to follow modern ways and parents who want them to study the old ways. Then, for ten centuries, from the end of Rome t??ihe acceptance ?f-tbertfews to the great expulsions f r om Western Europe, the problems of my grand-mothers were making a living and wars and children and trying to be secure in an increasingly insecure world. Did nothing change but the style of clothing? Shprintzeh: This memoir is different. My great great grandmother Jehudit spoke in German. Her ancestor Sarah wrote in Nederlandisch. Shulamit wrote in Spanish, Zipper ah in Italian, Miriam in Arabic and so on. Not since Leah bat Beri of Beth Shemesh has an ancestor written in a Jewish language. Now I do again, in the haimische schprach we call Yiddish. Why not? I live in a Jewish community governed by Jewish elders according to Jewish law. True, the king is not Jewish. He is Stanislaus Poniatowski, king of Poland, a good king. And I am Shprintzeh bat Shmuel. My father is the shamas of the leather-workers' shul My great -7- Shprintzeh: great grandfather and mother wandered here from Germany, so (cont.) they say. They also say that they were sheushpieler, but they don't say that to my father's face. He insists our ancestors were respectable Jews. My husband also insists on it. Why not. What else has he got to worry about? Next year - which is only a few months away - it will be 5545, or 1786 as the government counts - his five years' kest is over. Five years ago we were married and my new husband moved into my father's house, to be kept auf kest so he could continue his studies. My father supported us both. That doesn't mean my husband has to go to work now that the kest is over. Oh no. The duty of a man is to study. And the duty of a woman is to maintain the family so her husband can study. So I'm looking for a stall in the market-place. I'll sell arbis and he'll study. I bet if he dove a little deeper into the sea of Talmud, he'd find some place where the sages said it could be the other way round. But in these troubled times, we had better hang on to whatever stability we can find. We used to be in the middle of Poland, here in Cracow. Now, since the Russians and the Prussians and the Austrians each took a bite, Cracow is on the border. Maybe next year we won't be Poles and my husband will have to give up his studies. Yissel: My great great grandmother Shprintzeh was right. They kept taking bites out of Poland until it was all gone. And now, though we live in Warsaw, we are subjects of the Russian Czar. They call me Yissel Chaye's. All my female ancestors were bat something, that is, daughter of some father. I am called with my mother's name. Which is as it should be. In our secret classes, after work in Pan Levy's cotton mill, we have discussed the subjugation of women. It is one of the ways the upper classes use to keep the working classes down. That and starvation and persecution. The old folks are still arguing the merits of the Chasidim versus the misnagdim. That is only another means of keeping the working class from seeing their true position. As we found out last year when we struck the factory. We couldn't even get all the Jews together. And last week they arrested our leaders and sent them to Siberia. We are now talking about escaping over the border. That, too, is an argument. Some are saying Germany, others America, and a few even talk of going to Eretz Israel. We thought things would be better when that monster Alexander the Third died. But his son Nicholas the Second isn't any better. And who are the main victims? The Jews! After the revolution, anti-Semitism will disappear.