#still made her and my grandfather latkes

[milo-is-rambling]

Hanukkah feels so fucked this year :((

[scientia-rex]

(writing about Judaism while not being Jewish: a trip down memory lane)

In other news, writing from Danny’s perspective and trying to keep in mind at all times that his worldview is influenced by being Jewish in an anti-Semitic society that doesn’t want to recognize itself as such means that I’m reading a lot of Wikipedia articles and also trying to dredge up my memories of spending much of my childhood at my Jewish best friend’s house. It’s kind of sad and kind of hilarious to realize what I did absorb versus what I didn’t. I can’t tell you a damn thing about theology that I learned from them back then, but I can tell you they had THE PRETTIEST blown-glass menorah; their grandfather (or great-uncle?), a Holocaust survivor if I recall correctly, came for Hanukkah one year when I was in elementary school, and I remember them lighting the menorah as I sat across the table from this wizened old man with a million age spots and dentures, who talked in a mumble. My friend’s mother loved him so much that it was obvious from everything she did--the way she touched his arm and back, how she helped him with his plate. (And I wasn’t an emotionally observant kid.) I also absorbed that latkes were good, dreidels were fun, and arguments among family members didn’t HAVE to end in crying, as they inevitably did at my own, non-religious, emotionally abusive home.

I feel like I had this view of a Jewish family (very classic New York Jewish family, transplanted to our little bumfuck nowhere for her father’s work) from so early on--we met in our first year of preschool--that I just assumed everyone did, and the idea of anti-Semitism seemed quaint, something that could be safely assigned to shadowy monsters of the early 20th century. It was a hell of a thing to realize they still weren’t safe, fifty years later. I don’t even remember when I realized that anti-Semitism still runs wild. I was neither emotionally nor socially aware.

I hope I never made it worse.

Part of the reason she was my best friend is that we looked so much alike at that age we were constantly confused for each other: we’d get a teacher tapping on our shoulder, telling us to go do something, and we’d blink up at them and say, “But I’m _____.” It pushed us together involuntarily. It didn’t help the teachers that we had the same hobbies. We were both avid readers, total bookworms, who hated the same people and dreamed of being writers. She is one, now; she’s written for big-name shows you’d recognize, and has for probably ten years now. I’m terribly proud of her, even though we haven’t talked much since high school, when she went off to a very swanky East Coast university and I went to a state liberal arts school with no reputation to speak of. We keep in touch on Facebook.

I owe that family a lot. Her mother saw potential in me when not a lot of people did. She encouraged me endlessly, wrote me when she saw my poetry in the high school newspaper, always let me come over. I don’t know whether she knew what my father was like behind closed doors. Not a lot of people did. Hometown people were shocked when I talked about it on Facebook a while back, after an unexpected lecture on domestic violence left me shaking in my seat and trying to cry without making noise. (My father does a good impression of a harmless country bumpkin, until someone he sees as his property pisses him off.) But she always made their house a safe place for me.

Anyway. I hope I do this story justice. I’m acting in good faith, I think, and that’s all I can do; but I don’t want Danny’s cultural background to get washed away in telling his story, because it matters. It’s affected who he is and how he sees the world. And for all that I grew up passionately hating Christianity and hypocritical Christians, because those were the people who tortured me the worst about being queer and that was by far the dominant culture in my town, I grew up side-by-side with one of our tiny handful of Jewish families, privileged to see some of its warmest, kindest moments: a family handing around a piece of bread, inviting the weird, scared, shy neighbor kid to participate.

I’m not saying they deserve freedom from persecution (or positive representation in fiction) because they were nice to me. They deserve that because it’s a human right. But I am saying it makes it particularly obvious to me, poignant and very, very personal.

[scouthearted]

there is ham in the cabbage.

it is out of place, noticeably salty (grandma can't have much salt) and noticeably wrong.

grandma laughs, quiet, but not soft. her plate clacks as she sets it down. "it was going to be a real jewish meal. but your dad told me the cabbage needed ham."

the cabbage is familiar. I love cabbage. the rest is unfamiliar, or known only in its name, sweet on my tongue, sweet in how forbidden it'd been til now. it's the word my jewish friends exclaim over and the characters in books relish.

it has been a symbol of who I am for years, since I first asked what latkes were and my answer was an explanation, then a sigh on my father's lips. "my grandmother made the best latkes, years ago."

"do you know her recipe?"

"no, but your grandmother does."

"can I try one?"

"she doesn't make them anymore, or so she says."

it is a week before my twenty-fourth birthday. a large fraction of my family is jewish, in some sense of the word, in a way I find confusing and knotted up. they renounce it. they do not talk about it. and yet... yiddish peppers the words my grandmother and father say at dinner, its own seasoning, frequent enough that the words become onomotopoeic. they sound like the irritated affection that my grandmother and father have for me.

and yet... when my jewish friends tell family stories, and nobody else seems to relate to it, I grin. "oh, at my house too."

and yet... when family history is discussed, the history cannot escape it, and I know my grandmother cannot either, and probably not my father. they grow silent in thought, and will not discuss these things again, not for a long while. not unless the ending is happy, like how my great great great grandfather tricked those who would harm him and brought my family to america.

it is a week before my twenty-fourth birthday when I first eat a latke, hesitantly, wondering if it will live up to expectations. it's as if my father reads my mind and he stops me with a word. "tabby. this is a latke."

(as if I did not know, a reasonable assumption, to be fair)

"you have to eat it with applesauce. or with sour cream, but..." an apologetic shrug. "we ran out of that."

my grandmother laughs from across the table. "we could have bought more," and her voice feigns mournfulness even as her brown eyes sparkle with life. "I like both."

I take a bite with applesauce, half convinced I will see heaven, half convinced that this will send me there. it does not. perhaps because I am the ham in the cabbage. my big blue eyes and cultural ignorance taking something away from this meal.

but then I look around. my dad eats not with usual critique, fostered from a love of the food network, but like when I see some adults eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. he eats like this is childhood again and he does not want to let it go.

grandma doesn't murmur a single complaint about how this strange buckwheat is cooked, though she does say that the latkes could be a little less dark, and that she still finds it funny that there is ham in the cabbage.

"it tastes good, though," says my father, "and we eat ham anyway."

my grandfather does not speak. he is too busy eating.

there is something light about the house. my father complains about his day, but he still jokes as he eats, his bad puns ringing through the home invitingly. my brother comes down from his room, where he has spent the day, sick. he does not eat food, but he devours the atmosphere.

"what is this called again?" I point to the food on my plate.

"kasha."

"it's good."

"very well seasoned," says my dad, his food network habits leaking out, though only a little. "and so is the cabbage. the ham is good in it."

he talks about ham and how his grandmother would not eat it. he talks about his childhood and the food on our plates. his eyes are bright green under his salt and pepper hair. he takes a bite of the cabbage between stories.

I look at my plate, which is empty. I go to get more food.

I am the ham in the cabbage. but I am also, in this moment, the kasha, and the latkes, and the applesauce, and another chapter in the stories that make the food so delicious.