hello muda...hello fodda

hello!

yesterday after a hellish morning of school/work i drove over to my grandparents house to have dinner. i sat in the living room and updated my grandparents on my life, the weekend, anything really. they told me stories that i could never get tired of hearing. stories about new york, old jewish customs, family etc.

we then had a dinner. left overs from when my grandma hosted a big dinner party for the family. chicken, corn, salad, and carrot souffle. by the way, carrot souffle is the best thing in the entire world. it was so delicious. and of course i ate my corn on the cob with the little corn dish/holders my grandma has had since i was tiny.

after dinner my grandma and i watched housee hunters (a tradition for the two of us) and then we watched Tevye the Milkman. Its an old yiddish movie I found at Vidiots and I thought my grandparents would enjoy it. It was actually pretty good and most of the enjoyment came from seeing how much my grandma enjoyed/identified with it.

My great-grandparents immigrated to NYC from Russia in 1926. My great-grandfather came first illegally through Canada. He worked as a dress maker until he could afford to bring my great-grandmother, grandmother, and three great uncles(who I never met). When my grandma came to the US it was in the steerage part of the ship. I guess my great-grandfather had saved enough to buy them all first class tickets, but bc they were coming illegally, the people who brought them over stole from them and they ended up in steerage. I could not imagine.

Anyway, my great-grandparents were orthodox jews who spoke yiddish and came from the old country. I never completly realized how important those ideals, which seem so antiquated, mean to my grandma. The story is about Tevye, a milkman, whose youngest daughter marries a gentile man. The family is destroyed by it and considers her dead. Take away all the melodramatic stuff and I began to understand why it was so important back then for Jews in Russia to stick with Jews. Towards the end of the film Tevye is asked to leave the countryside he has called home all his life, because he is jewish. This is set before WW2 and even before Hitler took over, so not only do you see how much people hated jews, but how they really are the wondering people. I dont know where this is going...but i understand why religion was so important and keeping their idenity. I realize how a sense of place is crucial to people. I consider san diego my sense of place, my moms house, my dads, my grandparents etc. To not have that would be odd, and what do you hold onto? Thats all these people had and I dont understand it as well as my grandmother does because she came from a time when her family was forced to leave because of who they were.

i probably make no sense. im not a zionist or anything, this isnt some pro-israel pro-judism or what have you kinda rant. for my great-grandparents, grandparents and those before them judism and the jewish community was a sense of belonging and place. they were the wondering people and they needed some foundation. Okay, no more im just ranting about this. but thats what the blog is for.

the night was great. i love my grandmother so much. she has always been such an amazing woman, such strength and love. i cant imagine life without her. id believe in heaven just to know i wont be without her forever.