Susan Rosenberg
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Susan's Story
Chapter 1. Childhood
Tote Bag
I carry my life with me
at all times;
I take it wherever I go;
Oh, I know
it's in disorder,
all that precious stuff!
and a whole lot
has dropped
to the bottom
so I can't always retrieve
exactly what I need;
yet I find it very comforting
that absolutely everything
is there,
somewhere,
inside and together.
The year is 1929. I am five years old. I am in the living room. Guests are there. So is my Mother’s Aunt. They are all admiring me, the baby of the family and Aunt Nelly says, with a laugh, “She looks like a shiksa. Where did she get that nose?” Aunt Nelly’s unique laugh was hoarse and explosive and came forth with utter delight.
I had heard those words before but this is the first time I ask, “What do you mean, ‘look like a shiksa’? What does that mean?” My mother explains confidently, “That means you don’t look Jewish”.
I still don’t understand. “What do you mean, ‘don’t look Jewish’? What does ‘look Jewish’ mean?”
“That means”, says my Mother, wrinkling her face in distaste, “people who have dark complexions, dark eyes…” my mother begins to falter and gropes for words. Nobody helps her. I wait.
“You know”, she goes on again, “sometimes they have dark, kinky hair…or sometimes big noses…a certain look…”
“Like you?” I ask.
“Well I,” Mother says quickly, “used to have a nose just like yours. I broke mine”, she turns to convince her laughing guests, and to Aunt Nelly for corroboration, “You remember that!”
I mark the moment. I have some strong impressions now. One is that I am absolutely darling because I don’t look Jewish and the other is that if there is something undesirable about looking Jewish, perhaps there is also something not quite so good about being Jewish.
Shortly after the above conversation, my mother was reading to me at bedtime from a book I still remember. That is, I remember its special smell and the feel of its rough pages and the blackness of the ink and ink drawings although I’m not at all certain who wrote the book or what it contained other than its beginning. The words were “In the beginning there was nothing. nothing…nothing…nothing”. I tried to understand how it must have been before the world was formed. “Probably dark like it is now,” I thought when Mother turned off the light, and then I corrected myself…”No, no…it wouldn’t have been like that because even darkness is something…and there was only nothing, so……” I sank deeper and deeper into the endless abyss of nothing-ness, trying to imagine what it was. The concept of such vast emptiness frightened me so much I had to run to my parents in order to be comforted. My sudden appearance made them angry and they sent me back to bed. Perhaps….perhaps, it is because of the terror experienced then, when the she who is I glimpsed into the steep blank void of non-being, that I have always needed to cling, with great conviction to the everything-ness of God.
My family belonged to Rodeph Shalom, a reform Synagogue in Philadelphia. They belonged because they believed it was their duty to support it, but they didn’t go. My older sisters, Louise and Peggy were sent to Sunday School. They had both quit by the time I came of age and nobody wanted to bother getting up early on Sunday mornings to take me.
My mother said, “Louise and Peggy went and they hated it. You won’t like it either.”
But I wanted to go! As a matter of fact, I had been looking forward to being old enough to go. Being the youngest was like that, waiting for it to be my turn to do what my older sisters did. Also, my friends were all going to begin Sunday school that year.
Mother tried to reason with me but I was furious. I felt frustrated, cheated, and deprived.
“It’s not fair!”, I complained but Mother’s “No” became even firmer.
I attacked with a siege of non-stop pleading and was finally presented with an alternative.
“Alice Silverman is starting a little Bible class in her home”, Mother announced one evening. “If you want to go to Sunday school as badly as you say you do, it will be your responsibility to get yourself there. You can get up on Sunday mornings and walk to the Silverman’s all by yourself since there aren’t any streets to cross.”
I felt trapped. This wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what Louise and Peggy had done. Then Mother said she thought I’d learn the same things at Bible class as they had at Rodeph Shalom so I thought I’d give it a try.
I see myself at Bible class. I am sitting on a small chair, and hearing about God’s part in creation.
God! In the beginning, then, there was God, not nothing! What a great relief it was to be told that. I adored Bible Class. I could hardly wait from week to week in order to hear new episodes of the beautifully illustrated stories our teacher read to us. I felt a kinship with the characters even though they dressed and talked in funny ways. The bond was God. I believed in God with all my heart.
I was intrigued with the idea that people of the Bible spoke with Him then, in that far distant time and place, and that I could still speak to the same God. It meant something important to me to think that He knew them and that He knew me too.
We used crayons to color-in pictures of the stories we heard. We also made “stained glass windows’ by cutting out shapes of colored see-through paper and putting them together to depict Bible scenes.
One Sunday, our teacher took us to visit a Jewish temple. The children in our group were more or less familiar with Synagogues. Some attended regularly with their parents, and others had gone with their families on Jewish holidays. I, who had never been, was like an enthusiastic tourist in a foreign country; interested, but not of the place.
What impressed me most, were the stained glass windows. I thought them so beautiful with the sun light shining through. I gasped as the inner light of realization penetrated. Of course! These were real “stained glass windows”! They were what we had been trying to imitate with our paper work in class.
”This is God’s house”, Mrs. Silverman told us, “People come here to pray and to speak to God. You can’t see God here, but you can feel His presence.”
I was awed by that idea. I looked up to the ceiling, and around the sanctuary, trying to feel God. I couldn’t. It seemed impossible that God had a house. “Does He live here?”, I asked. “Yes”, Mrs. Silverman said.
Mrs. Silverman had told us that God was everywhere. I wondered how He could be everywhere if He was confined to a house.
“Then, how does He….um….how can He….how could He….”, I kept stuttering. I simply couldn’t formulate my question.
At about the time that I was attending Bible Class, my Grandmother came to live with us. I remember Nanny as a silky lady for so was my sensation when I sat on her lap. Every evening, after supper she would read to me or tell me stories.
She taught me the following prayer:
“Ear* on my bed, my limbs I lay,
God grant me grace my prayers to say.
And oh preserve my Mother dear,
in health and strength for many year.
And, oh preserve my Father too,
and may I pay him reverence due.
And oh, preserve my sisters both
from evil doings and from sloth.
And still, oh Lord to me impart
an innocent and grateful heart.
And may we always love each other,
our friends, our Father and our Mother.
Amen.”
My Grandmother had belonged to the “Ethical Culture Society” in Philadelphia. My Mother was of the opinion that she had learned the prayer there, but I always thought she had made it up especially for me.
My daughter pointed out that the words must have been “Ere on my bed…”, but I learned, remembered, and understood it as “Ear on my bed.”
Though my Grandmother, Brina (Bessie) MaKransky Kaplan, was an “Ethical Culturist”, she didn’t eat pork. If it was on the menu, she simply refused it, saying she didn’t like it. She never made an issue of it and never objected to our having it. For reasons I understand better now, she was usually subjected to a bit of teasing when she said no thank you to the pork being served. She accepted the jibes in a good-natured way.
One night we had pork for dinner and my Mother told “Nanny” that the meat was veal.
Nanny finished her entire portion before she said, “that was the best veal I’ve ever tasted!”
On hearing this, my Mother and sisters burst into prolonged laughter. Finally, they let my Grandmother in on their joke. She was horrified to realize what she had eaten.
I was very angry with my Mother and sisters that evening. I understood nothing but a feeling that they had been mean. It hurt me.Nanny was gentle and patient and kind. I remember a time when she and I were on the beach sitting under the boardwalk in Atlantic City. I had cut my foot on a shell or piece of glass. It was bleeding. Nanny was very calm, knew just what to do, told me not to move, took my little pail to fill it at the water’s edge then returned with it in order to wash away the blood. She tied her handkerchief around the sore, put on my shoes for me before we walked back to Aunt Nelly’s and Uncle Moe’s house where we were staying . Aunt Nelly was my grandmother’s sister. She told me then that Nanny was very, very sick and didn’t feel at all well and that it had been terribly hard for Nanny to walk all the way to the water and to wash my wound. She sounded angry with me as if I had deliberately cut my foot in order to hurt Nanny.
Nanny had cancer. She was put in my bedroom, and I was sent to sleep on the third floor. My friends and I had to be very quiet and to play on the other side of the house in order not to disturb her.
The doctors would come and go. My Mother, worried, sad, and strong, conferred with them in hushed tones.
Every night, in addition to the prayer I knew, I would add, “Please, God, make Nanny well.”
Then she died. I sat alone in my room on the third floor, saying over and over to myself, “I will never see her again….but I mean, I will NEVER see her again…I mean never….NEVER!!….NEVER!!” When I finally made myself understand what the word, “never” meant, I went downstairs to cry with the rest of the family.
Her death did not change my faith nor her prayer which I said every night. It wasn’t until some years after her death that, as if by revelation, the meaning of the words I had been pronouncing for so long by rote, suddenly became understandable to me. “And God bless Nanny who is in heaven”, I had tacked on to the prayer she had taught me. I can’t recall who told me she was in heaven. Possibly it was one of the help.
I used to look for Nanny’s face in the clouds. Sometimes I would see it.
I had another Grandmother. Grandma Rose. My Father used to tell me about his Mother and I had heard his praise of her many, many times.
“She had six children, all sons. She was a wonderful, wonderful woman, Susan, you would have loved her. She was such a good cook. She worked so hard. She was so kind. People would kiss the hem of her skirt. She was so kind to everybody…really, you can’t imagine…she was always helping people, always had time for everybody, was so good….”
“Am I like her, Daddy?” I would ask eagerly.
“You’re a nice little girl”, Daddy would say, patting me on the head, “But no. No, you’re not like her. Peggy resembles her somewhat. And Louise, Louise is named after her…did you know that? Louise Rose Stern. The ‘Rose’ is for my Mother.”
Be that as it may, because of what my father told me, Rose Hartman Stern was the kind of woman I always wanted to be.
Louise was named after my Grandfather too. Louis Kaplan had died when my Mother was nine years old.
One night, we were all sitting around the dining room table listening to a story about a baby I had never known. It seems my parents’ second child had been a son, named Dickie.
“He was a beautiful baby”, Mother was telling us, “A perfectly healthy boy and when he was born, Daddy went out and bought a canary for Louise. Louise loved the bird and called him Dickie too. It was your ‘Dickie Bird’…remember?” Though Louise was already a big girl, my Mother imitated her baby talk.
“Well”, she went on, “Louise got pneumonia and she was terribly sick. We really didn’t think she was going to pull through. We were all so worried. The doctor had been working over her for long hours. He was exhausted. He finally left, saying that all we could do was pray and that he’d be back the next day. We hardly slept that night and took turns watching over Louise. In the morning, I’ll never forget it, Nanny came into my room. She said, ‘Now listen, I want you to believe me, I saw your Father last night. I don’t mean I was dreaming. I didn’t dream I saw him. I was not sleeping. I saw him. Louie was standing at the foot of the bed and he said to me, ‘Don’t worry about Louise. I’ve arranged for everything’…then he disappeared.’ ’”
“That day”, my Mother continued, “Louise’s fever broke and the crisis passed. Three days later,” she went on dramatically, “we found Dickie, who had been a perfectly healthy baby, dead in his crib”.
I sat pondering over the story’s strangeness and about all those events having taken place before I was born. I was mourning my lost brother when my Father added, “If Dickie had lived, we probably wouldn’t have had you.” What a startling thought. “Wouldn’t have had me? Then where would I have been?”
Mother was not yet finished with her story. “Next day”, she said, “the canary was gone. Nobody could explain it. Nobody knew where he was. The door to his cage was closed. There were no windows open in the room. The maid swore she hadn’t let him out. He just disappeared. We never found him.”
Chills went up my spine. I was fascinated. I wanted to hear it over and over again. If she changed one word in the telling, I would remind her…correct her. I wanted it told just as when I had first heard it.
For years, I would beg Mother to tell the story of Louise and Nanny’s seeing Louis , and Dickie and the Dickie bird. It just fascinated me and because of it, I have always accepted the possibility of supernatural events as part of truth. Though I have never experienced it myself, it remains a component of my faith.
When I was in the third grade, I was sent to a new school. I knew nobody and was most grateful to the one girl who was friendly towards me. Her name was Lottie Rauscher and I clung to her as to a life line. One day, during the first week of school, the two of us were standing on the sidelines of the playground, watching a group of attractive, noisy, laughing classmates playing games. They seemed to be having a marvelous time.
“See those kids over there”, said Lottie, “Don’t play with them.”
“Why not?” I asked, astonished. I would have been so glad to join them if only they had asked me.
“They’re Jewish”, said Lottie.
“I think I’m Jewish”, I said wonderingly.
“No, you’re not”, Lottie said
“I think I am. I’m not sure, but I think so.”
“No, no. You’re not”, Lottie insisted, “You couldn’t be!”
“I think I am”, I said, “I’m going to ask my Mother, but I think so.”
When I went home with the story, my Mother seemed angry…not at me, but at what had happened.
She said, “Yes, you are Jewish and you can be proud of it! There are people who don't like Jews, but don’t you ever let them make you feel ashamed. You should be proud that you're Jewish and don’t you ever forget it.”
My Father said, “Just be a good American, Suzy, a good citizen; obey the laws and be honest and then, people will always like you. There are some Jews who are dishonest…who cheat and steal. Those are the ones people don’t like. If you are a good American, then that’s being a good Jew.”
“Be proud of what you are”, said my Mother.
I stood there listening to them, remembering my Mother’s face when she had told me what “looking Jewish” meant. I heard her saying there were people who didn’t like Jews.
I heard my Father’s voice….”dishonest, cheating, stealing Jews…”
From then on, I was glad I didn’t look Jewish and wished I wasn’t. From then on, I was terribly, self-consciously ashamed.
Martha, our German maid, had told us about Santa Claus. So had her cousin, Marie, who served as our family’s cook. One Christmas Eve, when our parents were away on a cruise, Martha and Marie showed my sisters and me how to hang our stockings on the mantle. They sent us to bed early because “Santa won’t come unless you’re sleeping”.
Expecting nothing, I came downstairs next morning and found the living room magically transformed. A beautifully decorated tree stood a little to one side of the fire place. Mysteriously shaped packages were under the tree. Our stockings, which had hung so limp and empty on the evening before, were now bulging. I ran to see what could be making mine so fat, and while I was still discovering the small surprises in it, I was told that some of the packages under the tree were for me too. I tore open the first and was amazed to see a doll I had been longing for. How had it happened? Who had arranged it? When? Our parents were away.
Martha and Marie staunchly insisted that it was all the work of Santa Claus. They didn’t seem to be teasing. In the end, I could only figure that, somehow, fat Santa had come down the chimney with his big bag, as I had been told he would, and that he had rewarded me for being good.
I learned to sing “Oh Tannenbaum” and “Heilige Nocht”.
I learned about the “spirit of Christmas” and the “joy of giving”. I accepted and understood it all, and participated wholeheartedly in pre-Christmas preparations for several Christmases thereafter.
Each year, Martha and I would visit Santa Claus at Wanamaker’s big department store. First we examined the dazzling array of available new toys. Then, after waiting in line with other children, I would take my turn sitting on the fat bearded man’s lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas.
From Wanamakers, Martha and I would go to the five and ten so I could buy gifts for others. Because of my limited funds, the choices were extremely difficult and my faithful “Miffy”, as I called her, was very patient with me.
Home again, she would help me wrap each of my painfully selected presents in pretty paper with ribbons, special stickers and tags marking which was for whom. We were conspirators, she and I, working together behind my closed bedroom door so that no one would find us out.
As I look back on it, I think that even more exciting than the fun of shopping and wrapping packages secretly, and more thrilling too, than the surprises I by now expected to receive on Christmas day, was a great and joyous, swollen feeling of love. I overflowed with it during the holiday season, and equated it with the “peace on earth, good will towards men” longing expressed in many of the carols I had learned at school. It is what I was ever yearning for; to love and be loved by all mankind, even though I was Jewish.
Some years later, my sister, Peggy, made me promise not to tell anybody, and then revealed that “there really isn’t any Santa Claus”. When she finally convinced me that she wasn’t joking, I continued, for some Christmases thereafter, to pretend to believe even though I knew it was just a pretence.
Easter had also been introduced into our childhood by Martha and Marie. Though the spiritual high I associated with Christmas was not present, I very much enjoyed egg hunts in our garden with neighborhood friends, and delighted in the chocolate bunnies, coconut eggs, and baskets of goodies we received. One year, we were even given fluffy, little, live chickens to take care of.
The fun-filled festivities had been initiated and perpetuated by people I loved; the maid and cook, Martha and Marie. Those two who brought all the beauty and wonder of holidays into our lives, had decided to return to Germany soon after Hitler came into power.
I remember hearing my parents trying to dissuade them. I can still hear Martha saying, “Ach, nein, Mrs. Shtern Das ist chust propaganda.”
We had some neighbors who were different from the rest of us Elkins Park Jews because they were religious. “Orthodox”, it was said. “Once my sister, Peggy, had been invited to their home for dinner (on what must have been a Friday night) and returned from the visit with a ridicule-filled account.
“They’re supposed to wear a little hat when they pray but Mr. S-C had forgotten to bring it to the table so he put a napkin on his head and it kept slipping off….it was so funny….it came down over his eyes...I could hardly keep from laughing….and he can’t carry a tune…he sings in a monotone…and nobody else knew the words…they’d just all of a sudden come in with a word….”
She told about it as an amusing experience that she would not like to have again. “So long and so boring….”, she sighed.
Some time later, I visited the Mikvah Israel Synagogue with our observant neighbors and I sat upstairs with the women,. Mr. S-C told me that I should keep watching the little light (the ner tamid….eternal light which is never extinguished) because when it went out, it would be time to go home. His daughter told me that her father was only joking but I kept glancing up at the light throughout the long service , just to make sure.
When I was about ten years old, Jippy came into my life. She had been a governess to Curtis Bok of the Curtis Publishing family. She had been my cousin’s governess. She was elderly and out of work. My Mother said she could live with us in exchange for taking care of me.
I loved Jippy, (so called because she was dark like a Gypsy). Her real name was Augusta Marie Nitschke. She was a gentle soul and a very devout Christian. She and I talked about deep things. We talked about God. We took long walks and picked flowers. She called me her “precious” and told me about Jesus. She brought me tracts to read from her Church. She also brought me Sunday School lessons which I studied eagerly.
Once Jippy took me to Church with her and introduced me as the “little Jewish girl who was so interested in Jesus.”
“How did you like our services?”, everyone wanted to know. Ladies with tight smiles surrounded me and were greatly pleased when I said that I had liked them very much.
“Do you accept Jesus?” one of them asked. When I replied in the affirmative, they were overjoyed. Carried away with success, I decided to be Jesus. I had been much impressed by the story of him as a twelve year old confounding the elders of the Synagogue with his questions. I identified with him. I was Jewish. I had questions. I asked;
“If you have to believe in Jesus in order to be saved,” They were all listening very attentively. I continued, “Then, what happened to all the people who died before Jesus was born? I mean, if they weren’t saved, then that’s not fair, is it?”
There was a long, nervous pause. Finally, one woman said, “I suppose…I’m certain…that the good Lord provided for them in some way….”
Yes, yes”, they all agreed and I could feel the relief.
I felt like a prodigy. I think now, though, that I must have been nothing more than a troublesome Jew for those nice, polite Church ladies. Jippy never took me again. We never talked about it. Jippy continued to bring home the Sunday School lessons and I continued to be taken with the Jesus idea. First of all, I had “accepted Him” and that was sort of a promise.
Second of all, I wanted to be saved. I used to pray for my parents’ souls because they didn’t believe. Jippy prayed for them too.
Once my Mother drove me to town. All the way down Broad Street I wanted to ask her if she believed in God, but I didn’t have enough nerve to speak. For some reason or other, it seemed a very, very difficult question. All during the long, quiet journey, I struggled with myself. I wanted to know, but I was afraid to ask.
At last, we reached our destination and my Mother was trying to park the car.
“It’s now or never”, I thought, and blurted out,
“Mother, do you believe in God?”
“Don’t talk to me while I’m trying to park the car”, she snapped.
I never asked her again but I knew….I knew all along that she was not a believer.
When I came home from camp, after my twelfth summer, Jippy was gone. Nobody knew where she was.
“She just left one day”, was my Mother’s casual explanation, “said we didn’t need her anymore.”
I missed her terribly. She had been the only spiritual source in a home dominated by materialism.
I continued my religious life in private and in strange ways.
My bed time ritual, for example, consisted of opening my window wide, sitting on its sill, breathing deeply of the night air, observing the sky, and singing at the top of my voice:
“Oh beautiful for spacious skies,
for amber waves of grain.
for purple mountains’ majesty
above the fruited plain.
America, America, God shed His grace on thee;
and crown thy good with brotherhood from
sea to shining sea.”
My voice sounded good to myself in the open air. That sung, I would croon in my sweetest tones, a lullaby to myself….still at the open window:
“Sleep, my child
and peace attend thee
all through the night.
God, His guardian
Angels send thee,
All through the night.
Hark, the drowsy hours
Are creeping,
Hill and dale
In slumber steeping.
I, my loving
Vigil keeping
All through the night.”
Having asked God, in that fashion, to watch over America and over me, I would tuck myself into bed and say Nanny’s prayer.
I believed that God could see into my heart and that He was always watching over me. I didn’t consider Him a spy, but rather an ever-present audience, and always approving…smiling down on me. I could feel His love in my heart. “Good girl, Susan”, He seemed to be saying, “Good girl!!” I especially remember talking to Him while practicing my jack-playing skills on the smooth marble step between the living room and sun parlor. It was nice to have Him watching to see how well I could do…or to be sympathetic and encouraging when I didn’t do so well.
There were times when I tried to bargain with God or to test him….If YOU will do this for me then I will do that for YOU…or If such and such, then I will REALLY believe that YOU can do miracles. I remember one such incident when I desperately needed a sharpened pencil in order to be able to take notes on a school trip. My pencil had broken and I tried to evoke a miracle by keeping the broken pencil in my closed hand and praying. Of course, the pencil was still broken when I opened my hand. Though I was disappointed I was not really surprised. I began to understand the difference between a make-believe God and a real one.
My sister, Louise, didn’t believe in God at all. She said she had faith in herself, not in God. “If you have faith in YOURSELF”, she told me, “you can do anything.” She was my big sister. I admired her tremendously. I wanted to have faith in myself too but not without God, oh no, not without God.
Our next door neighbors were Jews who practiced Christian Science. Lorraine was my best friend and had invited me to visit Sunday School with her.
When I asked permission, my parents said I could go, but they spoke derisively about the Christian Science Religion. Also, I felt that their attitude was resentful towards our neighbors because they were Jews who had changed religions. The message seemed to be: “Even if you don’t like being Jewish, you should be anyhow, if you are.” It puzzled me.
I went only once with Lorraine, but I remember much of what I learned, particularly about Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Scientists’ concept of God. Basically, I understood they believed in a God of love who doesn’t want people to be in pain; and that whatever pain there is, is our own doing, not God’s. I remember exact words: “God is perfect”. “God is love”. The conclusions were that since God exists, there can be no sickness or suffering.
Somehow, it made some sense to me even though I knew that there was pain and suffering in the world. I had been sick. I had been made well. Doctors had eased my Grandmother’s pain. Still, I seemed to grasp, from that one morning’s exposure, the idea that many of our ailments are self-inflicted and indirectly due to an absence of God in our lives.
I was invited to a Seder once. I had never been to one before so I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Still, I knew it was a Jewish religious event and I was very eagerly looking forward to participating in it. I remember arriving at my friend’s home and being welcomed warmly. Every one was happy and seemed in especially good spirits. From the living room, I could see the long and beautifully set table. I waited with anticipation for something wonderful to begin.
Finally, we were called to the table, seated, and given our Haggadoth*. After a short explanation to me, a first-time Seder attendant, the reading began. Much to my dismay, my friend and her brother made fun of everything. When they started the joking and giggling, I thought surely they would be reprimanded, but instead, their parents actually laughed with them. What I had so wanted to find Holy was being treated with mockery.
Perhaps, in my ignorance, I simply did not understand what was going on, but at the time, I half-felt that much of the fun-poking was for my benefit, that they were not laughing at the service so much as they were at themselves for being different from me and my family and for still clinging to this absurd relic of their Jewish past which really wasn’t important any more. I was angry with them. I wanted it to be important.
One Sunday, I went to Church with a school friend. I remember being annoyed with her because she kept whispering to me about things other than the service. I had wanted to pay strict attention, to learn, to understand, and to pray. It was clear to me that my friend was not even thinking about God. It disappointed me that a Christian, too, could be irreverent.
I am sick and confined to bed. I am sitting up and going through all the Church lessons left by Jippy. My Mother enters with a book in her hands. “I thought maybe you’d like to look at this,” she says, “I think it belonged to Nanny. It’s a Jewish Prayer Book”. She lets me know, somehow, that she is merely humoring my idiosyncrasies then leaves me to my own pursuits.
I come upon the Psalms. It is my first encounter with them. The words speak to my heart even though meanings are not clear. Meanings are strangely unimportant. The fascinating poetry stirs my feelings uncovering a deep understanding not understood.
I find something familiar in the prayer book. It is the song (prayer), En Kelohenu that we had sung at camp the summer before. I am startled to recognize it. The written words evoke the fleeting sensation of an evasive riddle but what is it? I can’t think of the question or the answer.
I see myself back at camp. There we were, dressed in white, arm in arm, ambling along, talking about who was going to sit next to whom at services, clumping up the old wooden steps, across the wooden floor of the front porch, through swinging screen doors, sliding over long, rough benches, remembering to sit up straight, (emphasis on good posture), mimeographed sheets handed out, smiling at friends from other bunks, “Aunt Dolly” facing us, “Sh! Sh! We’re beginning”. Whispers, “let’s get this over with”. “Yeah!” Reading responsively in English…..
But what? I can’t remember any of it. I look at the prayer book in my hand. I see the transliterated Hebrew words we had sung at the end of services. “En Kelohenu” had signaled the end. Once sung, we were free. Free to talk, free to move, off to the next activity, off to bathing suits, the lake, a swimming meet, whistles blowing, cheers.
How strange I could remember no insights, no religious experiences, no inquisitiveness. What did we say at those services? Why were we made to attend? I had accepted them as one of the many differences that camp life imposed.
I had enjoyed them as I did everything else about camp, that’s all. But now, here I am reading the translation of the Hebrew: “En Kelohenu” “There is none like our God. There is none like our Lord. There is none like our King. There is none like our Deliverer”…..
Something connects. It comes as a slight surprise. “Those services up at camp, then, had something to do with God. MY God. The very God I’m searching for.”
Continue to Chapter 2 »»
