Ich bin a Yid. I am a Jew. I have been that way since birth. My relationship with Judaism has been a perennial dance. First, some background: My father was born in Piotrkow, Poland in 1919; my mother, in a rural area near Mukacheve, in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1924 (the area is now part of the Ukraine). My father, age 20 and living in Tomaszow, Poland when the Nazis invaded in 1939, fled with his younger brother to Russia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere. Their parents and remaining siblings were all killed, mother and brother in the Tomaszow Jewish ghetto and father and daughter in the Treblinka concentration camp to which they were deported. My mother, also at 20, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and was moved to Bergen-Belsen shortly before that camp was liberated by the British at the end of the war. She survived the camps, in part by staying close to her sisters who were twins in Mengele's famous twin studies and in part, I suppose, by luck. My mother's father and most of her siblings were killed as well (her mother had died of illness early in the war). My parents met in 1947 on a train while smuggling food and cigarettes from Nuremberg to Stuttgart in Germany. They married later that year and came to the U.S. in 1949.  In 2005, I visited the towns in Poland where my father was born and raised as well as the Auschwitz camp my mother survived (see "Travel" page); I found the trip moving but sad, particularly the disheveled and sometimes vandalized state of the old Jewish cemeteries throughout the region.

Parental Units
(Upper row, left photo: My father as boy, far left, with family in Poland)
(Upper row, right photo: My mother as girl, far right, with part of family in Czechoslovakia)
(Middle row: Before & shortly after World War II)
(Lower row: the 1947 bride; the Ketubah; the happy couple)

Being a child of Holocaust survivors, a so-called "Second Generation" or "2G," is quite unique. I did not understand the impact of being raised by parents who experienced such trauma until my late twenties, when I began to read about the Holocaust and joined a 2G discussion group in New York City. One might ask why a 2G would need to read about the Holocaust. The answer says a lot about what it is to be 2G: Throughout my childhood, I heard only ominous, disconnected snippets of Holocaust information from my parents. As a child, one processes such snippets without context. For example, I heard thousands of times that Hitler "put Jews in ovens." It never occurred to my parents to explain that these Jews were dead at the time. Until I was nine or ten I believed that Jews had been roasted alive, a terrifying image that filled many a nightmare in my youth. My readings and discussions on the Holocaust as an adult were designed first to learn the facts, and second to understand how witnessing horrendous cruelty affects a survivor's world view and hence influences how a survivor raises children. When I first joined my 2G discussion group, I was amazed at how much I had in common with other group members. While we were different in superficial ways, each of us could relate some childhood experience we thought was unique and watch the rest of the group nod empathetically. We shared many psychological traits, and what we shared more than anything was a sense of the precariousness of things. Businessmen described how easily companies can go bankrupt; lovers, how suddenly relationships can turn sour; parents, how easily children can be injured. All thought about death with more than the usual frequency. Many (myself included) lamented never having had grandparents. Each of us carried some dark vestige of our parents' suffering. Today, I am not actively involved in Holocaust studies. However, I still feel simpatico when I meet a fellow 2G, and I still value self-sufficiency in a world always a mere Anschluss away from radical overhaul.

My parents had a deep cultural identification with Judaism. In the context of their background, however, they were not particularly religious. To me, though, as a child, they seemed distinctly alien with their separate holidays, kosher food and long prayer shawls. Why couldn't they just be like the other kids' parents? I now realize that much of this was the inter-generational experience not of Judaism, but of immigration. I was raised a Nice Jewish Boy. I went to Talmud Torah (Hebrew school) every afternoon following regular school and was Valedictorian of my graduating Hebrew class at age 13 <bow>. I had a classic 1971 Jewish-American Bar Mitzvah, at the Aperion Manor on Kings Highway in Brooklyn, complete with prime ribs, Horas, "Viennese Table" (desserts) and Apricot Sours (every Jewish boy's second drink, after Maneschewitz wine at Passover Seders). Within months following this joyous event, however, the problems began to set in. Rebellion against Judaism was the primary vehicle through which I expressed my adolescent rage against my father, against my upbringing and against the expectations everyone had for me. From teens to mid-twenties, I did nothing that could be remotely characterized as Jewish. When I moved into my first Manhattan apartment at age 24, I celebrated by erecting the largest Christmas tree a Brooklyn Jew ever had. (Not coincidentally, I was not speaking to my parents during those years.) In my late twenties and early thirties, however, I came to feel closer to Judaism as a cultural heritage, as opposed to a religion. A month in Israel in 1988 reinforced that feeling. These days I am very proud to be Jewish. I love klezmer music (see "Music" page), and I can't drive past Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side in New York without stopping in for "a bissel" (a little) corned beef.

I wrote the first draft of this page of the Web site on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). I saved the task for that day as a way to connect with my heritage on the holiday and to recount the winding path that has brought my feelings about Judaism to where they are now. On Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) the week after, I went to temple with my father, not to petition God (in whom I don't believe), but to see the Torah, hear the cantor and experience an array of what for me remain extremely resonant images. As a Jew, then, my prayer -- metaphorically -- is that my father and mother, now in their early 90's and late 80's, respectively, having suffered great losses in the war, having endured the hardships of immigration and having raised a sometimes difficult son, should live the remainder of their lives in health and satisfaction.

Featured links:

Judaism: Bar Mitzvah Disco (my 1971 gala is discussed in the book)
Yiddish: Virtual Shtetl
Holocaust: Cybrary of the Holocaust

So nu, vat are you vaiting for already?....

Judaism:

Zeek
Jewz
Jewcy
Jewhoo
JewGirl
JewBoy
JewTube
SabraNet
Nextbook
Jewsweek
Jewlicious
JewSchool
Ellis Island
Daily Jews
Zipple.com
JewSearch
Yehud.com
Jew Central
Judaism 101
YarmulkeBra
Jewish Street
YIVO Institute
Virtual Yeshiva
Bangitout.com
Jews In Poland
Jewish America
Tablet Magazine
Jews In America
Virtual Jerusalem
Jewish Genealogy
Jewish Web Week
JewishSports.com
Jewish Film Archive
Jewish Encyclopedia
Jewish Web Ring #1
Jewish Web Ring #2
Jewish Web Ring #3
New York Egg Cream
MyHebrewName.com
Jews In Sports Online
Jewish Women's Web Ring
Bubbe's Back Porch
Jewish Virtual Library
Jewish Recipe Archives
World Jewish Congress
World Wide Jewish Web
Famous Jews Interactive
Center for Jewish History
Jewish Museum (NYC)
Jewish Museum (Miami)
Jewish Museum (Prague)
Jewish Museum (London)
About.com Judaism Guide
Jewish-Polish Heritage Links
Harry Leichter's Jewish Stuff
Jewish Professionals Institute
Plotz (Jewish women's e-zine)
Jewish World Review magazine
National Center for Jewish Film
Jewish Heritage Online Magazine
Maven (Jewish index & searches)
Museum of Jewish Heritage (NYC)
Jacob Richman's Jewish Hot Sites
American Jewish Historical Society
Academic Jewish Studies Directory
Jewish-American History on the Web
Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
National Foundation for Jewish Culture
National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts
Jewish Outreach Institute (intermarriage)
Tannenbaum's Jewish Internet Resources
Museum of the Jewish Diaspora (Tel Aviv)
National Museum of American Jewish History

Yiddish:

Catskills Institute
Workmen's Circle
Yiddish Film Index
Yiddish Homepage
Yiddish Radio Project
Avivale's Yiddish Page
National Yiddish Book Center
Directory of Yiddish Resources
Gantseh Megillah (Yiddish glossary)
Mendele (Yiddish literature & language)
Zaytl Makher (Yiddish Web page maker)
Jewish Culture & the Yiddish Language
Yiddish American Digital Archive (YADA)
Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture
Understanding Yiddish Information Processing
Shmuesn in Mame-Loshn (Yiddish bulletin board)

Holocaust:

Auschwitz Museum
Auschwitz Alphabet
Auschwitz Jewish Center
Last Expression (art from Auschwitz)
Treblinka (Jewish Virtual Library)
Holocaust Survivors
Holocaust Web Ring
Polish Jews Home Page
Meyer's Holocaust Links
History of Jews in Russia
Nizkor Holocaust Project
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Czech Holocaust Summary
Polish Holocaust Summary
About.com Holocaust Guide
Remembering the Holocaust
Claims Conference (restitution info)
Museum of Tolerance Multimedia Center
Yad Vashem (Jerusalem holocaust museum)
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC)
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
9-Minute Video of 1933 Mukacheve, (then) Czechoslovakia
Association of Second Generation Holocaust Organizations
Piotrkow, Poland (memorial site)
Piotrkow, Poland (Museum of History of Polish Jews)
We Remember Tomaszow, Poland
Tomaszow, Poland (Museum of History of Polish Jews)
 

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