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scrawny body in his arms like a nursing mother holding a newborn
infant. My father had neverseen a black person before. But what
remains embedded forever in my father's memory is thecombined look
of horror and empathy on his liberator's face. With sweat and tears
streamingdown his face he stared speechless into my father's
forlorn eyes. After some time, he offered myfather a can of Heinz
beans, a small gesture that resonated far beyond its own
dimensions.
After liberation, my father drifted around the rubble of Eastern
Europe with a band of displacedteenagers selling cigarettes from
train to train in order to survive. Eventually, he joined a groupof
orphans who were taken from Prague by a Jewish organization to
start a new life in Millisle, asmall coastal town, near Donaghadee,
in Northern Ireland. Though the war had ended, myfathers internal
battles were raging. It was the peace and beauty of Millisle and
its people thatrestored his faith in human nature. There, by the
shore, he kissed a girl for the first time and atehis first orange
- not knowing if he should throw away the peel. With the friendship
and guidanceof the young religious Zionist volunteers from London
who lived with the orphans in Millisle,
my father began to reclaim his familial heritage of observant
Judaism.
My mothers story is a female version of Au Revoir Les Enfants .
The Nazis killed her fatherduring a rumble at the start of the war.
Soon afterwards, her mother placed her in a convent andwould
periodically emerge from hiding to visit her young Catholic
daughter and together recitethe Hebrew Shema prayer which confirms
the belief in the Jewish god and his oneness. For theremainder of
the war, my mother, along with a handful of other Jewish children,
lived with agentile farmer and his family,
My parents met in New York in the 50s and married soon
afterwards. T hey run a cultured pearl
importing business on 47th Street, the bustling center of
Manhattans jewelry district. Thecramped booth from which they
conduct their business doubles as a liaison office for the
variouscommunity activities to which they devote themselves. He
often is called upon to dispense hiswit, wisdom and sensitivity as
a peacemaker among squabbling relatives or business partners.My
mother has adroitly negotiated the delicate task of raising four
first-generation Americans inthe elusive space between caring and
smothering.
That my parents are who they are now, in light of what they went
through then, is a stronginspiration. They wouldnt allow themselves
to become the broken link in a chain of countlessgenerations that
plod through the hardships of Jewish history by clinging to the
principles of theTorah. And yet, knowing this, I still asked them
the hard questions: Is their faith driven by asense of survivors
guilt? Was my fathers return to religion an outgrowth of an
orphansyearning for community and stability? Or is there something
unrelated to my parents particular circumstances even more profound
and compelling?
I have learned from my parents that beyond the importance of
community and social justice, it isthe cyclical routine of Jewish
life, the Shabbat meals, the Torah study, the communion with
aloving, though sometimes elusive, G-d that sustains, indeed
revives us, every day. More through
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their actions than their words, my parents taught me to value
the challenge of growth over thecomfort of complacency. Theirs is a
legacy of faith and love that I hope I can transmit, or at
leastoffer, to the next generation of Friedmans. And I hope I can
do so in the same gentle manner inwhich my parents remind me that a
good way to begin the transmission process is to end
mysinglehood.
Occasionally, though, I wonder still if my own faith hinges on
and draws its strength solely notfrom my parents unimaginably
painful odyssey of deliverance, but from the way they have
dealtwith it. Perhaps, I am resting on their spiritual efforts. In
Talmudic fashion I reason, a fortiori,that if they still believe,
then I, who grew up in relative affluence, attending summer camps
in thePoconos and annual holiday vacationing in Israel, surely must
have reason to believe.
So I try to deconstruct my faith, but the results are as
disappointing as those of a recent attemptto intellectualize love
after an ambivalent breakup. I immerse myself in the writings of
Rabbi
Soloveitchick, Kierkegard, Frued, Erich Fromm and Jane Austen.
On the train to work a friendcatches me red-handed, and a little
red-faced, poring over an advice column in Cosmopolitan.Satisfying
biological urges, providing for evolutionary and other material
needs, companionship,emotional intimacy, stability and social order
these are the underpinnings of love.
Ultimately these explanations arent compelling and leave one
less than satisfied. But beneath allthe layers of academic and
popular analysis, there remains a precious, hidden core to both
loveand faith. In my family and other relationships, Ive come to
realize that I love someone not onlybecause we need or complement
each other, for the utility of who they are to me, but because of
whom they are to themselves.
To where does this analysis lead? While it seems the most
fitting model for the religious faithexperience is the experience
of love, and both are the pillars of existence from a
Jewishexistential perspective, the mystery remains. The source of
love and faith, it seems, is faith itself.
My father is sympathetic to these continuing struggles. Yours is
a difficult generation, he oncetold me, smiling warmly. In a
strange way his words comfort me, even as I ponder their
irony,considering all that he has endured. But this is his
shorthand for our post-war struggles withmodern American
secularism, individualism, materialism and the plethora of choices
andopportunities that relative affluence and an open society offer
us.
How these phenomena affect our ability to connect to G-d and to
each other is the difficulty myfather refers to and I am relieved
by his awareness. But his words also empower me. I learn tocut
myself some slack. Though Ive grown up in incomparably better
circumstances than myparents, this new world, with all its
unprecedented excesses and distractions, has presented itsown set
of unique challenges to my faith and give me ample opportunity to
make it my own.
