kilometers south of Lyon, a medieval city on the river Rhône, where two of my uncles had previously settled. That is where I grew up, sandwiched between my two brothers, René, a year and a half older, and Jacques, two years younger. My paternal grandmother, Memé, lived with us, and occasionally, my paternal grandfather would stay with us for extended visits. He was extremely affectionate with us three children. He was a religious Jew, and I can still see him in my mind’s eye praying every morning turned toward Jerusalem, his head covered with his tallith and tefillim on his left arm. We are Sephardic Jews, and as such, the Jewish laws and way of life were observed at home, particularly by my mother and grandmother. No work was done on Shabbat or during the Holy Days. This is curious, considering my parents’ education and exposure at a young age to Christian missionaries.
I recall how Maman used to light the candles on on the mantle of the fireplace in her bedroom on Shabbat eve. For the Holy Days, she would cover the beds with lace bedspreads and pillows. To this day, the scent of hyacinths, carnations and mimosa transports me over the years to our apartment at Passover time when Maman used to decorate the rooms with these flowers and the precious handmade lace bedspread made by my uncle’s mother-in-law.
I had been introduced to that lacework on a trip to Lyon one day during childhood. My mother took the three of us to stay a while with her brother, and when my mother saw the intricate lacework done by his mother-in-law, she ordered a bedspread especially for her. She received it sometime later, and used it only on the High Holy Days. I later learned that it was because the poor woman and her son had seen their entire families deported by the Germans to Drancy, a concentration camp south of Paris, and no one ever heard any more about them. My poor aunt must have had a broken heart thinking about the agonizing death of her poor mother and father, her many brothers, and then, in 1944, the death of her own son at 17 in a bombardment as he was saving people in a shelter. My aunt’s son was later decorated by their town posthumously, but I am sure she would have rather had her son than the medal. How many times did I thank God that my own parents died in their beds and not in the horrors of the Holocaust …
Many years later, when my brother, René, went to Israel to visit our parents, my mother gave that gorgeous lace bedspread to his wife as a gift, who later gave it to me as a remembrance of my mother.
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It is Hannukah 1991. I was lighting the candles this evening when a childhood memory suddenly emerged. It is again Hannukah, this time before World War II, and we are all gathered in our kitchen in Bourg-les-Valence around the hannukiah. I must have been around nine or ten years old. We had a visitor with the family, a Mr. Yerushalmi, probably a friend of my parents, but I had never met him before. That evening, it was my turn to light the hannukiah, as we three children took turns each evening. As I was about to light the first candle and we were starting to say the blessing, Mr. Yerushalmi suddenly stopped everything with an anguished appeal to my parents: “Certainly, the girl is not going to light the hannukiah; she might be impure!” I was so ignorant of adult things that beside the humiliation of being called “impure” with its dirty connotation, particularly in public and in the presence of my father and brothers, that I did not understand what our guest meant. Being his hosts, my parents asked me to pass the taper to one of my brothers, and I was left to wonder what had been my sin, if any. I do not recall having had any explanation later, but the incident reinforced in me a feeling of ostracism I had always felt, since I was constantly reminded that I, being a girl, could not do what my brothers were allowed to do.
I did eventually understand what our guest meant. He must have been one of the very Orthodox Jews who look upon women as “impure vessels.” Many years later, in Israel, when my father and brother, Jacques, were so immersed in their study of Buddhism and used to read aloud to each other from their books, I happened to pass by the room where they sat and heard of them reading, “…car la femme est impure …” (…because woman is impure). I ran out of the room shocked that even with my mother, my daughter and myself in the house, they did not hesitate to read such insulting material aloud. Naturally, such experience would not endear the study of this philosophy to me, much as my father encouraged me to.
We were taught very little about Judaism, yet certain traditions were deeply ingrained in our family. We knew we were Jews, and when we occasionally returned home from school crying that children had called us filthy Jew, our father would tell us that we should be proud to be Jews. In spite of his assertion, we felt different from the other children, and sometimes disliked by them. Our festivals were not those of our friends, and we did not go to church or catechism as they did, and our day of rest was Saturday instead of Sunday.
At Passover, after the house had been given a thorough cleaning of all traces of leavened foodstuff, we ate matzoh for eight days. The first night was always devoted to the Seder with the long Haggadah recounting the deliverance of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt read by my father.
At the time, particularly for my family with its emphasis on tradition, there was no question that I would celebrate my Bat Mitzvah. I was not even aware that such a ceremony was conducted for young girls in other countries, but my brother, René, started studying for his Bar Mitzvah that would mark his entry into manhood and the Jewish community when he reached the age of 13. I loved him very much and felt very close to him, and I aped everything he did. Listening to him memorize his lessons about Maimonides’ Thirteen Articles of Faith, I learned them too and the first lines of one prayer in particular are still clear in my mind: “Oui, je promets du fonds de mon âme de te rester fidèle, o, mon père et mon dieu …” (Yes, I promise from the depth of my soul to stay faithful to you, oh, my father and my God …)
We fasted on Yom Kippur, the children as long as we could last, and when the goodies prepared for us on the kitchen table tempted us beyond control, we broke the fast, sneaking rechicas and the delicious trovados, the traditional cookies dipped in honey that our grandmother had baked for the breaking of the fast.
That was more or less the extent of our religious upbringing. Maman and Memé taught us what they had been taught, but our father preferred that we learn in a more enlightened way. He did not believe that all traditions were worth living by. Today, his outlook would have been considered that of a reform Jew, allowing his mind to question and to interpret the Scriptures more intellectually. As a result, my father was less orthodox in his understanding of his own Jewish faith than either my mother or grandmother, and rather than seeing his children taught religion in what he viewed as a narrow way, he decreed that no religion at all was to be imparted to us. The unforeseen consequences of that decision would be revealed in the not too distant future with a tragedy that would rock our family.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There were so few Jews in Valence before World War II that there was no temple or synagogue in the city. One year, however, my parents decided to conduct services in our apartment during the High Holy Days. Since a quorum of ten men is necessary to conduct the prayers, barely that number of Jewish men was found in Valence and invited to our home. My parents moved most of the furniture out of the dining room and covered the armoire with a white sheet. A Torah had been brought in from one of the temples in Lyon and placed in that makeshift Ark. The women sat in the other rooms and looked on from the doorways as the men prayed in the “sanctuary.” I vaguely remember an incident during those Holy Days when one of the men sat in the sanctuary during services and crossed his legs, putting one foot atop the opposite knee. This created quite a stir among the other men who reproached him for his lack of respect in this “holy” place. I mention this as an instance of how sacred Judaism was to my family in spite of my father’s modern attitude and edict that the children not be given any particular religious education.
That year, since we were going to have a “temple” in our home, along with many guests, my mother had my aunt, Allegra, sew a new silk dress for me. It was light blue and the skirt finely pleated. The fittings at my aunt’s house and my joy at having to wear such a delightful new dress during the Holy Days knew no bounds! Sadly, I had disobeyed
