Day 19 of Nat'l Emergency: Mah Nishtanah

“Mah nishtanah halielah hazeh mikol haleilot?”

Why is this night different from all other nights?

As they have for decades if not centuries before each seder, briskets will simmer awaiting the conclusion of the first part of the Passover story related in the haggadah. Matzo balls will swim in chicken soup. Horseradish will sit next to slices of gefilte fish. Wine cups await to be filled four times over.

The sweet voice of a grandchild singing the “Mah nishtanah”—what is different—should be lilting through my home next Wednesday, April 8, the eve of the first day of Passover. One of the youngest at the table would recite the Four Questions that distinguish the evening. It is how Jews have marked the seder for generation after generation, for millennia. But not so this year. 

The Angel of Death has upended tradition. Indiscriminate fear of the novel coronavirus will keep families apart. Our children and their families live in Massachusetts and Nebraska. Coming home for the holiday does not qualify as essential travel during a pandemic. Better to seder-in-place than risk contamination on the trip to Westchester from their homes.

Envy is a vice frowned upon by God. But I do envy my friends with year-round access to children and grandchildren who live nearby. Hugs and kisses are not meant to be limited to holiday visits and family vacations. Their absence at the seder table is all the more painful when catastrophic events prevent physical togetherness.

We will Zoom the Four Questions and the rest of our seder liturgy. It is better than nothing. We will see and hear them but won’t be able to touch our legacies. We will miss their frantic search for the hidden pieces of matzo, the afikoman, required to be eaten to conclude the seder banquet, and the squeal of joy when it is discovered. Perhaps we will have each family hide an afikoman in their own homes. Again, better than nothing.

Jews can find humor in almost everything, even life threatening, tradition-busting situations. Coronavirus is no exception. Making the rounds on the Internet—“Biblical Irony: Passover Seder may be delayed by a plague.” Of course, comedy is no match for reality. “Thousands of locusts swarm over Israel, Egypt — just in time for Passover,” headlined The Daily News on March 6. 

Growing up in Brooklyn my parents’ seder attracted 25-40 celebrants depending on how many guests they invited to augment the 18 in our immediate family of aunts, uncles and cousins. Led by my father and his brother, the seder was a raucous affair. Reading from the Maxwell House haggadah, the brothers would drone on in an Eastern European trope that befuddled my brother, sister and me and anyone else who tried to follow along in Hebrew (no English to be heard except for the chattering among my mother and her three sisters which prompted my father’s repeated unsuccessful appeals for them to be quiet). 

The seder back in the 1950s and 1960s was a time of family ingathering. Everyone lived in the New York Metro. By the time my wife and I took over seder chores some 30 years ago, family togetherness had dissolved. My sister had moved to Los Angeles. Her family stays there for Passover. My brother’s family in Maryland kept coming north until about 10 years ago. 

Our seder ritual has become more universal. Over the years, aside from incorporating English, themes covering the emancipation of Russian and Ethiopian Jews as well as the treatment of refugees from all zones of conflict have become integral parts of the haggadah we have fashioned. 

In an ironic way, conducting a virtual seder via Zoom reinforces a central theme of the seder to be kind to the stranger among us. It took Zoom founder Eric Yuan nine attempts to earn a visa to emigrate from China 23 years ago. He spoke little English. He might not qualify for a visa under the current, more restrictive, admission standards. Today, Yuan is a successful technology entrepreneur worth an estimated $3 billion.

As we peer into the Zoom-enabled camera of our computers, tablets or smart phones we must remind ourselves that the Torah admonishes us no fewer than 36 times to treat the stranger fairly because we, our ancestors, were strangers in Egypt. Not slaves. Strangers.

Passover teaches us how ephemeral the status of our existence might be. Originally invited by Pharaoh to live as guests in Goshen in Egypt, the Israelites were considered dangerous aliens by a successor. Though God smote the ensuing Pharaoh and his subjects for enslaving the Israelites, he commanded the former slaves to welcome the stranger, to treat him “as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. “  

It is a lesson to be imparted from generation to generation, in person and, this year, virtually. 

Day 6 of National Emergency, 3 Weeks Till the Seder

Three weeks from tonight, April 8, Jews will gather for the seminal holiday ritual of their religion. Or will they? While for many of today’s chosen people the seder remains a religious experience, for many others it is a secular reaffirmation of their primal heritage. More Jews gather to attend a seder than congregate for any other religious observance. It is so powerful a symbol that even in Auschwitz Jews assembled to observe the Passover seder.

Religious practice—the comforting rituals that have bound parishioners of all faiths to their chosen deity—has been traumatized by the coronavirus. Decades-, centuries-, even millennia-old protocols have been temporarily shelved as clerical and lay leaders improvise alterations to communal customs and religious ceremonies (https://nyti.ms/2vqXY5Y).

Barring a miracle as equivalent as the series of wonders that preceded the Exodus from Egypt, Jews the world over will celebrate the Passover seder in relative solitude, likely not surrounded by the usual numbers of family and friends for fear of viral transmission, unless they defy government and health authorities to gather in numbers larger than ten. 

(As a point of interest and information, the Torah made provisions for the inability of celebrants to attend a seder at the appointed time. Passover could be observed a month later. Of course, there is no surety the pandemic would be tamed by May 7.) 

My earliest memories of a seder are from my pre-bar mitzvah days. In our two floor row house in Brooklyn my parents would convert the ground floor into an open space with a U-shaped dining table that would seat as many as 40 participants depending on my father’s success in adding guests—second or third cousins, friends from Israel or from the “old country”—to the 18 members of our close relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins. 

Even when the seder moved upstairs to our living room after my bar mitzvah and shrank to a more manageable 25, the seder was a raucous affair. Reading from the Maxwell House haggadah, my father and his brother Willy would drone on in a trope that befuddled my brother, sister and me and anyone else who tried to follow along in Hebrew (no English to be heard except for the chattering among my mother and her three sisters which prompted my father’s repeated appeals for them to be quiet). 

Gilda and I took over seder chores about 30 years ago. By then family togetherness had dissolved. My sister Lee moved to Los Angeles 47 years ago. Her family stays in L.A. for Passover. My brother Bernie’s family kept coming north from Maryland until about 10 years ago. 

For more than 3,000 years Jews—religious and sectarian—have gathered from near and far for a seder meal, a symbol of congealed peoplehood.

Our children and grandchildren have joined us from Massachusetts and Nebraska. But will they this year? Is traveling hundreds of miles by car or plane an essential trip during a pandemic? I just don’t know.

Sharing Voices in a Chorus

On the eve of the 10th day from Wednesday, April 10, Jews the world over will sit down to a seder commemorating the exodus from Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. It has become a festival of nationhood, a symbol of freedom from oppression and bondage, a reminder that they should treat the strangers among them with dignity and fairness because, as it is written in Deuteronomy 10:18-19, God “befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

How far we Americans—Jews and non Jews—have come from this biblical ideal. 

Days after celebrating Purim, the holiday that rejoices in the foiling of Haman’s plot to annihilate all Jews inside the Persian empire because they were different, and days before the Passover holiday when Jews became refugees seeking a new life, the Trump administration has vigorously renewed its attack on legal asylum seekers. 

Trump has claimed there is no room in the United States for all the asylum seekers. He made that argument before a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas (on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, of all days). Of course, his facts were wrong (https://nyti.ms/2UpZ1hF).

Reportedly, the purge of officials at the Department of Homeland Security in favor of those who would implement a more repressive immigration policy has been championed by Stephen Miller, himself a great grandson of a Jewish refugee fleeing pogroms in Belarus. How shameful. Miller is a modern day Torquemada, whose medieval family converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Torquemada became a priest and led the Spanish Inquisition against Moslems and Jews who converted but were suspected of less than complete adherence to Catholic practices.

Facebook and Twitter are enlightening sources. Here’s a post from Jackie Calmes. Above a picture of Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis in 1939, Calmes wrote, “Never thought an audience of Jews would cheer words like Trump’s in NV on Sat against asylum, labeling migrants fleeing violence as threats & saying US is ‘full.’”

Under the picture, a link to an article in Smithsonian Magazine recounting the State Department’s long history of anti-Semitism. The headline: “The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies” (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/#V6QqrCfvfc4Ktrpo.03).

Lee Clark on Twitter wrote, “Trump went to Las Vegas and in front of the Jewish people used the same analogy against the South Americans that the country used against the Jews in 1939, the country was full and could not take in any more refugees. Refusing to let the Jew in sending them away Hitler killed all of them. The same thing Trump is doing to the South Americans.”

Words matter. Why is it that when Trump talks about Puerto Ricans or Jewish Americans it sounds like he does not consider them to be American citizens. Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he referred to Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu as “your prime minister,” suggesting that the Jews he was speaking to were not American citizens but rather Israelis, that their loyalty was, at the very least, divided.

The case is being made by some Jews that it is in their best interest to abandon the Democratic Party in favor of Republicans. It’s called “Jexodus”  https://nyti.ms/2Yc2yhO. 

I’m not buying it. I’m not turning my back on millennia of Jewish ideals, like support for human rights, equality, equality of opportunity, support for education, civil rights, community, respect for scientific knowledge.  

The noted astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in his 1995 book, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,”  forecast the type of existence we find ourselves in today. Here’s a Twitter post of Sagan’s thoughts from his book from Dan Kaminsky via a Bret Thorn retweet:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

We deserve a leader who would help us reverse the decline, yes, to make us great again, not by dividing us into competitive camps but by uniting us toward a common goal. 

Instead, we are faced with the reality of another Sagan quote from his book: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

Will Trump's End Justify His Means?

Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a sense of history. After all, despite all his bravura claims about the efficiency and accomplishments of his presidency, he has yet to claim he has “made the trains run on time” (editor’s note—for those unfamiliar with the claim, google it. You’ll find it under Mussolini or Il Duce). 

Seriously, though, The Trumpster has added fuel to a long simmering debate: Does the end justify the means? 

Are his bluster, his arrogance, his indignities, his lying, his disdain for anyone not a Trump, just for show, to be ignored as long as he secures his objectives? Or, do all his character flaws impoverish the office of the president and the heritage of the United States as the beacon of the civilized world?

For Trump, for all of us, the bottom line, the “end,” is his presidency. When will it end? In January 2021? In January 2025? Or sometime before?  

America used to be known as a country where protagonists debated ideas. Trump has reduced politics to a contest of name calling powered by personal animosity and vengeance. 

Too many respected observers of our political landscape, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, have issued warnings about the Trump effect and the world’s and our possible slide into fascism for their misgivings to be ignored (your choice of sources: an Op-Ed piece by Albright in The New York Times: https://nyti.ms/2EpFn8F or or an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/599120190/madeleine-albright-warns-dont-let-fascism-go-unnoticed-until-its-too-late).

To keep our heads above a fascist tide requires perspective plus a knowledge of history, science and basic truths. In the extraordinary teenage response to the Parkland, FL, high school shooting, what should we make of the use of the #NeverAgain hashtag? As repulsive as the killing of 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was, does it compare to the six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust often commemorated by the phrase Never Again? (http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Never-Again-From-a-Holocaust-phrase-to-a-universal-phrase-544666)

Let’s hope the new Never Again movement has more success than the last. Since first promulgated, the world has witnessed genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria, Chile, Argentina, Myanmar. Given the frequency of school shootings, I am not confident of more success. 

Perhaps the students, even the Jewish students among them, did not know of the Never Again association with the Holocaust. Chalk it up, if so, to the sad condition of American education. We’re seeing that sorry state play out in the teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. It is difficult to attract quality teachers for the poverty wages states pay.

When I started as a reporter in Connecticut back in 1972, my immediate supervisor resented teacher pay scales. He reasoned, as too many do even today, that teachers led cushy lives, that they had summers and holidays off, that their work day ended in the early afternoon, not realizing they spend evenings grading papers and preparing lesson plans. And that they often spend their own money to supplement the meager supplies they need to properly instruct their students.

Back then, teachers, like nurses, social workers, police and firemen, were thought to not need higher pay, that they received part of their remuneration in the positive feelings generated by their good works. Ha! Try paying your mortgage or your grocery bill with positive feelings!

Among the signs held up by a student at one of the Oklahoma teacher protests was one stating, “My textbooks are older than me.” Proper grammar would have taught him he should have written “than I,” but the sentiment was appropriate.

Our country’s history is full of less than noble chapters. Slavery. Near annihilation of Native Americans. Robber Barons. Jim Crow Laws. Segregation. Discriminatory laws against Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese immigration. Yes, we are a great country, but we must also keep in mind that dangerous precedents inhabited our past.

That’s why it is so important for our leaders to embrace the symbols of our diversity and greatness. Consider just two events of the past week. For the second straight year Trump chose not to attend a Passover seder at the White House. 

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump did not visit the monument to the slain civil rights leader a short distance from the White House. He merely tweeted a canned video praising King, but his unrehearsed comments of the last two years have exposed him as a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe and a sympathetic friend of budding, if not already, dictators around the world. 

“Instead of mobilizing international coalitions to take on world problems, he (Trump) touts the doctrine of ‘every nation for itself’ and has led America into isolated positions on trade, climate change and Middle East peace,” wrote Albright. “Instead of engaging in creative diplomacy, he has insulted United States neighbors and allies, walked away from key international agreements, mocked multilateral organizations and stripped the State Department of its resources and role. Instead of standing up for the values of a free society, Mr. Trump, with his oft-vented scorn for democracy’s building blocks, has strengthened the hands of dictators. No longer need they fear United States criticism regarding human rights or civil liberties. On the contrary, they can and do point to Mr. Trump’s own words to justify their repressive actions.”

Trump has used his bully pulpit, both in person and via Twitter, to harangue adversaries. His latest target is Amazon and its alleged sweetheart shipping deal with the U.S. Postal Service. Trump further claims Amazon is the reason many Main Streets across America have vacant storefronts (https://nyti.ms/2Gxtkfq).

Imagine that! Sen. Bernie Sanders agrees with Trump that Amazon is getting too big.

Amazon revenues last year totaled $178 billion. But what about Walmart? Its revenues reached $500 billion. Arguably, Walmart has done more to close down rival merchants than Amazon. To my knowledge Trump is not calling for a breakup of Walmart. Sanders, meanwhile, does criticize the Arkansas-based retailer for paying low wages to most of its associates.

Interestingly, while Trump bemoans the growing strength of Amazon he applauds the consolidation of local news outlets under the banner of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a steadfast supporter of his views. If Sinclair receives approval to purchase Tribune Media it will have entry into seven out of 10 U.S. households. 

Trump also says Amazon should be required to collect state sales taxes to even the playing field with brick and mortar stores. He’s right, but Trump should be the last person to criticize anyone for not exceeding the requirements of the law. For its direct sales Amazon need only collect sales taxes in states where it has nexus. It is not required to collect sales taxes from sales made by its third party vendors. 

As are too many of our fellow citizens, Trump is under the impression that America owes its greatness to settlement by Western Europeans. He fails to recognize the contributions of Hispanics and Africans to our culture and economic growth. He scapegoats them in appeals to white nationalists and those who live in fear of imminent poverty or financial dislocation because America has shifted first from an agricultural economy to one dominated by manufacturing and now to a service-oriented platform.

Trump promises a return to greatness without ever spelling out the time period he wants to return to. His roadmap to wherever and whenever presumes America needs no partners other than on Trump’s terms. 

Will we be willing fellow travelers? Trump wants to get reelected. So do congressional Republican majorities who have mostly sublimated their constitutional obligations in favor of coattail election politics. 

It’s the people, however, who will determine—even in heavily gerrymandered districts—if democratic values will outweigh a strong man’s bombastic rule and attack on  cherished norms of society and politics. 

President Spanky and His Gang

One of the more amusing tidbits to emerge from the 60 Minutes Stormy Daniels interview is a new nickname for The Donald allegedly used by Washington politicos. Reflecting off Stormy’s swatting him on his derriere with a rolled up magazine bearing his face on the cover during their tryst at the Beverly Hilton bungalow that apparently was his preferred pied-à-terre-les-liaisons-dangereusese, the cheek-in-chief is being called President Spanky

(http://time.com/5218617/stephen-colbert-on-donald-trumps-new-nickname-stormy-daniels/).

It seems overblown to label Stormy’s sexcapade with Spanky an actual affair as she claims they did it only once during their months-long relationship. It was more like a frisbee fling that so far has not officially landed. 

The kerfuffle over Stormy’ nondisclosure agreement brought to light Trump’s alleged demand that administration officials sign NDAs. If adhered to, one wonders how detailed a view the public will get of Trump world. One can only imagine the stories ex-secretary of state Rex Tillerson or ex-national security advisor General H.R. McMaster could tell. Or ex-press secretary Sean Spicer. But, according to The Washington Post, the NDAs include a penalty of $10 million if classified information is ever released without authorization. The fines would be paid to the government, not Trump (https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/trumps-nondisclosure-agreements-came-with-him-to-the-white-house/2018/03/18/226f4522-29ee-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html). 

If anyone would dare test the NDA it might well be David J. Shulkin. Fired within hours of being told by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that his job as head of the Veterans Administration was safe, Shulkin said he was let go because he did not support Trump’s plan to privatize the VA (https://nyti.ms/2uuSXaZ). 

“They saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed. That is because I am convinced that privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans,” he wrote in The New York Times. 

“I can assure you that I will continue to speak out against those who seek to harm the V.A. by putting their personal agendas in front of the well-being of our veterans.”

Let’s hope he follows through and that others place loyalty to country ahead of NDA’s to an egotistic leader. 

Turn of Phrase: To be a television commentator or political show panel guest it seems one has to be able to put Trump’s actions in comic terms. I was particularly taken by a remark Republican strategist Ana Navarro made on a recent Real Time with Bill Maher. 

“The only consistent thing about Donald Trump is his inconsistency. We saw it with guns. We saw him doing it with barring gays from the military. The guy, you know, can hold more positions than the Kama Sutra.”

Safety First?: Mississippi governor Phil Bryant was quoted as saying he wants his state to be the safest for the unborn child. That’s why he is trying to prevent any abortion from happening in Mississippi. He signed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law has been stayed in court pending a constitutional challenge (https://nyti.ms/2GL6X39). 

But what Bryant doesn’t talk about is his state’s position on health care for expectant mothers and their babies.

A new report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention “showed that, from 2013 through 2015, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. ranged from 9.08 deaths per 1,000 infants born alive in Mississippi -- which had the highest rate -- to 4.28 deaths per 1,000 live births in Massachusetts, which had the lowest” (https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/health/infant-mortality-by-state-study/index.html).

Moreover, Mississippi ranked 40th when it came to maternal mortality (https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-health-of-women-and-children-report/measure/maternal_mortality). 

Passover begins Friday night: Time of liberation. A template story for Africans bound into slavery in the New World. Some 40% of all slaves brought to North America landed in Charleston, SC. 

A new International African American Museum is planned for the city. But as The Times pointed out, South Carolina still has a ways to go to balance its dedication to the Confederacy and slavery with the inalienable rights of Black residents. “The state’s most recent proposal for social studies standards in public schools doesn’t mention the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or Rosa Parks,” The Times noted (https://nyti.ms/2uvYcar).

Harbinger of Spring: Passover also is known as a celebration of spring. I have my own signal spring is upon us. My harbinger is not a crocus that keeps trying to reveal itself through the lingering cover of snow across our yard. Or the robins bobbing along each morning. 

No, my signal reveals itself in the middle of the night when I turn on the bathroom light, freezing any silverfish that, resurrected from a winter’s sleep, has chosen that moment to emerge from a crack where the baseboard meets the tiled floor.  

An Illuminating Journey Down South to Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine

Passover, the quintessential Jewish holiday of liberation and national identity ends Tuesday night. Exodus from four centuries of slavery. A time when Jews came together for a seder, traditional or not, hopefully to reflect on the values of human rights and the history of oppression, not just to their brethren, ancient and modern, but to all people including this year Syrians under fire in their native land and dispersed as refugees throughout the West, undocumented immigrants in America, the starving multitudes in eastern Africa, and, yes, even those Palestinians who would recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace as they too would like to live.

Gilda and I recently toured Charleston, SC, Savannah and St. Augustine for two weeks. It was as much an architectural embrace of some of our nation’s earliest cities as it was a passage back in time as we absorbed some of the history of the coastal Atlantic southern states.

Forty percent of the near half million souls who survived the barbaric, inhumane voyage as cargo from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean on a journey from freedom to slavery in colonial America and the nascent United States came to our shores through Charleston (another 12 million were sent to South American and Caribbean lands). Charleston was considered the richest city in the New World until the importation of slaves was halted by Congress in 1808.

Anyone, virtually anyone, associated with merchant trading and shipping in Charleston engaged in the slave trade. That included Jewish merchants. They might not have had as many slaves as a plantation owner but Jewish households possessed slaves who, we were told by a Jewish guide, would often be included in the Passover seder ritual. How strange that must have been for slaves to hear a story of liberation and exodus while forced to live in bondage in, at the very least, figurative shackles. Is it any wonder that the song “Go Down Moses” with its haunting refrain of “Let my people go” became an anthem for their release?

Growing up in Saratoga Springs, NY, Gilda lived in a house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing to Canada. But there was a southern spur to the railway. From the beginning of the 18th century, slaves fled south from Carolina and Georgia to Florida while Florida was under Spanish rule. Escaped slaves need only convert to Catholicism to be granted freedom in Spanish Florida. However, Florida changed hands several times over the next century. When the British and Americans ruled Florida their liberty vanished. Many former slaves fled again, this time to the Bahamas.

An irony of slavery in South Carolina is that the enslaved West Africans had the skills and experience needed to make the colony successful. The original crops planted— indigo, tobacco, sugar cane and cotton—did not flourish. But the English had brought with them an asset that changed their fortunes. Their West African slaves came from rice growing regions. They suggested the Carolina plantations situated along riverbanks were suitable for rice cultivation.

Unlike cotton, growing rice required lots of water and constant attention. Constant attention, in the region’s malarial and alligator-infested waters, required lots of manpower. In other words, lots of slaves. 

Dismiss the notion that just any ol’ slave would do. Plantation owners had specific needs and culled their purchases from a diverse but skilled assortment of human possibilities.

Far from being ignorant toilers, slaves were prized for their expertise in carpentry, masonry, smithing, barrel making, basket and net knitting, rice farming, and boat construction. Highly skilled slaves were often rented out by their owners to other plantations and businesses. They possessed the skills and trades necessary to clear land and channel waters to build rice paddies, plant and maintain rice, and separate the kernels from the hulls. 

A highly profitable cash crop sprouted up along the coastline. Carolina Gold—rice  exported to Europe—made plantation owners among the wealthiest Americans. Before the Revolutionary War Charleston was richer, more important, than New York, Boston or Philadelphia. As early as 1750 it was not uncommon for the gentry of Carolina to summer in Newport, RI, to escape the heat and mosquitoes of their plantations.

Rice grown on Middleton Place plantation outside Charleston made its owners one of the elite families of colonial and antebellum America. The Middleton family played a part in the momentous times of the era. 

Henry Middleton served as the second president of the First Continental Congress. His son, Arthur, signed the Declaration of Independence. Arthur’s son, Henry, became governor of South Carolina and a minister to Russia. His son, Williams, signed the Ordinance of Secession prior to the Civil War. 

King Cotton is a phrase often associated with the South and indeed, after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, cotton production, and slavery, expanded exponentially as America developed more lands westward of the Atlantic. Rice, however, made planters wealthy, at least until the end of the Civil War. 

With the end of slavery, cheap labor disappeared. Plantation owners encountered new competition from more mechanized rice farmers in upland counties, while a series of devastating storms destroyed most of the dykes that formed their rice paddies. Today, rice production is mostly a historic foundation of coastal South Carolina’s past.

The state tree of South Carolina is the palmetto in honor of the service it provided during the Revolutionary War. To prevent the British from capturing Charleston, Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island at the mouth of the harbor was constructed from palmettos trees. In late June 1776 a British fleet of nine warships pounded the fort but cannonballs simply bounced off the soft, resilient palmettos. The navy retreated after sustaining damages. Attacking by land four years later, the British succeeded in taking Charleston. 

One of the more spectacular sights of Charleston and Savannah are the Live Oak trees. An oak tree, to me, had always conjured up images of a tall, stately tree that shed its leaves each fall. Live oaks, however, retain leaves throughout the year.

Often draped in Spanish moss (an epiphyte plant that is not harmful to other vegetation), live oaks have numerous expansive limbs that can span as much as 100 feet. They provide abundant shade and give the tree a majestic look. Live oaks can live for hundreds of years. Their deep, strong roots preserve them during storms, even hurricanes. 

During our time in St. Augustine Gilda and I stayed in a bed and breakfast on the oldest street in America, Aviles Street, which dates back to the 1570s (parts of the B&B, the Casa de Solana, trace their construction to the 1760s). 

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established city in the United States, having been founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first governor. 

I could be wrong but I believe most Americans, especially those who grew up and were educated along the Eastern Seaboard, the region of the original 13 British colonies, do not fully appreciate the contributions of Spanish colonials to the development of America. Our orientation is toward our link to Britain.

It is illuminating to realize the list of Spanish introductions to America includes horses, cattle, pigs and citrus fruit. But that’s not all. Here’s a link to a BuzzFeed article recounting 14 contributions Latinos have made to America: https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidnoriega/14-things-latinos-gave-to-america?utm_term=.owXq6X9Pq#.meV80dqE8

The by-no-means-comprehensive-list becomes all the more interesting and poignant given the attitude Donald Trump has taken toward the Hispanic community.

Baby Freedom Is Now Cecilia Jane

Pity the poor expectant mother who goes through an ordinary labor—she will have nothing to share with friends or family about the travails of her delivery. Ellie, on the other hand, no doubt will have plenty to tell about the birth Tuesday of her and Donny's daughter, Cecilia Jane Novak, their first offspring, Gilda's and my third grandchild.

I'm under strict restrictions not to reveal details but I can tell you that CJ, formerly known as Baby Freedom (conceived on the 4th of July and born during the festival of Passover, the liberation of the Hebrews from hundreds of years of bondage in Egypt), belied her nickname by staying inside the womb a week longer than forecast. She was riding high inside Ellie when last we saw her after the second seder Saturday night.

Contractions started Monday morning but Ellie didn't go to the hospital until after midnight. CJ made her entrance  at 10:38 am Tuesday.

I don't mean to suggest extended delivery is harder on grandparents than parents but it is rather difficult just waiting around for news. As type-A personalities Gilda and I are not the best bystanders. The no-news-is-good-news mantra just doesn't cut it when waiting for a grandchild to show up.

But all is cobetzedek now that Cecilia Jane has arrived and everyone—mother, father, child and grandparents, in New York and Omaha—is resting comfortably.

(For those who might wonder, cobetzedek is derived from the Hebrew words hacol bestedek which translates to "everything is all right.")

Baby Freedom Is Coming. Just Not Yet

Soon, any day now, Baby Freedom will paddle down the birth canal inside Ellie and present us with our third grandchild. Her due date was March 31, but you can never tell with first pregnancies if they will culminate on the appointed date.

You may be wondering why I referred to our soon-to-be granddaughter as Baby Freedom. Count back nine months and you will note conception most probably occurred over the Fourth of July holiday.

Moreover, revealing her dual heritage, Baby Freedom will pop out before or during Passover, the holiday that celebrates the release of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt, their exodus and formation as a united people.

Whatever Ellie and Donny choose to name her, she will always symbolize freedom to Gilda and me. It will be tough not using her nickname of the last half year, Freddy.

Medical Update: Nothing new to report on the kidney stone front. No pain. No sign it has passed.

Meanwhile, it appears that rather than pain from a TMJ disorder I have a nerve problem in a bottom molar, tooth #30 for you would-be dentists. Seeing a specialist Thursday morning. Either a root canal or an extraction replaced by an implant looks to be in my future. In the interim, as Gilda can attest, I am not suffering in silence. Whimpering abounds. 

Solar Update: Four days into our solar panel project we have saved a whopping $5. I know. It doesn't sound like a lot. But we are only expecting to save about $1,000 a year which is about $2.75 a day. Given the mostly overcast weather of the last few days we might not be too far off from projections. We could make it up when it is truly sunny out.

A Father's Day Tribute to My Mom

Having just read Timothy Egan’s tribute to his father in The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/SRE4HZ), I considered writing one for my dad. But it occurred to me that when I write about my parents it is mostly about my patrimony. So, with the comment my mother used to make, that without her Kopel Forseter would not have been a father, here's a posting about my maternal heritage.

The second of four sisters and an older brother, Sylvia Gerson came to New York from Lodg, Poland, in 1921 when she was four. Her father, Louis, was a jeweler, successful enough to move his family to an apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that cost her a boyfriend. With an air of upward social mobility she enjoyed conveying, my mother would relate that the boyfriend stopped calling on her because, he explained to her years later, she had attained an address status beyond his station.

A mutual friend set up my parents. Perhaps the story's apocryphal, but the way she told it, my father fell off a ladder in his store when he first saw her. It wasn't from her good looks. Rather, it was her wild and frizzy hair. They agreed, nevertheless, to go out that Friday night to a performance of Die Fledermaus, a comic opera. When Kopel came to her family apartment he didn't recognize her. She was all dolled up and beautiful. They were married six weeks later, Labor Day weekend 1942.

If six weeks seems like a whirlwind courtship, consider this. For several weeks they were apart because Sylvia went on vacation. During one of their times together my mother garnered one of her favorite stories.

Kopel took her back to an apartment he shared. Speaking Yiddish, his roommate asked if they would like to be alone, to which my father replied, also in Yiddish, “No, this one I am going to marry.” Unbeknownst to my father, Sylvia was fluent in Yiddish.

Their union was also a work partnership. As a full charge bookkeeper Sylvia ran the one-person office while Kopel ran the factory where they produced half-slips and panties sold mostly to chain stores across the country. For a little more than four years Sylvia stayed home to raise their three children. I propelled her back to work with my poor eating and an exasperating habit of flinging peas off of my high chair tray. Funny. Today peas are among my favorite vegetable.

Sylvia taught my brother and me to play ball. She made sure we went to Broadway shows and the opera. She took us to the Catskills. She enrolled us in private Hebrew schools and eight week sleepaway Jewish summer camps. She made our house the center of activity. Friday night poker games with my brother’s friends. Passover seders with as many as 40 participants. Overnight guests that prompted her to call our home Malon Forseter, malon being the Hebrew word for hotel. Her dinette table was never too full. Unexpected guests were met with the standard retort, “I'll just add another cup of water to the soup.”

Though I wrote earlier that my poor eating sent her back to work, truth is Sylvia was a woman ahead of her time. Not just a homemaker and club woman—head of the PTA and active in temple and social groups—she also was an accomplished businesswoman not content or fulfilled in a stay-at-home mother role. Because of their business my parents could not always vacation together. My mother was confident and independent enough to travel to Israel and Europe by herself in the mid 1950s when she was just 40.

These are memories from my youth. As she aged my mother's joie de vivre deteriorated. She chain smoked. She was diabetic. She suffered bouts of congestive heart failure. A little dementia. She had one leg amputated below the knee because of her diabetes. A few years later on the eve of an amputation of her second leg she died of cardiac arrest.

My brother sister and I don't dwell on the last decade or so of her life when she no longer was the vibrant source of our family life. It is enough to know that together with our father she molded us into the people we are today. And we are happy with the results.

Keeping Memories Alive

Around sunset tonight I will light six memorial candles, two for my parents, two for Gilda’s, two in honor of our uncles and aunts who have passed away. On the last day of Passover tomorrow, Yizkor will be recited. Yizkor is the prayer of remembrance, said four times a year in honor of the departed. 

Last week the Colombian, Nobel laureate author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, passed away. He was 87. Among the many passages quoted in his memory, this one touched me deeply: “What matters in life is not what happens to you—but what you remember and how you remember it.”

Perhaps that’s why I have recently been obsessed with the fantasy of getting a dog. For a year when I was 11, we had a dog, a puppy. Dusty. We were told he was a border collie but he probably was of mixed parentage, at least part golden retriever, which accounted for his thick yellow coat and his size. My sister, brother and I still talk of Dusty. They both had goldens when their children were young. Lee has since had two other dogs. She took home Ollie from the rescue shelter a few weeks ago.

Gilda’s not buying into my fantasy. She doesn’t believe I’d be willing to walk a dog early in the morning and late at night, when it’s cold, snowy or rainy. And I readily acknowledge I would not like picking up after it. So I think back on my 12 months with Dusty (10 actually, as two months we were separated while I summered in sleepaway camp) and revel in my memories. 

“I think we forget things if we have no one to tell them to.” 

That sentiment describes another reason for this blog. It is from the Indian movie The Lunchbox, by Ritesh Joginder Batra. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you don’t wait much longer as it is not the type of film that vanquishes superhero, supernatural or animated flicks for screens at the local cineplex.  

Last week an article in The NY Times provided insight into another of my childhood-to-adult foundations. Though born and raised in Brooklyn, I am a NY Yankees fan. My brother and all my friends rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers. We went to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers, until they moved to Los Angeles. I always said I became a Yankees fan because my mother rooted for them, though she really favored the NY Giants. But they moved west, too, to San Francisco. The last year the Dodgers played in Brooklyn was 1957. I was eight years old.

Keep that age in mind, because according to The Times article, team loyalty for youngsters is deeply impressed when a boy turns eight, particularly if the team wins the World Series (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/they-hook-you-when-youre-young.html?_r=0). Furthermore, “the odds of being captured as a perma-fan peak with those aged 8 to 12 at the time of the championship,” the article related.

Now, in 1957 the Yankees lost to the Milwaukee Braves in seven games. But the following year the Yanks defeated the Braves. And from 1960 to 1964 the Bronx Bombers played in five consecutive championship series, winning two titles in 1961 and 1962. It’s not too difficult to understand why I became a Yankees fan for life.

Lag Ba'Omer: A Time To Be Outdoors

How fitting that today would be a beautiful spring day when lots of families are outside reveling in the sunshine and cool air. Today is the day Jewish children are encouraged to play outdoors. It is Lag Ba’Omer, the 33rd of the 50 days between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot (Lag, in Hebrew letters, is the equivalent of the number 33.) 

As a child I was taught the significance of this day harkens back to the time when Jews were once again rebelling against Roman rule some 60 years after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70 CE and the desert fortress Masada fell in 73. The remnants of the Jews, under the leadership of Rabbi Akiba and the general Bar Kochba, challenged Rome between 132-136. On this day it is believed Bar Kochba’s army achieved a significant, though temporary, victory. To commemorate this triumph children were encouraged to go out into the fields with bows and arrows and to play games.

As youngsters in Brooklyn my brother, sister and I were a little too urbanized to go around shooting arrows on Lag Ba’Omer. Instead, on the Sunday closest to the actual day our Hebrew school, Yeshiva Rambam, organized a family outing to Cunningham Park in Queens. It meant not only a day of fun but also freedom from 9-12 Sunday school.

We'd assemble at the school on Kings Highway and East 31 Street to pile into yellow school buses with our fathers and mothers for the ride to the park. It was one of the few times kids would see their parents dressed informally in public. No ties, no white shirts and, this being the 1950s, hardly any jeans or sneakers. But in their open collar short sleeve sports shirts the fathers looked less formal or fearsome. Mothers wore skirts with bright blouses. No pants. They might have adored Katherine Hepburn, but they were not movie stars with the confidence to challenge societal sensibilities.

Once at the park it was like a scene from an Oklahoma land rush in an old western movie. We'd race across the lush grass to stake out a spot for a blanket, hopefully a small plot of land shaded by the leaves of a tall tree. Then the games would begin. Baseball for mostly the kids from the older grades and their fathers. Organized races for others: Wheelbarrow races. Three legged races. Eggs on spoon races. Potato sack races.

When it was time for lunch we would retreat to our respective blankets. My mother would unwrap cold hamburger sandwiches. Maybe they were meatloaf, though I never recall her ever baking a meatloaf for dinner. Active in her youth, even a horseback rider, mom kind of lost the feel for the outdoors as we grew older, though she did claim to have taught her three children to play ball. Dad surely didn’t. He had no concept of any sport.

A few years before mom  passed away we kidded her that we never barbecued in our back yard in Brooklyn. She disagreed strongly, asserting we would eat tuna fish sandwiches at a table in the yard. That to her was close enough to be called a barbecue.

More games followed after lunch. My father usually napped. On the ride back to the school we would sing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Or, more than likely for kids my age, we would fall asleep, perhaps dreaming of Bar Kochba smiting the Roman legions.

Winter Is Officially Over; Men Still Behave Badly

The calendar proclaimed it happened March 20, but I declare today the official end of winter and the beginning of spring. Today marks the day I ran the motor dry in my snowblower and stored it away in the shed, took out Gilda’s gardening wheelbarrow and removed the cozies from two of our outdoor faucets. 

Yes, spring was definitely in the air today, sunny with almost no breeze. I even fed the birds, giving them leftover Passover-version Cheerios (they’re really vile tasting, but the birds don’t seem to mind), and crunched up whole wheat matzah. D’ya think it will have the same binding effect on the birds? 

Is it a surprise to anyone that men behave badly? Specifically, men with authority who coach athletic teams and other groups where discipline is demanded. 

The abusive behavior of Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice toward his players led to his dismissal Thursday, days after a series of videos surfaced of him taunting his players with homophobic slurs, hitting them at close range with thrown basketballs, kicking them and otherwise manhandling them. Sadly, it wasn’t the first nor will it be the last time a coach acts badly. It happens in almost all sports.

But as I tuned into the last few minutes of a segment on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show today, I was intrigued by the comments a sportswriter guest made. Rice’s behavior toward these collegiate athletes was no worse than they might have experienced had they been new soldiers undergoing basic training in the Marines or Army. I am in no way trying to justify Rice’s actions. But it seems we surely have reached a point where college sports have stepped over a line that separates it from the rest of our society. Sports have transcended the educational purpose of higher education. I’m not sure we will ever rebalance our priorities, not when athletics produces oodles and oodles of dollars for universities, nor when the commander-in-chief’s picks for March Madness command as much if not more air time than wars in the Mid-East or hunger in America.

As if to reinforce that thought about war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lehrer noted the intense interest in the compound leg fracture sustained by Louisville’s Kevin Ware during a game against Duke last weekend. Many people want to watch the video of the mishap. Yet, Lehrer pointed out, as gruesome as the injury was, it was not as bad as what happens every day in war zones, to civilians and to military personnel. We are shielded from viewing those traumas. The wars, it seems, are not for public consumption.

  

Venus, Jon Stewart and Red Light Districts

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece on Good Housekeeping’s Seal of Approval a few days ago. If a product carrying the coveted seal does not perform as promised, the magazine—not the manufacturer or the retailer—will refund the purchase price or replace the product. Which brings me to today’s mail and a copy of a magazine-sized glossy catalog of women’s apparel from Venus of Jacksonville, Fla. It’s 96 pages of soft porn images of fetching young maidens in bikinis and otherwise come-hither fashions. The back cover headline is “Sexy Sunrises are on your horizon.”

By the way, this hot catalog was not sent to Gilda. It was sent to me! I’m flattered Venus considers me, or Gilda, sexy. But I can’t help but thinking Venus and others of its ilk should adopt a Good Housekeeping-like creed—if their products don’t turn you into the personification of sexiness (at least to your partner’s satisfaction) in say, 60 days, you should get your money back. Or at the very least, they should remove you from their mailing list.

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is no Sandy Koufax. You’ll remember the southpaw ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers forsook pitching the opening game of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins because it fell on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Judaism’s holiest day. (For the record, Koufax pitched and won two other games in leading the Dodgers to the baseball title.) Stewart chooses to ignore, and even mock, Jewish holidays, working on Yom Kippur and other holidays including this week’s Passover celebration. Most Jews I know have a liberal sense of humor about our religion, so we laugh along with Stewart’s comedic send-ups. 

Monday night, however, one of The Daily Show’s best puns went unappreciated by what must have been an audience with few if any Jews, given that it was the night of the first seder of Passover. There wasn’t even a hint of laughter when Stewart’s reporting on the president’s trip to Israel was accompanied by the caption, “Barack Atah Adonai.” For the non-believers out there, and anyone else Hebraically challenged, Barack Atah Adonai is a play on “Baruch Atah Adonai” which begins every blessing and means “blessed are you, Lord our God.” In Stewart’s version, the Hebrew translates to “Barack (Obama), you are God.”  

Uh-oh: Retirement may cost me about 50 bucks. Since I don’t travel out of LaGuardia Airport too often these days I was unaware traffic lights were installed on an overhang above the departure ramp of the main terminal. As I drove Ellie and Donny to the United Airlines door, I was softly questioned by my son-in-law about gliding through a red light. 

I stopped at the next one and noticed a camera stationed to the right of the red sphere. Dread descended. No doubt my picture was taken at the prior light. No doubt I’ll get a notice in the mail in a few weeks demanding payment for going through a red light. No doubt my defense that no lights previously impeded my progress down the ramp will not absolve me from having to pay for the infraction. Ah well, it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise enjoyable retirement.

Repurposing Stories on Passover and Kutsher's

I don’t know if NBC News and ABC News do this, but CBS News is a practitioner of “repurposed copy”. In other words, stories done for the daily evening news often find their way onto CBS Sunday Morning or some other news broadcast. It’s all part of the new dynamic of trying to fill airtime devoted to news, which seems to be expanding, with staffs that seems to be constantly contracting. Nothing wrong with that, especially since we repurposed all the time on Chain Store Age, using material from our Web site in the monthly magazine. More to the immediate point, I’m about to repurpose two posts from my first year of blogging, posts chosen because of their link to current events. The first commemorates preparations for Passover which begins tonight. The second also comes from that first year and is reprinted because of the death of Helen Kutsher, matriach of the Catskills resort Kutsher’s Country Club.

Gilda and I figured out this morning it is 25 years since she began cooking and hosting the annual Passover seder for some two dozen family and friends. Back on April 2, 2010, I paid tribute to my mother’s yeoman prior work for this most Jewish of all holidays:

Passover Wonders

How did she do it?

How did my mother, who worked full-time with my father in his business, manage to cook and store food for 20 to 30 people for our annual Passover seders when all she had was an old oven and stovetop and a small International Harvester refrigerator-freezer?

It’s always baffled my brother, sister and me, especially when I see the preparations Gilda makes each year for our seder of equivalent size, the food she cooks in advance and stores in our two fridges with their freezers and our stand-alone freezer.

Our mother no doubt bartered space in neighbors’ kitchens in exchange for portions of gefilte fish and matzah ball soup. I’d be in charge of delivering the goods each year, not one of my favorite chores as I was rather possessive of her handiwork. Her gefilte fish was an exquisite blend of pike, carp and whitefish she personally bought from the fish monger’s truck at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Avenue W, a block and a half from our home in Brooklyn. Simply put, her gefilte fish was to die for.

My sister Lee loved her matzah balls (I was more partial to the kreplach she made for Rosh Hashanah). Each matzah ball was exceptionally soft and fluffy. So it was more than surprising when one year everyone almost broke their teeth, literally almost broke their teeth, on her matzah balls. Without telling anyone, she had hidden a blanched almond inside each sphere. Her unsuspecting family and guests assumed their knedlach would easily melt inside their mouths. The crunch and resistance we all felt made everyone uneasy. Too embarrassed to say anything, we wondered if she had somehow mixed chicken bones into the matzah ball batter. When she finally noticed everyone avoiding finishing their knedlach, she volunteered that she had hidden a “surprise” inside each matzah ball. Enlightened and relieved, we gobbled up the rest, and thereafter joked about it at all subsequent seders.

Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, we lived in an attached two-story row house. Before I turned 13, we’d hold the seder in the basement. Tables would be arranged in a U-shape. Our immediate family, aunts, uncles and first cousins totaled 18. On top of that came mostly people related to our father by kinship or friendship, swelling our numbers to 25 or more, as many as 40 one year. Uncle Willy, who ran a dry goods store on First Avenue in the East Village in Manhattan, always brought us new clothing for the holiday.

In the 1960s, after the seder moved upstairs, my brother Bernie and I were tasked with rearranging furniture to accommodate a long table run down the center of the living room. We moved the couch and chairs into the dinette. Our father presided at one end. Willy sat a few seats down. Our mother sat at the far end, gossiping with her three sisters. In between, the nine cousins, two more uncles and assorted guests, most of whom could not read Hebrew, and even if they could they would find it hard to follow the melody Dad and Uncle Willy brought with them from Galicia. But that didn’t stop our father from plowing ahead in Hebrew, expecting participation from his Hebrew school-trained children and at least silent devotion from everyone else. He didn’t skip a word in the haggadah. It was an excruciatingly long service, broken up by the not-so-occasional remonstrance from Dad to be quiet. When the noise overwhelmed him, he’d threaten not to continue, which made us all the more fidgety and anxious to get to the midpoint of the haggadah so we could eat.

Food. It always came back to the food. No matter how long the service, no matter how many at the table, the seder hinged on the quality and quantity of the food. Mom piled on the food. Each year she’d make a crown roast, until she traded that signature dish in for rack of lamb. Same meat, different presentation. Almost 25 years ago, it became too much of a burden for her to prepare the seder. We knew it was time to transfer the torch, er, spatula, to the next generation, to Gilda, when there wasn’t enough meat to adequately serve everyone. Because there were no leftovers, Mom thought she had ordered “just enough.” It was one of the first signs she was failing to appreciate reality.

Over the years, the cast-in-stone liturgy of our haggadah has changed as we graduated from the Maxwell House version Dad used to a text assembled by Bernie, then me and now our daughter Ellie. The themes of liberation, equality, emancipation, egalitarianism remain constant, updated to reflect current humanitarian concerns. Constant, too, has been the function of the meal, a celebration of plenty, a symbol our generation are not slaves in Egypt, or shtetl dwellers in eastern Europe, or refugees squeezed into Lower East Side tenements.

I witness how exhausted Gilda is after preparing the seder meal, how taxing it is for her to do this while working full-time, how physical it is even with all the modern day cooking conveniences. And I wonder how our mother was able to do it all. It was, no doubt, another miracle of Biblical proportions.

********************************

Helen Kutsher was proud of her resort, not the least for being the last of the “grande dame” hotels that transformed the Catskill Mountains surrounding Monticello, NY, into a Borscht Belt of oversized, cholesterol-filled meals and nightclub acts featuring mostly Jewish singers and comedians including Alan King, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. The heyday of Kutsher’s, Grossinger’s, The Concord, Brown’s et al was the 1950s and 1960s. All but Kutsher’s have closed. As a youngster, I tagged along with my parents to many of these hotels. Gilda never experienced the Catskills. Here’s what happened 25 years ago when she suggested we spend a romantic weekend at Kutsher’s:

Borscht-Belted

In 1988, when our son, Dan, was 9, he went to sleepaway camp for the first time for eight weeks. With the assistance of a neighbor who agreed to watch the then 6-1/2 year old Ellie, Gilda planned a romantic weekend getaway for us. Having never experienced a Catskills resort when growing up, Gilda craved the experience. She had seen an article in The NY Times describing a renovation of Kutsher’s in Monticello. She made a reservation and sent a $50 deposit.

Now, I had accompanied my parents to many Catskills hotels when growing up. They were generally pleasant, but by 1988 I had been exposed to, shall we say, a more refined world. I traveled across the country for my job, staying in many first class hotels and resorts. Gilda had often shared the resort trips with me as they centered around conferences where the presence of a spouse was a definite advantage in meeting and mingling with sources. Despite Kutsher’s renovations as described in The Times, I was less than enthusiastic about trekking off to the Catskills. Having just mastered riding a bicycle at age 39 (a subject of a future blog), I was happy to learn Kutsher’s had it own bike trail around its lake and provided bikes free of charge.

The fateful weekend in early July came. I admit I did not muster much enthusiasm. Gilda was rightfully upset with my attitude. As we pulled onto the hotel driveway, the same canopy depicted in the picture in last Friday’s paper appeared. It was not the equal to the Del Coronado outside San Diego. Or the Boca Raton Country Club. Or the Arizona Biltmore, the Scottsdale Princess or the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, all hotels Gilda and I, often with our children, had enjoyed. I sensed her trepidation as we entered the small registration desk just inside the front door.

She wanted to see the room before we officially checked in. The registration clerk asked why. Just to be sure. We didn’t want a room with double beds. Reluctantly she agreed to show us the room. As we walked across the lobby, I detected a strange odor. It reminded me of a used kitty litter box. I suggested perhaps the carpet was mildewed and was immediately rebuffed. It was new flooring, I was told. New or old, I said, the carpet smelled.

I glanced out the picture window and saw the “lake” with the bike path surrounding it. It appeared to be about a half acre in size. Yes, bikes were available, but they couldn’t be ridden anywhere off the paved path around the lake. So much for any biking expedition.

We arrived at our room and stepped into the 1950s. It had separate beds; the carpeting was a long shag of deep orange. We demanded a different room. Reluctantly Kutsher’s agreed. We asked to see it. Again the clerk was less than enthusiastic. The second room had a single bed and decent carpeting. But its only window was higher than six feet from the ground. Standing on the bed I could see out the window. If I craned my neck I could see part of the pool. But most visible was the building next door. Had I wanted to see a building when I looked out the window, I told the clerk, I would have stayed in Brooklyn.

Gilda was now convinced Kutsher’s was not going to be part of our weekend escape. We were prepared to forfeit the $50 deposit, but amazingly Kutsher’s refunded it. We weren’t ready to return home, so we decided to check out the Concord in Kiamesha Lake. Before registering, however, we opted to scope out the hotel. It seemed acceptable until we came upon a yoga class in progress. How can I say this delicately? The yoga instructor could be a contestant on the show,The Biggest Loser. No way, Gilda said, was she staying in a hotel that disrespected its clientele with such an instructor.

Disappointed, we headed homeward till I remembered about the Inn at Lake Waramaug in Litchfield County, Conn. It’s a beautiful setting, with individual cottages. No TVs. No phones. Just the opportunity to commune with nature. That is, unless it’s pouring rain, which started to fall right after we arrived and kept coming down well into Saturday morning, by which time we decided that White Plains wasn’t too bad a place to spend a romantic weekend by ourselves, with Ellie down the street playing with Issa and her mother, Angeles.

Matzo Balls, Soft and Fluffy

For dinner tonight, Gilda and I polished off the last of the matzo balls and chicken soup left over from Friday night’s first Passover seder. Gilda boils light, fluffy matzo balls, just like my mother used to make. I know there are some who consider a matzo ball’s density the true test of culinary art. Suffice to say, I subscribe to the belief that hard matzo balls could substitute for cannon balls, while dissolve-in-your-mouth matzo balls are to die for.

One year during the seder in my parents’ home, the matzo balls almost turned into an orthodontic disaster. Without telling anyone, my mother hid a blanched almond inside each matzo ball. Her unsuspecting family and guests assumed they would easily melt inside their mouths. The crunch and resistance we all felt made everyone uneasy. Too embarrassed to say anything, we wondered if she had somehow mixed chicken bones into the matzo ball batter. When she finally noticed everyone avoiding finishing their matzo balls, she volunteered that she had hidden a “surprise” inside each sphere. Enlightened and relieved, we gobbled up the rest, and thereafter joked about it at all subsequent seders.

We had a small, manageable crowd of 18 hungry souls at the seder table this year. For the first time in many years my cousin Michael, with his wife, Mary, drove up from Baltimore. Michael filled the void created when his mother, the last survivor of our aunts and uncles, moved last year to Kansas with his younger brother, Steve, and his wife, Grace. It felt right to have someone representing Aunt Lily’s side of the family.

This was the first year Finley “participated.” He sat next to his mother, for the most part transfixed, intently watching and smiling as we performed various rituals and recited prayers. I think he most appreciated the grape juice he drank as part of the ceremony. He must have been enthralled with the proceedings as he stayed awake talking to his crib companions for about an hour after Allison and Dan put him to bed.

So far, Finley has not discovered the joy of matzo ball soup. But if he’s anything like his dad, he will. One of Dan’s lasting memories of my mother was her spoon-feeding him matzo ball soup when we’d visit her in Brooklyn. GG’s (Grandma Gilda’s) matzo balls are sure to find a soft spot in Finley’s heart in the months ahead.

Return of the Blogger

If you’re wondering why your inbox has been a little lighter this last week it’s because I decided to take some time off for the Passover holiday and, more importantly, a six day visit by our 17-month-old grandson, Finley (okay, his parents, Dan and Allison, as well).

Of course I’m biased, but Finley is adorable. He smiles at everyone. He’s at the cusp of verbalization, mixing in some words with incessantly cute babbling. When he wakes up in the morning or from his afternoon nap, it’s not with a scream or cry but rather with minutes of active, babbling shrieks. He goes to sleep the same way, nary a cry, babbling himself to slumber.

This is his age of wonder and amazement, bewilderment turned to comprehension, exploration fashioned into discovery, rote repetition to learning. I taught him to say “Grandma GG” for when Gilda came into the room; couldn’t get him to say “Grandpa GP.” Maybe next time. He knows more words than he can say. He’ll follow directions, to get a favorite book or toy, for example. He’ll surprise you by walking passed his coat and saying, “Jacket.” He’ll wave and say “goodbye” to cashiers.

We took him for his first haircut, to the same woman, Rosie, who gave Dan his first haircut some 30 years ago and who still cuts my hair. Three generations of Forseter men have sat in her chair.

Allison and Dan don’t let Finley watch TV really, but while they were out one afternoon Gilda and I enjoyed the perks of grandparenthood and put on Nickelodeon and Looney Tunes. He ignored the cartoons, preferring instead to entertain himself with a toy kitchen. Once or twice he looked up when a commercial ran, but rarely for more than a few seconds.

My mother used to say my poor eating drove her back to work. As an infant I would throw peas off the high chair. Finley’s a human vacuum cleaner. He eats everything, especially fruit and vegetables, just as Dan did. For Dan it was a matter of survival. He was allergic to milk products. Finley loves eating, but retains a slim physique. Aside from saying “more,” he also hand-signals the sign for more food.

Finley went home Saturday. There’s hardly anything more melancholy than when your grandchild, whom you hadn’t seen in two months, goes home with an uncertain date as to when you’ll see him again. With his development changing almost daily, he’ll almost be another person when we reconnect. I can hardly wait.