Memories

My Israeli grandmother passed away this week. It is surreal to be so far away from the family, the funeral, and the mourning. I am not sure how to commemorate her life from here. Safta Shulamit was a tough woman. At 16, she and her identical twin sister followed their 18 year old sister to Israel from Romania. After they arrived, the twins lived together in a boarding school where they learned to speak Hebrew. Shulamit used to tell me what it was like in order to encourage me when I was learning Hebrew and homesick.

Safta Shulamit was the one member of the family who spoke no English at all, which made her the best Hebrew teacher for me. We were left with no other means of communication, but we made do in the beginning, and then later, she always encouraged me by pointing out to everyone, "Linsey speaks Hebrew now. Listen to that!"

One of the things I loved the most about my early years in Israel was Friday night dinner at her and her husband's house. We would arrive in time to walk Saba Shmulik back from the synagogue. When we returned to the house, the Shabbat candles were glowing merrily. We would stand around the table and sing "Shalom Aleichem", the men's bass voices rattling the windows while the women's voices danced around in harmony, and we smiled at each other. Then Saba Shmulik would say kiddush, bless the lovely, fluffy white loaves of bread and invite us to sit. Safta Shulamit would bring out a platter of gefilte fish, which I learned to love. Nothing made her prouder than the fact that her gefilte fish were so good she'd managed to make a Mormon girl from Utah ask for seconds. After the gefilte fish, there was dish after delicious Hungarian dish. And always coffee and chocolate yeast cake for dessert.

Saba Shmulik passed away three years ago. Safta Shulamit wasn't the same after he died. She was angry at him for abandoning her after everything they had survived together. She hated having to leave her home and move into an assisted living apartment. I always regretted not having the opportunity to live in Israel while Saba Shmulik was still alive. In the beginning, he was upset with me and with the fact I was a shikseh and didn't convert, but after a while, I converted him. He learned to love me, felt that I was good for his grandson, and saw how I loved Judaism and the family and embraced both. It is because of him and Safta Shulamit that I kept my name.

When we moved to Israel, Safta Shulamit was already losing her memory and by the time I left, it had declined seriously. She started to forget the names of her great grandchildren and sometimes her grandchildren and their spouses, but she somehow remembered mine. There was something gratifying to me to know that even when I wasn't there, someone remembered me. I will do the same for her; even though she is no longer here, I will always remember her.