For her and my father, who had grown up in an anti-Semitic communist environment, my leanings toward frumkeit were a dangerous return to the shtetl
M y father was only 12 years old in 1944 when the letter his mother had sent from Bucharest to his grandmother in Transylvania was returned to them with the words “Addressee Unknown.” When my father’s mother saw the envelope she immediately knew what had happened. At that point she declared that they were done with Yiddishkeit. There was no more kosher food no more Shabbos candles no more Pesach Sedorim.
My mother who was born in 1939 does not remember life before the war nor does she remember the family’s deportation by the Nazis. She does however remember the retreat of the Nazis from Stalingrad during which they went “Jew hunting.” She was four years old at the time and suffering from whooping cough and she still remembers hiding with her parents and grandparents in a basement and hearing the sounds of the Nazis’ boots above her head while her mother held her mouth shut.
After the war my parents worked tirelessly to become successful professionals a doctor and a lawyer respectively. As Jews living under a communist regime they had to work twice as hard as their non-Jewish neighbors all the while hoping that their applications to leave Romania for Israel would be approved. After an almost 20-year wait they made their way to Israel in 1970. In search of better professional opportunities they moved to the US in 1974 where they raised me in the liberal environment of Worcester Massachusetts.
Although my parents were not observant their Jewish identity was very important to them so they sent me to a Jewish day school.
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