Links and Kinks

Yudit’s face seemed so familiar. Where do I know that face from? The thought crossed my mind, and the answer looked down at me from the silver-framed photo

A s soon as they crossed the threshold the cousins from Israel handed me their cameras. I thought their focus on memory preservation to be unnecessarily premature but in hindsight they were correct; record-keeping is always forgotten if postponed. When the blinding flashes ceased the two sisters leisurely observed the mob of still-unknown family packed in the living room. Strangers we were then.

But Yudit’s face seemed so familiar. Where do I know that face from? The thought crossed my mind and the answer looked down at me from the silver-framed photo perched on the seforim shrank. Yudit is Babi Yehudis — Zeidy’s mother and her own namesake — reincarnated.

After the war his wife and children dead Zoli Bácsi (“Uncle”) had remarried and headed straight for the Holy Land. His brother my grandfather returned to the childhood home. A decade later when the Communists overran Hungary Zeidy asked his scattered siblings for advice: Where should he go?

“You have small children ” Zoli wrote. “Life is too hard here.”