figured it was the same as any kind of dancing, only more slowly.
At the club a soldier asked me to dance. He clutched me very close and tight. I stepped on his feet. I did not know how to slow-dance and I did not like being pulled so tightly to the soldier and it was scary. I was still only twelve.
After that event, I never have been able to slow-dance. Thatâs really why I got an F in my college ballroom dancing class.
momâs arrest
I srael was only twenty years old at that time. My mom took us to public events where I got to meet people like David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan (who was quite sexy with that eye patch). But I didnât know who either of them was. I didnât even know what being a Jew was, really.
I knew I had Orthodox grandparents on my motherâs side, but still, what did that mean? My parents did not keep kosher and I did not understand, because it hadnât been explained to me, that you could not have milk if you had just had meat, unless it was breakfast, when you should never ask for bacon or sausage. Asking for bacon or sausage made Grandpa and Grandma hurt and upset. I always felt awful, but there was no way to know what I would say next to absolutely destroy them. No one ever said what their problem was!
On my dadâs side were a bunch of Polish peasants who came over to work in the silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey, around 1904. This side was not like my momâs side. This side denied being Jewish as much as they could, which I guess would work until there were pogroms or someone trying to drag them off to concentration camps.
Swearing in Yiddish that you were an atheist wouldnât have saved my great-great-great-great-grandmother, who must have gotten raped by one of the invading Huns, which is the only reason I can think of for my slightly Asiatic eyes.
Although, knowing my grandmother on my dadâs side, my ancestor probably wasnât raped. She probably lured one of the Mongolian horde into her shtetl while Tevye was out fiddling someone on a roof. âOh, Genghis! Genghis! You look like youâre good at fixing things. My husband, forget about itâheâs useless. Would you mind taking a look at the hole in here? And I want you to try my gefilte fish.â
My momâs parents did come over that year to visit us in Israel, though neither my dad nor anybody from his side did. My grandparents came to visit the following spring, after the small cement-block cottage we were living in by then, on the deserted beachfront of Herzliya Pituach, got flooded out and we moved to a cheap hotel.
But the summer of 1968 was supposed to be sort of an adjustment/vacation time before the fall, when we would move to an ulpan, a center for new immigrants to learn Hebrew and the hora.
The hora! Oh, the hora!
Money still had not arrived in the bank thereâdue to the fact that, day after day, the bank was always closed. We continued to walk over every day in the heat, only to find the bank closed and a sign in Hebrew, so forget it.
The hotel said they had waited long enough for Mom to pay the bill. My mom told the owners, âLook, Iâm sorry we canât pay the bill, but the money was supposed to be wired over to the bank, and the bank is never open! Iâm not going anywhere, and if you want you can hang on to my passport and checkbook.â
Thatâs pretty much all she had to offer. See, back then, there were no credit cards.
She tried to explain that eventually the bank would have to open and her money would clear. But it was no use. The owners of the hotel said we had to pay up or leave.
We packed everything and went out the front entrance. Even though we hadnât been there long, we had a whole lot of stuff. You couldnât buy much in Israel in those days; my grandparents had told us to bring sheets, towels, cooking utensilsâyou are New Settlers! Then there was the dog, and the dog needed bowls and other items. And then there
At the club a soldier asked me to dance. He clutched me very close and tight. I stepped on his feet. I did not know how to slow-dance and I did not like being pulled so tightly to the soldier and it was scary. I was still only twelve.
After that event, I never have been able to slow-dance. Thatâs really why I got an F in my college ballroom dancing class.
momâs arrest
I srael was only twenty years old at that time. My mom took us to public events where I got to meet people like David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan (who was quite sexy with that eye patch). But I didnât know who either of them was. I didnât even know what being a Jew was, really.
I knew I had Orthodox grandparents on my motherâs side, but still, what did that mean? My parents did not keep kosher and I did not understand, because it hadnât been explained to me, that you could not have milk if you had just had meat, unless it was breakfast, when you should never ask for bacon or sausage. Asking for bacon or sausage made Grandpa and Grandma hurt and upset. I always felt awful, but there was no way to know what I would say next to absolutely destroy them. No one ever said what their problem was!
On my dadâs side were a bunch of Polish peasants who came over to work in the silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey, around 1904. This side was not like my momâs side. This side denied being Jewish as much as they could, which I guess would work until there were pogroms or someone trying to drag them off to concentration camps.
Swearing in Yiddish that you were an atheist wouldnât have saved my great-great-great-great-grandmother, who must have gotten raped by one of the invading Huns, which is the only reason I can think of for my slightly Asiatic eyes.
Although, knowing my grandmother on my dadâs side, my ancestor probably wasnât raped. She probably lured one of the Mongolian horde into her shtetl while Tevye was out fiddling someone on a roof. âOh, Genghis! Genghis! You look like youâre good at fixing things. My husband, forget about itâheâs useless. Would you mind taking a look at the hole in here? And I want you to try my gefilte fish.â
My momâs parents did come over that year to visit us in Israel, though neither my dad nor anybody from his side did. My grandparents came to visit the following spring, after the small cement-block cottage we were living in by then, on the deserted beachfront of Herzliya Pituach, got flooded out and we moved to a cheap hotel.
But the summer of 1968 was supposed to be sort of an adjustment/vacation time before the fall, when we would move to an ulpan, a center for new immigrants to learn Hebrew and the hora.
The hora! Oh, the hora!
Money still had not arrived in the bank thereâdue to the fact that, day after day, the bank was always closed. We continued to walk over every day in the heat, only to find the bank closed and a sign in Hebrew, so forget it.
The hotel said they had waited long enough for Mom to pay the bill. My mom told the owners, âLook, Iâm sorry we canât pay the bill, but the money was supposed to be wired over to the bank, and the bank is never open! Iâm not going anywhere, and if you want you can hang on to my passport and checkbook.â
Thatâs pretty much all she had to offer. See, back then, there were no credit cards.
She tried to explain that eventually the bank would have to open and her money would clear. But it was no use. The owners of the hotel said we had to pay up or leave.
We packed everything and went out the front entrance. Even though we hadnât been there long, we had a whole lot of stuff. You couldnât buy much in Israel in those days; my grandparents had told us to bring sheets, towels, cooking utensilsâyou are New Settlers! Then there was the dog, and the dog needed bowls and other items. And then there
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