Diminishing Observance
When I was a kid in Heidelberg we walked across the Neckar to Sabbath services because it was forbidden to ride on Sabbath. While I’m not very knowledgeable about my mother’s kitchen, I do know that she treated meat to what I take to be the prescribed three-hour bath in salt water. We also had separate dishes for Passover. We didn’t count ourselves among orthodox Jews (nor would they have included us), but in our practices we were not all that far from what today is called modern orthodox.
During my teens, I was a faithful member of the synagogue choir, if not very aware of the institutional implications of that. My interest was mainly musical, but the context was entirely religious. My father would have loved me to become a rabbi, though there never was a chance of that.
When I married Fannia—100% Jewish, but brought up ignorant of Jewish traditions—that made me take a lead, primarily during major holidays.
While I had intellectual interests in Judaism from my late teens on my Jewish identification became primarily what a friend sensibly called tribal and above all political. I note when someone I read about is Jewish and never miss checking on that topic when reading—faithfully—NYTimes obituaries. I “give credit” to Hitler for that insistence to always identify myself as Jewish.
But as for recent practice, it has waned away. Still, my two grandchildren, Max and Eva, were Bar and Bat Mitzvah. When in a recent phone call with Eva I said that there are plenty of non-observant Jews, just don’t forget that you are Jewish, she laughed and said she understood.
And I have arranged to be buried with Fannia in a grave we bought in a Jewish cemetery—which probably contains more relatives of mine than any other on the globe. That should make up for neglect in prior years.
