As I donned my red, white, and blue and clothing yesterday morning for the ECC’s Independence Day picnic, I couldn’t help but wonder what my ancestors might think of me today.
Carrie Bradshaw references aside, I am now a little over one month into my new position at the AARC. As I have been showered with welcome and congratulations, I have also begun to consider what I think of me.
This past weekend, my mom’s family gathered to commemorate my Grandpa Burt’s 20th yahrzeit. While visiting his gravesite, I felt a magic and electricity as my mom and uncles shared memories of their father.
This aliveness I feel always seems to come about in such moments of profound connection and remembering. The same feeling I get from reading memoirs of women like Mary Antin or Letty Cottin Pogrebin. Jewish American women, each from different generations than my own, and all of us with different, yet parallel experiences of our Americas.
Mary Antin’s The Promised Land provides the perspective of a young girl immigrating to late 1890s New York who must reconcile two greatly different worlds. Antin was also a contemporary of Emma Lazarus, a Jewish poet whose words adorn the Statue of Liberty.
Cottin Pogrebin’s, Deborah, Golda, and Me on the other hand, illustrates the author’s reckoning with the patriarchal aspects of her Jewish American upbringing through the lens of second wave feminism.
There are many things that tether these women’s stories to my own and to those of our congregation. We all have our own unique experiences and perspectives of what it means to be Jewish in America, and this can bring up a host of feelings, particularly around the 4th of July.
I consider myself fortunate to be a part of a community in which we, especially non-men, are free and encouraged to participate and think deeply and critically about all aspects of our tradition.
Politics and parades aside, I feel proud of the Jewish American life that I am making, and hope my ancestors, both near and distant, feel similarly.
Whether you are lighting fireworks this year or simply enjoying some rest, let us not forget those who came before us, and what they might think.
