Great-Aunt Ruthie grew up in a cozy Jewish Chicago neighborhood. Her childhood was full of Yiddish and Jewish foods. While family traditions changed over time, Judaism stayed central to her identity.
Warm was a word you could put to my Great-Aunt Ruthie’s upbringing, especially in the fall of 1966. Ziskeit, sweetness, might be even better.
Living in an unequivocally Jewish Chicago neighborhood, young Ruthie had much to look forward to that b’nai mitzvah year. Years of ballroom dancing lessons from the Arcadia Terrace Park District left her eagerly prepared for these special events and the large parties that followed. She remembers them fondly, as shared moments of excitement and joy across the community.
Ruthie’s neighborhood was so Jewish-ly populated that she was made to wait eight months past her twelfth birthday before she could have her own coming-of-age ceremony. Then, on an unassuming Friday night in March, she stood before her congregation to recite her parsha.
She says she still remembers almost every word.
Conservative Judaism was passed down to Ruthie from a long line of Yiddish-speaking immigrants. She fondly remembers conversations between her mother Leah and Leah’s girlfriends, when Ruthie couldn’t quite speak Yiddish but could certainly understand it.
As yellow afternoon light flooded in through the windows of their modest apartment, Ruthie’s mother spent hours gossipping about everything under the sun, both to her friends, and to an audience larger than she thought.
Occasionally, a girlfriend would pause and whisper, “Eyr frarshteyn?” Does she understand?
Leah’s response: “A bissel, a bissel.”
These words, “a little, a little,” are one way to describe Ruthie’s Jewish childhood. Things were rarely done exactly by the book. Moreso, her family followed what they liked of the scripture, along with a little bit of familial charm. A little from here, a little from there.
Now, Ruthie says, that is the way she tries to maintain her Jewish life. Although she is long removed from the urban Chicago streets of her youth, she remains influenced by her mother’s words and youthful memories.
She still holds onto her Yiddish language, and threw in many words during our conversation. But what she remembers most is the food, and her eyes grew large and glassy as she recalled her grandmother’s soups and kichlach.
But there was no true typical Shabbat meal for her family. As much as Ruthie would have liked to continue eating her family’s brisket and rugelach forever, as her mother became very ill later in Ruthie’s teenage years, the family would slowly abandon these traditional meals.
Matzoh ball soup was replaced with Chinese takeout, and over time, their family’s traditions molded to meet her mother’s needs. Bissel-bissel, or little by little, Ruthie began to see the purpose of Judaism in her life shift from something exclusively spiritual to something much more communal.
She recalls with laughter how her Zayde would lead Pesach seders, rushing through the Haggadah in prattling Hebrew so the family would have enough time to do what really mattered to them: twirling through the kitchen in their finest holiday clothes, belting Yiddish songs, and devouring little Pesach cakes.
This all brings Ruthie to her current definition of Conservatism. More than a means of connecting to God, it is a means of connecting to her family. Although she married outside of her religion, she raised her daughter with the inclusive Jewish values that danced around her youth.
There is a certain grit, she says, to being Jewish. A certain cleverness, too. Now, although she rarely attends synagogue and concentrates most of her religious experience into the high holidays, she has not lost sight of her original Jewish principles.
All that matters, she says, is goodness. Goodness, strength, and ziskeit.
This essay was submitted as part of Exploring Judaism’s L’Dor V’Dor Essay Contest. To learn more, or submit your own essay, go here.
