The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah (2 page)

How Jewish Is Too Jewish?

I could tell my friend Rachel Miller anything. Even about what I heard in the car ride home when we finally left Poppy's apartment, when my parents thought I was asleep, like Sam was. Like I was, until we hit a bump on the West Side Highway. Through my lowered lashes, I saw my mother turn around in her seat to see if I had woken. It was late and dark, and the lights from the oncoming traffic shone into our car, making a kaleidoscope behind my lowered eyelids. I didn't even move my head. But I listened.

My mother went back to her conversation with my dad, in between crying. She was telling family secrets, and I wanted to hear them.

 

Rachel was my best friend, my best friend since nursery school. We were certain we had been separated at birth. For the first seven years of our friendship we looked exactly alike. In fact, it was because the other kids in our nursery school class couldn't
tell us apart that Rachel and I met in the first place. Rachel went to the two-day-a-week fours program and I went to the three-day-a-week program, and the kids who went all five days a week thought we were the same little girl. They kept mixing up our names and calling Rachel Caroline and me Rachel. One kid got it all wrong and called us Racholine.

The teacher thought it was so funny, she insisted our moms meet each other. Our moms became best friends, and so did we. That was almost eight years ago, and we still use Carachel and Racholine for our screen names.

But lately, the last year or so, Rachel and I had stopped looking so much alike. To tell the truth, now I looked like Rachel's big sister. For one thing, Rachel's hair stayed golden blond, while mine was nearly totally dark brown now. And I had grown so much more; there was no hiding it, no amount of slouching. Sometimes, next to Rachel I felt like an elephant. But most times when I was with her, especially if we were alone, I'd forget. And we'd be like twins again, separated at birth.

 

We were both sitting on my bed, in my room. Rachel had come over first thing the next morning. She and her family had been at the funeral but they couldn't stay for the eating part, the shiva in my grandparent's apartment. Now I had so much to tell her.

“I heard them talking in the car,” I told Rachel. “My mother and father on the way home last night when they thought I was sleeping. I found out why I never met my new aunt Gert before.”

“Why?” Rachel asked.

“Well, I think my grandfather was mad at her,” I began. I wasn't sure of the whole story myself. I wasn't sure who was
still mad at who or who had done what when or for how long. It was confusing, and I was figuring it out myself, as I told it to Rachel.

“At who?” she asked.

“At his sister, the old lady who was sitting with us, remember? The kind of ugly lady?”

Rachel nodded. “So why?”

I tried to explain. “When my grandfather wanted to marry my grandmother, his whole family was against it. So against it, that my grandfather's father threatened to cut him off from the business and all their family money.”

“They had family money? What's that mean?”

“I'm not sure…but I think my grandfather's family was really rich. They owned some big store in New York. You know, like Bloomingdale's…but not quite. They had been in America a long time. They lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but my grandmother's family was still really poor.”

I had already known that. Sometimes my nana would tell me stories about when she was little, but I never thought much of them. They were more like fairy tales, like
Hansel and Gretel
or
Sleeping Beauty
. Something you'd read in a book. Or see in a movie.

I went on. “So my grandmother's parents were both born in Europe somewhere so they still spoke Yiddish and kept kosher, stuff like that I guess. My grandfather's family told him if he married my nana, they would cut him off completely.”

“But he married her anyway, didn't he?” Rachel said. “That's so romantic.”

“Yeah, he did.”

It was romantic, not that I could imagine my grandparents
that
way. I could only see them in their big giant bed, with me in the middle. My nana doing her needlepoint, my poppy watching comedy shows on TV.

“I guess my nana's family was an embarrassment to my grandfather's family,” I said. “They thought she was
too Jewish
. I heard my mother say that.”

Rachel was Jewish. She was even having her bat mitzvah this year. So even though I did absolutely nothing Jewish at all, I liked that this little story connected us in a way. A little Jewishness between us, separated at birth.

At the same exact time but without saying so, we both lay back on my bed and looked up. A long time ago, my mom and I had cut circles from sticky shelf paper and stuck them on my ceiling. Now I had a solar system of purple and pink and red I could disappear into. I could float around and think about things without going too far.

“Can you believe that?” I asked Rachel. “
Too
Jewish.”

“No,” she said. “What does that mean?
Too
Jewish?”

 

I didn't know, but it made me think of the time Rachel's mom asked my mom if I was going to have a bat mitzvah. It was over a year ago. She was just starting to plan Rachel's—finding the right place, picking the date. She wanted to make sure there were no conflicts, that my family could all be there.

“We wouldn't miss it for the world,” my mother said. “That's a great weekend for us.”

That's when Rachel's mother asked, “Amy, do you ever think of having one for Caroline?”

They were having coffee while Rachel and I were working on a school project together in the other room.

“Of course not,” my mother answered.

I thought my mother said that a little too quickly. I had just happened to walk into the kitchen, looking for scissors. I decided to linger by the “everything drawer,” where we kept everything we didn't know what else to do with. The scissors weren't supposed to be in there, since they
did
have a place, but they didn't happen to be in it at the time. I poked around and listened.

“Well, she
is
Jewish,” Rachel's mom said. “Technically, since you're Jewish. I just thought you might have thought about a bat mitzvah for Caroline. Considered it.”

“It would be hypocritical at this point,” my mother said. “Besides, bar and bat mitzvahs have become so Americanized. Commercialized. With all the theme parties, the DJs and dancers.”

I remember my mom had to call Rachel's mom that night and apologize.

 

Now Rachel and I lay on my bed and stared up into my ceiling, and in less than three months Rachel was going to have her bat mitzvah, or
become
a bat mitzvah, which was how she put it. She had a band and a caterer. She had invitations and yarmulkes with her name on them. Her whole family was coming; even her cousins from Israel were flying in.

We were best friends and Rachel had included me in everything and anything I wanted. I even helped her with the decision on the food for the kids' menu and the color of her tablecloths, lavender and navy blue. But then again, I didn't have to go to Hebrew school two days a week and on Sundays. I didn't have to learn a whole other language, and when Rachel showed me
what she had to sing in Hebrew, I was so glad it wasn't me. At the same time, I kind of felt like maybe it should be me.

Or at least, it
could
be.

Nana, how could you be too Jewish when I am barely Jewish at all?

I Would Have Been Nicer

Had I known my last visit with my grandmother was going to be my last, I think I would have been different. I would have tried to remember everything, set it in my brain, and held on to it.

I would have remembered to thank my grandmother for the terrific lunch at Gold's Deli because, for one thing, a chocolate egg cream is the most delicious drink in the whole wide world. It is sweet and milky and has the bite of soda all in one. The top is frothy and the bottom is thick with the unstirred syrup. And it comes in a big, tall glass, so full they bring it to you with a little plate underneath.

I would have asked her about her family. I would have listened better to her stories. I would have asked her about
her
mother. About her father, about where he was from. What did he do for a job? And what about all her brothers and sisters?

Maybe I would have asked her about Poppy.

When did they meet? How did they fall in love? Did she know about his family? How they disapproved? Did she know my new aunt Gert?

And after our lunch, after Poppy and Sam went back to the apartment and I went with Nana to her doctor's appointment, I wouldn't have done what I did. I never would have done what I did if I had known how sick she was.

Even though she told me later she wasn't mad at me.

I would never have hurt her feelings the way I did.

 

The appointment had taken a long time. It was hot in the waiting room and they had boring magazines. It was good to be in the fresh air, even if it was New York City. It was only a few blocks' walk back to my grandparents' apartment. My nana said it would do her good. She wanted to take my hand, but I didn't feel like it. I was a little jumpy. I looked up at the tall buildings, and at the sidewalk and all the people I didn't know.

And suddenly, I just wanted to try it out.

I wanted to walk without my grandmother in the streets of New York, on Lexington Avenue, so people would think I was by myself. I wanted to look like I was old enough to be alone. I wanted to see what it felt like to be a grown-up, just for a little bit, in a little way. So I stopped walking, quietly, before my nana could notice, and before I knew it she was almost a half a block ahead of me. For a second I got scared. She was too far away. What if she turned the corner and I couldn't see which way she went?

“Why are you back there, Caroline?” My nana turned and looked at me.

But I didn't even answer her.

I couldn't respond to a perfect stranger, could I?

“Caroline?” she called out again, and then, I guess, she gave up. I followed behind her, far enough to look like we weren't together at all.

Here I was, just walking by myself down the block. People passed me in both directions, couples and single woman, and a man walking his dog. Two teenagers smoking cigarettes.

And me, Caroline Weeks, whoever that was.

Half and Half

In my house, we are both, I like to say. I'm half-Jewish, half-Christian, whenever someone asks. I guess to be honest it was a little more half and half when I was younger, when I first started nursery school and first met Rachel. We both went to the Jewish Community Center. Not because my mother wanted to introduce more religion into our lives. She didn't. My mother is not a big believer in things she cannot see or hear or prescribe medicine for.

My going to the JCC had more to do with how close it was to our house.

But we still had Christmas every year. My dad bought a tree and we hung stockings on the mantel by the fireplace. We had eggnog, which my mother said was too fattening but Sam and I loved. We left cookies for Santa, and we could barely sleep Christmas Eve.

But we also had Hanukkah. I made decorations in class at the JCC and my mother hung them up around the house. I learned
what the letters on a dreidel meant. Of course, it helped when Hanukkah and Christmas came around the same time, but I remember one year when Hanukkah came right after Thanksgiving.

“It's tonight,” I told my mother.

“No, it can't be,” she said.

I was in public school by then. Rachel and I were in different classes that year, so it must have been second grade. There were only two Jewish kids in my room, Kate Nemerofsky and Danny Schiffman. They had been talking about it all day, talking about what presents they were getting. What they were going to eat. The teacher let them go to the front of the room and explain the Hanukkah story to the whole class.

I may have been only seven, but I still thought they were making way too big a deal out of it. Lighting candles and eating latkas—even spinning a dreidel was nothing compared to going to bed, too excited to even lie down, then somehow falling asleep, waking up way before you were supposed to, and running downstairs in your pajamas to a magical pile of presents that hadn't been there the night before.

But still, being half and half, I should have at least
known
it was Hanukkah.

“No, Mom.” I insisted. “It's tonight. Tonight is the first night.”

My mother is a doctor and she's not home a lot. She works all week and some weekends she's on call, so she's not home then, either. She works really hard and she saves people's lives, so I didn't blame her. Hanukkah just kind of crept up on us that year. She checked the Hadassah calendar we get every year because my parents give them money. I was right. It
was
tonight.

“Okay. Well, I'll get the menorah down from the attic,” she said. But she looked tired. It was after eight o'clock and she had just gotten home from the hospital. She hadn't even eaten dinner yet.

“It's okay, Mom. There are seven more nights,” I said.

Sam was just a baby then. He didn't even notice. I think we lit the menorah three, maybe four nights that year, and that's probably when Hanukkah started to peter out in our house. Half and half became seventy-five/twenty-five. Then more like eighty/twenty.

 

But the truth was, what I had really meant to say was,
It's okay, Mom. There's seven more nights. As long as you don't forget Christmas.

 

But how
could
anyone forget Christmas?

It was all around us, everywhere, and it began early. The local stores had red and green decorations up so early, it was almost as if they had never come down from the year before. TV commercials with Santa Claus and Christmas trees started pretty much right after Halloween. At the grocery store and the pharmacy and everywhere you went, people said “Merry Christmas” instead of good-bye. So if you didn't want to correct everyone every time, you just got used to it.

The principal at our school played holiday music over the announcements in the morning for the entire month of December. They weren't religious, but everyone knew they were Christmas songs. The tinsel was so sparkly and the lights were so pretty. My favorites were the houses with one single white light in every window.

But most of all,
everyone
celebrated it, talked about it, waited for it.

Everyone except Kate Nemerofsky. Danny Schiffman.

And my best friend, Rachel Miller, who not only celebrated Hanukkah but also Passover, and Rosh Hashanah, and some other holidays I didn't know anything about.