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| A SPECIAL PESACH MESSAGE Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein |
13 Nisan 5765
April 22, 2005
Dear Friends,
As a child, I knew that Pesach was not far off when the scent of spring clung to the air like
a new garment, and the crocuses were pushing eagerly through the soft ground so
recently thawed, and the taste of mom’s apricot hamentaschen was fading quickly from
the palette. When the date of Hymie’s arrival was announced, then we knew that,
takeh/indeed, it was really almost Yontev. Hymie came from Coney Island in Brooklyn,
New York to the “provinces,” as he said, to be with us, the Boston mishpoche, for Yontev.
Whenever he came, though, whether acknowledged in bold color on the Jewish calendar
or not, it was always for us a Yontev. Pesach and Hymie go together like soup and k’
neidlach, or, if you’ll permit me as a vegetarian, like gefilte fish and chrain/horseraddish.
His memory remains ever interwoven for me with the essence of Pesach. It is impossible
for me to think about Pesach without remembering Hymie, and it is equally impossible to
think about Hymie without suddenly feeling suffused by the warmth and joy of Pesach.
Hymie was short and of slight and wiry build. His eyes twinkled with life, and there was
almost always an impish smile on his lips. He rolled his own cigarettes and smoked half a
cigarette at a time in a short well-stained plastic tortoise shell cigarette holder, thinking he
was smoking less while smoking twice as many halves. Hymie was a Jewish type that is
no more, but that’s an anderer zach, another matter. He was a self-described atheist and
a card-carrying communist, the only one I ever really knew, who in one moment would
quote Lenin or Marx and in the next, Sholom Aleichem. Hymie traveled most often by
train, and when he would arrive in Boston my Dad and I, or some other combination of
dignitaries would go to South Station to meet him. He walked briskly along the platform,
bending slightly to the weight of his valise. For Hymie it was never a suitcase or luggage,
but always a valise. After he died, many years later, when I was a rabbinical student in
New York, I went to help clean up his apartment and sort through his things. I filled one of
his old blue valises with his beloved Yiddish volumes of Sholom Aleichem as well as with
his notebooks and various “props” that formed the stuff of his life and stories, the
cigarette holder, fishing bobbers and sinkers, an old Waterman’s fountain pen presented
by local 139 of the International Workers’ Order, a fraternal organization destroyed by
McCarthy. But now I’m remembering Hymie as he lived and it is almost Pesach.
He would arrive at our house and sit at the kitchen table and sip tea and tell stories as my
mother cooked and laughed along with us. At about that stage in the cooking, and in that
pre-cholesterol conscious age and my own pre-vegetarian state, my mother would place
gribbenes/rendered chicken fat on the table for us to munch on. Hymie laughed and
sang and mesmerized us with his stories. In retrospect, I think that he drew as much
comfort as we did from the warmth of Yontev preparation in a family kitchen. “Hey
dynamite,” he would call out to my sister. He wove special stories for each of us. For my
youngest brother, he told of his pet giraffe. When Hymie died, Billy wanted to know who
would take care of the giraffe. He told us of his fishing exploits and of his little brother
Jackie. As kids, we were never quite sure if he really had a brother or not. As I grew and
learned more about Hymie and the family, I wondered if the stories of a younger brother
were a way of giving cathartic voice to the memory of his older brother Aaron who had
died as a young man in Russia, Aaron who I heard from my great aunt had been a
vegetarian and a revolutionary, an intellectual who had traveled once to Odessa and
taken Auntie with him when she was a young girl. Hymie always seemed to have a
shadow of loneliness behind the twinkle in his eyes. He had never married, joking that he
didn’t want to be a “victim.” Whenever a wedding was announced in the family, though, it
was Hymie, the atheist, who would say with such warmth of the chosn or kaleh to be, gut
gedavent, he or she prayed well.
My Zayde, Pa, led our seders in my earliest years. He was so mild mannered and
unassuming, like my mother. He was not particularly religious, as none of that generation
was in my family. They had rebelled in favor of the “revolution,” not having been able to
find in the religious life of their time and place the avenues for social change that I would
later find. Pa seemed to love his role at the head of the seder table, moved, perhaps, by
memories of seders long ago and moving me as I watched him. I think even as a child,
though unable to articulate it, I wanted there to be more than what we did, and felt
confused and annoyed by the perennial plaint from some, “isn’t it time to eat already?
Dayeinu/Enough!” After Pa died, Hymie would rise to lead the seder, and again, it was
the atheist who would lift up the kiddush cup to begin only when yarmulkes were in place
and all were quiet. After the seder, Hymie would sing Yiddish songs and Bobi or my
mother would explain them to me, though they went straight to my heart whether or not I
understood a word of them. Without understanding I understood everything.
Those seders are long past now, and most of the beloved dear ones are gone. On this
night that is different from all other nights, they come to me again on wings of memory.
Long past the asking of why this night is different, as the seder ends with the singing of
Chad Gadya, Hymie slowly comes to his feet again to sing Yiddish songs of the heart. His
voice rises from the last verse of Chad Gadya, as the last verse of the last song fades
into the night. This crescendo of joy at the very end of most Haggadas is profound, for all
of the fun associated with the singing of the song, “Then came the Holy One and slew the
Angel of Death.” Concluding the telling of our liberation from slavery, the closing thought
of the seder is the ultimate liberation - - even from death. Does it mean that there shall
be no death? Probably not. Rather, I think it means that the hold of death upon us shall
be vanquished. Though the salt water upon the seder table is also the tears of our own
personal sorrows and losses, our dear ones shall still be present at our seders. In
memory is life. Set an extra cup, the cup of memory, with that of Elijah’s, place a loved
one’s favorite flower upon the table, sing a song that sings of them, tell the stories of
those whose memories kiss away our tears and transcend death.
The scent of Spring is in the air. Pesach can’t be far off. It is the time when Hymie would
come....
A Pesach rich with memory, kosher and freilach, liberating....
Sincerely,
Rabbi Victor Reinstein
April 22, 2005
Dear Friends,
As a child, I knew that Pesach was not far off when the scent of spring clung to the air like
a new garment, and the crocuses were pushing eagerly through the soft ground so
recently thawed, and the taste of mom’s apricot hamentaschen was fading quickly from
the palette. When the date of Hymie’s arrival was announced, then we knew that,
takeh/indeed, it was really almost Yontev. Hymie came from Coney Island in Brooklyn,
New York to the “provinces,” as he said, to be with us, the Boston mishpoche, for Yontev.
Whenever he came, though, whether acknowledged in bold color on the Jewish calendar
or not, it was always for us a Yontev. Pesach and Hymie go together like soup and k’
neidlach, or, if you’ll permit me as a vegetarian, like gefilte fish and chrain/horseraddish.
His memory remains ever interwoven for me with the essence of Pesach. It is impossible
for me to think about Pesach without remembering Hymie, and it is equally impossible to
think about Hymie without suddenly feeling suffused by the warmth and joy of Pesach.
Hymie was short and of slight and wiry build. His eyes twinkled with life, and there was
almost always an impish smile on his lips. He rolled his own cigarettes and smoked half a
cigarette at a time in a short well-stained plastic tortoise shell cigarette holder, thinking he
was smoking less while smoking twice as many halves. Hymie was a Jewish type that is
no more, but that’s an anderer zach, another matter. He was a self-described atheist and
a card-carrying communist, the only one I ever really knew, who in one moment would
quote Lenin or Marx and in the next, Sholom Aleichem. Hymie traveled most often by
train, and when he would arrive in Boston my Dad and I, or some other combination of
dignitaries would go to South Station to meet him. He walked briskly along the platform,
bending slightly to the weight of his valise. For Hymie it was never a suitcase or luggage,
but always a valise. After he died, many years later, when I was a rabbinical student in
New York, I went to help clean up his apartment and sort through his things. I filled one of
his old blue valises with his beloved Yiddish volumes of Sholom Aleichem as well as with
his notebooks and various “props” that formed the stuff of his life and stories, the
cigarette holder, fishing bobbers and sinkers, an old Waterman’s fountain pen presented
by local 139 of the International Workers’ Order, a fraternal organization destroyed by
McCarthy. But now I’m remembering Hymie as he lived and it is almost Pesach.
He would arrive at our house and sit at the kitchen table and sip tea and tell stories as my
mother cooked and laughed along with us. At about that stage in the cooking, and in that
pre-cholesterol conscious age and my own pre-vegetarian state, my mother would place
gribbenes/rendered chicken fat on the table for us to munch on. Hymie laughed and
sang and mesmerized us with his stories. In retrospect, I think that he drew as much
comfort as we did from the warmth of Yontev preparation in a family kitchen. “Hey
dynamite,” he would call out to my sister. He wove special stories for each of us. For my
youngest brother, he told of his pet giraffe. When Hymie died, Billy wanted to know who
would take care of the giraffe. He told us of his fishing exploits and of his little brother
Jackie. As kids, we were never quite sure if he really had a brother or not. As I grew and
learned more about Hymie and the family, I wondered if the stories of a younger brother
were a way of giving cathartic voice to the memory of his older brother Aaron who had
died as a young man in Russia, Aaron who I heard from my great aunt had been a
vegetarian and a revolutionary, an intellectual who had traveled once to Odessa and
taken Auntie with him when she was a young girl. Hymie always seemed to have a
shadow of loneliness behind the twinkle in his eyes. He had never married, joking that he
didn’t want to be a “victim.” Whenever a wedding was announced in the family, though, it
was Hymie, the atheist, who would say with such warmth of the chosn or kaleh to be, gut
gedavent, he or she prayed well.
My Zayde, Pa, led our seders in my earliest years. He was so mild mannered and
unassuming, like my mother. He was not particularly religious, as none of that generation
was in my family. They had rebelled in favor of the “revolution,” not having been able to
find in the religious life of their time and place the avenues for social change that I would
later find. Pa seemed to love his role at the head of the seder table, moved, perhaps, by
memories of seders long ago and moving me as I watched him. I think even as a child,
though unable to articulate it, I wanted there to be more than what we did, and felt
confused and annoyed by the perennial plaint from some, “isn’t it time to eat already?
Dayeinu/Enough!” After Pa died, Hymie would rise to lead the seder, and again, it was
the atheist who would lift up the kiddush cup to begin only when yarmulkes were in place
and all were quiet. After the seder, Hymie would sing Yiddish songs and Bobi or my
mother would explain them to me, though they went straight to my heart whether or not I
understood a word of them. Without understanding I understood everything.
Those seders are long past now, and most of the beloved dear ones are gone. On this
night that is different from all other nights, they come to me again on wings of memory.
Long past the asking of why this night is different, as the seder ends with the singing of
Chad Gadya, Hymie slowly comes to his feet again to sing Yiddish songs of the heart. His
voice rises from the last verse of Chad Gadya, as the last verse of the last song fades
into the night. This crescendo of joy at the very end of most Haggadas is profound, for all
of the fun associated with the singing of the song, “Then came the Holy One and slew the
Angel of Death.” Concluding the telling of our liberation from slavery, the closing thought
of the seder is the ultimate liberation - - even from death. Does it mean that there shall
be no death? Probably not. Rather, I think it means that the hold of death upon us shall
be vanquished. Though the salt water upon the seder table is also the tears of our own
personal sorrows and losses, our dear ones shall still be present at our seders. In
memory is life. Set an extra cup, the cup of memory, with that of Elijah’s, place a loved
one’s favorite flower upon the table, sing a song that sings of them, tell the stories of
those whose memories kiss away our tears and transcend death.
The scent of Spring is in the air. Pesach can’t be far off. It is the time when Hymie would
come....
A Pesach rich with memory, kosher and freilach, liberating....
Sincerely,
Rabbi Victor Reinstein
| Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue 43 Lochstead Avenue, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 |