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First off, a very blushing thank you to Julie, for this lovely little award. She was kind enough to mention that she found the near novel-length series of posts about LP very moving - while I feared they were too long to be read at all - and the writing of that just wore me down and left me feeling raw, which I suppose is a sign of integrity. I will pass this award on in due time.
I thought I'd add my bit to the discussion about loss that's happening today. Honestly, I'd love some feedback, because I'm feeling a little lack of integrity on my part and maybe that's what I'm missing most of all. You see I've been married a long time now and I've had my married name a long time now too. There are many people who meet me know who never have known or likely will know my maiden name. I've lived in this suburban soccer mom setting - without being a very likely candidate for such activities, at all - and we are practicing Christians, so life at church is all about all 5 of us who live here at Needs New Batteries and our very Anglo last name, come by honestly via Matt's parents who are, in fact, English (so fair enough on that count, right?)
The further I move away from my life in New York or college, the more I become the mother of those three adorable boys in Sunday School, the further I feel from a whole different part of myself that I don't quite have a context for. Last week, Bub and Pie's post, My Invisibility Cloak, got me thinking about my very Jewish last name - and how sometimes I miss it. That part of my history and heritage do matter to me very much, removed as they are from my everyday life. I got this name from my father, who got it from his father and so on before him stretching back through time and moving from on side of the Atlantic to the other, fleeing danger on all parts of the continent of Europe as far back as time can tell us. I wish I knew more than I do, though I think our family in general holds a good deal of knowledge.
Here in suburban New England, I am left with a feeling of loss for my heritage and sometimes I wonder how much of that loss I've picked for myself. I commented that I don't always put on eye make-up or pull my hair back in a band, but when I do, I look like a very fair-skinned Jewish gypsy. Somehow, that doesn't seem to always "fit' with life, it's become easier over time to blend more into my context. In addition, my Jewish heritage has been something I have to inform people of - or hoist into my current context - which hardly seems real or fair. I was raised in home practicing Christianity and that's what we practice in my home today. Thanks to my gentile mother and my father's gentile mother the history of the family they married into was remembered and celebrated, even if not religiously in nature. So what is the thing of integrity for me? I don't think I'm trying to hide, but I'm not sure how to share. Stories of religious conversion tend to make people of the book uncomfortable - and for good reason.
The play I was in recently was held at the Jewish community center. After weeks of gathering together, at our red tent gathering we were invited to give the names of our maternal ancestors. I gave out the names of my mother, grandmothers and great-aunts. It was quite a jumble of Anglo and Jewish sounding names. Someone afterwards said, "I didn't know you were Jewish!" She was happy about my Jewish ancestors and I awkwardly claimed my place as "not quite" among so many others of mixed heritage. That recognition and rejoicing - are they really for me? Maybe they are, but I feel like I've lost it.
12 comments:
Hmm...that's complicated, but maybe because you are unsure so far about what you want and how you want it to fit into your current life.
It's not the same thing but I can relate a little bit. It's what I call the Not Exactly From here syndrome in my own life.
We moved. A lot.
"Where are you from" is such a "who are you?" question. From whence you came is supposed to provide insight into who you are.
All of us have things on the inside that shape how we relate on the outside.
Yesterday the woman who severely judged people who sought medical treatment for pregnancy as, "Lacking real faith, impatient and unwilling to submit to God's will," had no idea I had done so.
But that unknown bit of knowledge certainly shaped how I responded to her!
I don't know...I'm not sure what to tell you beyond as soon as you become truly mindful of something sometimes it's amazing how it works its way into everyday things.
Do you mind updating on this?
Julie
Using My Words
first of all, what a lovely photo of you. Thank you for posting it.
I don't have the lost heritage so much, but I do feel a bit of loss, still, at giving up my last name. I'm glad we have a family name, and we chose to do that very much on purpose. But it is why I hate being called "Mrs. X" My parents gave me neither name, and I became them both when I married my husband. To call me only that is to name me only in relation to my husband. Please call me by my first name.
And that is not at all what your post was about, but what it triggered in me, nonetheless. ;)
julie- not at all, I'm sure I'll have more to say, because I'm sure you are correct - I'm thinking about this for a reason right now. I just don't quite know what it is.
painted - thank you
and also, when people call me Mrs __, I usually turn around and look for my mother in-law. I don't identify with it at all! Which is funny, because it has been nearly 12 years!
Names are such a tremendous part of our identity, both for what they tell and what what they conceal - my own longstanding reservations about taking my husband's name have always been about losing that last thread to a family name that is actually not a longstanding name, but one that my father picked, practically from a hat, when he changed our surname (long story) when I was two. No history to the name, and one that reveals nothing of my family's history, but still - MY name, and my father's name and the only one that I knew. One that I put my identity onto and into. So reluctant to let it go.
Jewish names are also funny because so many of them were changed upon arrival. The Gluhovkies became the G*ld's, a name I was only TOO happy to ditch when I married.
I suspect you haven't so much lost that identity but rather added to it and changed it.
Cultural identity is a fickle thing, a process really. I'm mixed too, a 'not quite' girl. You never actually arrive at finality, in my experience. Everything changes over time, marbleizing sometimes, others not. Your Jewishness is always and already transcribed onto the fabric of your life, and if you remember to be concious of it it will always be present to yourself and everyone else in various ways.
Remember that it's *yours*, and no one else has the authority to authenticate it. Nobody gets to tell you what being Jewish means, or what a Jewish woman ought to look or sound like or be named as.
Thanks for this post. It rocked.
Karen, GORGEOUS Karen, we are mirror images, I think.
My father, not Jewish. My mother, half-Jewish, but the "wrong" half, as it was her father who was Jewish, not her mother, and Judaism is matrilineal. And my mother's mother? A DAR!
I've lost something I can't define through taking my husband's name, but it's not an essential something. I think I carry my mishmosh of ethnic identities inside me, and I believe that there's no question that I have the character I do because of the history of those who came before me.
We've moved a great deal too [Navy brats] and my parents were of different faiths, as are myself and my husband. There must be a middle path, but I'm not entirely sure where that might be.
Best wishes
Lovely post. And lovely YOU, too - how pretty are YOU?
What a beautiful photo...and a thought provoking post. My MIL was born in Hungary in 1936 to Jewish parents, but they chose to christen their children in a Catholic church to help them survive. I know that her mom continued to go to temple on the high holidays, but they really gave most of it up. So that is part of my children's heritage, but I don't have any idea how to impart that to them....
Tee hee! Yes my sister is VERY pretty! Hurrah!
I love this post Karen. I feel similarly at times. I think I've just forged ahead and claimed some of the traditions as mom did, but sometimes I feel like an imposter...other times like it's just right.
One more reason I wish we lived closer...we could celebrate times like Pesach together. I'll have to rework my Seder to be more child friendly next year. I may call you for ideas....
You know, Justin thinks it's so sad that I gave up our my last name when we married. He loves the heritage and the sheer beauty of the name. It's something I want my daughters to know.
Really, really can need to get Dad on camera.
We place a lot of who we are into our names, which is why mine will never change. We (British, Canadians, Americans, former colonies) are unusual in that we expect women to give up their surnames. An Italian or Polish woman would never even DREAM of it, quite right too.
We are not chattels & children do not have nervous breakdowns if their mummy has a different name to them.
Do I feel so strongly about my surname because I am Jewish? No, my father is a gentile, I have a very Catholic last name, but I feel strongly about it because it is mine. It is part of my father I will carry forever.
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