Historical Presence, Holy Inheritance

At dusk on a Wednesday, I rode the Metro and pondered my life's constants. They include coffee, gentle kisses on both cheeks from every new person I meet, and celebrating Shabbat. Change is ever-present! And after a short period of angst, I have come to embrace it unabashedly. Last Sunday marked the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul -- a time for reflection and teshuvah (repentance), when past and future curl into present like the soft melding arc of bodies in a human spoon. Mercury is no longer in retrograde and autumn scents bring an upsurge of emotions. Sometimes the heart swells with loving fury it nearly bursts forth in a well-spring of glittery goodness. Meanwhile, pain unfurls on the shores across the ocean. Distance is (cathartically) anesthetic; presence frustrates everything.

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I arrived in Poland on July 21, 2005. For seven weeks, I've been bombarded with the unknown, awakened to new realities, and filled with a deep sense of uncertainty and gratitude. I've had no shortage of "how did I get here?" moments and I've experienced many spurts of surreal randomness like playing 'UNO' on a beach along the Baltic Sea or listening to NPR's "This American Life" over butterbeans and Bloody Marys with a group of lesbian ex-pats on the floor of a hippified communist flat. Contrast and newness never cease.

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Every Tuesday evening at precisely 6:30, I have dinner with a 90-year-old British-American-Polish woman. The pace of life quiets to the soothing hum of the fan perched on the floor in her tiny twelfth floor apartment. She serves me boiled chicken, twice-baked potatoes, and lifeless, over-cooked green beans. To satisfy her belief that I am still "a growing girl who needs to stay warm in the winter," I eat every morsel without thinking twice. Over several mugs of tea, we talk about the changing of the seasons, the latest fashion, politics in the Middle East, Jewish cooking, and how our American president is destroying the world. She shows me pictures of celebratory luncheons at Baptist Hospital where she was once a volunteer during the mid-80s. She recounts memories of her deceased husband, displays the artwork of her estranged son, and speaks longingly of her vacation to the coast of France -- the happiest week of her life. I listen and smile and try not to tear-up when she talks about preparing to die. She frequently asks me why I wear my hair "short and spiky like the fellas" and then reflects that "perhaps the times have changed; women are different now." She marvels at the ability to view photo albums on my laptop screen and read the New York Times on the internet. I think to myself: what will I marvel at when, in 60 years, I'm boiling chicken for my own 22-year-old friend? Will it be that newly-weds spend their honeymoons on the Moon? That gardening will be replaced by the sprinkling of 'clone juice' onto the seeds of our genetically modified tomatoes? That people commute to work not by public transportation, but with aerodynamic capes made of chemically manipulated Himalayan pashmina? That the earth will be void of heterosexuals because the gays will have finally succeeded in throwing a global coup de'tat? (Just kidding).

It's hard to live in post-Communist Poland and not have an acute generational consciousness. The lifestyle gaps between the young and the old are striking. In the Ogrod Saski gardens (where I usually go running after work) lies the tomb of the unknown soldier. Along the park's perimeter, old women gaze across the road at pre-war architecture scarred with bullet holes from the German occupation while half-naked teenagers flaunt their mid-drifts, piercings, and most noticeably their PDA; and toddlers, sticky with ice-cream, giggle and gasp each time a breeze rustles their hair. So many lives in such a small space! A few weeks ago I spoke to a couple who had met in 1940 at the age of 16. After being separated during the war and subsequently surviving, they found each other in Russia, then again in Israel, and were married in 1948. I asked what it feels like to live through such history, to know survival so viscerally with the person you love. The man thought for a moment and with a smile and a shrug he said "we are only just children." Turning to his wife he lovingly added "and she is still so pretty."

Preparing meals for impoverished bed-ridden elders, organizing a rehabilitative retreat for Holocaust survivors, and helping the Social Welfare Commission order glucometers, wheelchairs, and blood pressure monitors for welfare clients (this is the nature of my job) has made me think much more about the aging process, about what it must be like to lose your autonomy; to no longer feel the fresh sensation of biting into an apple; to lose the luxury of strolling through the countryside to watch the leaves turn; to forget your grandchild’s name; to breathe only with the help of tubes and an oxygen tank; to bury your best friend or eulogize your life-partner. I am slowly understanding the responsibilities of daughterhood. And I am equally aware of my own mortal condition. I often forget how easy it is to throw on my sneakers and run ecstatically in the rain, or write vigorously in a journal until my hand cramps. Until recently, I hadn't truly processed that there may come a time when I will never have an un-cramped hand.

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In Warsaw there are micro-climate garden spaces called "dzaokas." They are privately owned plots of land where people grow apricots, jasmine, strawberries and mint. Dzaoka owners erect small huts draped with grape vines or wisteria and surround their walkways with wild rose bushes and Echinacea flowers. A new friend and I drank tea under her dzaoka's walnut tree. We watched the sun fall back behind the horizon, harvested a few cloves of garlic, and listened to cicadas chirp in the final breaths of summer. "Everyone needs a place to hide," she said, and then quietly, we eased ourselves out of hiding and into the buzz of metropolis.

It's interesting, this cultural paradox of hiding and exposure. So many Polish Jews have spent their lives hiding or being hidden by others. World War II, the Shoah, and Communism created deep complexities for the Polish Jewish community and for each individual's Jewish affiliation. There are people who've only recently discovered their Jewish roots and are only beginning to know a "Jewish self." A leaflet published in the late '90s by a Jewish outreach organization read: "Do you have Jewish roots? Is it your problem? Or is it your secret? Or perhaps it is your passion, pride, and hope? Your greatest shame? You may be at a loss for how you can identify as a Jew without losing your identity as a Pole." Having been raised in the United States, expressing myself Jewishly has never been a concern. Being Jewish is my essence; it colors my entire existence. It is neither a burden nor a secret nor a discovery. But for the average Polish Jew, this is not the case. At Beit Warszawa (Warsaw's progressive Jewish synagogue) where the walls are adorned with Marc Chagall and lavender incense burn on the window sill in the moments before candle-lighting, people emerge from hiding and dwell in their spiritual home. Yarmulkes and tallitot are worn for the very first time. Some wear these objects only one time per week; sometimes just once a year; it is their best kept secret as many are not "out" at work and some are not "out" to their families. I am still trying to grasp this experience; this seemingly torturous flight in and out of the Jewish and the Polish self; this holy inheritance of strength and pain, serenity and grief.

From this foreign land of pirogies and paradoxes, from places of hiding and exposure, I wish you "pokoj i kolorowy snow" – much peace and colorful dreams.