So, when I started this I thought I was going to do strictly my life story from my past. Now I am seeing that everyday is a new page to the story. So I have decided to do this, which I hope isn't too confusing for you, my reader. I am going to do this in two sections, then and now. I'm going to make a go of it, and see how it works out.
So here is the beginning of then.
THEN......
I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952. I was my parent's first child, born a year after they were married. I guess you could say I was a post World War Two, Baby Boomer. My parents were both Jewish. My mother was 22 at the time, my father around 35 -37. He was born in a house to old country Jews, in the lower East Side of Manhattan,and didn't have a birth certificate. There was some confusion to his actual age. My parents met working in the garment industry. My mother stopped working when she got married, and was always a stay at home mom. My father continued in this profession until he retired.
My mother was raised secular Jew, by first generation Americans. She shared a room with her Orthodox, Yiddish speaking grandmother, who cut the toilet paper every Friday morning so she wouldn't have to work on the Sabbath. My father was raised Orthodox Jew. He was a first generation American. His father was a poor, religious man. He sold fabric off of a push cart in New York City and helped lead the services three times a day. My father was raised with Yiddish as the only language at home. He learned English when he was put in school. Both my parents were fluent in Yiddish. I only learnt pet phrases my mother would say to me, as my parents used it as a secret language, using it when they wanted to talk about things in front of me, so I couldn't understand. I have talked to other Jewish people my age, and they say this is what their parents did too, so it seems to have been a common practice. My own theory was that it was after the war, and they wanted their children to be Americans, so they didn't teach them the language of the old country. I wish they had.
I was born in a huge, Jewish hospital. It was the era of formula. I was told that they gave little pills to all the woman on the ward to dry up their milk, and all the babies were given formula. Also, it was standard procedure to keep the mothers in the hospital for 10 days, and the babies separate from their mothers in a baby nursery the whole time. We got to be with our mothers 3 times a day, to be fed the formula. Our father's could only look at us through the nursery glass, and didn't get to see us in person, or touch us, until we went home.
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NOW...
Today is kind of a blah day. I woke up with alot of pain in my back. I am sitting in bed with a heating pad on it. I did learn something really good in my Jewish Character building classes today. Every week you work on a new trait for 13 weeks. This week is about building gratitude. The lesson is about an old famous Rabbi named Nachum Ish Gamzu. Nachum Ish Gamzu always responded to life in the same way: "Gam zule'tovah," he would say. "This too is for the good." Such was his sense of gratitude. This is what I am supposed to do this week. I am supposed to memorize the phrase "gam zu le'tovah" -- this too is for the good, and say it all week, especially when something not so great happens. I believe I can definitely use some improvement in this area.
If you want to take the class, here is the link http://www.jewishpathways.com/course/mussar-program The program is called Mussar and it believes that "A person's primary mission in this world is to purify and elevate his soul", and that is what it sets out to do.
copyright 2010 © Stacey Bander. Please contact for any reuse.
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