The Art Of Being Jewish
Bernadette Miller
When Olivia on the phone invited me to Thanksgiving dinner, she described the hostess, Mimi Cohen, as lovable and typically Jewish.
“Typically Jewish” puzzled me into comparisons, but I said, “What do you mean?”
“You know. The accent, gestures...”
“Ah, yes.” Olivia regarded my Jewishness as irrelevant because of my Virginia upbringing. Since her father was a Pennsylvania preacher, she, of course, was “typically WASP”--tall and skinny with red hair and freckles. Fascinated by foreigners, she’d married Ambar, a brilliant biologist from India.
“Well, Rachel, do you want to join us?” Olivia said.
I agreed and, bearing Olivia’s home-baked pumpkin chiffon pie and my Beaujolais, we greeted Mimi at her foyer door. She had a small nose and mouth, blue eyes, and smooth complexion, but she dressed like a slob: a shapeless maumau and clunky sandals with anklets, her brown hair coiled in a wispy neck bun. I assumed she was a young fortyish, but when I asked Olivia her age, she whispered that Mimi was twenty-eight.
“Hiya, make yourselves at home,” Mimi said with a heavy Brooklyn accent as she grabbed my wine bottles.
While Olivia helped prepare dinner, Ambar and I headed for the living room with its modern oil paintings, white leather furniture on a spotless white rug, and a Brancusi marble female reclining on a smoked-glass coffee table.
Shades of Hava Nagila, I thought, amused, as I sank into a deep armchair. Where were the photographs of bar mitzvahs, graduations, and weddings, like my grandparents’ house in Virginia? Visiting relatives understood that our living room was simply “for show.” The spacious kitchen was where everyone ate, gossiped, and complained.
Ambar, with his huge black mustache and dark eyes, sat on the sectional sofa near the fireplace. Danielle, Mimi’s slender older sister, took the other armchair, near the window’s potted plants. The opposite of Mimi, she wore a clingy black jumpsuit with pearls and high heels, her blonde hair French-braided around her head. Mimi’s husband, Neal, looking suspiciously Waspish with his fine features and pale brown eyes, joined his university colleague, Ambar, on the sofa.
When Olivia introduced me, Neal said with perfect diction, “My sister writes, too. I’m sorry she couldn’t be here and chat with you.”
Danielle suddenly rose to grab her small son, a chubby Alpine climber with shorts and knee-high socks, as he gleefully stretched toward a fern. When he eyed the Brancusi, she abruptly carried him to another room. Ambar and Neal discussed biology; during a pause I asked about Danielle’s French name.
“Didn’t Olivia mention that the girls’ parents are French?” Neal said, boyishly sweeping hair off his forehead. “In fact, their father was a prominent attorney, representing people like the Rothschilds.”
“No, she never mentioned that.”
Olivia, emerging from the kitchen, exclaimed, “Mimi’s so unpretentious! She and Danielle attended an exclusive finishing school, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. Exclusive finishing schools weren’t normal for a typical Jewish family--like my Latvian grandparents who’d emigrated poor and unable to speak English.
“Anybody who’s hungry, the food’s on the table!” Mimi announced in a most unfinishing school manner, and we followed her into the dining room. Near the picture window overlooking the East River, the linen-covered table offered a Limoges platter of turkey, steaming vegetables, and hot croissants with herbed butter. Roses floated in a bisque centerpiece. Not exactly a typically Jewish meal, I thought, recalling Grandma’s modest gefilte fish followed by stuffed cabbage, hulupches, cooked with gingersnaps and raisins, the aroma of challah baking in the oven.
Danielle’s son, safely imprisoned in a high chair, squealed as he beat the tray with his fists. Danielle bent over him to whisper something. Her voice, soft and modulated, had no accent.
Mimi, pointing at the turkey, shouted, “Don’t be bashful, help yourself!” She disappeared into the kitchen.
“Mimi, when are you going to eat?” Neal called out, carving turkey.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about me!” our well-bred hostess shouted from the kitchen. “Ess! Ess!”
Ambar chuckled indulgently. “A real Jewish housewife, your sister, eh, Danielle?”
Mimi finally entered, plopping beside Olivia, her lips curling in a “typically Jewish” sign of disapproval. “We attended a Shiva last week that was farblundget.” She motioned for Olivia to pass the turkey. “Neal’s cousin came, the meshuggah I told you about from Long Island, remember? Flashing her new diamond ring in all the women’s eyes--like this.” She flashed her large diamond back and forth. “To see if yours is as big as hers. Then, she gives me the business that if I’m nice to her, she’ll remember me in her will. Ha!” Mimi chewed turkey vigorously. “My husband’s after the Nobel Prize for his biology research and she thinks I’m worrying about her diamonds and will--” The phone rang; she jumped up. From the kitchen came a stream of fluent French sans Brooklyn accent.
Olivia, beaming with freckles, passed me a croissant. “Isn’t she a riot? I told you she was typically Jewish.”
“So I see.” Inwardly I cringed with embarrassment. What a repertoire she could have amassed if my uneducated peasant grandparents had raised her. Emigrating at nineteen, they’d toiled in New York factories, scrimping to start a clothing business that became successful, and when it later floundered, my stubborn grandfather started over in an unfamiliar Southern culture because Blaisburg’s rolling hills and gentle pace reminded him of Latvia.
“Mama wonders if we’d like her Philharmonic subscription tickets Saturday,” Mimi told Danielle when she returned to the table.
“What’s on the program?”
“Borodin, Elgar, and--”
“Syrupy.”
“Dreck!” Mimi, the product of an elite upper class, licked butter off her fingers. “Mama always saves the Bach and Vivaldi for herself. But anyway...” She stuffed her mouth with turkey, indicating that Danielle should wait until she swallowed. Olivia smiled with amusement. “The Shiva was a mob scene,” Mimi continued. “My uncle was such a famous Rabbi, many strangers came. And what they brought! Lady Godiva chocolates cost plenty of geld, huh, Danielle?”
Wiping her son’s mouth with a napkin, Danielle nodded. “Actually, it was a lovely affair but too crowded.”
“Ha! You can say that again!” Mimi glanced at me. “Oh, I’d better explain to Rachel what a Shiva is.”
“I’m Jewish,” I replied, smiling.
“She was raised in the South,” Olivia volunteered.
“Oh, the South...” Shrugging, Mimi gazed at me. “She looks Slavic with those wide cheekbones.”
“I sat Shiva for my grandmother,” I said defensively. “Grandpa explained that we sit Shiva to tell jokes and cheer each other up over our grief. Grandma would have enjoyed the party.”
“Our uncle’s Shiva was very sad,” Danielle said. “Nobody said goodbye. And you couldn’t wear leather.”
“Why not leather?” I asked.
Mimi, serving pumpkin chiffon pie, said, amused, “Even without an accent, Rachel acts Southern. What does she know about being Jewish?”
“Well, I’m not hung up about it,” I shot back.
“Whaddya mean by that?”
“Nothing.” Smiling, I accepted a slice of pie.
“Ooh, Rachel,” Ambar scolded me kiddingly.
“Would anyone like more pie?” Olivia said hastily and turned to her husband. “Please, Ambar, no dirty limericks after dinner.”
He nodded, his lips forming a small smile, making me wonder about “typical” Indian biologists who tell dirty jokes.
“Whaddya mean, hung up about it?” Mimi asked me, attacking her pie.
“An identity problem.”
“Problem, schmoblem,” she mumbled, mouth full of meringue. “Eight times Neal and I visited Israel. I’m a big shot at Hadassah. I want people should know I’m Jewish so our faith doesn’t die out.”
Neal, sugaring his coffee, said, “Mimi’s so Jewish, I sometimes feel that I’ve abandoned my faith and joined the Philistines.”
“Please pass the cream,” I said with my most Waspish tone.
The conversation fragmented over clinking spoons and a circulating plate of chocolates--Lady Godiva’s? Neal and Ambar debated biology, Danielle tended her son, Olivia and Mimi whispered importantly.
Left alone, I reflected on what being Jewish means. Dietary or religious laws? Attending synagogue? Dating Jewish men? I don’t even know many Jews. All I had were nostalgic Jewish memories: laughing at Cousin Arnie’s bar mitzvah when the Klezmer band played, “Heim Afen the Range.” Grandma praying Friday nights over lighted Menorah candles. And clinging to my ancestors’ belief in Yahweh... Yet, at family weddings and bar mitzvahs, I sometimes have the uneasy feeling of “them” instead of “us.”
Ruefully I thought of my “typically Jewish” mother in Queens: tight pastel pant- suits with gold studs, her formerly black hair dyed orangy-red, her apartment adorned with gilded cupids.
“You call yourself Jewish?” she’d sneered after I moved to New York. “You sound anti-Semitic! Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you feel about my home and my friends. Just because I was too sick with T.B. to raise you...”
“Mother, how can I be Jewish and anti-Semitic?”
“Oh, don’t be such a snob. It wouldn’t kill you to act Jewish once in a while.”
“For God’s sakes, what does that mean? Swagger like Aunt Polly with her mink coat? Dismiss anyone who isn’t Jewish--like my stepfather does?”
Well, my mother’s taste was appalling but at least she was honest--unlike Mimi. Why hadn’t I recognized this virtue?
Danielle lifted her son from the high chair and held him close to her body, his tiny arms reaching around her neck, his head resting sleepily on her shoulder. If mother had been as affectionate with me during her infrequent visits from the sanitarium, I might have appreciated the honesty more.
“Reminiscing?” Danielle asked me softly.
“The dinner brought back memories.”
She sighed. “I know. I...don’t think about being Jewish until I visit Mimi.”
The party soon ended and we scrambled for the foyer to struggle with coats, boots, and scarves. Outside, riding the bus back to my tenement apartment, I thought how dangerous it could be, fiercely preserving one’s identity until it fossilized into labels, accusations, and hatreds--separating “them” from “us,” the melting pot stirred to boiling over.
This morning, after breakfast, Olivia called to ask if I’d enjoyed the party.
“I hope Mimi wasn’t upset by my saying she was hung up about being Jewish.”
“Heavens, no. She’s concerned about not appearing snobbish because of her background. Another Jewish friend told me that her behavior got on his nerves. But I can’t be objective. To me, she’s simply a lovable, typically Jewish woman.”
“Oh, she’s Jewish, all right,” I said, and laughed. “In fact, I’d say she’s developed it into an art.”
