Kaddish for my mother

Jaroslava Halper
יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ שְׁמֵיהּ רַבָּא

A couple of days ago, on Elul 18, I observed yahrzeit for my mom who died 9 years ago. We went to our Chabad, my husband recited Kaddish, and I shared a few memories and thoughts about my mom with our small congregation. Because we live in Athens, GA, not exactly a metropolis, it is not always possible to get a minyan (especially for a woman), so I took the opportunity to have a proper yahrzeit for my mom on Shabbath and reflect on her life, the meaning of it and her influence on me with depth and dimensions which I realized only with passage of time. I would like to share this with you as well.

My mom, Zuzana, Shoshana bat Yehuda, was born and grew up in Zilina, Slovakia, a town not that far from Auschwitz. Her family was well off, her father owned a distillery and a beautiful house in the town center. The WWII came and they lost their property to Slovak fascists as part of so called aryanization. Interestingly, in the beginning of the war my mom, a young teenager, was able to participate in HaShomer HaTzair, I guess it was clandestine, but just like today on many university campuses adversity brought Jewish kids and students together. To avoid deportation to Auschwitz my mom with her parents and sister escaped to nearby Fatra mountains (part of the Carpathian range) and lived there, if one can call the constant hiding and running for new shelter, starving and freezing, witnessing atrocities a living.

After the war the family came back to Zilina, recovered most of their property only to lose it in an aftermath of the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948. By then my mom was already dating my dad, they got married in 1950 and stayed married for 65 years until death tore them apart. They did almost everything together, so when I talk about my mom it is many times about both of them. Even their birthdates were close – my mom was only fours days younger than my dad. They were an obstinate Old World Jewish couple who knew everything (at least they thought so), and they drove me, and later my hubbie as well, crazy. But they were my parents and I loved them. My parents were writers and journalists, and Jews. What they cared about most was the family (their two daughters and their marriage) and being Jewish. They were quite antireligious, but they never renounced their Jewishness, on the contrary they were what I call fierce Jews, and stayed that way in communist Czechoslovakia (we lived in Prague), and later in Toronto.

My mom, or maminka in Czech, more than my dad, was scarred for life by Holocaust. Today she would be diagnosed suffering from PTSD. When one of us was five minutes late, she was ready to call the police, she was absolutely terrified of dogs – the German and Slovak troops were hunting Jews on the run with trained German shepherds. And to some extent I inherited these traits, or at least they were transmitted on me, but, fortunately not on my kids – all three of them share their homes with canine creatures, and I am able to tolerate them, both my kids and their dogs)!! I never found out much about her Holocaust experience, she was purposely vague about it, only couple of times I got a glimpse about the atrocities she witnessed in the mountains – they were hiding with other Jewish families and she recalled a soldier grabbing a baby from its mother’s arms and murdering it. I wish I knew more. At least I am grateful to my mom by giving me classic literature and art books to read, and taking us to concerts and art exhibits and this way I developed appreciation of literature and art. But it took me while to realize how much I learned from her – in many instances it was too late to say Thank you.

Israel and Jewish topics were always in the air at home, and during the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars not just in the air, but in the clouds bearing heavily upon us. And this helps me to fully develop Jewish identity while growing up in a somewhat hostile environment of a communist country. And though my mom was a tough cookie, stood her own and refused to give up, she did not end up being a “successful writer”. True, my parents published a book of short stories – about Jews and music (classical music), and the relationship between the two of them, in Prague in 1971. Because of the Jewish content starting with the subversive title (Song for the Day of Atonement) the book was immediately confiscated and never republished, though I did find a great translator into English and two of their Holocaust stories came out in the Mosaic magazine many years later. She was never able to be a part of the inner circle of writers in Prague, to which personalities such as Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel belonged. This bothered her until she died. Maminka took up painting in her later years, though she had no training (and my guess is she did not want to admit that she did not have money for classes). No, she was not Rembrandt, but I like some of her paintings and have them in my house.

I remember vividly when we already lived in Toronto that my mom kept talking about antisemitism and her fear that it will come to the shores of North America – this was in 1980s and 1990s, and I just laughed at her – well, I hate to say: she was right. My parents never visited Israel, they actually refused to go to our son’s wedding. It was their fear that they would be caught in a war that kept them away.

In a way, it is too bad and too late that they never went – they had relatives in Israel, and even without them they would have loved it (and could heap their major objections and complaints on Israel ad libitum): the people, many of them just like my parents, obstinate and experts on everything, but lovable; the food, the sights. I have regrets not making aliyah. One of our sons (yes, the one who got married there) and his family live in Israel – they are my surrogates, but I keep asking my self- is this enough? I still have time to do it – but let’s leave this story for another time. They were happy to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and it was painful for me to realize during our celebration of their 65th wedding anniversary that they had no idea who these young people and kids were. As my parents got older and older, they got more and more feeble both physically and mentally. They shared their main disease – severe coronary arteriosclerosis and heart failure. They had hard walking and when I suggested that using canes may be a good idea, my mom refused vehemently that this is out of question, they do not need canes they can lean on each other, and I got goosebumps. But this is what it was, until my mom died, they leaned on each other, and after her death my dad deteriorated fast and died a few months later.

עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו, הוּא בְּרַחֲמָיו יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵינוּ, וְעַל כָּל-עַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן
May my mom’s memory be a blessing – we should all be fierce and loving Jews.