Zaddie
Posted by Bonnie on July 26th, 2006
Zaddie
B. L. Kaplan
My Zaddie was very religious. I don’t ever remember seeing his head without his hat or a yarmulke or both, which made perfect sense to me, because I often watched him sitting in his lounge chair in the kitchen softly rocking and chanting prayers, as my Bubbie cooked her family-famous chicken fricassee for Rosh Hashonah or Passover, the two holidays we spent with my mom’s family in Toronto. I’m sure the separation from her parents was hard on her, but the trip from Ellenville took eight hours in a car with three kids who could get car sick one after the other,
Conversations were difficult with Zaddie. He prayed in Hebrew, and even though he understood English, at home, with his family, he was most comfortable speaking Yiddish with just a sprinkling of English. My mom could understand him, but my brothers and I were lost in any lengthy conversation or even when he told us a story. My mom would have to translate the climatic moment. Maybe that just added to his appeal, because my strongest memory of my Zaddie was our walks to his neighborhood synagogue, which was just a room in someone’s house where he and a group of men davined together.
They sat around a huge table or moved off by themselves for private communion with G_d. I sat next to Zaddie and was handed a sidur by one of his friends. I was glad that I was attending Hebrew School and Saturday services back home, but these prayer books had no English translation on the left side of the page. Zaddie would every so often gently turn a page if I fell behind and move his index finger right to the spot for me to follow, but it really didn’t matter, I was just there to enjoy his world of social prayer. It wasn’t enough for him to sit in the kitchen and pray alone, he needed his community to raise their voices together in celebration.
Of course, there were only men in his community. My Bubbie was home cooking with the other wives. I knew that I was there because even though I was his granddaughter and he was proud to have me with him, I was not yet a woman and when I would begin to flower I would not be welcome even to tag along as a visitor. But I loved watching my Zaddie with his congregation. Unlike our synagogue at home, this group of 25 men took turns leading the services without an official rabbi. In this room, without any spoken directions, everyone seemed to participate in the act of prayer
Maybe what I loved about this community, was what I strove for in the classrooms I created as a teacher, where my students could feel part of a community that respected their unique voices and even though I was the teacher in charge, we were all in the learning together. Maybe that’s what I took from my Zaddie.