Meet Alan's Father and Mother
Dad
My father goes to synagogue maybe once or twice
a year. For a while, he started going to the
Orthodox synagogue, which is odd because he is
not an orthodox Jew. A couple of Yom Kippur’s ago,
he begged me to come with him to his new place of
worship. He said, “It would be good for our
relationship.” After much consternation, I finally
decided that I should go. Why? I am not sure.
Maybe because I thought it would help strengthen
the bond between us. Or, maybe it was because I
was curious to see what the inside of an Orthodox
synagogue looked like.
Walking into the synagogue, I was struck by the fact
that the men were not sitting with the women. Only
in modern Orthodox synagogues is this ancient
custom practiced. As the service wore on, I got
bored. The Rabbi was making many references to
God - a God I am not even sure that I believe in -
and in an attempt to tune him out I started counting
the pages of the prayer book, trying to figure out
how much longer the service would take (something
I have been doing for as long as I can remember).
OnYom Kippur it is customary for the service to
end at sundown. But every year, the service seems
to end a little bit later (in synagogue, we all
speculate about whether or not the other
congregations’ services have ended or not). As I
flipped the pages of my prayer book my father
looked over at me knowingly and whispered in my
ear “This guy (the Rabbi) really likes to drag it out. I
think Temple Shalom (the local reform
congregation) is already out”!
My father and mother were raised in a fairly liberal
Jewish tradition. My dad grew up on the prairies
(Moose Jaw, to be exact), and my mom in Seattle.
My father’s parents were Russian immigrants who
came to Saskatchewan sometime in the 1920’s.
My dad grew up during the Depression in a home
that was hardly religious. Nevertheless, the fact
that he experienced anti-Semitism firsthand and
lived through the Second World War forever
codified his Jewish identity.
Mom
(Pictures of Alan’s Mother and her family, retro
Jewish (kosher) advertisements and video)
My mom’s family was originally from Minnesota,
and moved toSeattle when she was quite young.
They were Orthodox Jews who decided not to be
Orthodox anymore. It all happened, my mom said,
after her mother took a trip to the kosher butcher.
“It was during the depression,” she recalls. “My
father wasn’t working, so there was hardly any
money to go around.” My mother asked the
butcher if she could get a good cut of meat for the
upcoming high holidays. The butcher gave her the
meat, which he said was his finest. When she
served it, it was like shoe leather, completely un-
edible. And that was that. My parents decided that
they were not going to keep kosher or obey any of
the tenets of orthodoxy.