You Can Have All Gelt The World, But It’s Worthless Without Family.
As a fully assimilated North American Jew my version of Hanukkah is very much rooted in potato latkes, cheap chocolate wrapped in gold foil and cash… cold hard cash. But mostly latkes. My Grandpa Uzi had a special way of making them, the potato has to be shredded just so, every ingredient combined made the world’s best latke but mostly, as you know, his not-so-secret ingredient was love. If he had a latke stand instead of a TV fixing business it would say, “Over 1 Billion Served…Oy” His latkes were that good.
When I was younger, growing up in Brighton, Hanukkah was the biggest celebration of the year. My immediate family lived in a group of buildings called Warbasse. Mom, Dad, Ethan and I in building one; Grandma Ester and Grandpa Uzi (Aunt Roz and Uncle Lenny until they moved out… to building three) in building two, Grandma Ruth in building four and my best friend Hali and her family in building five. Warbasse was across the street from Trump Village, Trump Village was across from my elementary school and P.S. 100 was across the street from the boardwalk, beach and Atlantic Ocean respectively.
During the holidays, when you passed Warbasse and Trump Village on the Belt Parkway you could count the number of Christmas lights on terraces and would easily go cross-eyed from the orang-bulbed electric menorah’s. It was, in short, pretty fuc*ing Jewish. After all, this is the neighborhood that gave the world Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, The Neil’s: Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond and Neil Simon the fodder and neuroses are endless.
The first night of Hanukkah was always the most important for my brother and I. Traditionally, Jews spread out the present (or gelt) giving over eight days, one present each night. For the first sixteen years of my life, Ethan and I were the only children in the Rosenduft family and we were given all of our presents at that Hanukkah party in building two. There was a large network of friends; a chosen family Grandma and Grandpa had assembled. Other survivors, people they had met in Israel or soon after arriving in America. This was our congregation. My Grandfather was never a member of a temple; he’d sooner join a gym (which he did). As a family we never paid to be part of the religion, my parents don’t believe in paying for G-d if you have him in your heart.
We knew we were Jews because of what grandpa had gone through at Auschwitz, we knew he survived and that is why we were in Brooklyn. The star of David meant just as much to me as the A-5704 tattoo on Grandpa Uzi’s forearm. Both meant Jew. He always wore a short- sleeved oxford, always; I don’t ever remember him in anything otherwise, it was for people to see.
My Great-grandfather Eliazer (my Dad’s middle name) had a factory in Koln, Germany. As far as I know Rosenduft’s were wealthy people. There was a house in the center of town with a factory not far away, it was also inferred that they were left alone for the most part until the very end, when the Nazi’s came in and took everyone. My Great-Uncle Gustav was sent to England where he met my Great-Aunt Ilsa who was on the kinder-transport. This is how I wound up with British family, my second cousins Tara and Keri, who are 7 and 5 years older than me respectively were like older siblings with cool accents.
My cousin Tara was taking me to places like Soho House when I was a teenager, passing Steven Fry playing a game of cards during the height of my obsession with Emma Thompson and watching Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon play a game of snooker while I was quietly sipping chandy’s in a corner were formative moments in my adolescent life. When I would visit during my spring breaks in college, Tara would tell servers that I was a food editor at the Village Voice and we would get complimentary appetizers, she would take me to theatre and BBC radio recordings. My cousin Keri would take me to Camden town on weekends and we’d go shopping for DM’s.
When I was fourteen, my Grandmother and Grandfather took my brother and I on a tour of the British Isles. We spent the summer exploring England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and finished out the summer with our family in the Northwest part of London called Southgate. They wanted us to have one strong memory of something we did together, Ethan was only 11 at the time, we were just babies and yet the same age that my grandfather and his siblings were when they were separated from my great-grandparents.
The tour stopped in Edinburgh during the famed Edinburgh Military Tattoo. A military tattoo originally started when the British were fighting in the low lands, they would send out drummers to signal soldiers that it was time to stop drinking and return to the barracks. In modern inception, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo is held every August on the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle and is the centerpiece of The Edinburgh Festival. Essentially it’s a concert with lots of bagpipes that celebrate HRH military bands. What I’m getting at is the city is really crowded and the only way to get to the Edinburgh Castle is to walk up through the old city, a winding network of ancient cobblestone roads. We were travelling on a tour bus with about 50 other folks. Ethan and I were the only children; in fact, this was a tour that was specifically designed for older folks. There were two other women; “best friends” who were in their late-30s and everyone else was over 50. The tattoo was a highlight of this three-week tour. Our group was seated together but when the last lone piper bagged his way through “Amazing Grace”, the lights came up and we were to make our way back to the tour bus on our own. Down the windy ancient streets of the old city amidst thousands of other tourists.
It’s hard to remember how, nearly 17 years after the fact, he was separated from us but Grandma, Ethan and I suddenly found ourselves lost in the crowd looking for Grandpa. We didn’t know where he was or where he had disappeared to, it didn’t take long for my grandma to become panic stricken. You could see the flashback begin as her eyes glazed over and in the distance - an air raid siren - as people pushed their way down through the old city. My Grandma Ester is from a small town in Romania, she too came from a wealthy family, my Great grandparents owned a very popular general store in a small town just out side Iasi. When the war drew closer the non-Jewish Romanian’s took the business and their home. My Grandma Ester was put on the now famed Exodus ships with her brother and set out toward Cyprus.
She started to call his name and held our hands tightly to her, she was shaking. People were pushing past us, I remember holding on to Ethan so we wouldn’t be separated. Maybe he is back at the bus? When we arrived, he wasn’t there and Grandma started to cry. Our tour guide and I set out into the crowd leaving Ethan to calm Grandma down, an hour later, after searching he emerged traumatized trailing a group of drunken hooligans. He got lost looking for a bathroom, he got spun around panicked and walked back up to the castle after exiting a men’s room.
When we finally reached the bus Ethan was sitting alone, Grandma couldn’t sit there and wait she set out on her own. Now it was Grandpa, the tour guide and the two women looking for my Grandmother. Ethan and I sat at the back of the bus listening to the other American’s snicker about us. After a while they all returned, Grandma and Grandpa clutching on to one another. The tour guide made a joke broke the tension, and we set out toward our hotel. Grandma and Grandpa sat in front of Ethan and I still hanging on to one another. No one on that bus, including Ethan or myself would ever understand the feeling of being separated from our family and never knowing if we would see them again. That is why my family hangs on for dear life and why the celebration of Hanukkah has more meaning than just, gifts, chocolate latke’s and oil for eight days. For Rosenduft’s it embodies L’chaim. To life.
In 2006, Grandpa Uzi’s motor skills started to go. They found a mass on his spine and operated but the disease was relentless, it attacked his muscles. I was working for Men In Trees at the time and when I would talk to him he would just cry, so I would tell him all about the stories we were going to tell on our show. I saw him in November and he was still able to talk, I sat with him a while and we laughed about our trip to the British Isles, about how later that summer he and Ethan would go to the British Science Museum and they would have a similar episode to Edinburgh except Grandpa would find Ethan in the cafeteria eating a chicken dinner all by himself. That was our last conversation, I made him lox with cream cheese roll-ups and we watched Men In Trees together. He asked Ethan and I for a book on tape. The Iliad, it was the only time he ever asked us for anything. We added it to his iPod and he listened to the battles of King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles my Grandpa Uzi, the history buff was taking one last journey with his heroes.
In December, he fell into a coma on the day I flew home for the winter hiatus. The first night of Hanukkah, for eight nights we surrounded, him my aunts and uncles and their children, Ethan and I now the eldest grandchildren, my Mom and my Dad. My cousins and I made a gallery of drawings, we would tell him what we drew and tell stories and laugh, we cried and we held one another that Hanukkah. I whispered in his ear that I would never change my last name and I promised to be a success.
And then in the middle of the night on the last day of Hanukkah, a Saturday, after eight days without food or water, when it was just Grandpa Uzi and Grandpa Ester the little teddy bear she in put in his hands fell to the ground and he was gone. She says, “the teddy bear was moving up and down, up and down and then the teddy bear fell…”
They say that great men die on Shabbat; the Rabbi thinks he waited for the holiday to be over. We could have one last Hanukkah together as a family, even without his latkes, as long as we had one another we had the miracle of life.
