Lament for My Mother, Florence

‘When I was a child, I spake as a child. …. My mother was angry when  I came home from secondary school with a grade D in maths class. Raging with frustration and fear, she railed, ‘You’ll never go to university. You’ll be just a secretary. What will you do with your life?” Good question. I had no idea what I’d do with my life. All I knew was wanting a life unlike hers, constricted as it was by not enough money and too many tasks. Along with working as a bookkeeper and rearing me and my sister., she tended her sick parents and kept my labourer-father from totally giving in to recurring despair.   It was a dismal time, that long-ago childhood. Would those long-ago turbulent memories would leave me. But childhood memories  don’t go away. My internalized mother doesn’t depart. Sometimes it’s as though I never left our drab living room with its large black and white television set, red bound copies of  Encyclopedia Brittanica and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, the green plush sofa with scratched wooden armrests, lamps that never fully lightened the yellow-beige interior. Hot Florida days when I had to water the lawn, trudging in the humidity in my schoolgirl shorts and badly cut hair. 5 o’clock meals of frozen peas and overcooked beef. The sight of medical paraphenalia in my grandmother’s back bedroom. What did I learn from my mother? That  I was smart though not pretty; my curiosity was a trial and my uneven temperament was cause for dismissal—but that something better was out there and I had to look for it. My mother gave me life but she couldn’t give me succor. My mother gave me goals but she had no balm for sadness. My mother wanted love but  knew I wouldn’t give it. My mother bade me go. I released her hand and left home. What can I give her now? Of course, I’m asking what to give myself as forgiveness for the hateful indifference I felt towards her. There’s a notion that the child can redeem the parent, his or her life making up deficiencies that came before. I don’t know that I’ve redeemed my mother’s life. When I knew her, whatever dreams she had were squashed by circumstance. But though she had so little, she asked for even less. As if to atone for her shortcomings as a parent, she was oddly self-sufficient and sought little from me or my sister. It came across as selfishness and disinterest in us. It still feels that way. She was never one to praise or delight in her daughters’ triumphs or soothe them in their pains.  As I reflect now, trying to understand what a child could not, perhaps her withholding was a way of protecting herself and us. Perhaps her mind whispered ‘don’t ask anything of Rose or her sister Maxine, nor of anyone else. Get on with it. Do it alone.’ What’s the point I want to make? Primarily it’s to acknowledge what I think is a truism: we never completely leave our mothers ,no matter how educated nor accomplished we are. If childhood is remembered positively, those memories are filled with pleasant longing, a desire to re-visit the past, . If childhood was fraught, we seek to obliterate it or at least  loosen its hold on how we see ourselves. The desire to soften the harshness of a bad childhood, to run from it, can smudge the adult as she struggles to grow up. Whether we wish to return to childhood figments or rub them out, our mothers remain until they vanish with our final leavetaking. Perhaps that’s why I want to atone for not loving my mother, whose name was Florence. I fear not being loved by those who may, at least for a little while, remember me.

Rose Levinson, Autumn 2018

Identity and its Discontents

The recent furore over anti-semitism in political circles in the UK pushes me back again into that circle of identity: Jew. When asked why he called himself a Jew, though he didn't adhere to any practices or beliefs, the open-hearted thinker Isiah Berlin responded 'because they won't let me forget.' 'They' is anyone who singles out the Jew as Other, projecting onto that screen ugly traits deserving of annihilation. It's wearying, and I wish not to engage. But present tensions compel me to once again examine the knots of my own Jewishness , striving to make peace with its contradictions.

On one hand, the tentacles of Jewishness form immense bonds of warmth and clarity. When my mother died, Jewish mourning rituals--covering household mirrors, sitting on a low stool, tearing a piece of clothing--were immensely comforting as was the support of the community. On the other, the communal grip can strangle, squeezing out those not deemed acceptable to the tribe. When I chose a non-Jewish mate, my then rabbi refused to take part in our ceremony.

Perhaps Jewish particularity and insistence on maintaining non-adulterated ties at any cost comes from the small number of Jews in the world. Hard as it is to believe, Jews are only 0.15% of the world population and about 0.5% in the UK[i]. Current demographics indicate that right-wing religious Jews will soon be the majority UK Jewish culture. For a secular Jew like me, this shift towards a rigorous, 19th century Judaism as touchstone of legitimacy is troubling, pushing me further into seeing myself primarily as a rootless London cosmopolite, grateful to live in this city-state's diverse cacophony.

Israel has only made things worse regarding the vexed issue of Jewish identity. Irony of ironies, the existence of the so-called Jewish state both feeds anti-semites and starves those of good will who see Israel as a nation-state accountable to norms governing any country. Israel and many of its supporters want it both ways: Jewish and a nation; a democracy yet one permitting its priestly class, the rabbinate, to decide matters of public policy; an occupier of other's lands and a defender of the rights of a beleaguered people --so long as those people are Jews.

Rage against Israeli policies is one of the hardest challenges for a Jew like me who wishes to loosen long outworn ties whilst not adding to the chorus of Jew hatred. The line between opposing Zionist policies (using Zionist as a descriptor of those who define Israel as the legitimate homeland of only the Jews) and being anti-semitic is a thin one.[ii] Boundaries keep getting crossed. Anger at Israel often gets conflated with dirty words used to insult and threaten Jews. Jews who are critical of Israel are often accused of being self-hating. Jewish self-righteousness rears its head, insisting that the age-old slaughter of Jews can only be avoided if Israel is implacably unyielding and if Jews everywhere give Israel unquestioned support.

It's a mess, and the noisy and ugly non-conversation is exhausting. I struggle to be clear. I want institutional anti-semitism rooted out. I want Israel held responsible for its inhumane and immoral human rights violations. I want my fellow Jews to insist that Israel is a nation-state and not allow it to move further into a theocracy answerable to a god but unaccountable to international law. I want Israel to take its chances as an open culture, federated with neighbours Jordan and Palestine. I want to shut out the voices in my head that tell me I'm betraying the Jews by thinking this way.

As the ancient Hebrew priests invoked, 'ken yehi ratzon': Let it be so.

[i] www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-of-the-world

[ii] See the London Review of Books, Vol. 40 No.01-4, January 2018; page 18: The 'New Anti-Semitism' by Neve Gordon, an excellent discussion disentangling the threads of so-called anti-semitism from criticism of Israeli policies.

-Rose Levinson

Beginnings

A traditional Jewish saying cautions "all beginnings are difficult." It's an apt reminder for my first blog post. I've written a book,  published essays and articles. I've thought for years about a blog. Now I begin, grateful for the support of my friend Gillian.

It's fitting I start with a Jewish reference, since much of how I think about and interpret the world comes from living as a Jew. It's been central to my identity. But that Jewish identity has shifted over the years. I'm far less comfortable defining myself through that lens. It's like casting off clothing which has become too tight. Shucking the garment has been a long, gradual process. I'm still groping with the loss of a central identifying anchor point: Jew.

Other transitions in the way I order my universe are also in play. I moved from northern California to London just over fifteen months ago.  Uprooting from the place I lived for thirty-five years, I question my assumptions: how can I have  been so wrong when I was sure I knew what was true? how does discarding previous lives make me both stronger and more vulnerable? by what compass do I navigate now?

These knotty questions entwine with the reality of being in my mid-seventies. Age is indeed a different country. Examining the arc of my life. I consider accomplishments, failures, loss, blank spaces. I recognize the arc is finite, stretching itself towards completing the circle.  I see things now through the looming presence of eternity. Not a comforting notion but less frightening than when the days seemed endless and delay was of little consequence.

Words have always been my saviours as I continually struggle to make some kind of sense of things. Now I share these precious objects. T.S. Eliot, whose poetry is brilliant on notions of time and death wrote in The Waste Land: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins”. These blog posts are my fragments, a bulwark I erect to offset the ruins which are to come.

- Rose Levinson, Spring 2018