Posts Tagged ‘ children ’

I usually trudge along with Chasidic women to the J train every morning. Like them, I’m close to the JMZ lines. All of us walk mechanically, like robots, toward the loud, screeching subway train.

“Speaking of loud and screechy,” I…

“Git Shabbos, Reb Hershel,” the gabbai says to me with a smile. “Minche?”

He has it down to a science, Reb Yossel the gabbai. Every other week he asks me the same question. He needs someone to lead the services…

“Leig nisht dein hant in tash,” my father tells my son. It’s like my own childhood all over again. Hands in pockets were always considered wrong. It was never explained.

It’s Friday night and the three of us walk home…

I have to be at work early today. Niko has to load his truck at eight and Mr. V. won’t trust a goy with the keys. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t trust me either. It would make my life easier.…

We pack up the car and pile in. We drive for an unfortunately short half an hour. When we arrive, their smiles are gaudy and curious. A child takes my coat, revealing my bare forearms. Anger registers on…

The rhythmic thudding of leather meeting the heavy bag, coupled with the sharp “she, she” exhaling of breath, has an intoxicating sound all its own. Conversational snippets, background noise, all fade away as intensity increases. Jab, jab, cross,…

When I was a toddler, even before my mother started curling my little payess around her finger and brushing it with a bit of sugar-water, she taught me the English alphabet (after I had mastered the Alef Beis, of course). By the time I was enrolled in pre-school I knew that c-a-t spells cat....
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The house smells like a Friday afternoon. Ajax, some unidentified scent, and delicious Shabbos food. The washing-machine spins noisily, the little kids fight over a coloring book and the older kids fight over which of the younger ones…

It’s a winter Friday night, freezing cold outside but inside the small shul it is warm. All adults and children are on their feet facing the opposite side of the holy ark, singing ecstatically along with the chazzan…

Sh’ma beni,

As my father would say: her in derher.

I have suffered. At home, in school, and in society in general. However, we are an am kshei oref—a stiff-necked nation. We get up, dust ourselves off ; men visht…