It was at my childless Great Auntie Tsimitizm’s
Little house on 126th that I learned
What it meant to be a Jew.
My great aunt’s house had been
Skipped by developers,
Squeezed within an inch of its life
Between two big brownstones.
We liked going there. It wasn’t a tidy house.
It didn’t have nice furniture, or pictures on the walls.
And my great aunt was not a good cook.
The food she gave us would always be “healthy.”
She had been a hippie and her palate was formed
In the granola era, but even with that sort of food
She didn’t do particularly well.
But we liked it there because
We found her interesting and different.
And for whatever reason, she seemed to like us.
Sometimes on a Friday night or a Saturday,
She would suddenly say in her loud Broadway voice,
“Come on, meine kinder. Let’s be Jews today.”
She would get out the candles, even in daytime,
To show us how to light them,
And how to say the Hebrew brucha.
“Genuine shabbas candlesticks,” she would say,
“Made in Palestine by Arabs.”
She would put on a yarmulkah and tallis,
Wave her hands three times over the candles,
Light them, and say the prayer
(…vih-tzee-vaw-noo lih-hahd-leek neyr
shehl shabbat).
Sometimes on a Saturday, she would make
Braided challah with us. When it finished baking
We would chant the hamotzi, the Hebrew prayer for bread
(…ha-motzi leh-hchem meen ha-ah-retz, ah-meyn).
Then we would eat it by tearing off clumps
(Something we were not allowed to do with bread at home).
After that my great aunt would take out two thin cotton flags,
Each about the size of a sheet of printer paper,
And we would braid them just like the challah.
One was the American flag and the other was the Israeli flag.
Then we would go outside to the backyard,
Where she had an ecological stove,
And put the braided flags inside it,
Light them, close the glass door,
And squat before the stove, watching the flags burn
Until there was nothing left but ashes.
My great aunt told us,
“This is what it means to be a Jew:
To remember fire,
What it can do to you,
And when to use it.”