In Jerusalem where one of our married daughters lives, I was recently walking down the narrow byways of her charming gentrified city neighborhood with my two year old granddaughter in hand. She looked up at the tall, Talmud-carrying man walking in our direction and she called out “Sabba” – Hebrew for grandpa. She was wrong. Sabba had flown back to Boston already, but I saw what she meant. He was that type, especially with the black velvet yarmulke and grey beard.
I guess I’m a type too – the grandchildren call me Bubby, my choice. Deep down I hope that ‘Bubby’ conjures enough cognitive dissonance. I’m a youthful 62; Bubbies are shtetl born people who skewer noncount nouns and say things like “my hairs” or insist that you give them “a locht in kup”.
We were 20-year-old college juniors in Baltimore and religion was something you took a course in.
But – and this thought is hard earned and maybe comes with my AARP card – it’s not so bad to be a type, to look like what we are at the essence, a Mommy and Abba, a Bubby and a Sabba, especially when the generations, to quote King David, grow like olive shoots around our table. Sometimes, especially when we have cause to celebrate and reflect, such as the birth of another grandchild, we turn to each other and ask, “Well, how did we get here?”
In January 1974, we were 20-year-old college juniors in Baltimore and religion was something you took a course in. He was a Dead Head who wore black turtle necks, skinny black jeans, and an ankle length Army Surplus store khaki coat which his mother, in her first woman-to-woman confidence, told me she would throw out when he wasn’t looking. He’d worn a Smith Brothers beard since high school when he broke his jaw in a football scrimmage, and he was one of the few philosophy majors in his graduating class at Johns Hopkins.
I majored in English at Goucher, a women’s college about 20 minutes down York Road. I wore a blue jean mini skirt. Those days you took your jeans and cut off the legs and reset the seams in the front. In a streak of independence from my stylish and pampered upbringing I’d sewn it myself; wearing that ratty skirt was pure rebellion.
To my dismay, my fiction writing professor at Goucher gave me a little too much personal attention. I complained to my dean who let me take my fiction writing course at Hopkins. A great solution. A shuttle bus ran twice an hour between the campuses and though Hopkins had been coed two years it was still dominantly male. The tradition of Hopkins/Goucher couples was almost a 100 years old.
I saw him the first time in the coffee shop, before my writing class. I began going to the library to study at night. I was deep inside a semester of William Butler Yeats, TS Eliot, and Ezra Pound. I found him on the B level of the Milton Eisenhower Library, the second level underground. I sat at the end of the conference table where he studied. I sat in the same spot every night for a week. He didn’t look up much except when the streakers (that 70’s phenomenon) came by in an uproar and the table resettled itself. But I got to work and made eyes at him. The B level was the smoking level and finally one Sunday night he came over and bummed a Kool and asked if I wanted to go out for coffee. We met off and on that week in typical college fashion.
“I can’t see you tomorrow night. I’m a Sabbath-observing Jew,” he said. I burst out laughing.
The following Thursday I stopped by his apartment. He fixed us some cold drinks, popping cubes out of an ice tray. I couldn’t help notice the packs of burgers, dogs, and chicken in his freezer, provisions from his parents just in case he would be dying of starvation. I fully expected we would settle on some weekend plans. But as we sat down, he hummed and hawed, clearly the prelude to something dark or awkward.
This boy in the black turtleneck and black jeans who had the Grateful dead on a constant stereo feed had an announcement to make. “I can’t see you tomorrow night. I am a Sabbath-observing Jew,” he said.
I burst out laughing. He didn’t look or act like an orthodox Jew and I knew something about them. My older brother, in some adolescent surge of rebellion and search for meaning, had been a card-carrying yeshiva boy since he was 15. My brother and I were good friends and I knew orthodox boys didn’t hang out doing college stuff with college girls.
It turned out this boy who bummed my Kool had had a spiritual moment in the Israeli desert the summer before, and had come back to Hopkins to a new advisor, a logician and philosophy professor who wore a kippah and invited him to join a seminar in Jewish philosophy. Over the year he’d come to see that Judaism was something you did, not just studied.
“I can see you Sunday if you want,” he said. “But tomorrow is the Sabbath.”
I could have run in the opposite direction. But I didn’t run. Instead, I said, “You observe the Sabbath?” Thinking of the chicken in the freezer, I said, “I can make chicken soup.”
His eyes lit up. ”You can?”‘
I was onto – something. Except for the fact that I had lied. I had no idea how to make chicken soup.
At Law School graduation, 1978
I can’t recall now how I knew that Joel L down the street had a soup pot but I went to borrow it. I had to wait until after 4 pm because Joel, a poet in the Hopkins graduate Writing Seminars slept all day. And, under cover of getting a few ingredients at Eddie’s Supermarket down the block, I ran into the back phone booth at the Blue Jay Bar & Grill next to Eddie’s and called my mother. I told her that I’d just told this guy I could make chicken soup. How did you make it? She answered with one of those frustrating non recipes of no measures or proportions. A little onion, a few carrots, a handful of this and that. Somehow I muddled through.
Every Friday afternoon I went to his apartment and made chicken soup. Matzah balls too.
Who knows if the old canard about the way to a man’s heart is true, but every Friday afternoon I went to his apartment and made chicken soup. Matzah balls too. We started a Friday night ritual and attracted a crowd of Hopkins students, including Bill Z (Greek) the penultimate party guy who took seven years to get his BS; Walter S, a Ukrainian nationalist who always walked around with a hand inside the plastic grip of a six pack of beer. He was possessive about that beer. He set it outside the door of the apartment before he walked in, which we thought was funny because who knew about alcoholism in the 70‘s?; Bernie C, another poet, who later that year stuffed a few boxes in what we called the Bernie C Memorial Closet and went off to have a go at romantic tragedy on the Left Bank of Paris; Joel L who, since it was his soup pot, joined us for a few Friday nights but went on to make a living selling plans for a one-man-build-it-yourself-helicopter out of a small ad in the back of Popular Science.
They all faded away. But this boy and I discussed and argued and talked and argued and talked: how can a Jew love Pound’s Cantos when Pound was such an anti-Semite? Did God exist? Our first real fight was about how kosher was kosher if you just avoided butterfly shrimp wrapped in bacon in a Chinese restaurant.
Our first real fight was about how kosher was kosher if you just avoided butterfly shrimp wrapped in bacon in a Chinese restaurant.
Finally, together, we joined his professor and wife for Shabbos. His professor was Dr. Gottlieb, now well known as Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb from Ohr Somayach. We began to go the Gottliebs more regularly and were introduced us to their Rebbe, the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Horowitz.
After college graduation and dozens of Shabbats, we moved to Boston where he started law school and I started graduate school. We got married during semester break in January about two years after he bummed a Kool from me in the library. We began our family pretty much right away, years earlier than our old friends, college classmates and cousins who stayed on the more ‘normal’ trajectory of establishing themselves in jobs first before all that other life stuff began. Nothing was easy but we lived in a community of young newly religious couples just like ourselves. The original urban family. The Bostoner Rebbe and Rebbetzin facilitated and inspired the ‘how to’ and the occasional ‘whys?’(which begs a book-length description). I’ll just say that we had been so cool and so pleasure oriented and now we had to live up to this life full of meaning. Even when we were having fun.
In the past few months, on the heels of our 40th wedding anniversary and welcoming a new grandchild into what one of my writer friends calls the family corporation, my husband and I both lost our fathers, two very proud Jews who got pleasure from our families and, we assume, extreme pleasure ‘seeing’ the hordes of their grandchildren and great grandchildren sending them off at the cemetery. Both shiva weeks were full of talk- talk- talk, especially about our family trajectories, our upbringing, and our return to formal religion. I rewound the chicken soup story a half dozen times until someone asked why didn’t I run in the opposite direction.
It’s the indomitable ‘spark’, that indestructible core of Jewishness that lurks within whether you know it or recognize it or not.
I might have answered what I’d thought all along: that I met a guy I was crazy about and I had this latent Jewish thing anyhow and he presented me with the opportunity. But in the vulnerable mindset of shiva where you strain to visualize eternity and souls, especially souls without the husk of the body, I had a clearer insight into how supernatural and independent Jewish identity is. The concept has a name, the pintele yid, what both the Bostoner Rebbe – a Jew with a thousand years’ wisdom – and the anti-Semites of the world have recognized as real and true. It’s the indomitable ‘spark’, that indestructible core of Jewishness that lurks within whether you know it or recognize it or not.
My husband and I might look like types, but I’m guessing the pintele yid doesn’t. What would a pintele look like anyhow – or two of them? Two college kids in a library wearing ratty clothes? Does one pintele yid talk to the other? What language do they speak?
There’s a lot of poetry you can make about that pintele: Like a spark waiting for ignition into a flame. Like a spark that can never be extinguished. Like the spark that is the Jewish soul. There are lots of quotidian things to say about an enduring marriage too, but as far as the path we took and the changes we made it clearly took two of those sparks to make this flame.
(21) Max, September 8, 2017 5:48 PM
All too familiar
I seem to recognize some of the protagonists in the sory
(20) Lisa Aiken, September 11, 2016 6:58 PM
I was in that class with you!
When I read your article, it brought back lots of memories. I was in Dale Gottlieb's philosophy class at JHU with you both! Do I recall correctly that your husband's name was Skip then? I always wondered how both of you got into Judaism, and now I know! Nice atory...
risa, September 13, 2016 12:44 PM
thanks
Yes, your memory is correct. Sometimes he still is Skip. (You can take the man out of Connecticut but you can't take the Connecticut out of the man.)
(19) Risa Miller, August 23, 2016 10:20 PM
Thank you...
…for reading and for your kind comments.
(18) G. Berry, August 23, 2016 3:13 PM
The most important thing: there are many, many ways to meet one's future partner in life! The "shidduch system" works for many but not all. We need to be open to all possibilities, because after all, Hashem is the one who puts them in front of us.
(17) Malka Tzipora, August 23, 2016 3:33 AM
Inspirational
I loved seeing your Baal Tchuva modern romance in black and white. I've heard the story before but not all the wonderful details. How fortunate to have a deep connection to the Bostoner Rebbe and Rabbi Gottleb. It sounded wonderful to be part of the Bostoner Rebbes community back in the day. You have a gift of being able to describe a moment in time and give it so much depth, breath and Inspiration. Thank you for being brave and allowing us to have a window into your world. Can't wait until the next Aish article.
(16) Sharon, August 21, 2016 3:46 PM
Grandchildren...
Re comment #12 and the 40th High School Reunion with hundreds of friends where the writer was the ONLY one with grandchildren. How very very sad. We truly have to thank G-d every day for the lives we live and the blessings we have received!
Alan S., August 21, 2016 8:39 PM
Grandchildren...
Concerning comment #12 -- and I know this is not the point of the comment, but something does not truly add up. About 38% of people aged 55 have grandchildren. How is it possible that in a 40th class reunion of hundreds of attendess, only one person has grandchildren? There likely were many Jewish people in a class where the ba'alath teshuva went to high school; statistically, if the story is accurate, this was the strangest high school class possible.
G. Berry, August 23, 2016 3:09 PM
I am 59. Recently had a reunion with some of the kids who were in my elementary school class. I was the ONLY one still married (and most had never married) and the ONLY one with grandkids! I grew up in L.A. I guess my life would have been on a very different trajectory had I not become a BT.
(15) devora, August 19, 2016 4:04 PM
GREAT story Risa
Wow! Boston caught my eye and when I scrolled up to the author I knew I was in for a treat! I don't think I ever heard your story and how your spiritual and married life unfolded. Very inspiring. We all have such amazing stories and to think that Hashem plucked us out of our everyday Grateful Dead existence for something so much more is a privilege to witness. May you have much nachas from your famlly and may you continue to inspire us with your writing. it is an honor to know you Risa!
(14) Anonymous, August 18, 2016 12:39 PM
Beautiful!
Thank you for sharing this touching story. Have nachas!
(13) Aaron, August 18, 2016 10:24 AM
Beautiful story
This is a piece that makes Judaism attractive in such a real way! I loved reading it. Thanks Risa
(12) Ra'anan, August 18, 2016 9:27 AM
I could have run in the opposite direction...
BEAUTIFUL WRITING! BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORY! I've already passed your love story around the world a few times! Recently a famous ba'alath teshuva flew from Jerusalem to the states to attend a 40th year high school reunion. She met literally HUNDREDS of old friends &, of course, they talked. She was stunned to discover that she was the only one there, & I kid you not, that had GRANDCHILDREN!
(11) Anonymous, August 18, 2016 4:25 AM
beautiful story,
touching beautiful story, what has to do with bill or hillary? was afraid to read thought will have something dirty in the story
(10) Anonymous, August 18, 2016 3:26 AM
maybe we met...
I went to Goucher from 1984 - 1986 shortly before they sadly went co-ed. The Gottleibs lived a few blocks away from us in Baltimore and they davened in the same shteibel (Rabbi Taubs Shul).
Of course the Gottleibs moved to Israel - and years later their son Nechemia moved across the street from me in Lakewood.
(Now he lives elsewhere in Lakewood)
It is a small world after all...
(9) Anonymous, August 18, 2016 2:13 AM
What an inspirational story!
Thank you for sharing the story of your incredible journey. It is truly inspirational.
(8) TLK, August 17, 2016 5:34 PM
Thank you!
Thank you for a truly wonderful and inspiring story!
(7) Anonymous, August 17, 2016 5:13 PM
You moved me to tears, today on my 40th Anniversary. I am also Bubby and my husband is Saba. We call it a mixed marriage
Nancy, August 18, 2016 6:31 PM
To commenter #7 Anonymous
I see that you posted on August 17 and mentioned it was your 40th anniversary. August 17 was my 30th anniversary! What a wonderful day that was! Happy belated anniversary and many many more.
(6) Nechama Cheses, August 17, 2016 4:44 PM
beautifully written Risa - Kol Hakavod!
I learned even more about your past - loved the story about your meeting in the library - how romantic and sweet..... The present time photo (happy anniversary) is lovely - you look radiant and Hershel looks like a contented man! You are a constant inspiration for us to follow your lead and write memoirs - we have gained a special perspective in life!
(5) Anonymous, August 17, 2016 4:37 PM
From Rockaway to Israel
We met on Rockaway bch almost 60 yrs ago In our 50th yr of marriage we made Aliya People thought we were crazy, but it was fulfilling a life long dream Ten yrs and counting , we have a new generation of Israeli great grandchildren and what could be sweeter? Life is not always easy but somehow with bitachon and a smile and emunah we make our way yom yom and don't look back only forward There is no other place we would rather be although we miss the families who aren't here
Thank you for your story, I thought I should share a bit of ours
kol tuv
(4) RMG, August 17, 2016 3:40 PM
A precious journey
Thank you to the author and Aish. I cried reading this real account of how she and her husband connected to each other and then to their roots.
I remembered my own beautiful love story in the late 60's and return to Torah also.
My beloved husband of 40 years passed away almost 9 years ago and with the help of G-d( and maybe also the prayers of the Har Nof Bostoner Rebbe) I met a widower and together we hope to build a new home among the Jewish people.
I'm a Bubby also, older than the author. Every single young or old should meet and marry his or her beshert if that's for the best and build a home among our people celebrating a Jewish life.
(3) Leah Blumenfeld, August 17, 2016 2:25 PM
Amazing
You captured my interest from beginning to end. May you continue to have a gebentched life together till 120.
(2) Miriam, August 17, 2016 11:04 AM
Wow
Thank you for the chuckles and the tears! You bring your story to life. More from this author please.
(1) Yael, August 15, 2016 11:20 AM
What a funny, fun, interesting and moving article!
Brought me to tears!