Susan's Musings

Eighteen and Pregnant

Shortly after hearing the news that four of our friends became great-grandparents, I came across a news item about an upcoming reality show. The producers are seeking women in their thirties who are grandmothers. Well, the daughter of one of our friends fits that description.

It seems though, that the grandmother in this case won’t meet the show’s criteria. Yes, she’s in her thirties, but she got married at eighteen and has, with her husband, built a beautiful, large family. Their daughter in turn, also got married at eighteen, and both her parents’ and the groom’s parents’ blessings accompanied the young couple down the aisle. The new baby’s arrival, about a year later, was anticipated and desired.

Not only is this new grandma’s family intact, a fact which makes it uninteresting to reality TV, but the family members’ lives are boring. Cameras placed in their home would show people working, living, loving and learning. Throw in some shooting hoops, piano practice and family meals and all in all there is little to engage the viewer. No hysterical quarrels with lots of profanity and violence; no dark secrets waiting to be revealed; not even a mid-life crisis on the horizon. There is certainly no thirty something woman appalled that her daughter is thrusting her back into infant care because the new mother is too immature to handle the baby herself. Not only is the family boring by TV standards, but they would never allow cameras into their home, understanding that the sanctity of a family deserves privacy.

Granted, very few eighteen year olds today are mature enough to marry and few couples as young as this are mature enough to begin families. Of course, more years don’t automatically add maturity and it is possible to spend those years destructively, doing things which add burdensome baggage to one’s life, making a healthy lifelong relationship less likely. Certainly, most girls who become single mothers in their teens are placing obstacles to success in their lives and the lives of their babies. Shows such as this potential new one or its predecessors, “Teen Mom” and “16 and Pregnant” may indeed show the difficulties young, unwed mothers face, but they also help to normalize those situations.  I think the overwhelming majority of girls who do get pregnant as teenagers would express disbelief that it is possible that girls close to their age could actually be mature enough to marry with reasonable expectations of having a long and happy marriage.  While they hopefully will discover that having a baby can propel one to maturity, they haven’t understood the equation that maturity should precede becoming a mother. They may have heard of women marrying young and establishing families back in the 18^th or 19^th centuries, but certainly not today. My friends’ families would baffle them.

I recently read the words of a highly successful woman who grew up in a home which was 180 degrees from that of my friends’ daughter, the new grandmother. Poverty, abuse, even child rape were this famous personality’s childhood companions. She wrote how watching the 1950 and 1960’s sitcoms which are derided today, like Leave it to Beaver or Father’s Knows Best showed her that her own shattered family wasn’t the only paradigm to follow. There were happy families in the world.

It may well be true that the old sitcoms didn’t depict the lives of all Americans. Certainly, many of the actors in the sitcoms were not privileged to have the wonderful homes they portrayed. But neither were these fantasy shows. There actually were and are homes where husbands and wives adore each other, where parents are respected and where children are brought up with both love and values.  There are families where a couple who has celebrated their own 50^th wedding anniversary can gaze at their newborn great-granddaughter filled with optimism and faith that her young parents are committed to her and to each other. 

The books that students read in school and the movies and shows they watch may well reflect contemporary realities. How sad that they don’t provide visions of marriages and of peaceful homes where one man and one woman dedicate their lives to each other and their children. By not giving glimpses of what is, even in today’s day and age still attainable, we are depriving those who have not been blessed to have such examples in their own lives of even imagining that such a thing is possible.

Bigots Anonymous

There are meeting of Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Clutterers Anonymous and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, Alcoholics Anonymous. I would like to suggest a new addition - Bigots Anonymous, and Rabbi Joshua Hammerman should head the effort to get it off the ground.

Rabbi Hammerman has apologized for his twisted remarks about those who applaud Tim Tebow’s public declarations of faith. The New York based newspaper, Jewish Week, which published his thoughts rather than sending them back to him with a big red X through the offending article, has apologized as well. I am quite sure that both the newspaper and author were taken aback at the furor their words provoked, and I am willing to concede that the apologies may be authentic rather than simply backpedaling to get out of trouble.

Pretty much anyone who speaks or writes publicly, including my husband (and even me!), has occasionally said something poorly in a way that leads it to be misconstrued. Other times one sometimes gets a reaction which stems from the fact that the reader is reading poorly, bringing tons of chips on his shoulders to the writer’s words and reading things which no objective observer would see. Case in point – I was recently accused of racism for my blogs , Dear O and Lucy, Lucy and Herman Cain . I wasn’t sure if I had been insensitive – though I thought racist was a bit strong - or if my accuser was over-sensitive. After re-reading my words and not seeing anything I wanted to retract, I asked the reader to please post her comments publicly so that others could let me know what they thought. As of yet, she has not done so.

There is another experience one can have after articulating an idea. Strong negative reaction can cause one to step back and re-evaluate.  Perhaps one’s convictions are entirely wrong! In one of my blogs, I used a word for which I was taken to task by a reader. I honestly had no idea that the word had a reprehensible history and so his comments taught me that a word which I assumed was benign actually wasn’t. Or perhaps an author or speaker discovers that something which one assumed was a standard, perhaps universally accepted concept actually isn’t. This happened to both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The former’s comments as a candidate trying to share in the pain of the public, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” reflected a lack of awareness that arugula is not as American as apple pie and that Whole Foods isn’t quite Safeway.  The latter candidate similarly showed that his thinking isn’t instinctively that of most of us when he threw out the sum of $10,000 for a bet as if we all think in those types of numbers.

Rabbi Hammerman’s comments were obviously in a different category than either Obama or Romney’s. This is why they need to be treated seriously and not dismissed simply as foolish or careless. I don’t know Rabbi Hammerman and I don’t regularly read the Jewish Week, but I assume that the rabbi and the editors see themselves as good and enlightened people. This incident is a wake-up call that they hold prejudiced and bigoted views about Christian America. These views aren’t surprising as the circles they travel in are probably quite narrow: liberal, east-coast and academic.  As with most holders of prejudice, they aren’t aware of how intolerant they are because everyone with whom they interact shares their views.  It would do them all good to get out of their sheltered cocoon and get to know some actual Tim Tebow supporters, instead of the caricatures in their minds.  Perhaps, in addition to a twelve-step program for anti-Christian bigots, they should undertake a sensitivity training journey around America. I’d be happy to introduce them to pastors and congregants in amazing churches in the Bible Belt.  I don’t think that in their wildest imaginations they envision these fervent, sophisticated, charitable, and diverse congregations.

Future actions will determine whether Rabbi Hammerman and the Jewish Week’s apologies reflect a willingness to expand their thinking or if they only regret the crassness with which they revealed what they believe. If the dogmatic, doctrinaire, intolerant and insular thinking of the liberal Jewish community which they represent remains entrenched, an opportunity for growth will have been wasted.

 

 

 

Generation to Generation

Many years ago when I was leaving to spend a year studying abroad, my grandmother asked me for a favor.  When I got to Israel, would I please go spend a Shabbat with a dear friend of hers? Pepi had escaped from Europe and arrived in Israel just before the Holocaust’s full fury unfolded.  As my grandmother told me of her friend, it became clear that my grandmother, who arrived in America prior to World War I, had never met this woman.

 Pepi came from the same town as my grandfather and was friends with his younger sister. While my grandfather didn’t remember her, she remembered how her friend’s older brother left for the United States before the First World War.  After the Holocaust, she tracked down his address and from her new home in Israel wrote to him with details about his parents’ and sister’s deaths. My grandmother responded and a friendship was born. My mother and aunt remember packing boxes of warm clothing to be sent overseas; a struggling American family helping out an even less comfortable Israeli one. When my grandmother told me about Pepi, I knew there was something special about this friendship.  Everyone else in my grandmother’s circle of friends addressed each other as “Mrs. So and So” despite years of acquaintance, yet this woman was to be known, even to me, by a diminutive of her first name.

 I admit to being apprehensive about visiting Pepi. A Shabbat visit would last for at least 25 hours, which could be interminable. Even my grandmother had never spoken with her; their interaction was entirely through the mail. Not only was she an unknown, elderly widow, but she didn’t speak any English. My Hebrew was pretty good, but what if I didn’t understand her or we had nothing to say? However, I adored my grandmother and would have done anything she asked. I duly called Pepi shortly after my arrival in Israel and arranged to travel north to her home.

My fears were allayed them moment she opened her apartment door. The pre-Shabbat aromas wafting into the hall transported me to my grandmother’s apartment. Her loving embrace did the same. Pepi’s daughters told me of their excitement when a package from America arrived and how the candies tucked into pockets of sweaters and jackets made them feel wealthy and privileged. I was instantly grafted into the four generations of their Israeli family.

 I came to adore my time with Pepi and regularly returned through the year. Each time I left her home I carried a package filled with food including a still warm kokosh cake that has never been equaled.  When I returned to the States I stayed in touch with Pepi and we both mourned when, shortly thereafter, my grandmother passed away. A few years later Pepi rejoiced with me when my husband and I gave our eldest child my grandmother’s name, Rivka Leah.

Ten years later, Pepi too was gone. When our youngest daughter was born, my husband and I gave her the middle name Penina – Pepi’s given name. I prayed that our Tamara Penina would have the unwavering faith in God, effervescent joy in life and heartwarming demeanor of her namesake.  

Since Tamara’s birth it has given me a particular thrill to see my eldest and youngest girls together. Their namesakes never got to experience that physical closeness, at least in this world. Almost ten years ago, Tamara helped me address invitations for her sister’s wedding and a few weeks ago my Rivka Leah and her husband opened their home to host a Shabbat wedding celebration for Tamara and her new husband.

There is a Hebrew word, nachat (sometimes pronounced nachas) which is impossible to translate into English. It is a combination of joy, pride and intense satisfaction among other emotions. It is what parents pray to receive from their children’s lives. That Shabbat, I experienced tremendous nachat, and I knew that my grandmother and her beloved friend, Pepi, rejoiced with me.

With Charity from All

Many years ago, my mother-in-law asked a friend to pick up four strawberry jellies for her at the store. When her friend returned with four jars of strawberry jam, she was dumbfounded. It turns out that they weren’t speaking the same language, though English was both their native tongues. As they discovered, British English and American English don’t use the same words to describe the same item.

I don’t believe that there was a similar linguistic explanation for my horror when I read an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal. I do believe the author and I speak the same language; however our worldviews are distinctly different.  In a debate entitled, “Should Philanthropies Operate like Businesses,” Michael Edwards made a statement while seemingly unaware that it was at all arguable or controversial. He said, ‘For starters, let’s not forget the reason we have philanthropy in the first place. It’s to support work that will never be funded or supported effectively by the market or government. “

That is certainly not my definition of philanthropy. As I see it, philanthropy is charity writ on a large scale. And I suspect that many people, like me, give charity because we believe that God directs us to. If the marketplace and/or government were super-efficient and flourishing, I would still be commanded to assign 10% of my earnings to others.  By this measure too every individual, no matter how little he or she has, is obliged to give.

Before we can argue how philanthropies should be run, we need to agree first on a worldview. Is charity a concession to the failures of the market and government or is it an affirmation that speaks to the triumph of the human soul?  How we answer that question says as much about our views on the marketplace and government as it does about our ideas about charity.