Monthly Archives: April 2024

On Passover miracles

6 Replies

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

The story of Passover, more than any other Jewish holiday, is all about miracles. A burning push. A staff that turns into a serpent. Ten plaques, each one worse than the previous one. The parting of the Red Sea. Manna coming down from heaven. Moses receiving the Torah. 

I have experienced what I consider miracles in my own life. Meeting Larry at a Purim party over fifty years ago. Holding our son and, three years later, our daughter, in our arms. Seeing flashes of ourselves and our children in our three beautiful grandchildren.

Just this past month, I experienced my own mini-miracle. On my fiftieth birthday, Larry gave me a pair of diamond earringsOnce I had second holes pierced into my ears, I put them on and only took them off to clean them. About ten years ago, I lost one of them when the backing came off. Six months and one earring replacement later, Larry found it when he swept our garage. I happily chalked it off to an amazing stroke of good fortune. 

I thought my luck ran out on Friday, March 31, 2024. While eating dinner at a restaurant with friends, I realized that I had lost one of my diamond earring again. I had no idea when and where. In the middle of the night? During an aerobic session at the Palms, our community’s recreation center? An hour later, while doing laps in the community pool? That evening, walking into the restaurant? Or anytime in the last week, the last time I remember feeling it on my earlobe?

I made a couple of phone calls to the appropriate places and did a thorough sweep of my house, car, and garage. I then resigned myself to ever seeing it again. I tried to be philosophical. It’s only stuff, I told myself. Friends had loss their entire house to a fire a year ago and were yet to even have a roof. Other friends had lost spouses and—worse yet—children to illness and accidents and suicide. I certainly was going to get past a lost earring. 

Exactly a week to almost the moment that I felt that empty space on my earlobe, as we members of Congregation Shalom were settling into our seats for the Shabbat services, my phone rang. “Marilyn, this is Anita at the Palms. I want to let you know that we found your earring!” A cleaning person, who was ironically on her last night on the job before moving an hour away, found my earring stuck in her mop. When I picked it up the next day, the backing was obviously missing and the post was bent. But my diamond was still intact. Luck? No, I consider someone finding my earring—and turning it in to lost and found— a miracle. 

More importantly, through my writing, I have been able to share stories of other people’s miracles. My great aunt Lillian Waldman was fired from her job at the Triangle shirtwaist factory a week before a tragic fire snuffed out the lives of 146 garment workers. Born and raised in Bialystok, Poland, Harry Oshinsky faced innumerable obstacles as he navigated a three year journey over three continents, arriving in Brooklyn, New York in 1916. 

Along with immigrants’ stories, I also shared miraculous stories from World War II and the Holocaust. United States Army soldier Melvin Weissman survived a plane crash and the subsequent sixteen months in a German POW camp, using his knowledge of Yiddish to provide needed information to his fellow prisoners. Galina “Golda” Goldin Gelfer and her father spent two years hiding in a Russian forest with Soviet partisans, living as did the real-life Jews portrayed in the 2008 movie Defiance. Seven-year-old Estelle Feld Nadel, hours away from being deported to Auschwitz after being captured by Nazis, escaped from a prison cell and found shelter and refuge in the home of Righteous Gentiles. By his own account, Albert Kitmacher credited his survival during the Holocaust with five miracles that snatched him out of the jaws of death. Eva Geringer Schloss, along with her mother, survived Auschwitz/Birkenau and recently held her first great-grandchild. 

As I write this, parts of the country are now experiencing a total eclipse. Scientists can provide a logical, calculated explanation, but even they were celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime moment. Dr. Charles Liu, Graduate College/Staten Island, called the totality of the April 8, 2024, event nothing short of a ridiculous coincidence of cosmic proportions. The astrophysicist, an award winning educator who hosts the LIUniverse podcast, offered up on YouTube his own rendition of a Cat Stevens song: “We are going to see a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow. Looking and laughing in a moon shadow.” 

Moses and the Israelites may have experienced a solar eclipse through the ninth plague. God tells Moses, “ Hold out your arm toward the sky that there my be a darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.” (Exodus 21) to stretch forth his hand that a darkness might be placed over Egypt, a darkness that could be felt.”  The darkness encompassed the Egyptians for three days, but the Israels “enjoyed light in the dwellings.” In those circumstances, the eclipse must have been viewed it as a miracle, a message from God.

No matter what, this Passover, I will hope for miracles. I hope that my friends who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer will go into complete remission. I hope that scientists will find a way to deal with climate change and global warning. And most of all, I hope for the miracle of peace in the Middle East and the world. Shalom. Chag Sameach. 

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/news/why-2024-eclipse-will-be-epic

Tanakh. The Jewish Publication Society. Philadelphia1985.

Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Moses and the Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea, c.1855, by Henri Frédéric Schopin

Remembering COVID Fatigue and some (heavenly) family support

4 Replies

This essay was originally published in March 19. 2021, The Jewish World. It reflects how just before Passover, the deep connections with my family and the memories we made along the way helped me get through a low point in the pandemic. It can be found in my fourth book, Keep Calm and Bake Challah: How I Survived the Pandemic, Politics, Pratfalls, and Other of Life’s Problems.

Passover will not completely pass over us this year. When the spring holiday occurred last year, we were only three weeks into the reality of the pandemic. Larry and I had a small, quiet, seder for two. On March 27, we will have a virtual Zoom seder with our Kissimmee, Florida, synagogue.

My husband Larry and I have been fortunate. As were our Hebrew ancestors, our family and circle of friends have been spared the “angel of death” in that we lost no one to this (God willing) once in a lifetime scourge. Friends who contracted the illness have survived, albeit with some lingering effects that we hope and pray will result in a r’fuah sh’leimah, a ,complete recovery.

Despite my gratitude, too many times during this year of the pandemic felt that more than Passover had passed us by. I know I share the feelings of so many others that we have lost a year of our lives.It has not only been the life events—first birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, weddings, graduations, even funerals. It has also been the small things: a restaurant dinner with friends; a movie or play, a live sporting event, a simple hug from a friend.

This feeling of ennui especially hit me when February arrived. When we lived in Upstate New York, the second month of the year had always been difficult as I was tired of the cold, the snow, the bleakness of winter. Now that we were living in Florida, we were liberated from the end-of-winter blues. Larry and I still were able to enjoy long walks and long bike rides in the sunshine. Physically, I was doing fine. But emotionally, I felt sad and cold and dark. Would this pandemic ever end? Would our children and grandchildren be able to get vaccinated? Would we be able to travel to see them this summer?When would the world begin to turn to normal?

Getting on Zoom calls was a chore; if I did sign on, I remained quiet, content to work on my crewel piece or check my text messages.Telephone calls were even more difficult; it was just too much work to talk about our endless Groundhog Day routine: morning exercise; afternoon puzzles and projects; late afternoon dinners; and evenings on the couch watching Netflix or reading a book.

In the middle of all this, I was working on my third book. When completed, Fradel’s Stories will compilation of a number of essays my mother had written in the last five years of her long life as well as essays I had written about my parents and family, many which had been published in The Jewish World. My mother had passed away on March 2, 2011, and I was determined to get the first “run” to my editor to correspond with the tenth anniversary. I devoted hours to organizing, editing, and re-editing. What should have been a labor of love was turning into just labor. Of course, that put more pressure on me, something that I certainly didn’t need in my emotionally depleted state.

On the third Saturday in February, I opted out of my usual exercise-in-the-morning routine and continued editing the second hard copy of the manuscript. When I got to the chapter that Mom had called My Romance, I brightened “The saying goes, ‘You have to kiss many frogs until you meet your true love,’” my mom had written in one of my favorite stories. “Well, I knew many frogs.” She then went on to describe the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys she dated while living and working in New York City until she was introduced to Bill Cohen, her brother and her cousin’s co-worker in an Upstate New York clothing store. 

After a whirlwind three month courtship, my father proposed over ice cream on February 14, 1940. “We had just seen Gone With the Wind,”Mom wrote. “Bill must have thought I was Scarlett O’Hara, and I must have thought he was Rhett Butler.” They were engaged!

Over the next six months, they carried on a long-distance romance. Separated by over 300 miles, they saw each other infrequently but wrote each other often. Mom had kept the letters in her dresser her entire life.“Where are they now?” I thought. Then I remembered that I had found them when my siblings and I were emptying her apartment soon after my mother had passed away. They were in a metal box that held all my treasured correspondences.

Even though I had been known about my parents’ love letters for at least sixty years, I had never actually read them until that Saturday morning. The first one I read, from my father, spoke of feeling “sad and cold and dark. “ Oh my goodness! He was describing me! His remaining letters expressed his love and excitement about their pending marriage. My mom’s letters shared some of his romantic sentiments, but the majority of them described wedding preparations and constant reminders for Bill to get his Wassermann test before the August 20 ceremony. 

After reading them all, I called all three siblings to share the emotional news of my find. That triggered more memories, more family stories. Laura reminisced how her eight-year-old self had found our parents’ love letters and decided to play post office by delivering them to each of the mailboxes on Waverly Street. Jay remembered how, while living in that same Upstate New York house, he and a fellow five year old had called the fire department to report a “blaze” so the two of them could get a first hand look at the town’s new fire engine. Bobbie remembered another letter—the one my parents had written to her in 1977 when, as a recent college graduate, she was struggling to find a job—that she still has kept over 43 years later. 

After my phone calls, I went back to the kitchen table to resume work on my book, but I was no longer alone. My siblings’ stories echoed in my mind. More strikingly, I felt my parents’ strong presence, surrounding me with encouragement to keep writing and with quiet assurance that “This too shall pass.” Recalling through their stories how they had survived the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, World War II, and their own nine decades of ups and downs, I knew my family and I would survive COVID-19 and its resulting tsouris-troubles.

Ten days later, I felt confident enough to send my manuscript to my editor. We still have months of work ahead— more editing, picture placements, cover design. But I know that on September 1, what would have been my mother’s 104th birthday, Fradel’s Stories will be launched on Amazon. 

Soon, I will give my house a thorough cleaning, make my chicken soup and matzoh balls, chop up my apples and nuts for the charotzes, set our table for our Zoom seder. With all the recent good news of the medical front, I have faith that next year’s seder will be a more crowded, joyous, affair. Meanwhile, Passover and spring are here. Thanks to the love and memories my parents and siblings have shared with me, I no longer was sad and cold and dark. I was happy and warm and filled with light.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York.

My parents, Frances and Bill Cohen, on their sixtieth anniversary, August 20, 2000.

Contemplating Purim heroines in the #MeToo era

2 Replies

Fifty-one years ago this March, Larry and I met at Purim party held at in the upstairs floor of a restaurant in Albany, New York . In a corny, hastily put-together shpiel, Larry a.k.a. Ahasuerus chose me a.k.a. Esther bypassing my competitors, Libby the Lib and the sassy, insolent Vashti.

Would Larry have chosen me if I had played Vashti? After all, for most of Jewish history, she was portrayed as the headstrong, rash woman who incurred not only the wrath of King Ahasuerus, but also the condemnation of the other male leaders of Persia. “Not obey the king? Why, next thing you know, all the women in our kingdom will be disobeying the men in their lives!” they cried. “Banish the hussy! or even better yet, execute her to set an example!”

In Purim party after Purim party, most girls—and women— have preferred to dress up as the beautiful, passive replacement who obediently followed the edicts of her husband, King Ahasuerus, and the directions of her uncle Mordechai. Fearing the same fate as her predecessor, even when faced with the extermination of all the Jews in Persia, Esther took time approach her husband. She fasted for three days, threw one banquet, then another, and waited patiently and gracefully for the right moment to revel the evil machinations of the notorious Haman.

Esther finally came through for us, resulting in her always being viewed as the heroine of the story. With age, wisdom, and more feminist leanings, I have learned to cheer for Vashti, who refused to bow to her husband’ misogynistic demands to dance naked in front of a group of of inebriated male chauvinists. In a 2023 article in the [Harvard] Crimson, writer Arielle C. Frommer dates the history of feminist interpretations of the Purim story to as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a 19th century leader in the women’s rights movements, described Vashti as “a sublime representative of self-centered womanhood.” Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, praised Vashti’s resistance as a “first stand for women’s rights.” “We shall stand amazed that there was a woman found at the head of the Persian empire that dared to disobey the command even of a drunken monarch,” Stowe wrote.

The praise for Vashti continues into the present day. LaVerne McCain Gill, journalist and pastor, describe Vashti as a “model of rebellion against the patriarchy.” Christian Pentateuch scholar Alice L. Taffy views the disgraced first wife as a greater hero for her lack of dependence on any male figure to make her decision. As while many stories feature Jewish heroes vanquishing their persecutors, Frommer writes that the Purim story is “dependent on a female heroine taking a stand against a patriarchal monarchy, thus linking Jewish liberation directly to the feminist experience.”

So if Vashti was banished but not beheaded, I wonder what happened to her? Did she escape to another country that respected strong-willed women who stood their ground? And did King Ahasuerus and Esther live happily ever after, enjoying wine and challah on Shabbat? Did he give up excessive drinking and look at not only Esther but all women with more respect?

In this election year, it may be wise for all women to remember the story of Purim and the traits of these women. In 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

According to Planned Parenthood, as a result, one in three women now live in states where abortion is not accessible. In the first few months after Roe was overturned, 18 states banned or severely restricted abortion. Today more states are working to pass bans. 

The resulting stories have been horrifying. In Florida, a woman was forced to carry her child to full term despite the doctors’ knowledge that he would die shortly after birth. In Texas, doctors in one hospital told a a 25-year-old woman whose ectopic pregnancy endangered her life to “go home and wait.” [She had emergency surgery 24 hours later in another hospital, where the doctor said she came close to losing her life. In Ohio, a 10-year-old child who had been raped by a family member had to travel to Indiana for an abortion. 

Conservatives may have rejoiced with the Supreme Court decision, but it has resulted in a voter backlash. According to a Reuters/Ipso poll taken in December 2023, it resulted in limited Republican gains in the 2022 congressional midterm elections, as well as propelling Democrats to victories in recent off-year elections. The same poll reported 70% of Americans said protecting abortion access in their state would be an important issue in determining their vote in November, including around two-thirds of independent voters. The poll also showed that half of Americans said they would support a law legalizing abortion nationwide, including close to one-third of Republicans.

Who is in the forefront of the battle? Women.For many women, protecting reproductive rights have become the number one factor in voting decisions. “I am a one-issue voter,” a friend told me recently. “I believe in a woman’s right to chose.”

Old white men in expensive suits and $300 haircuts are denying those rights. It is time for us women to take some lessons from Vashti. She believed that she had the right to choose what she did with her body. In 2015, my hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, The state controlling a woman’s body would mean denying her full autonomy and ultimately full equality.” Vashti would agree. 

Reproductive rights were center stage in President Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month. “With all due respect, justices, women are not without electoral or political power,” Biden said. “You’re about to realize just how much.” 

Remember Vashti’s actions. Remember Biden’s words. And remember them when you vote in November. 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/07/biden-state-of-the-union-reproductive-rights-abortion

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/3/23/queen-esther-vashti-purim-feminist-history

Image of Vashti courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Larry and Marilyn, March 18, 1973  

The pest in the attic…

8 Replies

The Pest in the Attic

In October, 2023, on a miserable, windy, rainy day, Larry and I found a puddle on our kitchen floor. Looking up, we could see water coming from one of our recessed light. Damn!

We called a roofing company the next day. After spending an hour directing a hose onto spots on the roof, the roofer found nothing. “Just call us if it happens again.”

It did. On December 23, on another miserable, windy, rainy day, we had to again pull out the buckets to catch the water dripping from the same spot.

As promised, the roofer came back free of charge. This time, he found the problem. The flashing had not been installed properly when the house was built, resulting in a spot where water had gathered. The wood in the attic was mildewed and rotting. The roofer was honest: his company specialized in shingle roofs. He couldn’t guarantee they could fix it and recommended we contact another roofer.

We called another roofing company that had been recommended by a friend. The representative confirmed the problem and said his company had seen this several times in Solivita. We signed the contract, forked over half the payment, and waited for the repair, thankful for dry weather in the meantime.

On Wednesday, February 7, 2024, the roofers came as promised. Five hours later, the job was done. Of course, we could have taken a cruise on the money we paid, but the leak problem was solved.

Less than an hour after the roofing crew left, we heard a sad, moaning sound in our attic above our bathroom. Oh no! It sounded as if an animal had gotten into the attic when the roofers were working on the problem and had gotten trapped. 

We texted the roofing company.

“Oh no! So it sounds like something may have pushed through your soffit,” a representative wrote back. “I’d definitely walk the perimeter of the home and check to see if the soffit is pushed in or damaged anywhere.”

Then came the less helpful comment. 

“Unfortunately we cannot get any animals out from an attic, that is something a trapper or pest control would have to do.”

We called our pest guy on Friday. Meanwhile, I put out a recommendation request on Next Door. People wrote back suggesting DYI solutions—mothballs, noise, cats. Along with the names of companies, people shared frightening stories of rabid raccoons, slithering snakes, and aggressively agile alligators. 

Our bug guy finally texted us Monday. No, he didn’t do animals. Just bugs. He texted me the name of an animal control company. 

“We’ll come out for a free estimate on Thursday,” we were told

And if there is an animal?

“The cost will range from $500 to thousands of dollars, depending on the animal and the damage.”

I immediately texted the roofing company again.

“Considering we noticed the sounds literally an hour after work was completed, we can assume the animal was trapped during the work,” I responded. . It’s turning into what can be a very expensive follow-up to what was already a huge expense. Would it be possible for someone to come and at least crawl into the attic, maybe releasing the animal?”

I also contacted the concierge in our community, who gave us a name of a local person who trapped animals at a more reasonable cost. “Johnnie” could come Tuesday at 2:30.

Meanwhile, the general manager of the roofing company called Monday night. He said that animals usually don’t go in with all the banging and hammering, but he was willing to split the bill.

On Tuesday, “Johnnie”, albeit  three hours late, arrived at our home. Ninety minutes and $350 later, he found nothing. Nada. No animal. No droppings. No noise. No nothing. He left a trap and said he would be back the next day.

That night, while in the bathroom doing our nightly ablutions, we realized that the squeaking, moaning sounds were in synch with our turning our faucets off and on. Eureka! It wasn’t an alligator or armadillo or an anhinga in our attic. It was pressure in our pipes, Shoot! Did we now need to call a plumber?

The next morning, on a hunch, I went outside and checked the outside hoses. Yes, I had turned off the front hose when I watered the plants on Wednesday. Whew! Not my fault! Then I checked the back hose. Mystery solved! When the men were fixing the roof, they must have used the outside hose in the back of the house. Our hose attachment was in the “off” position, but the water had been left on. Because of that, there was pressure in the pipes. I turned off the water connected to the hose. Voila!! The sound stopped immediately. 

Six days and a huge chunk of money later, the roof was repaired and the noise that had been driving us crazy was gone. Thankfully we figured it out before we called a plumber. But we are hoping that the roofing people will step up to the plate and pick up the entire bill for the pest guy.* Hey! I don’t mean to be a pest! But I will be badgering (Raccooning? Squirreling?) them until we get this settled. 

PS: They didn’t.

The mess before the “pest.”