DONKEY EPILOGUE

 

Several readers have inquired about the donkey. Really. So, I'll tell you all.

The donkey came.

She is black and white, and her name is Storm.

For the past two days, my ten-year-old grandson has been waiting patiently for her to settle into her new home. Well, perhaps "patiently" is not quite the right word. He is checking on her approximately every three minutes.

Storm is taking her time getting used to her surroundings.

My grandson is counting the seconds until she will let him be her best friend. So, one of them is learning to trust. The other is learning to wait.

I think they are both going to be just fine.

The Witch of the World

For twenty-three years, I have been the most wonderful grandmother in the world. At least in my own mind.

I was the fun grandmother. The generous grandmother. The exciting grandmother. Every visit sparkled. Every outing was an adventure. Every grandchild was brilliant, adorable, hilarious, and perfect. Anything they wanted was granted. The sun rose and set on them.

Then came this past week.

Their parents went away, and suddenly I wasn't the visiting grandmother anymore. I was the one in charge. And let me tell you something. The transformation was not pretty.

A few months ago, I played the Witch of Ein Dor on stage in the musical David. This week I became the Witch of the World … and I wasn't acting.

"Don't hit him."
"Get back into bed."
"Finish your dinner."
"No, you cannot watch that."
"You took it. Eat it."

THE GRANOLA BAR AFFAIR

Take, for example, the Granola Bar Affair. "Can I have a granola bar?" "I don't think you'll like it." "Yes!! I will!" "If you take it, you have to eat it." "I want it!"

He took it. He tasted it. His face did something I have previously only seen on people taking medicine. "You took it. You eat it."

That granola bar sat on the table. For two days. A monument to poor decision-making. Every time he walked past it, I reminded him: when you choose something, you eat it.

By the second day, even I was tired of looking at it. "Okay," I said. "If you really don't like it, let's throw it out. But what's our lesson here?" "Don't take something you won't eat." "Exactly."

WHERE IS SUPER SAVTA?

Every night I went to sleep wondering what had happened to Super Savta. Where was the woman who bought ice pops and read stories and played endless games? Who was this cranky person who seemed to spend the entire day enforcing rules?

Then last night I figured it out.

For one week, I wasn't really a grandmother. I was a mother-substitute. The fun grandmother's job is simple: spoil, spoil, spoil. She gets to arrive with treats, hugs, and stories. The mother-substitute has a different job description:
Keep them safe.
Keep them fed.
Keep them clean.
Keep them healthy until their parents come home.

Somewhere during the week, I remembered that I used to be a pretty strict mother. Apparently those skills were not lost. They had simply been dormant for a few decades.

AND SHE’S BACK

Fortunately, on Shabbat with my grandchildren's help, I regained some of my Savta Mojo. We played. We lost. We won. We laughed. We read books. That felt much more familiar.

And then, just to keep things interesting, came the Donkey Saga.

I was hit with an unexpected "situation." My grandson had apparently bought a donkey - or he thought he bought a donkey or maybe he only bid on a donkey, nobody was entirely sure - and he had spent the whole day worrying that it would be delivered to the farm near his school while he wasn't there to greet it.

I could have said, "I am not chasing a possible donkey that we don’t even know is yours. Let's just go home." And honestly, that would have been a reasonable thing to say. But he was so nervous and so excited, I couldn't let him down.

So when we left my house and went back to his town today, before we even checked on his actual, currently-living-with-us dog, we drove to the farm to see if the donkey had arrived.

It hadn't. And we stood there, the two of us, looking at an empty patch of farm where a possible-donkey was not. He was disappointed, but at that moment, he knew I wanted to come through for him.

Still, I worried that the grandchildren would remember me as Strict Savta, the Witch of the World, the one who said:
"You cannot lick it and put it back."
"Do not leave your bed."
"I'm not telling you again."

WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

So I decided to ask them a question. "What did you learn this week with Savta?" I expected silence. Instead, I got four answers.
"Only take what you will eat."
"Do not fight."
"Sleep is important."
"Clean up after yourself."

And just like that, I realized something. The children had not spent the week listening to my nagging. They had spent the week learning lessons. Simple lessons, perhaps. But not bad ones.

In fact, if every adult in the world followed those four rules, life would probably run much more smoothly.

So maybe Super Savta didn't disappear after all. Maybe she was simply wearing a disguise. For one week, she served as Acting Minister of Nutrition, Laundry, Conflict Resolution, and Bedtime Enforcement. And according to the children, who are as always brilliant, adorable, hilarious, and perfect, she did a pretty good job.

The truth is that love does not always look like ice cream and adventures. Sometimes it looks like, "No, you may not lick it and put it back."

And that counts too.

 

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

For centuries, mankind has searched for the Fountain of Youth.

Explorers braved stormy seas to find its source. Alchemists searched for magical formulas. Scientists studied ageless villagers in far-off mountains. Entire industries have been built around miraculous creams, vitamins, and exercise machines. Everyone searching for the same thing - a way to stay young.

Well, search no further.

We have uncovered the solution to the world's greatest mystery. My husband made his discovery on a preschool class minibus, and I made mine in a rocking chair with the quiet snore of my two-year-old grandbaby.

THE CLASS TRIP

My husband, "Sabba" to the kids, volunteered to be a parent on the preschool class trip. The night before the expedition, our kitchen table looked like a staging area for an African safari - a borrowed baseball cap, sunglasses, sunscreen, a water bottle, a bag lunch, and a handwritten list of instructions, which Sabba studied very, very carefully.

The next morning, he climbed aboard a preschool minibus wearing his white shirt, black cargo pants, and electric blue sneakers, and joined a crowd of squealing four-year-olds heading out for adventure. He high-fived our grandson, laughed at the antics of his friends, stopped a few potential fights, and had a grand time.

Sabba reported that the highlight of the trip was an animal show, which featured, among other things, a giant snake that was draped enthusiastically over the shrieking children like a very large, very slimy scarf. Sabba came home and said, simply: "There was a snake." I did not ask follow-up questions.

SWINGING AND ROCKING

I, on the other hand, picked up our two-year-old granddaughter from pre-preschool. When I arrived, a teeny pair of pink socks was hanging on her hat hook. They were not hers. She was certain they were. She insisted I put them on immediately, right there in the hallway. I did. Somewhere, a little girl is going home sockless. I hope her mother doesn't flip.

We went to the park, ate ices on a bench, and headed to the swings. She wouldn't accept any help climbing onto the swing. She is two. She slipped off four times. On the fifth try she made it, and looked at me with the triumphant expression of someone who has just conquered Everest. I cheered like she had.

Then we went back home to rest. I rocked her in my arms as her head nodded back and forth, and I hummed the melody I had hummed to her mother thirty years ago - a melody I thought I had forgotten - until she fell asleep in my lap.

And I realized something.

DISCOVERING THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

The Fountain of Youth isn't about looking young. It's about participating in the world of the young.

Grandparents who are involved with their grandchildren have a second chance at life. You think you're finished with preschool trips. Then suddenly you're on one. You think your days of discussing snacks, playgrounds, missing socks, and who gets to sit by the window are long behind you. Then grandchildren arrive and hand you a fresh ticket.

As Sabba called out to the kids on the jumping castles, "No pushing. One at a time!", he was suddenly forty-five again, calling out to our own boys as they over-enthusiastically bounded through the jumping castles of our kingdom long ago. The children ignored him completely, just as our boys did thirty years ago. Some things are eternal.

As my two-year-old gently snored in my arms, her warm breath on my cheek, I was in my thirties again, holding her mother - the same blonde curls gently bobbing, the same angelic look on her sleeping face.

THE TREASURE IN OUR REACH

The Fountain of Youth isn't a fairy tale or an impossible treasure. It is right there - as we eat lunch with messy four-year-olds, or try to push a toddler on a swing.

Access to the Fountain is granted when you take the hand of your grandchild, sit him on your lap for a story, or look up at the birds together. When you enter your grandchild's world, your knees may still be achy, but somehow time rewinds to those days, decades ago when you couldn't imagine that your little darlings would soon have little darlings of their own.

Perhaps that is why the explorers never found the Fountain of Youth. They were looking in the wrong places. They searched in hidden valleys and distant mountains. They should have looked in preschools, and beside sandboxes.

They should have looked on a class bus filled with four-year-olds wearing sun hats and carrying sticky juice boxes, or beside a rocking chair where a grandmother is humming an old lullaby to her grandchild. They should have looked for a man in electric blue sneakers refereeing a jumping castle, or a grandmother chasing her grandbaby around the park.

Because that is where time folds in on itself. That is where yesterday and today sit side by side. That is where a seventy-year-old man becomes a young father again for an afternoon, and a white-haired grandmother closes her eyes and remembers when her face was smooth and her hair was still blonde.

Looking into the eyes of our grandchildren, we realize that the years did not take away the sweetest parts of life. In fact, they may have made them even sweeter.

They simply brought them back wearing smaller shoes.

Performing at the Jerusalem Theatre… with the Beginners

Last week, B"H, I had the thrill once again of performing on stage at the Jerusalem Theatre. Bright lights. Applause. Adrenaline.

And yet, I wasn't dancing in a dazzling sequence costume with my steel-shuffling troupe. I was performing with the beginner tap group.

No… I did not accidentally wander into the wrong dance number or forget where I was supposed to be!

FINDING A NEW ROLE

I have been tap dancing for twenty years.

Twenty years.

At this point in life, I should probably be teaching the beginners. Instead, I joined them.

Not because I stopped “real” dancing or lost the place I had earned in our kick line. And definitely not because I stopped loving it. But because my ankle and knee recently decided they were no longer interested in jumping high or f-lapping faster than a speeding bullet. Apparently, my joints have been holding meetings without me, and decided: “Effective immediately: reduce high-impact commitments.”

So I adapted.

That's how I found myself in beginners’ tap, relearning steps I once knew in my sleep.

At first, it felt strange. Who willingly goes backwards? But you know what? Beginners don’t agonize about what they used to be able to do. They simply try to do it now. And that’s surprisingly peaceful.

TWO TAP LIVES

Now, I haven’t left my veteran tap class. I’m still there too. Every week. Standing beside dancers who sometimes perform steps that my arthritic ankle and knee look at with deep suspicion.

So I’ve become something of a choreographer for one. When a routine asks for a step my joints politely refuse, I don’t leave the line, I adjust. I simplify. I substitute. I improvise. And you know what, everyone still smiles and loves me.

It’s not always easy, and occasionally I suspect my body and I are performing two slightly different dances to the same music. But I stay in the room. And that matters more to me than anything else, because I love my troupe and I want to dance with them as long as I can.

So my week now has two tap lives:

In the veteran class, I stretch myself, adapt my steps, and try to stay part of something bigger and more complex than what I can comfortably do alone. In the beginner class, I relearn, rebuild, and remind myself that joy doesn’t require expertise. Between the two, I keep dancing.

ON STAGE

And then something unexpected happened. We performed at the Jerusalem Theatre. Yes. The beginners’ troupe. There I stood under stage lights, feeling exactly the same thrill I have felt for years at every stage of dance.

The stage, it turns out, doesn’t care what your level is. It only cares that you give your all and shine out   your personal aura. And the audience doesn’t come to measure technical perfection. It comes to feel your love and enthusiasm, your willingness to share your gift across the footlights.

LIFE IS MULTI-DIRECTIONAL

Many of us believe that life moves in one direction only: Forward ..to.. better ..to.. more advanced ..to.. more capable.

But then, one day life quietly introduces a different curriculum: Oy vey, so... adapt ..and.. simplify ..and.. begin again.

At seventy, I’m learning that “beginner” is not a downgrade. It’s a skill. A state of mind. Really... a privilege.

There is something deeply honest about the beginners’ class. No pretending. No hiding. No comparison to who you used to be. Just: Can I do this step today? And if not, can I do a version of it that still lets me dance?

So, here I am tapping in two worlds, and I’ve discovered something important: I am still a dancer.

Not because I move the way I used to. But because I still move. And I still say yes to the stage.

Maybe that’s the real secret of this stage of life. You don’t stop performing when things change. You learn new ways to stay in the dance.

And if that means being a beginner at seventy … then I’ll take it. And tap on.

She Hung Up Her Tap Shoes. I’m Still Lacing Mine.

Last year, at 71, my friend Fayge hung up her tap shoes. 

Not dramatically. Not with a final Broadway bow.

Just quietly. After eighteen years of shuffle-ball-change, costume mishaps, and late-night laughter.

When we began dancing at 50 (me) and 52 (Fayge), we were on top of our game. (Yes, really.)

As the years went by, tap became more challenging, but we did our best with a determined smile. And there is a moment we often shared that I treasure most.

After a particularly difficult step - the kind that requires fierce concentration and silent prayer - when we somehow managed to execute it without collapsing into each other, Fayge and I would reach out and squeeze hands. No words. Just that squeeze.

We did it.

That squeeze said: We’re still here.
Still moving.
Still brave enough to try.

WOMEN OF STEEL

But tap is not simple at any age. It demands speed, precision, strong knees, cooperative ankles.

Now Fayge and I have none of those things.

Fayge was diagnosed with Parkinson’s years ago. Yet, she kept dancing. She kept showing up every Tuesday night with lipstick on and her tap shoes laced tight. But last season she decided that the turns and the quick movements – um, tap is mostly turns and quick movements - were asking more than her body could give.

So she chose to stop.

ALONE ON THE DANCE FLOOR

So, here I am. Seventy years old.
In a class of women ranging from 33 to 50 … and then… me.

I have arthritis in my ankle, which makes my shuffles occasionally slur in ways I’d rather not discuss, and hops live only in my mind. My knee, injured two years ago, still negotiates every fast combination. When the choreography calls for “quick and light,” I do my best to remember what that once felt like.

Still, Tuesday night tap is my happy place.

KEEPING MOVING

Fayge may have hung up her tap shoes, but she didn’t hang up her dance costumes. She still performs in “The Walker Dance,” a joyful piece filled with women over sixty who march and sway with more energy than orthopedists would advise. (We dance with walkers, but B"H, they're still props.) Fayge does yoga. She exercises. She shows up for life.

And she still belongs to our tap family.

She keeps in touch. She cheers us on. She lives in our inside jokes. Even without the shoes, she is part of the rhythm.

And me?

Fayge has officially made me the oldest tap dancer in Gush Etzion.

For now, I am choosing to stay. To shuffle imperfectly. To ice my ankle. To stand in a room full of younger women and claim my place anyway.

One day, I too may hang up my shoes.

But not yet.

For now, when the music starts and the floor answers back, I am still reaching for that invisible hand squeeze.

Still here.
Still moving.
Still dancing.

(Photos by our dear friends - Rebecca Kowalsky and Beth Lanin)

 

The Past Three Months Have Been Harder Than I Realized

The kumquat tree missed them.

On Friday afternoon my newly-seven-year old grandson climbed the garden wall of our home and almost ran into my arms. I burst out in giant loud messy sobs. He stopped so short that smoke came out of his sneakers, and he anxiously eyed me top to bottom, sure that I must be bleeding somewhere.

I started apologizing (by this time his eight-year-old sister was beside him, watching me scare my grandchildren with my wailing). Choking on my sobs, I told them, “Savta is just so happy to see you at my home. I missed you all so much. My house missed you. My kumquat tree missed you. The toys missed you. I'm sorry. I can’t stop crying, because I am grateful.”

Absolutely frozen, they watched me in silence - a bit afraid, a bit weirded out, a bit pity-filled for Savta. And I realized that the past three months have been harder on me than I realized.

Like the rest of you, I spent more than two months in self-isolation – not leaving the house, not seeing my friends or family, not participating in any real-world activities. I zoomed. I whatsapped. I facebooked. I even worked a little. B”H for my heroic husband (ad 120 beyachad) and wonderful kids who shopped for us. B"H for exciting screen door visits.

HEY, WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

Mostly, I watched a deserted world at my front door, as I prayed in my rocking chair. (Wow, that does sound like an old lady from some novel, but truthfully, we had been left behind in a ghost town.)

And I observed, as life transformed over the weeks - from me alone with my birds, to one person walking through the street on Shabbat, to three kids and a dog, to a few couples and a family here and there, and then this past week, voila…a busy exciting bustle passing my door.

I did everything I was told. The day the Health Ministry said we could go out (of course, with our masks), I tremulously and hesitatingly walked out my door, holding my brave husband’s hand. When they said we could visit our grandchildren, but at a distance, my husband and I jumped in the car and visited every single grand/kid immediately. We even brought “We-love-balloons.” We just wanted to see their faces in living color sans-screen, even if not up close.

THE SHOCK OF REALITY

But nothing could prepare me for the sight of my cherished little people climbing up my wall. I am still overcome with emotion, thinking how much we (the protected part of the population) have suffered more than the rest of the world at-large from lack of interaction with our grandchildren.
Thank G-d, they are back in our lives.

An amazing outdoor get-together (with masks, except for eating and smiling.)

And still, we older folks probably won’t totally heal until that day comes when we can hug those little people that we love and smother them with kisses. May it come soon.
PS - thank you to the folks who worked to keep us healthy and safe. xoxo

Purim and the Death of the Soviet Haman

Throughout Jewish history malicious Haman figures have risen and B”H fallen. In our minds Germany’s Hitler, yemach shmo, is the Haman of the last generation. But Russia’s Joseph Stalin, yemach shmo, ranks very close. Responsible for the deaths of about 15-20 million of his own people, Stalin had a special place in his black heart for the Jewish people.

On the miraculous Purim of 1953, Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror ended.

Stalin was a maniacal murderer. Paranoid, he saw those around him as enemies. The Jews were a Fifth Column to him, disloyal, dangerous. In well-orchestrated actions, Stalin executed scientists, intellectuals, writers, artists, peasants, landowners and his own Army’s generals - with a special emphasis on the Jews.

The Night of the Murdered Poets of 1952 eliminated Jewish culture along with poets, writers, playwrights, artists. The Doctors’ Plot of 1953 launched a vicious anti-Semitic media campaign when Stalin accused the nation’s Jewish doctors of planning to poison Soviet leaders.

Building on the need to eliminate the three million Jews from Soviet Society, Stalin reportedly planned mass deportations of Soviet Jews to Siberian concentration camps.

Only a few days before the doctors were to go on trial, and before the reported deportations were to take effect, Stalin suffered a massive stroke on March 1, 1953 on the holiday of Purim. He died a few days later, and not long after, the doctors were found innocent and (if they had truly been planned) no trains carried mass numbers of Jews to the Gulag.

Soviet Jewry had been saved on Purim 1953. And while the Soviet Union didn’t stop using its secret police or gulags until the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Jewish population lived on, some assimilating into Soviet Society and some courageous figures fighting to retain their Judaism and even to emigrate to Israel.

This year IY”H, The Women’s Performance Community of Jerusalem in partnership with OU Israel will bring to the Jerusalem stage, “Whisper Freedom”, the story of the struggle of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s. Follow our journey to Moscow on facebook.