Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

71 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

She was never at a loss for an answer. It always came quickly and usually was to the point. However, sometimes you got the impression that she attached more importance to the swiftness of the reply than to its precision.

Keeping the ritual laws for kosher food, which are quite difficult to carry out, was never any problem for Grandmother. She considered eating pork cannibalism. But she was no synagogue-goer. She used to say, "I worship Gd, not the slrul."

Women like her seldom went to the synagogue except after childbirth, for the Bar Mitsvah of a grandson, or when there was a wedding in the family. Yet she taught her grandchildren, "When you find a page torn from a prayer book in the street, you must not throw it away.You should bring it to the rabbi. Throwing it away is a sin in the eyes of G-d."

Grandmother had a leaning towards mysticism; she believed in a force that had something to do with Name. Yes, Name with a capital letter. For that reason the oldest grandson from each of her offspring was named after her late husband, Meyer and woe to any of her children, expecting their first baby, if they considered any other name. She warned, "You may not use a stolen name. It brings bad luck."

"But Meyer is such an old-fashioned name... what if I call the blessed child Max?" Mother had said when I was born.

Snapped Grandma, "So you want them to talk in the synagogue about the 'Five Books of Max' instead of the 'Five Books of Moses?'"

The deep abyss between Grandmother's generation and