Ay, Rachelika, Rachelika,
My Sefardi mother-in-law, hands lifted to the heavens, you pushed my hands in that direction too, you tugged me out to the balcony to stand under stars and invoke angels in Ladino, you had me sing nursery rhymes of pishkedikos della mar to my babies. And when they cough, I still hear my voice saying, "Oras buenas, oras claras, malachim". Rachelika, I miss you, our afternoons folding little triangles of filika dough around salty feta cheese, our conversations late into the Shabbes night, candles lighting tears. Your words so infused my cooking and my childrearing, that still, when my son Adam calls from the army, I answer, "ijo della madre, el preciado della casa". My own Yiddish roots were stamped down, paved over, with hopes for a more modern, more Canadian life, as if it were possible to keep a Yiddish tree down for long. (My own childhood read on the obsolescence of Yiddish; my own sister's children speak to her in Yiddish, and I do not understand what they are saying). And so, when I looked for an older voice in my writings, your voice was the one there for me, and I wrote of filikas and berenjenas con tomat. I married a history. But now I live in Israel, and my daily chance encounters with more and more relatives from our family shtetl, Staszow, invite me to connect with the Yiddish rootings I had earlier tried to step on, like some onion in the ground with its head upside down (What's the expression I'm trying to think of? I'm sure it sounds better in Yiddish!!)