Alberto's Voice

Aging At Turbo Speed

I flew to Athens, Greece with the specific intention of visiting my 95 year old aunt (my mother's sister), Hara, who had been moved into an assisted living facility (in this case more of a nursing home). Fond memories of my early childhood are crammed with hugs, kisses, meals (because her food always tasted better to the 5-6 year old Albertiko) and sharing an L-shaped house with her, my uncle Avraam and their daughter, Anna (who is more like my sister rather than a cousin). I would spend four days, seeing her, each one, and return home for Shabbat.

The trip came off like clockwork (well, at least to this point which is me waiting at the Athens airport at 4AM for my 6:35 plane) except for a small hitch or three. It seems that the aging process is more predictable that I ever thought. Instead of visiting one aunt, I found another very dear aunt was in almost the same position (at approximately the same age). Her cousin (another aunt of mine in her late 70's) had just gone through serious surgery and was recuperating at home. Finally, the day I got there, one of my very close relatives got serious news from her doctor and will be going through surgery within a week or so.  As I drove all over the Attiki peninsula visiting each of them (although I kept my personal pledge and saw Aunt Hara every day) it felt as if I should don whites and surgical gloves. Does everyone become ill in their later years? I guess if I had done my research I would probably find out that the answer is yes, for the most part.

I have numerous friends that enjoyed their winter years in places like Palm Springs and Jupiter, FL that played golf until shortly before they could no longer do so. They are surrounded by some of the best hospitals in the world and an entire economy based on their recreational and medical needs. Greeks live in one of the sunniest places in the world. Although winter is no picnic they do not tend to spend their dotage away from home. Islands and other countries are for visiting. One's home is where one lives out one's life. The difficulty of a culture in which almost everyone has a family home that is passed down to children or other relatives, whether a one room cottage in a village or a beautiful mansion in a swanky suburb, is that, when illness hits and brings special needs, one tries to stay in one's home as long as possible. This is true both for Greeks who can afford Western-world luxuries like part or full-time help. and for those of modest means. Moving into a nursing home is an enormous shock. Having family visit, bring flowers, a picture or two, is a balm to the soul.

This very necessary visit (in what is most definitely the ebbing of a specific era in my family's life) clearly demonstrated to me that "bikur cholim" can be therapeutic for both the giver and receiver;  that one cannot take one's own health for granted; that a supportive family can be more therapeutic than doctor visits; that we must all go the extra mile to show respect and love toward the people that were the center of our lives in our formative years; and that a few roses can make your 95 year old aunt smile as when she was in the bloom of youth. Don't put it off if you can do it now.

FAITH ON WINGS OF EAGLES

Emunah Al Kanfei N'sharim

The airplane today is a marvel of science. Yet, aerodynamics play little role in the trust most of us place in entering the behemoth knowing that we will almost certainly reach our destination, whether it be Cleveland or Bruxelles. As I fly over the Atlantic, I believe it is a more compelling trust; our faith in God. I remember reading in the Jewish Catalogue (a much more reliable compendium than Wikipedia, say) that man asks, "Why do I need to pray? I have all I need..." The answer given is simplistic and profound. We should pray so that when we need to, we will know how. The same reason can be given for study.

In trying to make sense of our role in the ongoing saga of human history, our sages have long toiled on establishing our relationship with God. The Orthodox Jew speaks about "Torah Moshe miSinai" and that relationship is based on the faith that the Torah is God given and there can be no question about who God is. The Torah tells us, exactly. But, since the Haskalah (Enlightenment) period, the study of Biblical literary criticism has raised many unanswered questions and put "modern man" in a quandry. Weekly, we hear why one must have faith; often coming from different sources with new paths toward that faith. We must all find our own way through continued study of Torah and its myriad commentaries, joyfull and reflective prayer, and the leadership of so many brilliant minds that have dedicated themselves to philosophic discourse and a combining of our ancient and modern texts in continuing our path to faith. Find an adult education course and open yourself to so much more than the mundane "vochedik" (weekday/common) thoughts that hardly tax our miraculous brains.

You may find it easier to fly accross the pond.

BUMUELOS AND STEAK

What I missed most about this last Hanukkah was my daughter who was living in New York city but now moving to Philadelphia. What is it about children who when they get their graduate degrees don’t simply move back home but have to find good jobs far away? In any case, I digress.

My second most missed thing last Hanukkah was “bumuelos” (Turkish Beignets). I can smell a “bumuelo” frying at 1,000 paces. Every culture has such a thing. In the case of the Sephardic Jew, it is a golf ball size jewel of fried raised dough, covered in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. The only reason “latkes” (potato pancakes) were invented is that the Jews in their exile to Northern lands (Poland, Russia, Rumania, Hungary, etc) had an excess of potatoes available. Ah, but the Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian Jews got it right.

Hanukkah celebrates the victory of a small band called the Macabees over the Greco-Syrians in a 25 year war that began in 167 BCE. But, it also commemorates the rekindling of a makeshift “menorah” in the Temple of Jerusalem that had been defiled by idol worship. Not only was one vial of the priestly “kosher” pure oil found, but instead of burning for one day it burned for eight, giving the people time to press new pure oil. Thus, we have eight nights of Hanukkah, eight candles on our Hanukkah “menorahs”, and eight nights to enjoy my favorite artery clogging treat, BUMUELOS!  Oh, the steak? Yes, “bumuelos” go very well as dessert following a nice prime rib dinner. Just don’t expect to get to sleep very early that night!

D’VAR TORAH: Parshat Vayetze

D'Var Torah: 

Trickery. Deception. One might think that is the basis for two parashiyot of the Torah; last week’s Toldot and this week’s Vayetze. Talk about leaving your dirty laundry hanging on the line. Are we to believe that it was Yaakov’s fault or was it Esau that took his birthright so lightly as to sell it for a bowl of stew? Of course, there is little doubt that Jacob took advantage of his brother’s nature. Then there is Isaac’s blessing of his sons. What else is one to think except that Rebecca conspired with her son to steal that blessing? Was it but for a pelt of lambskin attached to Jacob’s arm and a well cooked soup that the blessing would have gone to the intended, Esau, and that Edom would be the blessed land and people instead of Israel?

And this week, what is Laban up to? Does he care so little about his daughters’ happiness that he tricks Jacob (many say this was tit for tat for Jacob’s trickery) into marrying Leah thus making the couple unhappy from the start? (Leah declares that her husband “hates” her and hopes that now, after the birth of their first child, “…now my husband will love me.”) Not to belabor this line of thinking, Jacob continues to use trickery in the form of craftiness (legal but sketchy) in using his expertise with animal husbandry to end up with quite a large flock that he sneaks away from Laban, now married to both Leah and Rachel after 14 years of laboring for them. It would also seem that both daughters were quite cross with their father as well. Laban hoarded the riches that Jacob had accrued for him and did not pass down the wealth to his children. For this he paid the price of his daughters abandoning him; a very high price for being cheap!

I think back to 1944 when my father and his brother, Alberto, answered a call by the Nazi authorities to come to the synagogue and collect free matzah for Passover. They were immediately herded into trucks and taken by cattle car on a TEN DAY death ride to Auschwitz. The Nazis were masters of deception.

My mother, then a lovely single woman, was to be forced into marriage with a Christian boy by her uncle so as to be saved from the Nazis (a deception that would not have worked). After her youngest brother, Victor, abducted her from the ceremony at gunpoint, she, her sister (with husband and baby in tow) and their mother, Stella, were hidden by the Kourelis family in a nearby neighborhood in Athens. When a “neighbor” turned them in to the Nazis it was Elftheria Kourelis who saved everyone’s life through the use of very quick thinking, courage and trickery. “What Jews? You can clearly see these are my mother, my aunt, my sister and my grandmother! You may search the house all you want for Jews!” We might not call that trickery but being fast on one’s feet.

I have no doubt that if and when my father and mother slept and dreamt through their ordeals they probably did not see a ladder leading all the way up to the gate of heaven as did Jacob in this week’s sidrah. It is hard to do that when in the midst of hell. But God did save them. The promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was fulfilled for a small remnant of our people who rebuilt their lives and ensured the continuation of the Jewish people for generations. May we, in the midst of a country blessed with freedom, not forget to be diligent and forthright in thought and action so that apathy and complacency do not become our common deception.

FOOD AND SUCH

What is it that makes us eat in restaurants that often disappoint because their ethnicity is that of our parents or grandparents?  I cannot tell you how many times I have subjected myself to old corned beef, oversalted and over celeried whitefish salad at one kosher deli or another only because my Hassidic friend wanted to eat "mamaloschendike maych'l".  I hope that's close to the correct Yiddish (if a bit comical) for food of my mother tongue.  Oh, yes, and tongue being one of my favorite salted meats I cannot tell you how distraught it has made me at times to taste watery, bland, hardly bothered with deli tongue...a real "shande" (waste or insult--sic)

Ah, but then, you get through those years between eighteen and twenty-five when it seems you will eat anything that is not green (the deli would have to be either green or grey) and realize that it isn't only quantity or availability that counts but quality and flavor.   I must say I do not miss those early years of overindulgence and not enough money to indulge even further.   No, age brings with it a certain farm fresh need that one can hardly find in anything but the food we eat.   Gone are all nighters and late night hard salami.   Here are burrata salads and fine mushroom with black truffle oil risotto accompanied by a lovely red (I only think of white at lunch and almost never drink that early).   What used to be a substitute for something more libidinous is now the raison d'etre.   Much safer, generally, and less expensive in the long run!

Ok, so I am Greek and the word "epicure" was invented by my people (no, not the Jews...my other people).   So, on the pretext of going to visit my 93 year old aunt (whom I love dearly and would certainly be reason enough to go) or visiting other members of my incredibly small family (the Holocaust was not kind to the Mizrahis), in the back of my mind are salads made out of tomatoes grown in heaven, fish flopping in the basket begging to be picked  as our main course, and good and lively friends who despite reaching my age have not given up their gustatorial standards or learned to go to sleep early (feh, yuck)!   Off to the "Patritha" (fatherland) close enough to Israel that the temptation is always there to jump over and visit Yerushalayim for a few days, and to Turkey, the birthplace of my grandparents whose government has proven no friend of either of the two countries I love most.   Somehow, pangs of remorse and anger pass quickly as one eats fresh figs off the tree sipping a little 50 yr Metaxa and listening to waves splash onto the beach.  I wish you the experience as soon as possible

LENGTHY PROJECTS: work and love

I feel life ebbing and flowing on a river of endless projects.  There are the ones that have a deadline and are usually done within the last two days (sometimes one) of the month(s) long period since their commencement.   Then there are the projects that feel as if they will never end.   Their only deadline is mortality itself.

A non-writer who dreams of writing that one great novel most often finds the memory of one’s story fading away before ink meets paper.  Not meaning to be maudlin, but we do tend to reach too far, too often.   My great CD of cantorial masterpieces will probably not get done.   Not one of the more than thirty recordings I have made were ever cantor/piano or organ hazzanut albums.   Nevertheless, this week, I go into a NY studio with Neil Levin, director of the Milken Archive and our Grammy Award winning producer, David Frost, and attempt to put the final editing touches on a recording we began in 1999.   It was an enormous undertaking -- the complete Rosh Hashanah Mussaf service as might have been presented in the 1940/s in the United States with cantor and large choral compositions.   This project falls under the heading “lengthy!”

***

As I sit in Jojo’s Coffee and Tea following the fabulous pomp and ceremony of a Yale University graduation day I think about the “project” that will hopefully take me to the end of my life and not complete.   Yet I think of it with only joy and love.   Belina, our daughter, just received her Master of Fine Arts from the School of Drama.   As Deborah and I walked to our seats Denzel Washington walked next to us to find his.  Ten amazing people received honorary doctorates: from Robert Altman to the woman President of Liberia to Aretha Franklin.  We all watched in awe, once more (Belina received her Bachelor’s Degree in ’02), as the over 6,000 undergrads and grads marched in under their college banners and cried out in delight as their school of study was announced to receive their degrees.   Flashbacks jumped into my head of bonding with my less than one week old baby girl sleeping on my shoulder all Shabbat afternoon, later trying to ride Scruffy our doggie, her first day at the Schechter School, High School, Astro/Physics degree … am I that old?   I was barely into my thirties when she was born…. 

I will be eternally in love with her, she will always be that little baby on my shoulder, and Deborah and I will continue to be ever grateful to God for the miracle of her birth, proud of her accomplishments, and intend to be there for her for as many years as we are granted on earth.

Fois Feu

Let’s talk about a short trip to Paris where I sang in the Synagogue Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth (a curious name for a Jewish place of worship, if I ever heard one), one of the most beautiful sanctuaries I have ever seen.   According to our friend, Peggy,  the real reason I was there was to procure for her a tin of Kosher Foie Gras from the deli on Rue de Rosier, the Jewish Quarter of Le Marais (Fr. “the marsh” the historic center of Paris — also the name of a wonderful kosher steak house in New York).   After the usual, “OH, you do not speak ze French?”, despite my pitiful attempt to do so with a couple of years of college French as well as having sung Faust and many operatic arias in the language – making me an expert…- the tall bearded Hassidic counterman, eyeing me carefully (I am rather large and was dressed very casually—even summerlike) reached into the abyss of his counterspace coming up with three tins that were obviously kosher foie gras and I was thrilled to have come upon them so easily.   The cans were oddly shaped, but I figured that made them more “special.” I could not avoid going into the adjacent kosher patisserie and drinking fabulous coffee with one, or perhaps, two freshly baked croissants- I faint at the memory.

Returning home our friend, Peggy, and my wife were both thrilled at the aspect of kosher French foie gras one evening while sipping champagne.   A few weeks passed and the time had come to eat our meal of meals!   I got a call from Peggy that very same morning asking me what kind of establishment had sold me this stuff!!  It seems that when enough botulism builds up gasses inside the tins, they EXPLODE!   It was then I understood the roundness of the tins!   I laugh now, and despite Peggy’s unbelievable pantry mess, laughed quite a bit then.   But, my feelings for people who take advantage of others are not warm nor fuzzy. Ce qui sera soyez – or Que sera, sera!