mallorys_camera | The Holocaust For Dummies

Judaism For Dummies is turning out to be a bore. Maybe it's just Reform Judaism. Dig: you don't have to believe in God to be Jewish (says the rabbi) but if you don't believe in God, why bother? Then there's the troubling matter of the commandments (Leviticus 10 through 27.) Apparently, Reform Jews get to pick and choose. It's all very socially progressive and affirmatively actionable, but how do they know that it's okay to shorten escrow to, say, thirty-five days, and shave their sideburns, but not okay to lie with your neighbor's wife? I sense a human agenda.

I do like Maimonides' take – God is only the opposite of what God is not. Ergo: God is not a real estate agent. God is not a hair stylist. God is, apparently, somehow connected to that jealous neighbor on his third vodka tonic, nervously checking the wall clock and wondering why his wife is so late coming home from her PTA meeting, but the exact nature of that connection is unclear.

Then there's evil and the Holocaust. Sometimes, I dream about the Holocaust. It's always the middle of the night when the knock on the door comes, and I'm always the rebellious daughter with the secret stash of communist pamphlets (ignoring the fact that the picture of the "evil capitalist" on the cover – hooked nose, beady eyes, full lips – is a stereotypic portrait of The Jew,) who spits at the Nazi Kommandant and is shot through the forehead on the spot as an object lesson in obedience. No, they're not going to buy me off with their Terezin fairytales. Survival is the grimmest thing of all. Eking out a heart beat between stolen potatoes, forcing your eyes not to register the horror around you (as though you can avoid being imprinted with it by willing yourself blind.) Any price is too high to pay for survival.

"The Holocaust," says the rabbi. And she sighs. "The core of Jewish spirituality is the mitzvot, more and more active engagement with the world. It springs from the thought that the act of creation shattered something. The result is an imperfect world, a fragmented world, often a cruel world. We're told as Jews we're a chosen people. Chosen for what? many ask. I believe we're chosen to help put the world back together. But it's a partnership. God cannot go it alone."

This logic only satisfies if one believes in God. But believing in God is not a Jewish requirement so the loop is left dangling, unsatisfactorily.

Alfred devotes a portion of his autobiography to parsing these mysteries. "In childhood," he writes, "I had no reason to doubt that God existed. In appearance, he was clearly like my grandfather, tall, white-bearded, endowed with dignity and power."

Alfred's grandfather – my great-great-grandfather – was born Chaskel Ptzachnikov, somewhere in Poland during the mid-nineteenth century. He grew up to be a rabbi. Somewhere along the way, he decided to emigrate. First he went to the Netherlands, where he married and begat a family. Then he decided to emigrate to the United States. He deserted the family. Arriving at Ellis Island, he underwent the usual identity change, though why they decided to rename the sparrowman "Vogel" – a German word – rather than the easier English "Bird" (or "Byrd",) I don't know. Maybe the guy manning the toll booth that day thought he looked too foreign. One photograph of Chaskel still exists – he has forelocks and a hooked nose, tiny beady eyes and sensuous lips. In fact, he looks a lot like The Jew in that communist pamphlet I sometimes dream about.

How anyone could desert a wife and children like that, I can't imagine. He had no presentiment of the death camps that would come, I suppose.

When Alfred compared God to his grandfather, was he unconsciously referring to God's history of abandonment?