Page 21 - Jewish News_Oct2021

JEWISH INTEREST October 2021 21A

Aging Jewishly – What our traditions teach us about growing old

Johannes Hähle, took 29 color pho-The saga of the purple coat:

could not bring himself to make them Do resentments hold back your happiness?
tos of Babi Yar and Lubny, though he

public or deliver them to his unit. At By Rabbi Barbara Aiello
Lubny, he documented the concentra-
tion of the population, their waiting hen I was a little girl, one of me yesterday. It’s brand new and it’s one hurt us that have become viv- own “purple coats” – those nasty up-
to be murdered, and then the killing my greatest adventures was mine.” id memories of what someone did or sets and resentments that we’ve been
itself. Although Hähle died during the Wshopping with my mother. “Well, it might be yours now but didn’t do? Have we allowed these carrying around for years.
Normandy landings in June 1944, his We were a struggling immigrant fam- it’s not brand new. Look inside on the memories to stay stuck inside us, af- My mother hadn’t planned to harm
widow kept these photos safe and sold ily, but my mother found creative ways label. My initials are right there.” fecting our actions and eventually de- me. That girl with the R.W. initials
them to a journalist in Berlin after the to distract from situations that empha- So sure was I that my mother had fining our personality? didn’t set out to hurt me and, even if
war. The original color photos only sur- sized how little we had. Her endeav- finally bought me something new, I I am now in my 70s and my pur- she did, it happened more than a half
faced in the year 2000, when they were ors worked for undid the beautiful leopard buttons. ple coat story happened more than 60 century ago.
acquired and placed in the archive of a while, but as I That’s when the “cool” girl told years ago, yet I’m still talking about it. The recovery community defines
Hamburg’s Institut für Sozialforschung got a little older it me to look down along the hem. She Isn’t it time to just let it go? For if the resentment as the act of reliving all
(Institute for Social Research). was no longer fun shouted, “See that label? My Nana New Year is anything at all, it is about those unfortunate conflicts of yester-
The fate of the Jews of Lubny is to go to Goodwill embroidered my initials right there. new beginnings, and new beginnings day. We allow them to weigh heavily
just one of countless massacres that or the Salvation Go on, look.” can only happen when we leave the old on our hearts, taking up precious emo-
took place in the wake of the German Army and “shop” By now a group of about one hun- baggage behind. tional space and keeping us from living
invasion of the Soviet Union 80 years for clothes. dred girls crowded around me. OK, it Imagine our parents and grandpar- in the moment.
ago. Though overshadowed by much What used to wasn’t a hundred, it was more like six ents trying to decide what to take with As the sound of the shofar fades
larger events, it was, for that small Rabbi Barbara Aiello be a great adven- or seven, but it seemed like a hundred. them to America. If any of them wanted and the taste of the honey cake recedes
community, on October 16, 1941, the ture, riding with I couldn’t stand it. I looked down and to take every single thing they owned, into memory, we can move forward
epicenter of the Holocaust. Today, we my Mama all over Pittsburgh on the there were the letters R.W. stitched into they would have never left Krakow, into a new year if we become willing to
remember them. streetcars, now became an ordeal of the label of my coat. I was humiliated Odessa, Prague, Vienna or Rome. My leave those slights, hurts and negative
Paul R. Bartrop is Professor Emeritus great embarrassment. I started making and I can still hear them laughing. family members carried only two suit- memories behind.
of History and the former Director of excuses about why I couldn’t go, and For weeks I was furious, and I cases and a shopping bag, but because Rabbi Barbara Aiello served Aviva
the Center for Holocaust and Geno- after a while my mother stopped asking blamed my mother. How could she do they were willing to leave the past Senior Living in Sarasota as resident
cide Research at Florida Gulf Coast me. She’d just go alone. this to me? For several days I sulked, behind, they had the emotional space rabbi for 10 years. She now lives and
University. I remember one winter when she cried and gave her the silent treatment. necessary to start something new. works in Italy where she is rabbi of
came back from a “shopping trip.” She My mother left me alone to blow off It’s not easy but it can be done. Italy’s first Reconstructionist syna-
had found, she said, something brand steam. Today I cringe when I think of The High Holy Days cycle has passed, gogue. You may reach her at Rabbi@
Need to reach the editor new. “Look, a new winter coat!” how she took a lot of guff and ingrati- but there is still time to think about our RabbiBarbara.com.
And what a coat it was. Deep pur-
of The Jewish News? ple wool with a leopard collar, leopard tude from me when she was doing the Rabbi Barbara Aiello’s most popular
best she could.
But the New Year question of the
Send an email to cuffs and six leopard covered buttons, day has less to do with my mother and columns are now published in her new
big as 50-cent pieces. A coat fit for a
book, Aging Jewishly, available on
jewishnews18@gmail.com. queen, I thought. And putting aside all more to do with me. Because if the sto- Amazon. It makes a great gift!
ry of the purple coat has any meaning
of my uneasiness, I dressed myself up
extra nice and wore my new coat to at all, it is this:
school. What do we do with those humil-
That afternoon, on the playground, iations, slights, embarrassments and
one of the “cool” girls came over to horrible moments that we carry with us
me. I was flabbergasted and I thought, for years? What do we do with the bad
“This coat must really say something. memories? Do we think about them,
Look who’s noticing me.” And notice hang on to them and never let them go?
she did. From halfway across the play- Do we let our own purple coat stories
ground she shouted, “That’s my coat.” fester into resentments that can last a
“Is not!” I responded with great lifetime?
indignation. My mother bought it for Are there situations where some-

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