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Dec
24
The day before Christmas: What do Jews do, Part IVb
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Read Part IVa here, Part III here and here, Part II here, and Part I here and here and here.
Back in West Haven, my mother signed me up for kindergarten in the spring of 1967. I was four years old and at registration, we met a mother and daughter who, it turned out, lived across the street and up three houses from me. And we’d never met before.
The street looked like a street in University Heights west of Warrensville, or in South Euclid, north of Warrensville and south of Mayfield. That is to say, the homes were close together and you could almost see into your neighbor’s kitchen. You could certainly hear your neighbors. The manicured lawns twinkled green and stood at just the right height. In the wintertime, the slopes of our yard provided an attractive nuisance for sledding. And all the trees stood the same height; you could tell that the neighborhood had been created within the last 10-12 years.
Everyone liked it that way, it seemed to me back then. Although we’d play and run from yard to yard and under fences, inevitably, someone else’s mother supervised us at each home. Most of the mothers stayed at home then, although I can think of at least four who went to work after we got into the upper elementary grades, but before we moved away.
I still find it amazing that I’d never met Linda Caprio before that Kindergarten sign up day. But I attended a Jewish day school nursery, and my older brother was in a Jewish day school also (although he switched to public school somewhere around this time too). My younger brother was not yet two years old. And my mother, who was 26, had just lost her mother to breast cancer (at age 52) and her mother, my great-grandmother, had moved in with us. Making friends with all the neighbors probably occupied very little of my mother’s time just then.
But finding a new playmate for me through Kindergarten sign-up led to the creation of a friendship that continues even now. In fact, the word friendship betrays the intense connection Linda and her siblings and her parents and I have with one another, likewise with all my family members.
And, until I married and settled in Ohio, I’d celebrated more Christmasses with the Caprios than I’d celebrated any other holiday with anyone else, except for Thanksgiving and the Jewish holidays of Passover, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:00 pm December 24th, 2005 in Politics | Comments Off
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Dec
24
The day before Christmas: What do Jews do, Part IVb
Filed Under Politics | Comments Off
Read Part IVa here, Part III here and here, Part II here, and Part I here and here and here.
Back in West Haven, my mother signed me up for kindergarten in the spring of 1967. I was four years old and at registration, we met a mother and daughter who, it turned out, lived across the street and up three houses from me. And we’d never met before.
The street looked like a street in University Heights west of Warrensville, or in South Euclid, north of Warrensville and south of Mayfield. That is to say, the homes were close together and you could almost see into your neighbor’s kitchen. You could certainly hear your neighbors. The manicured lawns twinkled green and stood at just the right height. In the wintertime, the slopes of our yard provided an attractive nuisance for sledding. And all the trees stood the same height; you could tell that the neighborhood had been created within the last 10-12 years.
Everyone liked it that way, it seemed to me back then. Although we’d play and run from yard to yard and under fences, inevitably, someone else’s mother supervised us at each home. Most of the mothers stayed at home then, although I can think of at least four who went to work after we got into the upper elementary grades, but before we moved away.
I still find it amazing that I’d never met Linda Caprio before that Kindergarten sign up day. But I attended a Jewish day school nursery, and my older brother was in a Jewish day school also (although he switched to public school somewhere around this time too). My younger brother was not yet two years old. And my mother, who was 26, had just lost her mother to breast cancer (at age 52) and her mother, my great-grandmother, had moved in with us. Making friends with all the neighbors probably occupied very little of my mother’s time just then.
But finding a new playmate for me through Kindergarten sign-up led to the creation of a friendship that continues even now. In fact, the word friendship betrays the intense connection Linda and her siblings and her parents and I have with one another, likewise with all my family members.
And, until I married and settled in Ohio, I’d celebrated more Christmasses with the Caprios than I’d celebrated any other holiday with anyone else, except for Thanksgiving and the Jewish holidays of Passover, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:00 am December 24th, 2005 in Politics | Comments Off
Print This Post
Dec
24
The day before Christmas: What do Jews do, Part IVb
Filed Under Politics | Comments Off
Read Part IVa here, Part III here and here, Part II here, and Part I here and here and here.
Back in West Haven, my mother signed me up for kindergarten in the spring of 1967. I was four years old and at registration, we met a mother and daughter who, it turned out, lived across the street and up three houses from me. And we’d never met before.
The street looked like a street in University Heights west of Warrensville, or in South Euclid, north of Warrensville and south of Mayfield. That is to say, the homes were close together and you could almost see into your neighbor’s kitchen. You could certainly hear your neighbors. The manicured lawns twinkled green and stood at just the right height. In the wintertime, the slopes of our yard provided an attractive nuisance for sledding. And all the trees stood the same height; you could tell that the neighborhood had been created within the last 10-12 years.
Everyone liked it that way, it seemed to me back then. Although we’d play and run from yard to yard and under fences, inevitably, someone else’s mother supervised us at each home. Most of the mothers stayed at home then, although I can think of at least four who went to work after we got into the upper elementary grades, but before we moved away.
I still find it amazing that I’d never met Linda Caprio before that Kindergarten sign up day. But I attended a Jewish day school nursery, and my older brother was in a Jewish day school also (although he switched to public school somewhere around this time too). My younger brother was not yet two years old. And my mother, who was 26, had just lost her mother to breast cancer (at age 52) and her mother, my great-grandmother, had moved in with us. Making friends with all the neighbors probably occupied very little of my mother’s time just then.
But finding a new playmate for me through Kindergarten sign-up led to the creation of a friendship that continues even now. In fact, the word friendship betrays the intense connection Linda and her siblings and her parents and I have with one another, likewise with all my family members.
And, until I married and settled in Ohio, I’d celebrated more Christmasses with the Caprios than I’d celebrated any other holiday with anyone else, except for Thanksgiving and the Jewish holidays of Passover, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:00 am December 24th, 2005 in Politics | Comments Off
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Dec
24
What do Jews do, Part IVa: The day before the day before Christmas
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Being Jewish in a country populated primarily by Christians doesn’t bother me. And being invited to Christmas parties always makes me smile. I’ve been to many and will be going with my husband and kids to one tomorrow afternoon.
I’ve also done the stereotypical Jewish thing on Christmas eve: eat Chinese food and see a movie. And I’ve enjoyed that.
But I’m surprised when I learn from Jewish friends that they’ve never been to a Christmas event of any kind – whether its The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, or a neighbor’s Christmas day supper.
Just this week, two Jewish friends of mine explained to me how they’d been invited to Christmas gatherings and weren’t sure whether they would go. Both friends are married and the spouse of each friend is skeptical about going. I haven’t spoken with the spouses, but after speaking with my friends, we agreed that there’s a fear of the unknown as well as a fear of temptation – that the children will envy and want to celebrate something that’s not part of the Jewish tradition.
I’m living proof that it doesn’t happen like that.
From just after I was born until I was almost 12 years old, I lived in West Haven, Connecticut. Maybe five or six Jews were in my grade at the neighborhood school I attended, although there were at least two or three Jewish families on my street. There were no African-Americans at all in my neighborhood. When we moved a few miles away to Woodbridge, there still were few African-Americans, but the regional school I’d attend was about 30% Jewish and that contributed to why we moved.
To be continued…
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:47 am December 24th, 2005 in Politics | 4 Comments
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