Comment

Post a comment

Leave a comment below or email dmj@mindspring.com with corrections.

Mameve Medwed - Part II date not known

Instagram - MaineJewishHistory

View this post on Instagram

Mameve Medwed memoir Part II “My mother’s grandfather had been the first rabbi in Bangor; his son, my grandfather, was an atheist. My mother aspired to WASPdom, she worshipped Boston Brahmins the way Pollyanne’s family worshipped Jesus; She was suspicious of anything that reeked of ‘nouveau.’ She liked old furniture and faded carpets and falling-apart cars. Our old falling-apart house was nothing like the spiffy subdivisions in the development called ‘Little Israel’ where a lot of the Jewish community lived...My mother didn’t belong to the Jewish organizations that the mothers of my Jewish friends had joined—Hadassah, the Sisterhood, the JCC. She was the proud integrator ... of formerly restrictive groups, the only Jewish woman on the board of the Y, the Family Service Committee, the only Jewish member of the Athena Club. She was notorious—and proud of the fact—for arriving at bar mitzvah celebrations after the service and just when the reception would start. She poured cocktails at five o’clock and preferred watercress sandwiches with the crusts cut off to chopped liver on rye. We ate white bread. A bagel was never sliced on our kitchen countertop. My father led a secret life which both mystified and excluded me. Mornings, I saw him wrap strange things around his arm, attach a little leather box to his forehead, sling a striped and fringed shawl over his shoulders and rock back and forth. ‘What’s he doing?’ I’d ask my mother. ‘Prayers,’ she’d dismiss. My father had grown up in a kosher house. My father prayed. My father went to the synagogue. These were things better ignored—a secret family shame like drinking or adultery. Meanwhile, my friends and cousins used to head to the synagogue for potato pancake parties... ‘Why can’t we get a menorah?’ I’d ask my mother. ‘And leave those candles burning?’ she’d cringe. She who set ablaze dozens of white tapers in their antique candlesticks on the sideboard and dining table for Saturday night dinner parties. ‘Besides,’ she replied, ‘you have Hebrew school...’” #mamevemedwed #jewishmaine #jewishwomen #memoir #mainewriters

A post shared by Documenting Maine Jewry (@mainejewishhistory) on

Thank you to DMJ for the video
People: Mameve Medwed