Emilia’s World

The Dilemmas of Mixed Identity

Herbert Kohl

         Two of my most valuable possessions are the Hebrew prayer book my grandfather brought with him from Belarus in 1904 or 5, and one gold cuff link that my grandmother gave me when he died.  The other member of the pair was given to my brother.  These were all he left me other than his original membership certificate for the Arbeiter Ring (Workingman’s Circle). 

         The cuff link makes me think of the Workingmen’s Circle and the family affairs he attended in his life, wearing a rented tux and his gold cuff links.  My grandmother told me they were very important to him.  They represented his dignity in the face of poverty.

         The prayer book, with its rough hand binding and yellowing pages was published in Warsaw during the nineteenth century, and, I doubt whether there will ever be another Jewish prayer book published in Poland.  Just looking at it makes me think of pop’s passage in steerage, to Ellis Island.  He arrived at the island as Moise Okun from Bialystok and emerged as Morris Cohen from the Lower East Side. 

         I asked him about the name change and he said that an Irish immigration officer asked him if he was a Jew and, when he said. “Yes,” assigned him his American name, Morris Cohen.

         I was born Herbert Cohen.  My father changed the name to Kohl when I was in elementary school.  I remember one day going to school as Cohen and coming out as Kohl.  I don’t know how my teacher explained the change to the other children, though it did create some friction, more in the neighborhood than in the school.  There were some practicing Jews on the block who saw it as a form of selling out to America, a sign of self-hatred as a Jew.  It’s ironic to me that people making those objections also received their names at Ellis Island so they were objecting to changing one new name for another, only a generation earlier. 

         My father’s explanation was that he simply could not get work as an engineer and contractor with such an obviously Jewish a name, Sam Cohen.  I asked him if the name change ever got him into an engineering firm, and he sadly admitted that it never did.  Towards the end of his life he told me that there were threes Sam Cohens in his class at Cooper Union, Sam Cohen Bronx, Sam Cohen Brooklyn, and Sam Cohen Harlem.  He changed his name to stand out, not be a generic first generation Jew.  Being Jewish to him was a fact of birth, not a matter of conviction.  He identified more with being Yiddish than with being Jewish.  He did not celebrate any rituals, did not keep a kosher house, and, like his father, was anti-Zionist.  However he did go to Temple during Yom Kippur, usually walking out in the middle of the rabbi’s sermon. 

         Yiddish was his first language, the language of his dreams, which he returned to before he died.  He knew no Hebrew, didn’t want to learn any.  Living on East End Avenue and 86th Strret at the age of ninety, he romanced with his memories of growing up poor on Rivington Street in an immigrant Yiddish speaking community. 

         I think of these things because I recently became a grandfather and as much as I love spending time playing and talking with my granddaughter, Emilia, I get even more pleasure watching her observe people, play, make mischief, and assert her will.  She is almost three and it’s already possible to guess, from her current behavior, some of what she might be like as a teenager and adult.  I see her with overflowing energy, a strong will, a love of being with people, and a probing, restless mind.

         I am thinking about giving my two special objects to her when she is a bit older.  But what might they mean to her?  It is a challenge to give them to her with their stories attached.  I don’t want them to be just special old things she got from her grandfather but as important elements in her own story, pieces in the complex jigsaw puzzle of identities, religions, and ethnicities that will contribute to her own definition of self.

          I come from a somewhat mixed family myself.  My father’s father’s side of the family were East European, secular, socialist, Yiddish speaking, anti-Zionist Jews.  My mother’s side of the family was partially Jewish.  Her father converted to Christianity and was buried under the name Newman Jackson, changed from Hyman Jacobs.  It seems that my mother’s grandmother was born in Iraq, most likely a Sephardic Jew, who arrived in the United States towards the end of the 19th century and lived in Little Italy (now East Harlem).  It’s not clear who the father or fathers of her children were and no one in the family was willing to talk to me about it.  However, those days, 118th Street between Second and Third Avenue, where they lived, was 99.9% Italian.  In addition, one of my aunts, Addie, was married to Rocco, whose family was Calabrese or Sicilian (I heard both stories).  She was introduced to him by her own mother, my grandmother, Rosa, who encouraged the match.  It is likely that there is some Italian in my mother and therefore in me.

         My wife is half Scots and half German-English, the latter part of her family dating back to the American Revolutionary War.  Her father’s parents were Scottish immigrants and her parents were nominally Protestants.  She has never shown any interest whatever in converting to Judaism.  And we have been married for forty-seven years.

         Our oldest child, Antonia, Emilia’s aunt, is married to Beej who is half Swedish, half Roman Catholic Irish. Our son Josh, Emilia’s uncle, is married to Haruko Nishimura, who is Japanese from Yokohama.  Her family is Shinto Buddhist. 

         My other daughter, Erica, Emilia’s mom, is married to Jose, who is Mexican American with Indian, Spanish, and possibly African roots.  He was born in San Jose, California, but traveled back and forth to Guadalajara, where his parents were born, for the first fourteen years of his life.  Added up, he spent about seven of those years living in Mexico.  His mother worked in the fields and in the canneries.  She was a devout Seventh Day Adventist. Jose has six brothers and two sisters, as well as an extended family in Guadalajara.  All speak both Spanish and English fluidly.

         Emilia Soledad Arenas Kohl, who is now three, is part of our complex and diverse family and I wonder what she makes of us.  Some things I am certain of.  She knows that grandma and grandpa (Judy and I are her only living grandparents) speak English, her mother speaks mostly English but some Spanish, and her father speaks English and Spanish.  Also she knows her dad communicates with her in Spanish.  Its easy to tell that this isn’t a problem for her since she communicates with Jose in Spanish, and communicates with Judy and me in English with some Spanish thrown in.  Her bilingualism has been carefully nurtured.  She attends a Spanish only preschool and most of her friends only speak Spanish.  The thinking behind this is that it is essential for her learn to speak grammatical Spanish fluently as soon as possible, since, once she is old enough to attend public school the predominant language will be English.  In addition she will read and write in English, watch English language television and movies, and live in a predominantly English-speaking world.  We all want her to be thoroughly literate in Spanish as well as English.  It is important that she does not lose her Spanish through school and the media, as many young Latinos do.

         I believe she will be comfortable and rooted in her Mexican American background.  I also think she will be equally at ease with living in a multicultural, inter-racial context of our family.

         However, I worry about how she will understand and relate to being part Jewish.  Though I made Bar Mitzvah, none of my children did.  My parents never said a word about it, and, as strange as this may sound, Judy and I never thought about it.  We were not connected to any church or temple community and still aren’t. 

         As a family we make up a rich gumbo and respect the traditions that have all contributed spices to the stew.  At present secular Judaism is a minor factor in our lives.  Yet it is important to me that Emilia know about her Yiddish and Jewish roots, just as she will know her Mexican roots.  However her Mexican and Mexican American identity is alive for her.  She knows Jose’s brothers and sisters, goes to an all Spanish language pre-school, and spends time with Jose’s nieces and nephews.  There is no way, other than through me, that she can acquire a sense of that part of her identity that is Jewish.

         So what is Jewish identity?  How does it manifest itself in my life?  Usually it came from without, not from within.  I experienced anti-Semitism as a child in the Bronx, in Harvard and Oxford, and sometimes in Harlem where I taught.  I’ve also experienced it in the Twin Cities, at the Jesuit University of Sam Francisco, and in the small town in Northern California, Point Arena, where I have lived for over 30 years.  None of this surprised me and I’ve managed to wend my way through the labyrinth of prejudice and ignorance that has been a continuing but marginal part of my life.  I expected it, resisted it, and went on with the life and work I chose for myself.  Of course it’s had an effect upon how I see the world and encounter people.  Even in my son-in-law, Jose’s family, I intuit a suspicion of Jews and a certain reticence when they are in my presence.  Perhaps this is my problem, but I rather doubt it when in the presence of fundamentalist Christians.

         And so I worry about Emi’s identity.  Mexican and Mexican American cultural will firmly establish themselves in her life.  But how can I tell Emi about “Jewish values,” and have her understand the cultural and history of my side of the family?  And so what are so-called Jewish values anyway?  Are they values all Jews respect and act upon?  Are there values that are only internal to some groups of Jews?  Are they universal and if so why are they Jewish?  Do they differ from the Scottish progressive values of my wife, to the radical Catholic values of one of my son-in-law’s family, to the values of Mexican or Japanese socialists?  Where is the “Jewishness” in valuing economic and social justice?  Certainly the people in my family do not need to learn about justice, struggle, and love from Jewish sources.  It is part of the very fabric of all of our lives.

         I have been struggling to make sense of what being part Jewish, a Jew and yet not a Jew, might mean to Emi.   Recently I came upon a story about the philosopher Henri Bergson that expresses what I hope for Emilia.  Bergson came from a Parisian secular, non-practicing Jewish family of Polish Jewish origins.  After living a secular life, he decided to convert to Roman Catholicism in his old age.  He had never lived as a Jew and at least ostensibly did not define himself as Jewish.  During the Second World War the collaborationist Vichy government passed anti-Jewish laws, which eventually led to the deportation and murder of French Jews in Nazi concentration camps.  Bergson was a member of the Legion of Honor and the Academie Francais.  The Vichy government offered him an exemption from these laws.  He not only refused, but also renounced all of his honors, and signed the Jewish Roles, which made him eligible for deportation.  As little as he may have identified as a Jew, when it came to the oppression of the Jewish people he insisted upon being Jewish.  He could not betray his people no matter how far he had moved from them.  Bergson died soon after he signed but otherwise he may have died in the camps along with other French Jews.

         I have not faced Bergson’s choice, but Emilia might, in less threatening circumstances, but would she be able to respond to being called a Jew by her peers?  This is not paranoia.  I have been around young people long enough to know that thoughtless statements about race and identity are used, either aggressively, or in self-defense.

         I remember lending a kid a dollar.  He was Irish and lived a few houses down from me.  Those days a dollar was a lot of money for a kid to have, so, a week after he promised to repay me, I asked for my money back.  His response was simply, “You Jews only think about money.”

         He never paid me back but he educated me despite himself.  Since that day I’ve never lent anyone money.  If someone asks me for a loan and it seems worth doing I simply do not expect it to be repaid.  I hate to play money games and won’t play them. 

         In other contexts, at Harvard and Oxford, I’ve been told casually, that I wasn’t like the rest of “them,” Jews, my family, the people I grew up with, some of whom I loved.

         So what night Emi face?   And, if all she knows about being a Jew is the reaction of others, what strength can that knowledge provide?  There has to be more and I am struggling to define what this “more” might be.

         I am sure Emi could pass and it would hard for her friends and teachers to guess that she is part Jewish if they didn’t know me.  So is she safe, immune, insulated, and ignorant of what made her life possible – my grandparents’ flight from the pogroms, the struggle of Morris and Becky Cohen to create a haven from oppression and poverty, first on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and then in the Bronx.  And of the strength they drew from their landsmen and the bonds of family and culture that kept them alive?

     She will certainly know the immigrant voyages of Jose’s family and, in fact, can go back to Guadalajara where she has both relatives and the language.  But what of my family’s migrations and struggles?  We have no place to return to, no relatives left there.  The small town Becky Cohen escaped from is not even a burial ground.  Most likely it is now a field or a factory.

     Will Emi know that she is somewhat of a Jew and therefore should be alerted to the problems and aware of the pleasures that it provides to all of us who are more fully Yids?  And will she feel it?  That, most of all!  She’ll learn the facts, she’ll probably know what the holidays are, perhaps have a sense of the history.  But will it become part of her character, her understanding of how she landed here, in California, during the first decade of the 21st Century?

         During the last High Holidays Emi’s nursery school, which is a Spanish language school, sung what she and my daughter Erica told me was a Rosh Hashanah song.  I don’t know any such songs; don’t remember singing any as a child.  According to them it was about raisons and fruits and something – maybe something from Purim.  I told them I didn’t know from such songs, but otherwise didn’t say anything.  As secular as I am, I was surprised by how much that small, and I’m sure generous, incident offended me.  The most important and, in my father’s family, only sacred time of the year reduced to an inappropriate song.  I worried, not merely for Emi, but for her mom, my daughter, Erica, and for myself.  For I gave Erica many Bronx stories, many Yiddish tales, many stories about my parents, and a sense of past anti-Semitism.  But what about the pluses, the things to be proud of?   I assumed she would pick up the tradition of learning, the sense of the importance of critical analysis and thoughtful thought, of the need to do service to others, of the respect for traditions, and the commitment to social and economic justice that I imbibed from my grandfather who, when he drank his Canadian Club every evening when he came home from work, told me tales about the socialist Yiddish world he grew up in and never abandoned until he died at 84.

         And Erica did imbibe those ideas.  She lives them, is an educator and activist.  However she drank from more than one fountain.  My wife, Judy, her mom, has the same values held with the same strength and stubbornness.  Her Scottish background, her history, coming from the removals and from a deep sense of what injustice does to people is as strong as mine.  Erica comes by her values through family, but they are not for her Jewish values, but our values, the way her parents have lived their lives. 

         Jose, Emi’s father also has the same values and came by them through hard experience.  His mother worked in the fields, his father in the canneries.  They migrated from Mexico and made their hard way to the middle class in the United States just as my parents did.  He’s a painter and a scholar, a lover of learning.  Emi, I’m convinced, will, however complex her journey might be, will come by her values through family and tradition.  I want mine to be part of that formation.

         All of this has led me to rethink my own relationship to Judiasm.  After all, I can’t possibly teach anyone else anything substantial until I have clarified my own understanding and commitments.  There are some aspects of Judiaic thinking that have troubled me from even before my Bar Mitzvah.  First was the idea of being a member of a chosen people whose wanderings and suffering would redeem mankind when the Messiah arrived.  I understand involuntary wandering since that was the history of my family.  It is the story of refugees from war and oppression throughout history.  And the idea of being chosen provided strength to counter the oppression, but I don’t believe that the Jewish people, however strong and oppressed we have been over the centuries, were chosen for anything but what we choose to be.  So, for Emi, I would like her to understand that “chosen” is a matter of choice, that she should draw strength from the people who came before her.  But I would never tell her to depend upon ultimate salvation or Messiahs of any stripe.

         She will certainly be exposed to the Christian Messianic thinking of Jose’s sisters, and I think it might be useful for her to encounter Judaic Messianic ideas as well.  It might be a way for her to avoid becoming entangled in dueling Messianic traditions and stay grounded in the more secular ideas of struggle here and now with no guarantee of success but with deep moral and personal reward.

         The question of being chosen leads to the other dilemma I feel Emi should understand.  A chosen people has a chosen land.  So what about Emi and Israel?  None of my children qualify for Israeli citizenship since their mother never converted.  I think it’s a burden they do not have to bear.  Above and beyond the question of whether the Jews are a chosen people, is whether they, as a group, are entitled to a homeland in Palestine.  I understand the need for a place for Jews to settle after the Shoah, and am partially sympathetic to Palestine being the theologically and historically a driven choice.  But I remember, in the late 1940’s, during the time of the creation of the state of Israel, when I was asked to raise money for the United Jewish Fund, and, in summer camp, trained to fight for the Yiddish army, being appalled by the racist and vicious jokes about the stupidity of Palestinians and about “our” right to extinguish them.  I found those words identical to the language I had heard about Irish and blacks and Italians from some people my insular Yiddish community in the Bronx.  My father’s family, being non- and anti-Zionist, understood that these were just ways of justifying stealing other people’s land.  Yet they were also torn, because those of their relatives in the Pale who were not burnt in the ovens, needed a place to settle.  They simply could not go back to live amongst their murderers.  So I grew up with a deep ambiguity towards Israel, one which, I find is now more than ever justified.

         How can I explain all of this to Emi, or more importantly, to Erica, her mom?  Or convey to Erica that these problems are my problems, and could be her problems too?  Is it just a matter of them knowing the history?  Not for me: it is emotional, intellectual, visceral, and deeply troubling. 

         This all leads back to Judy and my dilemma: in our family there are no values that can be called distinctively Jewish or Christian values.  From different cultures and with different histories, the values of people in my immediate family converge on a life lived for justice and equity, for the fulfillment of personal dreams, and for being of use to others.

         So-called Jewish values are not unique in my experience.  I’ve had arguments with people over this.  They claim Jews invented these values, even if there are many Jews who don’t observe them.  Could be.  Don’t know.  The fact that these values are ancient and often contested may help me with my Emi dilemma.  I hope she will understand, in an immediate way that, through my ancestors, she has been part of struggles for decency, that my ancestors have suffered genocide just as Jose’s did at the hands of the Spanish, and that she is, for all of us, a survivor with the capacity to thrive, but also with the need to remember and be wary of what the world can do to individuals and to peoples. 

         I want her to know what it means to be part Jewish.  To many some my Jewish friends this is sacrilegious. You’re either Jewish or not, no middle ground.  I don’t mean to insult, but it is clear, in my family, and in many other families I know, identifying with a single religion and a single tradition is divisive, unwelcome, and not at all related to the experiences of our children and grandchildren.  I want Emi to be knowledgeable about her Jewish roots, to feel proud of part of her complex history, and to know enough about Judaism to be able to draw upon Jewish texts and people for inspiration, education, and nurturance.  But I never want her to be in the position of having to decide whether she is Jewish or Christian, East European, Scottish, or Mexican, whether she is partial to her mother or her father’s traditions, or whether she is anyone other than that splendid and unique mix of cultures, religions, races, and traditions, which she has been blessed with and which she will know well enough to be able to draw upon throughout her life.

         On thinking back upon my experience over the past 72 years, being Jewish and being Yiddish, has created an echo, a murmur, a whisper in my soul that has always been with me and sometimes rises to the surface, especially  when I feel melancholy, offended, or surprise myself with the strength to continue struggling for justice when sometimes it seems hopeless.  It drives me, succors me, pushes me, sometimes torments me, sometimes, delights me.  I love reaching back to the Bronx and my grandparents when I feel weak or when I feel particularly strong.  I am still rooted there and wish to find a way for Erica and Emi to understand what this means, how rootedness can enhance joy and provide stamina in hard times.  And even more, for this has been the central driving force in my life, is to convey to them a love of the book.  Reading and writing have been my constant companions and I hope Emi will understand that the sacred is not just in Bibles and other religious texts, but in literature and poetry, in speaking well, listening, and in honoring people by honoring their words.

         Is this the key to my Jewish identity?  It’s a major dilemma to me.  We are supposed to be a people of the book but there were no books in my house, my parents thought I was a fool to become a writer and I am sure my father never read a word I have written.  No one studied the Talmud, and there were no intellectuals, artisits, or musicians in my immediate family.  Is it osmosis, myth – it’s hard for me to know but I intuit that, however remote, that part of me that I could call distinctly Jewish is my persistent, continual, obsessive love of books, writing, and teaching.. 

         I have focused my concerns for Erica, Emi, and her beloved aunt, my other daughter, Tonia on two objects – the prayer and the cuff link – that is, on the book and on pride and the social presentation of one’s self.  The mind and world – I want them to understand what they, as being part Jewish, have to learn from their ancestor’s creations, joys and sufferings.

         I love Emi as the three year old she is and think a lot about her as a twenty and twenty-five year old.  I’ll never know her in her young adulthood and it saddens me.  I can’t tell her all the stories I want to, teach her things I’ve learned throughout my life.  Old age is wonderful for me – I have time to think, remember, rethink the past, think of what is and what might have been, to revisit my mistakes and my loves, understand how I grew as a teacher and writer, reflect on my courage and cowardice, and try to figure out what I have accomplished in my life.

         It is urgent to leave something of my life and stories, and of the tradition I grew up in unto the 10th generation, and counting from my grandfather, Emi is the fifth generation.  What can I give her to pass on other than two objects sacred to me?

         Fundamentally I want Emi to understand the sentiments expressed by a mentor of mine, the poet, Muriel Rukeyser, who was as much a secular Jew as I am, in this poem:

To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century (1944)

Wishing to be invisible, you choose

 Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.

 Accepting, take full life. Full agonies...

   To be a Jew in the twentieth century

 Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,

 Wishing to be invisible, you choose

 Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.

 Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:

 Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood

 Of those who resist, fail, and resist: and God

 Reduced to a hostage among hostages.

The gift is torment.

   The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee

For every human freedom, suffering to be free,

Daring to live for the impossible.

         I hope Emi will someday understand what it means to dare to live for the impossible, to dream of it.  But this is not for a three year old. 

         My grandfather’s prayer book and cuff link have to come to her with understanding, stories, culture, pain and pleasure.  I know I have to give them to Erica and Tonia, and not to Emi herself.  It is too early in her life, and they have to pass generation to generation.  So I will give the objects and my stories to my daughters to hold in trust for Emi.  Hopefully the will help her remember that her Jewish heritage is more than holdays and songs and celebrations, but an acknowledgment of the struggles we have made to make her life possible.  At best, it will be passing to torch for her to respect the book, celebrate her and other people’s lives, and accept the necessity of struggling for equity and justice throughout her life.