Joy's Bio Story 50 years later

Joy's Bio Story, 50 years later. Not a rabbi's daughter. 

A self examination during Torah Parshat Vayishlach,

 where Jacob, Ya'akov asked angel after struggling, for an authentic blesSing with his name, and Jacob was renamed Israel. 

Dear Torah ladies, chevre,

Reflecting on sensitive questions asked of me following our Torah class today (with Chabad Rebbetzin Tzippy), my memory brought back images. 

The main truth that mother-in-law Thea Krauthammer, z"l, learned from the rabbis on the bima at my husband's, z"l, funeral, was that Marcel had been seriously sick with disease and surgeries during 18 years, and I had loyally cared for him with his couple dozen surgeries, and that he had been paralyzed for over a couple years.  Marcel had mostly hidden this from his mother, as his father had died a year prior to Marcel's first cancer surgery in 1988.

I realized that what others shared after Torah class was actually similar to my experience in being a future daughter-in-law.

Following my husband’s 2006 death, only then could I have conversations with my mother-in-law, that could heal decades of sadness for me. 

It was during that same Shiva week, that I asked my MIL about why I had been treated so badly, hurting me. 

She too, as in your personal stories, had believed that her son was taken away from her, by me, from the Yeshivah life that she had given to him following her (and her husband's) escaping from Nazi Europe, and then finding freedom.

Sure enough, the parents had BLAMED me for their son’s partially distancing himself from Orthodoxy. 

Marcel, z”l, in his entire life, never davened anywhere but in traditional or Orthodox minyans or at home. Marcel studied Torah every week. Marcel was a Ba'al Koreh. Marcel would only eat kosher.

In shock hearing this 'blame,' I carefully explained to my MIL that her elder son, the yeshivah bucher, had already distanced himself BEFORE HE MET ME, during the few years while he was at Yeshivah’s Einstein Medical School in the Bronx, New York, while the parents lived in Montreal, Canada.  His peers confirmed this distancing. 

I told Thea that when I met her son, he never even told me the first few months that he was Orthodox, nor kosher, which he clearly kept his entire life. I found out about his Orthodox life style when we shared that first Pesach at his family home. Sadly, I still recall the tears because of how the parents treated me...

Later... I asked him why he had never told me about his religiosity for the first few months of our dating.  He replied that he "did not want to lose me”.  There were some awkward then unexplainable situations...

So for a few decades of our marriage, there was DETACHMENT from his family, etc., until I finally asked -"WHY?" I spent decades trying to 'prove myself.'  I had value.  For their approval of me, with sad heart, I even changed my chosen career path from talented "chippy artist" to medical social worker.

No, I was not a 'shiksa'. I would not take the quarter and go to local store on Shabbat to buy the newspaper. And NO, when asked, I would not press elevator buttons in a "Shabbat elevator."

In that first year of courting, Purim promptly rolled around and we went to Yeshivah U. for a Megillah reading.  With me, Marcel sat in the balcony at far back, and I had no idea why, with no information on mechitzahs.

I had had NO formal religious education. I didn’t know why chometz was removed from my family home during Pesach.  We had Seders and Chanukah growing up at home. 

Then, months after meeting Marcel, on my own out of curiosity, I went to 770 Eastern Parkway to daven, and I met The Rebbe, and he gave me honey cake, and I had no idea who he was...  I had seen this building down the street from the Brooklyn Museum where I was doing graduate art studies. 

Actually, the year before I had traveled to Brooklyn from Queens because a stranger had invited me to dinner at his home in that neighborhood. I got all the way to the brown brick house and turned around and returned to Queens because I coudn't figure out why a stranger had invited me to Shabbat dinner at his home. Clearly, G*d did not give up on me.

OH, the other thing I was told by Marcel was that -  I “WAS NOT a Rabbi’s daughter," and that was not OK.

Better yet than being a 'daughter,' after my Non-Profit MBA, I was accepted to rabbinic school in 1994, but with Marcel’s increasing new cancer tumors, rabbinics didn’t happen for me. In fact, before my MBA, for years I directed a Jewish women’s education consortium, hiring rabbis/teachers from all denominations including Chabad Lubavitch, etc. I had also run a Jewish gift shop and created a Jewish art gallery, run Jewish bus tours, was Arts Editor for a Jewish Magazine, published also my own Jewish magazine, Chai Lights, and for decades exhibited my own art (ceramics and photography) in Jewish locations, and taught Torah workshops. In addition, my favorite current passionate profession since 1990, the last three decades, is also as a performing percussionist for Jewish groups/bands. AND I love being a Bubbie.

Blessed, I did become a "spiritual daughter" (as he called me) of a beloved rabbi, z"l. I continue my personal studies, and continue to serve Jewish and secular community.

"Ivdu Et Hashem B'Simcha"  Serve G*d With Joy  -Psalm 100:2

May we all be blessed to be surrounded and filled with Light this Kislev, and always.

JOY Krauthammer

12.13.2019

PS

This month, December 2019  is 50 YEARS since I met Marcel in 1969 in NY, the year of my mother’s, z”l, death, too young.

It is 45 years ago this week that I was wrongfully subjected to a secular civic wedding in a judge’s chamber, Dec. 18, 1974, so that I could be legally married.

I had a dear elder friend from Poland, also a survivor, who knew of Marcel’s family. 

She told me that Marcel came from “royalty," and I had NO idea what she was speaking of. 

Not long ago I saw Marcel's ancestral family TREE, and the 17 generations of rabbis, some of whom were renowned.

That, I realized, was the “royalty”.

And I had "no traceable family lineage." That was NOT OK.

My maternal great-grandmother, Perle, in Russia was renowned for her delicious Challah, before they escaped from the Czar, to America!

This Family Tree, in photo below, hung for decades in my in-law’s home. It was commissioned by David Horowitz, Thea Krauthammer's brother.

Marcel's maternal grandfather, Meschulem, aka Salo, is listed as generation #17. 

The photo below is of my secular wedding ceremony 45 years ago this week, along with my chuppah photo a month earlier. The rabbis weren't present for the secular certificate, only for the Ketubah. I had a Chabad chuppah. That would take a book to write... 

(My daughter met her hubby at Chabad and that Chabad rabbi and rebbetzin from across the country, were at their chuppah! And my grandchildren know their local Chabad families. I am grateful. My MIL became a beloved great-grandmother, celebrating every Shabbat with her little ones.)

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