“By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat
And also we wept
When we remembered
Zion.”
Psalm 137:1
Every summer since my father died, we have spent two months with our grandparents in the country. Even after we become seamstresses and are out of school, we still take summers off to be with our father’s family.
We ride there by horse and buggy, and we spend the day in the carriage playing games and looking out the window at the apple and pear trees that stretch for miles.
When we get off the wagon near my grandparent’s house, my aunt and uncle are waiting there to greet us. They live in the same house as my grandparents. My uncle helps Mama with the suitcases and my aunt Leah Mariam gives her a long hug. She is at least a head taller than my mother and strikingly beautiful, like a movie star from another world, and with the most gentle mannerisms.
“It has been too long, Chaya Necha,” she says.
“I know, there is so much to catch up on,” Mama says. “Oy, I missed you.”
“Come, I will help you get settled,” Leah Mariam says. “Ma and Ta are waiting in the living room. They have all the kids.”
Mama laughs. Leah Mariam has a lot of kids. Every two years she has had twins. She has never had a singleton yet!
“Hi, my beautiful nieces and darling nephew!” she says to us warmly. “Yecheskel, you got so big!
“I am already Bar Mitzvah,” he says.
“My goodness, where does the time go? And Rosie and Leah, you are both more beautiful every time I see you!”
We smile. This means so much coming from her.
We walk to the house together. It is bigger and grander than our house. My grandparents are in the living room sitting on the couch when we step in. It is a little too quiet in the room. Grandfather is nothing like Zaidy Heilbrun. He smiles at us when we come to him and gives us hugs but there is already a baby in each of his arms so he cannot get too close. Mama and Leah Mariam go into the kitchen for tea and then upstairs to unpack our things. We watch the younger kids in the meantime and tell Bubbe and Zaidy all that has happened since the last time we saw them.
Mama comes down the stairs with Leah Mariam.
“Are the rooms OK for you?” Bubbe asks.
“They are fine, thank you.”
Things are quiet again and then one of the twins starts crying and Leah Mariam scoops him up.
“I am going to change his diaper.”
“Come outside with us!” Leah Mariam’s five-year-old twins, Baila and Moshe, say.
We are happy to oblige. The warm summer sun and cool green grass are beckoning to us.
Once we get settled in, the summer with our grandparents is glorious. Leah and I had been growing sick of sitting indoors all day with a hot iron and tiny pins pricking our fingers. The field near our grandparents’ home never seems to end. The sun is warm, but we don’t get too hot because there are many trees to shade us. The air is fresh and smells of grass and sun. Each morning we wake up with an entire day stretched out before us and no work to do. All our cousins come to visit us. Faigy, our cousin who is our age, comes to visit us, too. We spend the whole week together. She sings like a bird with everything she does. She does not even realize she is singing. Her father has big wheat fields for his business and one day he takes us on a trip to go see them. We get out of his car near the fields, and we look in awe at the rows and rows of wheat stalks flowing in the wind. I cannot believe this is what they use to make matzah1 for Pesach.2 My other uncle owns a big vinegar factory. One night he comes over and tells us stories in his deep voice before we go to sleep. I wish he would tell us stories of what my father was like as a little boy, but no one speaks of him at all.
In August, Tisha B’Av3 comes around. It is the fasting day to mourn the destruction of the Temple. Before the fast starts we sit on the floor and eat a meal of hard-boiled eggs with ashes on top and rye bread without any butter. The sun sets and the fast starts and Zaidy leaves the room. I hear him crying from the study and it is shocking to hear my quiet, gruff Zaidy like that.
Later, as we are going to sleep, I notice Yecheskel put a rock from outside on the floor of the room.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“It is Tisha B’Av. The one day a year that we take time to remember that life isn’t the way it should be.”
“OK, you are already fasting. You don’t need a rock to do that.”
“I don’t want to sleep with a comfy pillow. I want to remember even in my sleep.”
“So, sleep with your head on the floor. Why the rock?”
“Did you know that when Yaakov slept on the land where the Temple was to be built, he put 12 rocks under his head, and they all merged into one? They symbolized how although we are all separate, as the 12 tribes were, we really are one. I want to do the same. On the day we remember the temple we lost; I want to remember that.”
“You are so sweet, Cheskel, but that’s just crazy. You cannot sleep on a rock. Here, take your pillow.”
“I don’t want the pillow. Do you know why our Temple was destroyed? We destroyed it by destroying ourselves. We are all one, but we didn’t know that, and we ripped each other apart and by doing so we ripped ourselves apart. We may seem different, but I am you and you are me and we are all part of each other. We are all part of God, living within Him. We have to know that!”
“What does Tisha B’Av have to do with that?”
“All destruction comes from thinking about others as different than you. To be cruel to someone, you cannot think of them as yourself. So, we make them a stranger in our eyes. As if we don’t all have the same blood in our veins, as if we don’t breathe the same air. No one can be cruel unless they really view someone as different but that rips the world apart. We cannot be different. We are all part of the same God. We are never alone.”
“And that is why the temple was destroyed?”
“On Tisha B’Av, not only was the Temple destroyed. On Tisha B’Av it is the day that all evil came into this world. And yes, in the time of the Temple, we were destroying ourselves from the inside. We were like a baby trying to break free from our mother’s womb because we couldn’t be one with the mother. But we couldn’t breathe on our own. Did you know that in the time that the Temple was destroyed, we were acting cruel to one another, and God was really supposed to kill us all, but He loves us so much that He let His Temple burn down instead? Now He has nowhere to go. I am not taking the pillow.” And with that, he lays his head down on the rock and covers himself with a blanket.
“Tisha B’Av is going to be a holiday one day,” he whispers as we all lie down to go to sleep. “We are going to learn; we are going to come together as one and it will be because of Tisha B’Av that we learn. We are going to dance together and eat a feast so delicious; you will not believe we ever fasted on this day. Believe me, we are going to celebrate on Tisha B’Av one day.”
“He is so mature,” Leah whispers to me as he falls asleep.
“Can you believe that’s our baby brother?” I ask. We both look at the almost teenager lying on the rock.
“I hope he is right,” Leah says.
We don’t know what is coming. We don’t know that we will soon be seen as strangers—not as humans—so that the cruelest acts in the world can be done to us. Everything that Yecheskel has said tonight will become reality in only one year. The entire world as we know it will fracture at its seams and explode into smithereens, causing destruction to everyone and everything in its wake. All because we haven’t yet learned to view each other as ourselves . . . that we are the furthest thing from strangers . . . that we are all part of one whole. But some people will want to remain separate, and by pulling us apart, they will unravel the very essence of what keeps the world whole, until it has no choice but to explode. Like a cancer, splitting the body’s own cells until every organ breaks down and the body, by doing to its own, dies.
The rest of the summer passes uneventfully. When September comes around and the tips of the trees start turning colors, we are sad to go. We hug our grandparents and aunts and uncles goodbye.
“See you next summer!” they say as they wave.
We wave back from the buggy. “See you then!”