How My Mexican-American Wife Became Jewish
by Sam Bluefarb (August 2014)
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
–Ruth I: 16-17
Thus began a correspondence with a dark-eyed beauty with a flirtatious sparkle in her eyes. I learned that she had graduated from James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles (or “Garfield High”), that same school where, decades later, the storied Jaime Escalante of the film “Stand and Deliver” (1988) would inspire under-achieving students to succeed in passing a challenging course in calculus. The celebrated event would eventually bring fame to both teacher and students, and redound to the greater glory of the school.
By the time we were discharged from hospital, we had exchanged a fair number of letters, enough to suggest that things had gone beyond a pleasant diversion, and that we shared a love of “deeper” things—books, music, the arts. Thus, it seemed natural, if not inevitable, that we would eventually meet.
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After graduation from high school she went to work as a saleslady at the Broadway Department Store in downtown Los Angeles. Even then, there was a need for bilingual personnel to serve the needs of the largely Spanish-speaking community. And although she didn’t overdo her ethnicity as does today’s compulsive diversity crowd in government, in academia — particularly in academia, its spawning ground (She was turned off by the newer self-conscious “Chicana”), her feelings about her dual heritage ran deep. Two of her brothers had been in the service during World War II and one soon after. Sal, the eldest, who had enlisted with the Army Air Corps (later the US Air Force), was killed during a training mission before he had the chance to go overseas. Once, after we’d been married many years and were driving through a residential neighborhood of a small Arizona town, she turned to me. “This is the Mexican part of town.” “How do you know?” “Because of the flowers.” She smiled a pensive little smile. Moments later something more solemn came over her, and both her words and tone reflected an altered mood. “I love my people, Sammy. I feel so sorry for the ones who don’t have decent jobs and are so mistreated.” This was no ersatz politically driven “compassion.” Whatever the trend toward the hyphenated American, or the more trendy “Chicana/Chicano,” she was always treasured her ethnic and cultural heritage, but she was equally proud of her (unhyphenated) American birthright. As for job opportunities for Mexican-Americans in those far-off days, her brother Joe (Joseph Vincent) had had an instructive experience of his own.
After discharge from the navy, he had gone back to college and earned a Bachelor’s and, later, a Master’s degree and a teaching credential. But that didn’t translate into a job right away. A principal had discouraged him with the lame excuse: “You may not feel comfortable in this community.” Not so subtly omitted was the qualifying “Anglo.” He was eventually hired by a fair-minded administrator in the predominantly Mexican-American school district of Alhambra. Since those days, the situation has dramatically improved, of course.
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Other than the illusion of a marriage born of romance and a never-ending honeymoon, most marriages, when it comes down to it, are entered into with a skein of conscious and unconscious reasons — the “bonding” already alluded to, a need for roots and stability, a preference for one person over another, and the recognition of a growing need (in me) for all of those. (Due to that earlier star-crossed experience, I had already been inoculated against the romantic agony called ‘falling in love.” A deeper love for my wife would grow over the years.) That led to a decision to “commit.” Some months later, we were married — once by a justice of the peace, the second time (by her choice) by a rabbi.
Why did this Catholic wish to re-affirm the civil ceremony with a religious one — and a Jewish one at that? Children. Neither of us was very observant, but she felt that raising our kids in dual Christian and Jewish traditions could only lead to confusion and inner tensions, a burden no growing child should be expected to bear. That decision — actually it was her decision —could not have been easy for her! But the concern was for naught, for she lost the baby, and we learned that due to gynecological problems, there could never be another. Long after, in moments of introspection, I would ask myself: was that G-d’s due — “punishment” is too strong a word — for our dual transgressions — a “conversion” that was not Halachically2 “pure,” and a marriage ceremony that may have been a sop to guilt? Ironically, afterthoughts are a luxury that can only be indulged in after the fact, when they can no longer make any difference.
The civil ceremony took place in the Santa Barbara County Court House, its Moorish-Spanish architecture, a simulation of the nearby, historic (1786) Santa Barbara Mission. Six months later, a Reform rabbi married us, with the assurance that the marriage would serve to unite us, not only as husband and wife but as Jews. That would come back to haunt us when I applied for an exchange teaching year in Israel. In any event, the rabbi congratulated us, along with Mazeltovs! (Congratulations!) from two temple members who acted as witnesses and co-signed the beautifully illuminated ketubah,3 with its carefully wrought Aramaic lettering.
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4 some of which she could understand. Most of the Center’s congregation had originally come from the Greek Island of Rhodes, a community that had shared with their Ashkenazic brethren the terrors and atrocities of the Nazi occupation.* On July 20th, 1944, over 1500 Rhodes Jews were sent to Auschwitz where most were murdered. A sampling of names on a website commemorating the Shoah (the Holocaust) and the Jews of Rhodes who died in it, testifies to the Hispanic origins of many of them. Their names resonate with a haunting intimacy that no stark list of numbers can ever do justice to:
Ezra Hanán de Moreno, Rosa Franco de Joseph, Benjamín Cordoval de Isaac, Vittoria Perez du feu Baruch, Estrella Benveniste de David, Renata Notrica de Judá, Rosa Notrica de Samuel, Linda Benveniste de Isaac, Rubén Codrón de Santos. . .
Something comparable to the encounter with the Hassid, but with less zealotry, took place when I applied for a one-year teaching assignment in Israel. I made an appointment with an Israeli consular representative who had an office in the old Los Angeles Jewish Federation Building, now long removed from its East Hollywood location to the West Side.
After some initial small talk, the official came to the point. Was my wife Jewish? What did that have to do with my qualifications for the position? (This was several years before my encounter with the Hassid, so that I wasn’t quite ready for the nature of the question or what had prompted it.) My response was that, yes, she was.” He shot a quick glance at my wife, then back at me. “Parents Jewish?”
“She’s a convert.”
“How was she converted?”
That stumped me. I must have looked the idiot he was convinced I was. And so he helped me. “Was it an Orthodox conversion?”
“In that case,” my inquisitor came back, “your marriage will not be recognized as ‘kosher’ in Israel,” he smiled. “In other words, you will be living in sin. . . . but if your wife would consider an Orthodox conversion. . .” I said we’d think about it and we left shortly thereafter.
Sheepish, I offered, “Maybe you could undergo an Orthodox conversion. It certainly wouldn’t be as traumatic as for a male.”
The levity suddenly vanished and, again, indignation switched into high gear. “I’ve heard about those Orthodox conversions for women… They baptize you and make you take a bath in those. . . those. . . ?”
“Mikvas,” I supplied.
“Mikvas—Shmikvas! I’m not going to undress in front of a bunch of old goats.”
“Rabbis. But they won’t see you. They hang up a sheet to cover your modesty. Women from the sisterhood do the honors. And the rabbi says the prayers on the other side of the sheet.”
“Nothing doing, Buster. If you can’t take me as I am, then get yourself a nice Jewish girl — the real article.”
“You’re my nice Jewish girl.” And the following summer, we went to Israel—as pilgrim tourists.
* * *
Although she was not Halachically Jewish, she was Jewish in a way that no rote ritual could ever match. Many years earlier, she needed to go into hospital for a breast biopsy. Such procedures are anything but routine. In a pre-op letter to her sister, she reminded her that “As you know, I embraced the Jewish religion, and if things don’t turn out right for me, please help Sam carry out the arrangements according to the Jewish faith.” Results of the biopsy were negative and she went on to live for another twenty-two years. When she died and was buried at the non-denominational Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, just a few miles east of the White Memorial Hospital where she was born, I made sure all Jewish honors were tendered, and I conducted the graveside service with my recital of the Kaddish.
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Her plaque up at Rose Hills Memorial Park bears the requisite birth and death dates. An engraved Magen David (Star of David), set between them, complements the inadequate sentiments of the text:
SHE GAVE SO MUCH BUT EXPECTED SO LITTLE
Two weeks after she was laid to rest, I drove up to visit her. There, rising from the fresh earth at the edge of the plaque, a solitary rose reached for the skies.
[1] In the Jewish faith, the anniversary of a loved one’s death
Genesis 2:24) — but nowhere in the Torah is a marriage ceremony recorded. Only in the Oral Law do we find details on how to perform a Jewish wedding.”— The Jewish Virtual Library: A Division of the American-Israel Cooperative Enterprise. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org /jsource/Judaism/Oral_Law.html/”
[3] A prenuptial agreement, considered an integral part of a Jewish marriage,
[4] Spanish Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 after dwelling there for hundreds of years.
* “The Shoah is not an Ashkenazi monopoly. Thousands of Sephardic Jews perished in the Shoah…. Over one hundred thousand Greek [Sephardic] Jews, many from Salonica [and Rhodes] perished.” Heskel M. Haddad, M.D., Letters to the Editor, Midstream, 47, Jan/Feb 2008. The letter was a response to an article about the Shoah that appeared in Midstream, March/April 2007.
[5] Another choice epithet of hers was “tonto”—fool, stupid, and other unflattering names… Not to be confused with Tonto, the lone ranger’s very dignified Indian sidekick. Why Tonto in that context is a question, but then the lone ranger was anything but politically correct!
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Sam Bluefarb is Prof. Emeritus, Los Angeles Harbor College.
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