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The Torah Portions in August focus on the Jews contemplating their move to the promised land, and the advice Moses gives them, about all the aspects of their lives, as Jews. Since that time, the Jews lost Israel, were dispersed throughout the world and only recently, returned to their homeland. As Americans, many of us have moved both across the country and throughout the world. Even in San Antonio, only 21% of the Jewish population was born here. What does it mean to be rooted to a place and what does it mean to be a transplant?
Once upon a time, I was rooted to a place. It was Chicago, Illinois and the surrounding suburbs. I was born in Chicago and I lived there all my life. I was born into a large extended family that included Grandparents on both sides, Aunts and Uncles, and many cousins. I remember holidays at my Bubbys when I was a child, and my other Grandparents would be invited to her house as well as my cousins' other relatives, so there was always a lot of people and activity and love to go around. There's a Yiddish word that truly described this relationship, Machatunim, which means relatives of relatives, which makes you family.
But my family didn't stay in one place very long. My Aunts and Uncles and cousins, and Great Aunts and Great Uncles all moved to California. This migration started long before I was born, in 1920 when my Grandmother's brother Paul ran away to California to become a Jewish cowboy. His letters home described the paradise of Los Angeles, his frustration at chasing calves that eluded him all day, but beat him home at night, and the lack of morals and inner strength, that he found in the stars he met at the Hollywood parties. His parents eventually made him move back to Chicago, but he returned to California in his fifties after his adult daughter moved there.
Since Uncle Paul began the migration, almost all our relatives moved to California. I spent so many vacations in LA and to a lesser extent, San Francisco that today both cities feel like home even though I've never lived in either. My Grandparents retired and moved to LA on the day I was stood up for a date, which I remember experiencing, as the more traumatic of the events. When my parents left in 1980, I had the strange sensation of being the last one left in the family to reside in Chicago. You could find more of our relatives in the Jewish Waldeim Cemetery than alive and well and living in Chicago.
If there was one thing that I believed, it was that I would never leave the Chicago area. I was determined to stay put and live near my children. I felt strongly about this particularly after my parents moved to San Antonio and I was left in Chicago missing them. I wouldn't leave my children and I didn't want to miss any important events. So Mary Lou and I stayed in Chicago throughout the eighties and nineties and watched our kids grow up.
Meanwhile, my parents had moved not to California like everyone before them, but to San Antonio. They found California too expensive and too congested, and decided to take a trip around the country and check out potential sites. They drove into San Antonio on a beautiful and warm December day, saw the River Walk and were hooked. My brother had just finished college and followed them to San Antonio and my sister had already moved to the Bay area, so I was the one left behind.
Over the years, we visited San Antonio and fell in love with it ourselves. We always came for Spring Break, which in Illinois usually falls around the last week of March. Sunbathing in my parents' backyard was wonderful after the long, cold, snowy and shivery winter. Still every time my parents brought up the topic of moving here, we just shook our heads. We couldn't imagine uprooting ourselves and leaving behind our life in Chicago. As a professor, I had been awarded tenure and the title of full professor at a private university. I knew that it would be difficult to replace that position. As a literacy educator, I had consulted in many school districts and had contacts all over the city. Added to that, all my friendships that I had developed over the years, and I knew that my life in Chicago could never be replicated anywhere else.
Still, there was always this feeling that would begin in October or November when the bad weather started to set in. Wouldn't it be nice to be in San Antonio in the winter and escape driving in the snow? Wouldn't it be lovely to live closer to my parents? In March 2003, during our Spring break in San Antonio, I saw a position posted on the UTSA website for a professor. I applied, was offered the position, and in August we moved here.
I know that this is but one personal story out of millions, people move away every day, but for me this was a first. The Jewish people have been forced to leave their homes over and over again throughout history. We've yearned to return to Israel for generations and yet only recently, has that dream been realized. The state of Israel is only two and ½ years older than me, so I am among the oldest of people alive who can't remember a time before Israel existed. So many Jews, many surviving the Holocaust uprooted themselves and moved to Israel to start their lives over. How difficult it must have been, to be in a strange country, without anything, trying to build a new life.
The United States, too, is filled with immigrants, uprooted from their homelands, seeking a better life. People from around the world have started over, looking for opportunities they didn't have before. My ancestors came to the US to escape the oppression of Eastern Europe and the Russian Pograms. They came to the US to survive. My Great Grandparents, the parents of my Grandmother and the Jewish Cowboy, came from the Ukraine and spoke no English. America has been good to their descendants, and I know that however traumatic my move to San Antonio has been, it is not comparable to the sacrifices my ancestors made before me.
We are not alone in moving to San Antonio. According to the 2007 San Antonio Jewish Community Study (Sheskin, 2007) 13% of the Jewish population has moved here within the last 5 years. Most of the new arrivals are not as lucky as we are to have family in the area. All of us have to make new friends, and find our place in the city, as we establish new roots. We joined as many groups as we could find and we also began going to Friday night services at Temple Beth El.
My parents were members of the Temple and I had always enjoyed going to services when we were in town. In fact, I was always looking for a temple like Beth El, in the far west suburbs of Chicago where I lived. When my Grandmother moved to San Antonio from LA, she would take the bus from the Madison Apartments every week. She loved the services, and it was something we always did with her when we were in town. Sometimes when I'm sitting in the sanctuary, I can feel her smiling presence asking me, “What page we are on now?” My Grandmother was fortunate, because she had her daughter and son-in-law who checked up on her, and took her to the movies every Sunday. In her last years she was surrounded by family.
Not everyone is so lucky. The Jews of San Antonio make up less than 1% of the population. Twenty-four percent of the Jewish population, consists of persons age 65 or older, and 12% are age 75 or older. Twenty-one percent of Jewish people 65 or older live alone. Since 61% of the Jews age 50 or older, either have no children, or no adult children in the area, many people are aging alone and away from family. Without family ties, who will help them with the challenges that growing older presents? If moving to San Antonio in mid-life was wrenching for me, how much more difficult will it be to navigate my retirement in years to come?
The Temple has a group that helps to address this need. It's called Yad B'Yad. The purpose of this committee is to provide friendship and companionship to the elderly who are confined to their homes because of illness and age related problems. We need volunteers to match up with the people on our list. It involves visiting them once a month and calling to check up on them, in-between visits. This is one concrete thing that any of us can do. And there is so much more that we might offer. The Temple offers many opportunities to reach out including helping at the San Antonio Food Bank and working with "Meals On Wheels." If everyone here decided today to take on one activity, think of the difference that we could make in individuals' lives.
I began this talk asking what it means to be rooted to one place, and what it means to be a transplant? A transplant has to uproot her or himself, step by agonizing step, until the new roots begin to take hold and thrive. Although my world in Chicago could never be replicated, my new life in San Antonio has brought the pleasures of being close to my parents, making new friends, and the joy of discovering a new city. But ultimately, whether you are a transplant, or firmly rooted here, you have to face the challenges and joys of life as they occur. We all try to do the best we can, but is there more that we could do? There is a Jewish tradition called Bikur Cholim, prescribing us to visit the sick (Lilith, Summer 2007, p. 37). Can we do more to brighten the life of someone who needs us? Can we give more to improve the quality of another's life? What can we do to make a difference? We each need to look into our own hearts to find the answer.
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