Short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

The world of a Jewish boy, born in Poland in 1904.
He is a survivor, and wrote stories about his childhood in A Day of Pleasure.

His parents are pious, and you see that at his young age, he is very mature and determined. Determined as he knows what he wants or what he doesn't want. I like that kind of people. The ones who change their mind every second drive me nuts.

Old city, Yerushalayim, January 2015, ©emmarubinstein

I enjoy reading his book like if i was a child reading a fairytale or a story before sleeping.

How was the Hasidut before the war? That seems so easy to live in Eastern Europe. They seem so well integrated to the society of that time. We know that it's not true indeed.
In one of the short stories, Reb Ichele and Shprintza, we met the first Hasidic rebel. He is the son of this couple, he shaved his beard and he cut his peyos. They don't reject him. He is sat with them at the Sabbath meal before joining his girlfriend to go and watch a movie. Their youngest son is a rebel too. He doesn't want to wear sidelocks.
One of my teacher said that when you have not been raised with no religious education, you will wonder who you are at a moment of your life. I felt concerned. But i am not sure that everyone is concerned.
I think that it depends on your priorities in life.

I have a friend from my childhood. His father was Jewish and his mother is not. Both are Americans and live in France since 30-40 years. His dad died when he was 4 or 5 years old.
I was his babysitter. He had a brother who died in a bicycle accident when he was 18 years old. That was one of a big drama in my life. We were all close when we were toddlers. We belonged to a group where there were many different couples from different backgrounds, religions, etc. I spent so many funny times with them.
Some died or took a distance because of the dramas of life.

Mea She'arim, Yerushalayim, January 2015, ©emmarubinstein

That little boy grew up, and the distance between us came naturally. I have been to his wedding. And i felt sorry. His wife said something that i didn't appreciate: she was bothered that the father of my friend was a Jew. Ouch! She has been raised Catholic. I don't like her family either.
But i respect the choice of my friend.
So far, i never heard that he had an identity crisis about his father's roots.
We grew up, and our priorities were completely different.
When he was a child, he already was into money. That was a sort of obsession for him.
And it still is, and it's worse. And his wife's family is the perfect match for his obsession. They always advise how and where to invest.

We are far from close now. His mother had repetitive cancers, and he is not nice with her.
At his wedding, there was no homage to his brother. I was shocked.
I was bored at his wedding. I went to bed early after the meal.
I don't blame that people need money, but i think that there is a limit of greediness.
He is a surgeon, she is a doctor, they have 4 children. They have a lot of money, but it's never enough.
Can we say that the greediness of money makes you blind about who you are, or is it too judgmental?

I cut friends out of my life who had the same obsession.
I can't check my bank account 5 times a day like them.

We live in a different world.

The deal during Shabbos was to have hot water. People went to the store of the Reb. They don't bring money because you can't carry money on Shabbos.
The question of Moshiach is asked, and the reply is: when the Messiah will come, there will be a continual Shabbos.
But how to cook? We won't need it because it will be the Paradise. That makes me dream. :-)

Old city, Yerushalayim, January 2015, ©emmarubinstein

The last thing in this short story, is the introduction of a Jewish Eunuch: "This man was a great enigma to me, a man who grew no beard. What could be odder than a beardless Jew?"
For me, that too was an enigma.
Thus, i googled "Jewish Eunuch" and i found something about a prophet called Daniel. That's the name of my father.
I always thought that there is something oversize, divine, (un)conscious which inspired the mind of our parents when they gave us our name. A name can be a weight or not, for all your life.

One of my childhood friends had a compound name. We lost contact when we were 15, and found on FB, when i was still in Brooklyn. We were very close, and the years split away when we met up. Nothing had changed.
We can talk about anything. The advantages are that we know the woes of each other.
She encountered a duality with her name, and made the choice to abandon one of them.
A friend of her who is interested in that subject told her that morphologically, her body is divided according to her compound name.

An Eunuch means  to be a man who has been castrated. And the following expression about someone who has no guts, that means, vulgarly, that he has no balls.
I was stunned that the name of my father suits him perfectly. He was the slave of his very dominant mother. He still remained closed in that position since she passed away: a lost cause.
That's terrible to hear that it's a name of a prophet and a Eunuch, because the image of the prophet is someone who makes things change with the divine will and help.
The birth of my father was a miracle for my grand-mother. She had a hard time to have children.

In the short story, the Eunuch was a sort of schizophrenic man.
I love the conclusion of the story by this little boy: "Eunuch or not, sane or insane, a Jew is a Jew."

Funeral at Mount of Olives, Yerushalayim, January 2015, ©emmarubinstein