Jewish Joy and Jewish "Oy"

When I type "au" into my phone, autocomplete suggests "Auschwitz"

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

---

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

On California playgrounds, my grandkids are the only ones who call out from the swings: “Push me, Oma!” My husband, Richard, goes by “Grandpa”; his ancestors were Eastern European Jews. But when my first grandchild was born, I knew I didn’t want to be “Grandma” or “Nana.” I grew up with an Oma and an Opa (“grandmother” and “grandfather” in German), and I wanted to keep my German-Jewish heritage alive—complicated though it may be.

Dad fled Germany with less than $5 in his pocket, armed only with his diploma from the University of Berlin Medical School. It was dated 1934—the last year Jews could earn a professional degree. “Education is something they can never take from you,” he used to explain, in his German-accented English. As a medical student, Dad saw dangerous Nazi ideology firsthand. Race was seen as a disease—extermination the cure.

Dad married my mom, Hazel Anderson, in her native Utah. Born and reared a Mormon, she converted to Judaism before their June 1942 wedding. Her mantra has guided me, too: “God doesn’t care if you are a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Mormon, or whatever. As long as you are a good Jew, a good Catholic, a good Protestant.”

Dad wanted to fight the Nazis, so he enlisted in the U.S. Army and returned to Germany, probably in late 1942. As part of General Patton’s Third Army and as a German-speaking physician, Dad was put in charge of injured prisoners of war. Whenever he encountered a captured SS officer who needed blood, he would shake his head and say in mock seriousness, “Wir haben nur blut von Schwarzen oder Juden.” “We have blood only from Blacks or Jews.”

Dad knew that SS officers had to prove Aryan ancestry dating back to 1750. “I wouldn’t dream of polluting your pure Aryan blood with that of Untermenschen (subhumans),” he implied. But they would inevitably respond: “Das macht nichts.” “It doesn’t matter.” Under duress, they admitted that the murderous Nazi racial ideology was bogus.

For 25 years, I taught a course on the Holocaust at a Catholic university near our home in northern California. It has been a privilege to teach my students about the terrible history of Nazi medical abuse—the medicalization of antisemitism, the euthanasia of the disabled.

Not long ago, I tried to explain to a non-Jewish friend what it’s like to be a Holocaust Jew. To illustrate, I started to type “audio” into my phone. After the first two letters, “Auschwitz” popped up.

But being Jewish isn’t just about the “oy”: it’s also about the joy. It’s about Shabbat dinners with my husband and some combination of our three children, their spouses, and our six grandchildren. I even love it when 11-year-old Sarah and 9-year-old Jonah fight over whose turn it is to light the candles, momentarily disrupting our Shabbat peace. Thanks to his Jewish education, Jonah requests the long version of the Friday night prayers, which I didn’t learn at my Reform Hebrew School in Indiana.

Jewish joy is the spiritual fix I get at synagogue on Saturday mornings, and the feeling I get—surrounded by a vibrant Jewish community—that there is something greater than myself.

It’s about having a husband who collects stamps printed with synagogues and famous Jews and, more recently, our grandchildren’s favorite animals and hobbies. Richard’s stamps also commemorate our meeting in high school, our two-month European honeymoon in a Volkswagen camper, the births of our three children, and other milestones of our 56-year marriage. I love watching him show our rapt grandchildren their pages in his collection.

It's the joy I felt recently, making Hamantaschen with Sarah and Jonah. “Don’t eat any of the Hershey’s Kisses, Jonah,” warned his mother—my daughter—Rebecca: the baby who turned me into a mom five decades ago.

“What if I accidentally eat one?” Jonah asked, his face creased with earnest innocence. “Watch me, Oma,” he said, as he carefully placed the Kiss in the center of the flat circle of dough, instead of in his mouth.

In 2017, my daughter Leah and her husband, both scientists, moved to Germany, where they work at the Technical University of Munich. (A poignant legacy: all of us hold German passports.) They live in the heart of Munich, just a few U-Bahn stops from the Marienplatz in the City Center. When I take her children, Ziva, 11, and Maya, 8, to the playground, cries of “Oma!” reverberate everywhere.

My daughter’s triumphant return to Germany represents my family’s defeat of the Nazis. Thanks to yearly visits to Munich, I no longer think of freight cars lumbering toward Auschwitz every time I hear the trains.

But whenever we’re in public, my inner child shouts: Neener neener—you didn’t get us all. I guess I remain a Holocaust Jew after all.

---

A retired university professor and mediator, Miriam Zimmerman has been a columnist for the National Jewish Post and Opinion for 40 years, writing under the byline, “Holocaust Educator.” She regrets that Northwestern University, her Alma Mater, recently scored a “D” on ADL’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card, albeit raised from its prior “F” rating.

---

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.