Most of my life, I have had an empty spot inside the quietest part of me with no idea what should be there. Yesterday, I think I found out what it is that has always drawn me to Judaism and the culture that surrounds it; to the religious rituals and the faith of those people who lived through the European hallocausts of the last several centuries.
You see, my father's family came to Canada when he was just three yearrs old. His parents immigrated from Holland in 1910, moving to Saskatchewan to seek their fortune where bananas grew so large they had to be carried one per train car, and beautiful fields of flowers grew for miles and miles. When they arrived, they found raw prairies, unplowed land and harsh winters. I am told my grandmother was so devastated she went to bed for three months and my grandfather had a nervous breakdown. But life went on, and they finallly adapted, had seven children and left their mark on this province in one way or another, through their offspring.
There was copious information about my grandfather's ancestry, but Oma's history was anecdotal and sporadic. There were things that held a veil of secrecy around them, answers no one could give me to the questions about her family and early life in Holland. Why would a young couple flee a lifestyle of relative comfort as wealthy merchants and the splendor of European culture to come to such a God forsaken place as the raw, Canadian prairies where it was either a deep freeze or an oven?
It was only when she got much older and had begun to meander through dementia that Oma began to talk of her early life in Holland. I was a teenager and her stories appealed to my romantic personality. She talked about wealth and symphonies, beautiful clothing, maids and servants, and then, a small story about her maternal grandmother, who, she said in a whisper, was the only survivor to get out of Poland and take refuge in a Catholic girls' school in Holland. She was fourteen when she left her family and was secreted out of the country, never to know what happened to them. No wonder future generations thought they had to hide such history! The family name was Rabiinovitch. I asked around the family, but it was as if a door had been slammed shut and no one would/could remember any stories like that one. End of the line.
Fast forward to yesterday. We met with folks from Ontario who are in-laws of my maternal cousin and who were travelling through Saskatchewan. We had lunch and chatted. They are Jewish and I tuned right in as they talked about their European history. Finally,I shared my attraction to Judaism and my suspicion that my grandmother may have been Jewish. Once I said the family name, they assured me that, indeed I must be a direct relation. They also told me that the ancestry is passed through the maternal side of the family, and that I was perhaps of the Sephardic Jews. The name Rabinovitch is Polish and means son of the rabbi. Strangely, my husband has had suspicions about his great, great grandmother, and in spite of geneological searches had met dead ends too. Once he said his great great grandmother's surname, he discovered that it was a name bought by Jews who could afford high status in Europeaan society. He will research this connection but is quite excited.
I can't explain how I feel now, except to say I am validated and sommehow completed. In fact, my life won't change much, but my heart feels like it has come home.
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