look toward the heaven and count the stars!
by sandi tomlin-sutker

Sometimes we simply know that it is time to make a change. “As the midrash says of Abraham, ‘at home he was like a flask of myrrh with a tight fitting lid. Only when it was opened could the fragrance be scattered to the wind.’” Adele Rose had lived her entire childhood and 42 years of marriage in New York City. In 1992 she knew it was time to open the flask and let her sweetness and joy flow out. When she arrived in Asheville, Adele had never had a house, nor a lawn, not a dog, not even a birdfeeder. And she had not yet participated in the coming of age ritual for Jewish girls, the Bat Mitzvah.

This ritual normally takes place at age 12 for girls, 13 for boys (and called a Bar Mitzvah) and signals that the young person is now a member of the adult community (literally responsible to follow the Ten Commandments).

I recently met with Adele at Max & Rosie’s Café for lunch and to talk about Adele’s experience as a "late-in-life" participant in this powerful rite of passage. My expectation was that we would be exploring the gender bias of traditional religions. I knew that at the time Adele would have been eligible for a Bat Mitzvah—during the Great Depression—females were rarely allowed to touch the Torah, learn Hebrew, or stand with the Rabbi at the front of the Synagogue. Throughout most of Jewish history, there was no ceremony for girls that paralleled the bar mitzvah, since Jewish women were not “called to the Torah” until the advent of Reform Judaism in the 19th century. So it was not until she was age “seventy-something”, as part of a group of adults studying with Rabbi Schmuel, that Adele Rose finally “came of age”!

As we talked, though, it became clear that the fact that she came to this passage at a later age was not due only to bias. There was also the fact of the Depression and a woeful lack of money. There was so little of it in her family that when the time came for her brother’s Bar Mitzvah, the Rabbi and a few other neighbors helped to buy the small treats that would be served in the celebration following the ceremony. And her family, while strongly identified as Jewish, did not consider themselves "religious". So even though Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (founder of the Reconstructionist movement) celebrated the first Bat Mitzvah for his own daughter in 1922, Adele missed that transition to adulthood.

Yet she yearned always for connection, for continuity. As a child, she equated being Jewish with Passover celebrations at her maternal grandmother’s house. The preparations began as early as January when they made their own wine. I laughed out loud at the image of a live carp swimming in the bathtub the night before it would become the main ingredient in Gefilte Fish! (She was that insistent on the freshest ingredients.) And so many family members came to honor this sacred time that they had to do it over two nights—the house in the Bronx couldn’t hold everyone at once! Family, love, tradition, great food, celebration—all these she experienced within the framework of Judaism.

When Adele married, she expected her husband, educated in “yeshiva” or religious school, to also have that connection to the religious traditions of her youth. Alas, he rejected them instead, not even wanting to keep a Kosher home. Then 20 years ago she had the opportunity to work with Russian Jews immigrating to New York, when various Orthodox groups helped them re-connect to their roots after years of living under Communism. Her journey from that time, when she began again to keep the Sabbath, to this moment, when she is taking advanced Hebrew classes and can read the Torah, is full of joy and power. In her own words: “Who would have thought I’d be down South, on my own, with a dog, reading Hebrew, active in two Synagogues...it all makes me feel that Anything is Possible!” Her current life bears out that belief: she takes yoga classes and weight training and participates in the richness of community, including speaking about her experiences to other religious groups.

There is a lot of magic in the events of her past 10 years. The city had been a happy, comfortable home all her life. But in many ways, she said, it was also a Ghetto, with each ethnic group living mostly within the confines of its own geographical area. As she wrote in her d’rash or speech interpreting her Torah reading for the Bat Mitzvah (hers, ironically, was the passage where God tells Abraham to leave his family and home and Go Forward to build a new Nation), “…some voice inside me said ‘it is time to go forth’…I did not hear God say: ‘You will live in a city of great beauty, surrounded by mountains and blooms; you will live in a wonderful Jewish community; you will grow and learn. You will celebrate being a Bat Mitzvah. You will read from the Torah and you will be more than you ever thought you could be, and at that special moment you will feel like one of the brightest stars in Abraham’s sky.’ I did not hear these words but today I know for sure that God must have whispered them to me.”

Sandi Tomlin-Sutker is co-publisher and associate editor of WNC WOMAN. She is also owner of The Natural Home on Lexington in downtown Asheville.