Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released

My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist

Helène Aylon

• Éditeur: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Année: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781558617698
• Sujet: Sciences sociales
• Sous-sujet: Biographies de sciences sociales

Growing up an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, Helene Aylon spends her Friday nights in a sea of extended family as the Sabbath candles flicker. She dreams of escape but marries a rabbi and becomes a mother of two. Suddenly her world splits apart when she is widowed at thirty. Aylon finds a home in the burgeoning environmental art scene of the 1970screating transgressive works that explore identity, women's bodies, the environment, disarmament, and the notion of God. Eventually she asks of Judaism what she never dared to ask as a child: Where are the women?Examples of Aylons work included are her early doors for the Jewish chapel at JFK airport, her peace pillowcases (including one worn by Grace Paley), and her current search for the links between feminism and Judaism

My Marriage Bed and My Clean Days

My Marriage Bed and My Clean Days, 2001. Mixed media.

Growing up, I had a task to complete each Friday as part of our preparations for Shabbos: I tore a roll of toilet paper into individual squares, since we were forbidden to tear on Shabbos. I neatly tore every piece on the perforated line the way my father neatly tore along the perforated line of his telephone bills. Then I stacked the squares in a pile. My other job was polishing my Dad’s big shoes. “Next size is the box,” he’d quip each Friday, when he handed me his size twelve shoes with the heavy shoetrees in them.

On Friday afternoons Daddy would leave “The Place” early and head straight to the shvitz (steam room) with “The Boz” (Daddy’s nickname for Uncle Abe), and when he returned to us, he was high on life, eager for Shabbos to begin.

At candle lighting time, the dazzling white tablecloth covered the large tish (the dining room table) making it look like a world unblemished. Everything shone brightly. The silver candlesticks on their silver tray, the silver kiddush cup on its silver tray, the silver Shabbos knife, the silver tray under the challahs—all gleaming.

My mother lit the Shabbos candles with a lacy handkerchief loosely laid on her head. I watched closely lest it fall into the flames. I loved the movements of my mother’s arms bringing the Shabbos light toward her in broad arcs, her arms sweeping the light in toward her heart—one time, two, three, all in slow motion. When she lifted her palms from her face, her eyes beneath were invariably moist. “Good Shabbos!” she called out and kissed whoever was witness to the great arrival of the Shabbos, accompanied by the moon and the comet and the Shabbos queen and the angels and the Shechina (the divine presence of God) all arriving every week precisely at sundown when the siren was heard throughout the land of Boro Park to announce lecht benching time (time to light the candles). Not that we were ever in danger of being late. My mother was always ready two hours early.

After the lighting we’d leave the candles in all their glory to watch from the front porch as the men paraded to shul wearing their tallisim (prayer shawls). It was dusk, bein hashmashim, the hour “between the suns” which seemed strange to me since sunrise was hours away. My younger sisters would scurry about while Mother and I reclined on the couch, our feet sharing a hassock, as we waited for Daddy to return. We’d keep watching as the streams of men returned from their various synagogues, the fathers walking proudly with their young sons.

Upon their return to their homes, the men would recite the weekly Friday night poem of praise, “Eishet Chayil Mi Yimtza” (A Woman of Valor, Who Can Find) to their wives. “She is the trading ship bringing food from afar. She gets up while it is still night to provide food for her household . . .”

After the kiddush on the wine for which we all stood around the table, we’d sit down to sing Shalom aleichem, malachei hashalom (Peace to you, angels of peace). Then came elaborate washing of hands with the sterling pitcher. We’d wait silently for Daddy to say the blessing over the challah and then—only then—the meal would begin.

At the end of the meal we would sing, the tune starting and restarting on a loop, as if we could not get enough of it, “Sheishet Yamim Taaseh Mlachtecha, v’yom hashveeyeey leilohecha,” (Six days shall you do your work; the seventh day is for your G–d.) I can hear it now, pulling me back to the Shabbos tish. In summer, when windows were open, the same niggunim, melodies, from other tables in other houses would float through the warm breeze onto the streets of Boro Park. One could taste the sounds. Uncle Dave and Aunt Lulu, Uncle Ben and Aunt Brucha, and Uncle Sam and Aunt Ray, Uncle Nuchum and Aunt Yetta, and sometimes Uncle Moishe and Aunt Elke would stroll in with their kids without ringing the bell, since ringing the bell is forbidden on Shabbos.

Then Daddy would sing “Yom ze mechubad mekal yamim ki vo shavat tsur olamim, (This day is honored above all days because on this day the creator of worlds rested). He repeated the niggun like a mantra, tapping the Shabbos tish as the meaning behind the words intensified more and still more with each refrain.

We never turned off the lights once Shabbos began; a gentile named Johnny came every Friday night to do it for us. He was old, bent over, and a bit crazed. His shabby pants looked like they were about to slip down any moment. A dime was left for him on the counter, prepared before Shabbos. Johnny liked receiving his bag of jellyroll and apricot cookies along with his dime and Mother’s praise. He came in the snow, in the rain, in heat spells and in frost, every Friday night until he died. Although Johnny performed his role in the Shabbos ritual with relish, I still blink with embarrassment that he was referred to as “The Shabbos Goy,” an impolite term for someone who was so important to us. Johnny helped make it possible for us to feel the intensity of the Shabbos. And despite our gratitude to Johnny, we still recited: “Ki banu bacharta V’otanu kidashta mikal Ha’amim” (For it is we whom you have chosen and we whom You have sanctified above all nations).

The next morning, known to the outside world as Saturday, we Greenfield girls headed out for the Young Israel shul on 50th Street. Daddy would have left two hours before. My sisters and I were always late, yet perfectly groomed, striding like royalty. We wore our small linen handkerchiefs tied around our wrists, since carrying anything was forbidden on Shabbos. Inside Young Israel, my mother would reintroduce me to the ladies I had known all my life, their eyes taking me in with obvious pleasure.

After services, once everybody had blessed each other again, we would walk home together—Daddy and I in front, Mother purposefully behind us, exclaiming how good Daddy and I looked together, tall people with good posture. I can’t remember whether my two younger sisters were holding Mother’s hand or just hanging about hoping her fixated gaze would fall on them. That gaze was reserved for the eldest. I tried to direct some of Mother’s fierce beam onto my sister Sandy, who wanted it, while I could have done with a lot less. My baby sister Linda was less attuned to these disproportionate offerings of attention, and consequently she is a more happy-go-lucky person than the one who got too much and the one who got too little.

Mother commented on everything about me. My attitude—“did you greet so-and-so?” My image—“why didn’t you wear your pearls?” She cared about appearance as much as a Vogue fashion editor. And she had a thing about my hair. “Put your hair back, back! Show your face, I can’t see your face,” she’d say with a tormented expression. Even in later years when she was semi-blind from macular degeneration, she would nevertheless comment about my hair looking “wild.” And all throughout my Shulamith years, our Polish live-in housekeeper Ana Sikora was instructed to brush my hair with one hundred strokes every morning while Mother prepared breakfast. Anna brushed as if she was pounding a rug, and she pulled the braids tightly from my scalp. I got even with her when I set the table and put her fork upside down while I set the rest of the table perfectly for everyone else’s place—even my sister Sandy’s.

The table was always set before we left for shul so that Daddy would not have to wait one moment upon our return to enjoy his schnapps for kiddush, and his lecach, sponge cake. Somehow, cake at kiddush before the meal never spoiled our appetites.

Often Daddy would gather round a whole gang of shul menchen for kiddush. The army of men would stampede into the kitchen, heading for the stove that had a thirty-six-inch square blech (a metal plate on top of one low-heating burner so that the stove was always hot without someone having to turn any knobs on Shabbos). They would stand around the blech, holding out their plates while Baba and Mother hastily ladled out the steaming krollas (stuffed hot dumplings) lifted from boiling oil in the tallest of pots.

“Wear an apron in the kitchen” Mother would say to me a bit sternly. “Your beautiful dress is too fancy without an apron.” The aprons were all stained with gravy, but I’d dutifully put one on. I remember once making a mental note to myself to buy Mother a new apron for Mother’s Day, thinking this would score points for me. She never could accept gifts, always insisting she did not need anything, but she would have to admit that she could use an apron, at least when company came. So I presented an apron to her that she raved about as if it was made of diamonds, saying she would save it for special celebrations.

Baba and Daddy sat at the head of the table like a queen and king. Mother was the lady-in-waiting, the role she preferred. She never took on the role of queen. And she never allowed us to sit in Daddy’s chair, not even after he died. It was his throne and we were his kingdom. Even now I can hear Daddy calling out from his throne laughingly to “Toots,” as he called Etta.

After an endless meal of fourteen courses, Daddy would again begin singing zmirot (Shabbos songs). Before each tune, we’d all confer over which it would be, since each one had many. Take “Tsur mishelo, mishelo achalnu, v’savanu kidvar adoni” (Source, from you we ate and we were satisfied, according to the word of G–d), a song of appreciation for the meal. I once counted in a Hebrew songbook seventeen melodies for this one song.

At the end of the zmirot, a very long benching (grace after meals) ensued. Mother always dragged out the benching, while I’d purposely rush the tempo, but she’d slow it down even more, holding the reins, singing louder than me lest I gallop away from the table too soon. She had all the time in the world to bench around the Shabbos table.

Afterward she kept me close by to deal with the uncountable “best” dishes reserved for Shabbos and other special occasions. She was always the one who washed the dishes and always had me do the drying. My sisters would bring the dishes from the dining room to the kitchen. After the precious sterling silver was dried, Mother made me count each fork and spoon and knife before putting it back in the frayed maroon velvet-lined chest. “One of the forks or spoons might have fallen into the garbage, you have to count them,” Mother insisted. “This is sterling, you know.” Then I lugged the heavy thing to the mahogany bureau where I shoved it back in until the next week, and locked the bureau with its impressive gold key as if it was a safe in a vault. Next, all the sterling kiddush goblets and the bone china English teacups were put away on exhibit in the dining room buffet.

After sweeping the challah crumbs off the white tablecloth, the time would finally come when I could take off with my friends. I was more certain to be promptly excused when my best friend Hindy called for me. My sister Sandy always tried to prevent us from leaving by clinging to Hindy, squatting on the floor and holding on to Hindy’s leg so she could not move. This would cause me to hyperventilate loudly, and Daddy would sing out to me, in his irritating sing-song style, “H-U-M-O-R.”

When we finally, finally got out of the house we met up with five other girls. We called ourselves “The Seven.” We’d walk from house to house in a herd, crunching on potato chips, giggling and screaming confidences at each stop. We knew another girl gang from a higher class, and there was a rumor that they once walked to a church way out of the neighborhood and one of them had spit in front of it, encouraging the others to follow her lead because she said the preachers told lies about Jews. No one else spit; they just turned around and came back. I thought this story was disgusting and I was relieved that my group mainly concentrated on discussing whom we’d vote for as the prettiest girl in the class. Or we’d ask each other, What would you choose, if you could get your wish, a gorgeous face or a gorgeous figure?

But in the midst of all this revelry, especially when we took a long walk, there were always these two words circling in my head: Get Home.

Get home before Shaloshseudot (the third meal on the Shabbos).

Get home before Havdala (the prayer for the separation of the holy from the mundane).

Get home before lecht benchen (the lighting of the candles).

Get home before B’dikat Chametz (the search for crumbs before Passover).

Get home because the Torah says so.

Get home because that’s our way of life.

Home, where you belong.

It was hard to go far, as if I was running on a treadmill.

At the end of the Shabbos, I, as the eldest, was privileged to hold the Havdala candle. That twelve-inch candle was a remarkable object, with its intricate braiding and its four small wicks that, once lit, became an instant torch. There was danger and high drama in my fiery assignment. “Hold the Havdala candle up high to get a tall husband,” Mother would predictably repeat each week. I’d stretch my right arm and stand on tiptoe like the Statue of Liberty, holding the torch up as high as my tall Daddy while the b’samim (spi...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• The Women’s Section
• My Notebooks
• My Marriage Bed and My Clean Days
• My Marriage Contract
• Ruach
• Paintings That Change
• Formations
• The Breakings
• Sand Carrying
• Earth Ambulance
• Stretched Canvas
• Current: two sacs en route
• Post - - - - Script
• Bridge of Knots
• The Liberation of G–d
• The Partition Is in Place, but the Service Can’t Begin
• Wrestlers
• Turnings
• Epilogue: Alone with My Mother
• All Rise
• Self-Portraits
• Self Portrait: The Unmentionable
• Acknowledgments
• Helène Aylon
• The Reuben/Rifkin Jewish Women Writers Series
• Also Available from the Feminist Press