Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Lantsman
This made my day:
I recognized the accent of my nonagenarian patient, so I asked her where she and her husband were from originally.
“Poland,” she said.
“Hey! Half my people are from Poland,” I told her. “My mother’s half of the family. They came from Lodz.”
She brightened even more . . . a thing of beauty. “We are from Lodz!” And of course she pronounced it better than I had (“wooj”).
When she and her husband left, they wished me a happy Hanukkah. They may be in their 90s, but their jewdar works very, very well.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. So what if I’m the only one who cares; I broke out the menorah tonight and lit up the candles. I don’t have enough candles to last eight nights. Hanukkah miracle, anyone?
At Lodz Shetlinks, you can take a Virtual Tour of Jewish Lodz. This sounded like a lot of fun until I took the tour, which looks a lot like this.
Graves. Lots and lots of graves. Thanks for bringing me down, guys! But at least they have some photos of the sole surviving synagogue,
So how strange was it for me to run into a couple of Lodz natives? Not that bizarre, I guess; Lodz is Poland’s third largest city. That’s right — Poland’s Chicago. No big deal, right?
But it felt good, just the same.
My grandparents, if they were alive today, would be (as best I can figure . . . they lied about their ages and didn’t know their true birthdays) about 105. I miss them, even though they drove me crazy.
D.
How cool is that, Doug> Happy Hanukkah, hon.
It doesn’t matter that I haven’t stepped foot in a Temple in years…lighting the Hanukkah candles is something I wouldn’t miss mainly because it takes me back to that house on Atlantic Blvd.