Random Thoughts

It's been a long time since I've written anything. I didn't want you all to think that I'd abandoned you or my blog. It's just I haven't had very much to say. I guess I am just figuring things out. Hebrew reading skills are improving... slowly, but still. This quarter I am in this adolescent literature class, and right now I am reading this book about a deaf teenager whose mother won't let her learn sign language so she learns secretly. The mother, inevitably, started to piss me off, and I started thinking about what I'd do if my child was deaf. This sort of scene played out in my head. I am at the hospital, the doctor hands me my baby and tells me that he is deaf. I turn to my husband freaked out "If he's deaf, how will he learn Hebrew? Is there Hebrew sign language?"  OK. What the heck? Like why would I think that? What about, will we send him to a regular school? Do you think you can learn ASL, honey? This is probably a sign of things to come...

In other news.... I wasn't going to write about this, but I don't think I have anything else to report so I might as well. A few weeks ago, for various reasons, I was in DC and went to the Holocaust Museum. I've been there a couple times before, and every time you go, you notice something different or something else strikes you or moves you. There were several things I noticed this visit, but there was one thing that really took me by surprise.

On the first or second floor (from the top, in the permanent exhibition), there is a glass walkway which leads to the stairs and it has listed all the names of Jews who died in the Holocaust. Not individual Jews, but all the different first names there were (so no repeats). I was looking at them, just like I always look at the detailed pieces, trying to really grasp all the individuals who lost their lives. These names belonged to someone, to many someones really. Their parents had carefully chosen the name and hoped their child would embody whatever that name means or stands for. There were tons of Biblical names, Hebrew words, Yiddish names, secular German or Hungarian names, etc. And there on the first panel from the right, near the frame, was my name. Yes, Mary was the name of at least one Jew killed by the Nazis. So her name wasn't exactly Jewish, but she was. She was Jewish enough that the Nazis found her and murdered her. This Jewish Mary's Christian name didn't save her. She lived and died as a Jew, perhaps she even died with the Shema on her lips...

Maybe I shouldn't have been thinking those things in the Holocaust Museum. But it is what came to mind as I placed my hand on my name and tears rolled from my eyes. Your name is just one part of your identity, but it doesn't have to define all of you. Yes, I cried during other parts of my visit, as is expected. But I never would have thought of this being a possibility.