Sandra Steuer Cohen
A much-belated memorial to the Jews of Gerolzhofen
Three years ago, my cousin Milka Zeiler Lichtenauer and her husband Shmuel, who live in Israel, made it their mission to visit Gerolzhofen, the small town in Germany where Milka’s father and my mother were born and raised, and where the rest of the Jews were rounded up and killed in 1942. Milka had been in contact with the mayor of this town, and his wife, who coincidentally is a Jew — the only Jew who lives there. This woman has since uncovered much of the history of the Jewish population there and continues to work to educate those who live in this area.
A somewhat older mom speaks out
Ani Cohen and his mother, Sandra Steur Cohen.
Speaking as an older mother in a very young Jewish community of '0- and 30-something parents, I find myself much outside of the box. It is not exactly by choice that I have a late-in-life child. Some things simply happen, and others are meant to be in a way that is indefinable. Parenting is a tough job with a partner and support system, and 100 times harder flying solo.
I had already raised three children to emancipation and lost my life partner when a situation arose that led me to motherhood yet again. It was an unusual occurrence and like many women in their 40s, I had long stopped actively thinking of babies and caring for them. Or perhaps not, for the year that my husband died I had the opportunity to adopt yet another infant. I did not give it much thought, for the decision had already been made by some unfulfilled mothering instincts that were still inside my heart. I was reaching the end of my 40s when I adopted my son, the age at which my neighbors were already grand-parenting or at least, paying off college tuitions.
Meeting my husband on Diezengoff Street one long-ago Christmas eve
I had never made an"official" aliyah though I traveled to Israel literally as a commuter for many years. None of my contemporaries from New York were Zionists, nor did they have any interest in living in Israel. Somehow the commitment to remain in Israel was frightening, so I pretended that it was all temporary while settling into a rented apartment in Tel Aviv and going through all the tedious bureaucratic hullabaloo of becoming a "new immigrant" as though it were just an incidental thing — as if anything in Israel of a bureaucratic nature could ever be "incidental."
A wishlist for miracles
In years long past, we had the miracle of the oil burning for eight days rather than one and a small band of Jews led by Judah Maccabee fighting off an army.
Here are a few "miracles" I would like to see in my lifetime:
1. that Jews unite without discriminating against each other because of differences of belief and observance.
'. that the Israeli government would stop publicly slinging mud at whoever is prime minister.
