BROOKLINE, Mass. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Emily Greenberg gathered with her family here for a traditional dinner that included dates, black-eyed beans, leeks and spinach, all foods that are mentioned in the Talmud.
But there were some new dishes on the table this year–sweet potato pie, red beans and rice and even barbecued chicken–because Emily brought her fiance Marcus Russell, an African-American, home with her from New Orleans, where they live.
“We’re just going to have to change with the times,” said her mother Naomi with a smile that didn’t seem forced.
Marcus is an evangelical Christian, and the Greenbergs are doing their best to conceal from Rosa, Emily’s increasingly senile great aunt, the fact that their daughter has married outside her faith. “It would break tante’s heart,” Naomi says.
Tupac Shakur: Kinda sounds Jewish
And so the Greenbergs adopted a new tradition, celebrating Tupac Shakur, a made-up feast named after the late rapper that was devised so Jews and gentiles could celebrate together without compromising the faith of either.
“Who’s the schvarze?” Rosa asked, using the Yiddish word for “black”. “This is Marcus,” Naomi replied. “He’s Emily’s fiance.”
“What’s he doing here?” Rosa persisted, her failing hearing an impediment to understanding.
“Take this 2 Live Crew CD out of the house of my father!”
“He’s here to celebrate Tupac Shakur,” Emily replied with a nervous smile.
“Tupac Shakur?” Rosa asked in a disoriented tone. “I don’t remember that holiday.”
“It’s when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to return rap CDs with explicit content,” Marcus interjects, joining in the little white–and black–lie the family has agreed to tell their aging relative.
Celebrating Haggledah
The Greenbergs are part of a growing movement among families with intermarried children to “mash up” holidays to accommodate different religious traditions, a trend that has penetrated even affluent Protestant denominations such as the Presbyterians. In nearby Chestnut Hill, an old-line WASP neighborhood with private roads and rolling lawns, Eli Winthrop prepares to celebrate the first wedding anniversary of his daughter Sydney to Ari Goldstein, a senior at Brandeis University, with a toast.
A menorah.
“It’s nice to have the two families together,” Winthrop intones as he raises his glass of scotch. “Cheers,” he announces, and then everyone moves to the living room to open gifts purchased in observance of Haggledah.
“We were dreading our first holiday season together,” says Sydney, “because we knew the two families would fight over whether to celebrate Christmas or Hannukah.” “So we settled on Haggledah,” Ari explains, a compromise observance developed by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
“Haggling over prices was always against our religion,” says Edith Winthrop, Sydney’s mother. “If we couldn’t afford it, we did without.”
Happy holidays!
“But that’s no way to live!” says Maury Goldstein, as he offers Edith a package. “Here–this is for you!”
Edith murmurs a quiet “Thank you” then unwraps the gift, being careful not to wrinkle the red wrapping paper or damage the white ribbon. “Oh, my–this is lovely!” she exclaims as she examines a bright purple sweater that, if she were candid, she would admit is not her taste. “Where did you get it?”
Simply gorgeous.
“That snooty Talbots place,” Maury explains. “They wanted to charge me sixty bucks for it but I got them down to twenty because of this,” he says as he points out a line under the bodice below which the color is much deeper, as if to mark a different country on a map. “They folded it over and left it in the front window all summer so it faded.”
“Fighting is a sin, so say three Hail Marys after you beat each other up.”
Across town in West Roxbury, an urban neighborhood with well-kept houses on small lots, the Catholics are getting into the act with the Feast of St. Irving, the first American Jewish saint. “Irving Cohen used to have to fight his way home from yeshiva school through tough Irish neighborhoods,” says boxing historian Lou Canoza. “He eventually won the respect of his Catholic tormenters by learning to hold his own and became a ranked flyweight contender.”
St. Irving
But, this reporter asks Canoza, what were the three miracles Irving performed in order to qualify for sainthood?
“He beat up the MacClary triplets”
US schoolchildren learn this in kindergarten, rather after the lesson on how George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and stunned the world of fashion with his empire-waistline bathrobes at Paris fashion week.
When fashion addicted Anna Maria de la Croix married her Abdelouchad ben Zaborak in 1967 on a rainy day in Paris, she asked her sister, who was a non, if she could borrow her head cloth. This was the start of a world wide fashion amongst Muslima. Did you know that?