I’ve often thought of physical spaces as human. When our family moved houses at age 6, I remember thinking about our new home as an all knowing place that had watched other families live within its walls, and would now bear witness to our family’s adventures. I was probably unusually nostalgic for a kid, and as a future writer, already deeply connected to sense memory.
As an adult, I often dream about my childhood elementary school library, the linoleum halls of my high school, and the graffited ceiling beams of overnight camp cabins. I visualize the generic low ceilinged dorm rooms I was thrilled to stuff myself into in college. I’ve treasured the homes I’ve inhabited as an adult, spaces to contain first me, then my husband and I, and then our kids, spaces that would absorb our stories.
Over the past six months, we have been forced to re-evaluate the utility of our spaces: home, work, educational, and public. The virtual life that had been creeping up on us prior to the covid-19 pandemic has moved us into a new sphere since mid March. We’ve had no choice but to adjust, be safe, think of others and to pivot and try to hold on. The situation is bizarre and unprecedented, and disruptive to all of the things that make us feel normal, like being together for the holidays.
With that in mind, I’m honored to be here today, with you all, in this space. We’re not ensconced in Plymouth Church, that quintessential NYC experience where faiths share space out of necessity. We are not in the emotional space we’d like to be in, either. We are worried, pained, sad and scared, all in our little squares. But because, as Jews and as New Yorkers, we adapt, cope and do what we have to do, I want to thank Rabbi Lippe for asking me to think about my Jewish identity in this very intense moment. I deeply appreciate the opportunity.
As a child, entering the Sanctuary of my synagogue for the High Holidays, I knew I was in a sacred space. The heavy wood doors, the carpeted aisles leading to the sweeping, theatrical bimah, the floor to ceiling stained glass and blonde wood pews. There was an organ, a choir, the orations of our formal rabbi and old world cantor, and the voices of responsive reading, singing, and the occasional hard candy wrapper. It was a grand space, and the feeling of entering that room filled with friends and neighbors was dramatic. I did my best, but I was often restless in the service and spent a lot of time scrutinizing the backs of congregants’ heads, hoping to locate my friends from Hebrew school and that they would know to meet me in the ladies room. We spent a lot of time there, watching the older ladies apply their lipstick in the mirror. Sometimes we’d sneak down to the kitchen, or go play in the social hall.
The Tree of Life, in Pittsburgh, was my synagogue.
When the shooting at Tree of Life happened almost two years ago in October 2018, I could instantly imagine that space, marred forever. The event was a manifestation of hatred I knew existed, and had worried about, but never expected to experience so brutally or so personally. I thought about how Tree of Life was witness to so many important moments for me and my family: from my Bat Mitzvah and confirmation, to my mother’s memorial service and place for my dad to say Kaddish for her, many years later. I mourned for the people I grew up seeing at all of those services and celebrations, those innocent souls who sought ritual and community, whose lives were shattered. I pictured these members, terrified, hiding in classrooms and closets and offices and bathrooms – spaces I remember so intimately.
In Squirrel Hill, everyone knew everyone. You could not go “up street,” what people call the shopping district near the intersection of Forbes and Murray Avenues – to the JCC, Carnegie Library, to Little’s shoe store, or the David Weber hair salon, without running into someone from who knew our family, grew up with my mom, played Mahj with my grandma, was a patient of my dads.
My parents, Richard Kasdan and Judith Hoffman Kasdan, were raised in Squirrel Hill, and met at Allderdice High School. My dad went to medical school and did his residency at the University of Pittsburgh, and my mom worked as a teacher and reading specialist in the Pittsburgh public schools. They built a life in a place with familiar rhythms and support, but with their own plans and goals for how they would live.
We were close with our grandparents. Grandma Jeannie was a single mom for much of my dad’s young life, after my dad’s biological father Leon Kasdan took off and left the family when my dad was a baby. My grandma later met Jack Ginsberg, who everyone agreed was a mensch. He owned a furniture store, adopted my dad and aunt, and put them through college. My mom’s mom, Rose Shulman Hoffman was known for her legendary (to us) cooking, and my grandfather Hy Hoffman for his slow and steady lap swimming at the Parkway Cabana Club, where we spent intergenerational summers in the 1970’s and 80’s.
My dad had gone to an Orthodox synagogue growing up, my mom to a conservative one. She did not have a Bat Mitzvah, and didn’t seem particularly spiritual. But she was always committed to the social justice piece of Judaism. After my sisters and I left the house, she became active in the National Council of Jewish women, leading the chapter as President. She created a beautiful waiting room for children in the Family Court system in Pittsburgh, a space that now bears her name. Her work as an advocate for women and children during her years at NCJW led her to earn law degree at age 55 and work in the Pittsburgh public defender’s office for several years before she got sick. My mom spent much of her life working for causes and encouraging her 3 daughters to think about using the privilege we had for the good of others, which to me, is as Jewish a value as any.
I left home at 18 for college and did not return to Pittsburgh. Though I loved growing up there, I knew I wanted a different kind of life. I went to Vermont for college, to Jerusalem for a junior year abroad, and than to New York City to work in book publishing, media and entertainment. I met Evan Benjamin in 2000, auditioning for a voiceover job at the studio where he was a recording engineer. Evan’s path was much different than mine, from Flushing Queens, a yeshiva boy turned turned Styvesant HS student to Berklee School of music. He was a real New Yorker, not a zealous transplant. He was a Mets fan and had been mugged on the L train when he was 14. He was a musician and cab driver and notoriously passionate political person. We dated and then after 9/11, moved in together in Brooklyn. His circuitous spiritual path intersected with mine, and our mutual desire to find to create ritual and find community brought us to BHS after we got married and had our daughter, Zoe.
So much about BHS felt familiar, but so much of it felt new, more progressive than where I had come from, and definitely where Evan had, and was grounded in the tolerance and diversity of what Evan and I hoped we were raising our family to be. We had a bris when our son Miles joined our family, and both kids went through the lovely BHS preschool and religious school. They found comfort and warmth in BHS’s cozy spaces, hanging in the Oneg room and classrooms and kitchen and Sanctuary.
At BHS, we have held on to these friends from preschool, and danced with them at Zoe’s bat mitzvah, a joyous occasion we were lucky to celebrate in October. We were dazzled by Cantor Ayelet’s voice and tutoring, by Rabbi Lippe, Rabbi Molly and the religious school’s years of preparation, and inspired by the social justice mitzvah project being a key component of Zoe’s transition to a Jewish member of the community.
Since 2016, probably like most of you, I have felt an urgency. How can I use my voice to push back against a hateful and cruel administration? How can I teach my kids what it means to be an active member of a community? To truly use our privilege for good, like my mom tried to do? We’ve shown up against gun violence, against anti Semitism, for women’s rights and climate change and for Black Lives. We’ve volunteered in the shelter. BHS has given us a framework for much of this activism. They are a support, and a resource, for whatever ideas or skills we have to bring to the table. They create and hold space in the most practical way.
Personally, in my own small way, I’ve been working to amplify voices of people trying to make things better through their art and activism. I’ve created a podcast where I interview mothers I’d like to know, in this space actually, asking them how, what and why they create. I try to make connections through these conversations, hoping that others would want to know these mothers too. I try to find levity or lessons in the children’s books and essays I write -- finding ways to comfort others with a laugh or a truth. This is a platform for what I believe, and a way to connect. It’s my spirituality, I think.
We’ve been, and continue to be, for now, in a very uncomfortable space. It is one of compromise and limbo. It is a space we should not have to be living in. This time has been one of despair. Our physical freedom and our health and safety are under attack. We have lost friends and family members. We don’t know who to trust. We have become more activated to the concept that we are not all free and we are not all equal in the eyes of our government. BHS is a space that is open to helping others, not contributing to the tribalism that is plaguing our country. It is a space of education, community, and love.
I want for my kids to feel the safety and comfort I once felt, inside that container that was Tree of Life. It was a different time, but I want a version of that space for them, and for all of us. We are united in our strength and our love, which I do believe, is stronger than hate,
May you all have an easy fast.
