![\"Grandma\"](\"http:\/\/marianfontana.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/Grandma.jpeg\")
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I grew up with a Jewish last name. Goldstein to be exact.\u00a0 I hated having a Jewish last name, not because I am anti-Semitic but because it so closely identified me with something personal like being named Lisa Liberal Democrat or Sally Sleeps Naked.\u00a0 When I was a Goldstein, people made presumptions about me.\u00a0 Jewish teachers favored me, non-Jewish teachers wished me a Happy Chanukah. I never corrected them or told them I was raised Catholic. Religion just never seemed like something people should know about me.<\/p>\n
My first job after college was as a movement teacher at the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y, arguably the largest Jewish Cultural Center in New York City.\u00a0\u00a0 I knew my name had something to do with my getting hired.\u00a0\u00a0 I taught a class called Wee Wizards that met twice a week.\u00a0 Toward the end of class, toddlers would sit on their caregiver\u2019s laps sucking on Sippy cups while I read them a book. Once while reading a book about Passover, a mother corrected me on my pronunciation of the Afikomen, the matzo that is hid for a child to find after the Seder is over.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s Ah-FEE-KO-MEN,\u201d one of the mom\u2019s corrected, furrowing her brow. \u201cHaven\u2019t you been to a Seder?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course I have,\u201d I said but my Jewish Grandmother Goldstein\u2019s Seder was not a typical Jewish affair. Yes we had gefilte fish and Matzo Ball soup but they were store bought and served out of obligation. \u00a0In fact, my grandmother Goldstein hated all things Jewish. \u00a0Every question about Judaism I had was met with an eye roll, a shrug and the same dismissive answer: \u201cYou\u2019re just supposed to.\u201d \u00a0My father was even less helpful, sharing very few stories of his childhood on the Grand Concourse where everyone sat in front of their buildings on folding chairs, speaking Yiddish.\u00a0\u00a0 The only story he told was that he shared a room with his sister and grandmother who was Orthodox.\u00a0 He said she snored so loudly that he kept a slipper on a string. He would hit her with it throughout the night, reeling the slipper back in like it was a fishing pole.<\/p>\n My own Irish\/Italian\/Catholic mother knew more about Judaism than my father did having studied theology at her Catholic college.\u00a0 \u00a0My mother is devout and my father regularly attended mass with her on Sundays. I remember how strange it was to hear the Irish priest say in his thick Brogue\u00a0 \u201cI want to thank Ira Goldstein for his generous donation to the church.\u201d<\/p>\n While we spent Jewish holidays at my grandmothers, she seemed to enjoy coming to our house for the Catholic ones even more.\u00a0 \u201cYou have better holidays than the Jews,\u201d she would say. \u00a0Her attitude confused me and made me even more resolute to finding out why my Jewish family was so un-Jewish.<\/p>\n One Easter, my grandmother, sister and I were sitting on the porch waiting for the ham to finish.\u00a0 My dad was making us all different kinds of margaritas and kept refilling them until we were tipsy. \u00a0It was a beautiful, spring day and the star magnolia was in full bloom, its sweet scent wafting up to the porch.<\/p>\n \u201cGrandma\u201d I said emboldened by liquor.\u00a0 \u201cWhy won\u2019t you tell me anything about your life?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 Normally, she would stare vacantly at me and say,\u00a0 \u201cYou have beautiful eyebrows.\u201d Instead, she closed her eyes, sighed pressing her small hands to her white curls.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember my father chasing me around the dining room table with a belt for chewing gum on the Sabbath,\u201d she said turning to me and giggling.\u00a0 \u201cWe were Orthodox. You couldn\u2019t do so many things. We had separate plates we ate off of, kosher food only, too many rules.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was your dad like?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe died young. Worked in a hat factory until the dust from the felt got in his lungs.\u201d she waved her hand away as if swatting a fly and I knew the conversation was over.<\/p>\n My Aunt Sheila, my father\u2019s sister was the only one of the Goldstein\u2019s that knew our Jewish history. A few years ago, my sister and I went to visit her in Santa Monica.\u00a0 My Aunt was dying of ALS and could barely speak, her tongue weak, her head hanging low.\u00a0\u00a0 I wrote down everything she said, knowing it was my last chance to know something about the Jewish side of my family.\u00a0 She showed me photos of my grandmother in flapper dresses her hair bobbed and white even when she was only eighteen.\u00a0 Sheila told me about my great grandmother, how she had triplets that lived three weeks before dying one by one, how she escaped the Russian Pogroms hiding my grandmother under leaves in the backyard while the Cossacks burned down her house.<\/p>\n My Aunt Sheila was the one who told me that Goldstein wasn\u2019t even our real family name. \u201cYour grandpa Joe had been adopted in Portland, Maine,\u201d she told me. \u201cHe was born to the daughter of a dentist.\u00a0 Katz I think the name was. They were a prominent Jewish family. They sent their daughter away to have the baby and then put him up for adoption\u201d While my Aunt struggled to speak, I stared at her beautiful, high, cheekbones that made her look more like an Egyptian princess than a Russian Jew.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cNobody knows who the father was, probably a sailor in town.\u00a0 Anyway, the Goldstein\u2019s owned a candy shop and they adopted your grandfather so that he could work in the store. Do you know they didn\u2019t allow him to go to school and then they made him make milkshakes and egg creams for the kids that did? Can you imagine?\u201d<\/p>\n When I got married in 1993, I quickly got rid of Goldstein. At first I tried hyphenating the name becoming Goldstein-Fontana, but I struggled to fit my signature on the checks and soon became just Fontana.<\/p>\n Amazingly, when my grandmother was on her deathbed, she spoke Yiddish again.\u00a0 \u00a0She was ninety-four dying in her living room on a hospital bed, the sweet hospice nurse fluttering around her like a bird.<\/p>\n \u201cBiz hundert azoi ve tsvantsik,\u201d my grandmother said to my father. To my shock, my father replied.<\/p>\n \u201cAz a yor ahf mir.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat did she say?\u201d I asked my dad.<\/p>\n \u201cShe says I should live like a twenty year old until I\u2019m 107.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what did you say back?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI should have such good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n Today was so cold and snowy I made matzo ball soup from the box.\u00a0 Just like grandma used to make.\u00a0 The smell filled the house and made me miss my grandmother and the holiday meals we shared.<\/p>\n I even miss my old name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I grew up with a Jewish last name. Goldstein to be exact.\u00a0 I hated having a Jewish last name, not because I am anti-Semitic but because it so closely identified me with something personal like being named Lisa Liberal Democrat or Sally Sleeps Naked.\u00a0 When I was a Goldstein, people made presumptions about me.\u00a0 Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n