Berkeley
novelist ponders a Jewish mom's cremation
Aleza
Goldsmith
Jewish
Bulletin of Northern California
September 13,2002
Rachel
Sondheim is searching for a home.
Not an
actual house, but a burial ground where her late mother's ashes can
rest.
The heroine
in Lois Silverstein's new novel DAUGHTER, Sondheim is struggling between
traditional and innovative religious observance.
She has
respected her mother's wishes by cremating her, but she can't bring
herself to scatter the ashes. Instead she spends the novel seeking out
a halachically sound loophole for burying the ashes next to her father.
"She's
just trying to do the right thing and preserve Judaism by pulling her
family together," said Silverstein. "Unfortunately, doing
the right thing doesn't seem to fit any one of the Jewish rules, so
she has to find some law or some addendum to a law - there are a series
of obstacles where her faith is challenged along the way."
Like her
heroine, Silverstein is also a person "open to many variations"
when it comes to Judaism. She is a member of Conservative Congregation
Netivot Shalom of Berkeley and fells "like I'm constantly learning."
Silverstein
doesn't need to find a home - she's happily settles in Berkeley with
a husband and a son, and is a registered expressive arts therapist,
a writing consultant and an instructor at various Bay Area universities,
colleges and graduate schools. Along her first novel, DAUGHTER, she
has published for books of poetry.
Although
the plucky Sondheim and the novel are not autobiographical and "the
story just came out by itself," Silverstein appreciates its significance
in Judaism of finding a grave site.
As a self-professed
amateur genealogist she has encountered firsthand the difficulty of
the Jewish people in seeking out family roots. Unlike her character's
mother, who was cremated at will, many who dies during World War II,
for instance, did not have a choice in the matter and their records
are hard to locate. Luckily for Silverstein, most from her father's
side emigrated from Eastern Europe in the 1860'w and her mother's side
came from Ukraine in the early 1900s.
She has
discovered a large part of the family tree from her mother's site, "but
it wasn't so easy to find, because often they were hiding or changed
their names." On her dad's side, meanwhile, "the records were
very spare."
Silverstein
said that disconnection from her ancestry affected her "peace and
harmony with the universe" tremendously. "You want to be able
to say, 'Oh that's what happened to Great Uncle Mo.' you look doe part
of your self in that."
This sense
of peace and harmony with the universe is Sondheim's quest in DAUGHTER.
She regrets cremating her mother, said Silverstein, "and she has
to live with it, but she's going to make it fit somehow."
The character
also deals with feminist issues in Judaism, a sibling relationship,
and the similarities between Jewish and Zen Buddhist attitudes towards
death and burials - all as she weaves through the streets of New York
with her mom's ashes in a Guatemalan tote bag.
"She's
a wonderful heroine for me." Said Silverstein. "She's so life-giving."
Silverstein
stressed, however that she doesn't want DAUGHTER to be viewed as a critique
of cremation. If any ethical questions do arise while reading the book,
she hopes readers will look to themselves and their own Jewish practice.
The idea, she explained, is to elevate the concept of belonging to Jewish
tradition in the best possible way."
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