The Truth About Your Dad

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

You know your dad as a fun, hard-working, loving father who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible. I know him as a wonderful husband and a good man who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible.  But did you know that he could actually be the poster child for Bay Area Jewish History Month if there was such a thing. Let me explain:

Your father is a complex and fearsome combination of the two big strands of the Bay Area Jewish community--the German Jews and the Eastern European Jews. His paternal relations, the Michels, are the German Jews and they have been in San Francisco since the 1860s. On the maternal side are the Eastern European Jews, the Shapiros and Whites (or Witkoviches).  They came to New York in 1890 and 1920--so during the Great Migration--and moved to San Francisco in the 1930s. The Michels, like most of the German Jews who came to the Bay Area in the middle of the 19th century, were fairly prosperous merchants.  Many belonged to Temple Emanu-el, though they were never particularly observant. Mostly they were pretty assimilated and they enjoyed the pleasures of San Francisco life, including the delicious shellfish!  On the other side, there was Rabbi Saul White, one of the great Conservative Rabbis of San Francisco. Saul was raised in a Polish shtetl and his mother Chava was an observant, Yiddish speaking woman.  Now, Saul assimilated too in his own way, but you get my point.

Your father seems to have merged these two strands and come up with a pretty interesting and mostly workable Jewish identity.

On the one hand,

• He definitely has the aristocratic bearing of the German Jews
• He loves shellfish and has never been able to turn down a local Crab in Black Bean Sauce

On the other hand,

• He takes his girls to services every weekend
• We keep a kosher home
• He objects vociferously to guitar playing on the Sabbath
  

How does he do it?  I don't know really, but he does it with style, don't you think?

Love,
Mom