Monday, October 8, 2007

A Riddle

A block down the street from where I live, on a stone wall, a mourning announcement for Ziporah Grayevski, who was laid to rest yesterday. A good Ashkenazi name, Grayevski, but she was buried by a Sephardi burial society, in their part of the cemetery. OK, so she must have married a Pole, or Romanian, but she's being buried by and with her folks, and there must be a story there. Except that the announcement was signed by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, so she must have married her Gallizianer, or Yeke, or whatever he was, many years before such cross-ethnic marriages became the complete banality they now are. So the story must be even more interesting.

And that's all we'll ever know, isn't it. Wouldn't it be boring if Israel was the monolithic cardboard society its detractors like to tell about?

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