The Beating of the Parpar’s Wings
Bliss Goldstein reflects on her grandson’s Bar Mitzvah and what it means to shape Jewish identity across generations.
Editor’s Note: The Hebrew word parpar means butterfly—an image that runs quietly through Bliss Goldstein’s essay about her grandson’s Bar Mitzvah and the generations that led to it. In this piece, she captures how identity, memory, and love move across time, sometimes on the smallest of wings. — Howard Lovy
I perched on the padded folding chair next to my daughter-in-law in the Orthodox shul outside Chicago, where a frosted glass mechitzah separated the men from the women. I could see my husband’s disembodied head rising above the glass from the other side where he sat next to our son, a large, bearded man who looked like Paul Bunyan in a yarmulke. Up front, the Torah scroll lay unfurled on the podium before my grandson, who stood with head bowed. He tucked an errant strand of long hair behind his ear, took a shaky breath, and began chanting.
My grandson’s voice, thick with incipient adolescence, rose above us. At the point he paused for the congregation’s chant of the opening prayers—I saw the future of the Jewish people in this boy-man who loves baseball and will undoubtedly look after his three younger sisters when the elders are gone. Our voices filled the shul: women’s voices from underneath jaunty hats or wrapped heads, the squealing voices of children racing in the aisles, Holocaust survivors’ voices, the voice of my husband of thirty-nine years, the voice of my son who became my son at five and who I refuse to call my stepson, and once again rising above them all, the voice of my grandson, who would carry the Jewish people across a desert on his back if no cart was to be found.
I said to myself, this wouldn’t be happening without you.
The realization rolled over me in a full-body chill. Outside, it was one degree shy of the area’s record high of 98 degrees. Outside, it was kosher to protest Israel, which sometimes devolved into code for “Kill Jews.” Outside, it was indeed heating up. Believing that our grandson would one day pass down a love of Judaism, along with his father’s baseball cards, cooled my fears for the future of the Jewish people. We’d schlepped the cards from our basement in a suitcase the height of his seven-year-old sister, a legacy gift that my baseball-obsessed grandson will hopefully give to his son on the day of his Bar Mitzvah.
Yesterday on our son’s driveway—before we could even make it from our rental car into the house—our grandson’s dimples flashed as he unzipped the suitcase containing over ten thousand cards. His three sisters danced an impromptu horra around him in the mid-day heat. The last time we’d been around this joyous circle dance was fifteen years ago, at our son’s Orthodox wedding in Jerusalem. We’d stood on a terrace rooftop under the intense red fireball of the setting sun. It wrapped a golden light around all of us before departing behind an endless horizon of white limestone buildings. His bride—his kallah—circled our son seven times, her face radiant as she flicked blue eyes to meet his hazel. I thought That’s it. He belongs to the future now.
Their son, the boy-man leading grown men and women in prayer, was born barely a year later. When we talk on the phone now, my grandson is full of stats and opinions: Guess how tall the tallest major league player is (6’11”)? Who is the best player (debatable)? And why would anyone not be an Astros fan (duh)? Even though they had since moved out of Texas, my grandson carried his loyalty on his back, wearing his orange and blues proudly. As proudly as the white and blue prayer shawl, or tallit, now draped around his shoulders.
My son once told me the blue thread woven into the fringes on tallit was dyed from a special blue snail. That tallit in Hebrew means “small tent.” My grandson, like that snail, like all Jews, carries his home on his back. We are a People of the Mollusk.
Now, these many years later when we’d driven up to the Orthodox shul for our grandson’s Bar Mitzvah, I noted the giant marquee outside. The foot-high removable letters proclaimed: “Shabbat Shalom. Mazel Tov on Your Bar Mitzvah…” Then, on the marquee for all to see, Jew and non-Jew, stood our grandson’s Israeli first name and his grandfather’s very Jewish last name, linked together as if standing vigil.
I nodded to the two guards dressed all in black, keeping a literal vigil at the doors of the synagogue. With their padded vests, holstered batons, and guns, they were our spiritual swat team. I felt safe, yet sorrowful. I also felt angry.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the guards on my way to the front door. The shorter one smiled. The larger one made brief eye contact, then went back to scanning the parking lot. When would we ever be left alone to be Jewish in peace?
During the Bar Mitzvah service, while her brother chanted, the eldest of my granddaughters roamed the shul with a basket in her hand. Her younger sister trailed after her, a look of mischief on her delicate face. In their lacey dresses, the eleven-year-old and the seven-year-old reminded me of fairies. The older one whispered, “Here, Bubbie, take this.” She withdrew a small blue drawstring bag from a pile in the basket and tossed it into my lap. I held the bag up to the light, discovering it was full of sugared jelly candy. The candy’s shape reminded me of all the Legos I’d stepped on when my son was her age. Not being Orthodox, I wasn’t sure what the bag of candy was for.
“The candy looks like tiny building blocks,” said my younger granddaughter as she twirled, her white lacey dress flying around her. “I want to live in a house made of candy!” The women sitting in the pews hid smiles behind their hands. As my granddaughter spun, I saw the invisible sparks of her Neshama, the flame of her soul that G-d kindles with breath. My Neshama smiled at a kindred spirit, one who felt Judaism with such a depth of joy it couldn’t be contained by mere flesh. That one’s spark wouldn’t be dampened by the torrent of hate raining outside her home.
I was confused, though, by our granddaughters being allowed to walk around shul with blue mesh bags of candy for everyone. I thought we weren’t supposed to eat in this holy place. But what would I know? I was raised in a Reform temple in the Deep South, in an area where it seemed there were Baptist churches competing on every street corner. There were no Jewish places of worship for my parents to choose from, and the only temple was a 45-minute drive.
In the temple of my youth, there weren’t Bar or Bat Mitzvahs, we didn’t keep kosher, and men didn’t wear shawls blessed by a snail’s blue pigment. The version of Reform Judaism it espoused involved planting trees in Israel, social justice, and a Unitarian, inclusive view of the world. My soul wanted more, hearing the selkie call of religious practice. Instead of studying Torah or learning the Shema in religious school, we watched film after film from thirty years ago in flickering black and white of dead Jews being shoved into mass graves. With their naked, emaciated bodies and the shoulder bones of birds, they tumbled into dirt troughs, one on top of the other. In 1939, the population of Jews worldwide had crested at 16 million; 6 million dead bodies later, our population was decimated. It clearly was up to those who remained to repopulate the Earth.
When I married my husband with the overtly Jewish last name and classically Jewish good looks, he came with a bonus: a beautiful five-year-old boy with freckles dusting his nose. I felt my life’s purpose click into place. Sure, my husband didn’t believe in G-d, didn’t attend temple, and was brought up by Jewish parents who were practicing atheists and thought religion was for dumb people, but he was Jewish, damn it. Like me, he knew a smattering of Yiddish. We shared a Jewish sense of humor; sometimes, we were the only ones in the movie theater laughing like loons. He was a feminist in the best meaning of the word: that men and women are created equal and deserve the same opportunities. As long as he didn’t lox-block me from passing on Jewish practice to his son, who became our son once we signed the ketubah nine months after we met, I could have a Jewish child and raise him to celebrate Shabbat and know the Shema.
And to balance Jewish joy with all we had lost.
After reading from the Torah, our grandson gave his drash on the meaning of what he’d read. Then he thanked those who were important to him, who had helped guide him to this day. I could have sworn the sun moved and sent a dazzling light down through the high windows when he mentioned us, his Bubbie and his grandfather, and how much he enjoyed our conversations. I smiled, fingering the cool mesh of the mysterious blue bag of candy in my lap.
I had thought about becoming Orthodox, but never did. But today, at my grandson’s Bar Mitzvah, I got to become an Orthodox Jew for a day. It was exhilarating. Women whom I’d never met spotted me and rightly assumed I was the Bubbie, showering me with Mazel Tov’s in melodious voices. They twittered like small birds, greeting one another and finding open spots in which to nest for the next few hours. I settled into my chair in solidarity with my sisters, whose home life and religious life were so well integrated that there was no line between the two. Once, I had yearned to live among them in an Orthodox neighborhood where everyone greeted each other Gut Shabbos on the walk to shul Saturday mornings. On Shabbat, we stayed within the eruv strung high above the perimeter of the neighborhood, which created one gigantic home without walls. Despite the prohibition not to carry things in public on the Sabbath, I learned from my son that this symbolic home allowed Orthodox Jews to bring their house keys to synagogue and push strollers on the Sabbath.
I could imagine my husband’s dark eyes rolling if I’d had the chutzpah to bring up moving my spiritual—and secular—homes closer together. When I met him, he and his son didn’t light candles on Shabbat or know the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It was a small miracle that my husband had been the one driving our son to religious school at the Conservative temple three days a week and stood by my side as I lit candles on Friday nights. To prepare for the Shabbat rituals, our son enjoyed swaddling the challah with the cover he’d made at religious school crafted from a white handkerchief with a cartoonish drawing of a plank of matzoh on its pliable surface. He knew the challah cover kept the bread from seeing the wine and feeling envious of the wine being drunk first.
As it turned out, just as I was about to have that conversation with my husband about becoming more religious, our son returned from college wearing a yarmulke. This was new. Home on spring break, he stood in our dining room in the morning light facing east and laid tefillin, attaching the leather prayer boxes with leather straps made from kosher animals to his body. I left him to his prayers and waited on the couch in the next room until he was done. He emerged—gently pushing the boxes and the straps of the tefillin back into a midnight blue velveteen bag.
I had so yearned to become Orthodox, and here, my son was the one tasting the forbidden fruit. My husband had allowed me to open the door to Elijah and the Shabbat Bride. And this was the thanks he got. He had watched from the sidelines as I crossed the street from Reform into Conservative practice—then as I side-eyed Orthodox—and didn’t say anything. Now, I was the one to eye our son’s Orthodox identity mutely from the sidelines. I knew that if I became an Orthodox Jew, I would be a divorced one. An impermeable mechitzah divided my husband from any more Jewish practice than I had already dared bring into his life. Into our son’s life.
My early nickname for my husband was Mr. Science, and Mr. Science was at his limit with anything invisible or ineffable. As I made the conscious decision not to talk to my husband about becoming more religious and creating an Orthodox home, I had to content myself with our son creating one.
And truth be told, it wasn’t just fear of losing my husband that kept me from having that conversation. The feminist in me had started whispering in my ear, sowing seeds of doubt: Shouldn’t the rabbi stand up front in the woman’s side, too? Why aren’t women reading from the Torah? Why is it okay for women to stay home on Friday nights and prepare the meals, freeing the men to go pray? Can I be a good feminist and Orthodox?
Now, these many years later, I sat with the women and children behind the low glass wall of the mechitzah in an Orthodox shul. Across the aisle, our granddaughters cradled their blue mesh bags filled with candy. As everyone’s voices braided, singing the final prayers for our grandson’s Bar Mitzvah—and I joined my voice to those around me—my heart opened as usual. A happiness so intense obliterated the boundary between me and not me. This is what always happens when I’m around other Jews, chanting the tunes of our ancestors. The tunes that transport us when we must pick up and leave a place where we are no longer welcome. The tunes I will be singing when I no longer have breath. I felt my bones shift in this Sea of Jews, all of us humming a wordless niggun with the same beautiful, sorrowful tune, realizing that in the end, what did it matter if I were Reform or Conservative or Orthodox? With our numbers declining in certain parts of the world—in Syria, for example, where Jews once numbered around 30,000, and now at best eight—it took all the tunes of all our collective prayers to light each precious Neshama.
My grandson shown so brightly at the front of the congregation I could see his very soul flickering in the pauses between melodies without words.
Yesterday, I’d taken that shiny boy-man chanting the last lines of Torah to Dunkin’ Donuts, a place he chummily called “Dunkins.” We discussed baseball and how he’d grown his hair long to look like his favorite player. He adjusted the yarmulke threatening to slide off and inhaled a Kreme Donut. He chased it with a bottle of apple juice, just to be healthy. I scanned the menu for the item least likely to send me into a sugar coma, opting for Bagel Bites. My grandson reached for one and gulped it like a pelican, his dimples flashing, too busy enlightening me about the history of Jewish players in major league baseball (190 total) to bother with something as mundane as mastication. He exuded Jewish joy.
The sweetness of my life overcame me like a sugar rush. I realized that I was the butterfly—the parpar in Hebrew—providing the spiritual equivalent of The Butterfly Effect, whose beating wings on one side of the world ultimately caused a typhoon on the other. Because I had married my husband and introduced his son to the beauty of Jewish practice, his son’s son would most likely make a Jewish home when his time came. As he matured, my grandson would know what it’s like to taste apples and honey on his tongue with each chanted note. I would gift him his father’s challah cover on his wedding day. He was compassionate like his father, after all, and wouldn’t want the challah to feel distress. And should my grandson be blessed with a son, G-d willing, that son would have a Bar Mitzvah one day, complete with 10,000 baseball cards. I felt at peace, knowing I had done this one good thing to perpetuate the history of the Jewish people, one good man at a time. Perhaps raising a good man is the most feminist act of all.
The next morning, as the final words of Torah left my grandson’s lips, the congregation cocked back their throwing arms like one united ball team. All around me, the small blue bags of sugared candy filled the air. Up, up they flew, the air thick with sweetness. As light as butterflies. The mesh bags hit my grandson all over—his arms, his legs, the chest destined to barrel like his dad’s—and bounced to the ground. He didn’t duck. He didn’t weave. He stood straight and accepted the blessings falling all around him with a beatific smile that shined upon the generations to come.
Bliss Goldstein’s work has been published in HuffPost, Insider, the LA Times, and Spider Magazine, and On Being Jewish Now. She is CALYX Journal’s 2022 winner of the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. Bliss taught writing at Western Washinton University and has an MLA from Stanford University, where she co-founded the journal Tangents. She is working on a children’s book, Jakey and the Yom Kippur Demon, about a group of friends who see demons on Jewish holidays. She lives in Washington State with her husband, the writer and artist Dan Goldstein. You can read more of Bliss’s work at blissgoldstein.com.
Five tiny delights
Washing my hair with Pikake shampoo so that I smell like Hawaii
Audiobooks so that I can read while driving and brushing my teeth
Crunching leaves since the sound reminds me of my dad making us rake
The taste of French butter on warm bread
“Funday Sunday:” Our made-up holiday where my husband plies me with homemade waffles and we talk for hours.
Five tiny Jewish delights
Pears on the sukkot
Digging out the hanukkiah still encrusted with the dripping wax from our children
How handsome my husband is in his brown knitted yarmulke
The taste of my giant matzoh balls infused with carrots and celery
The sound of multiple shofars while we stand on the banks of the lake, ready to toss birdseed into the water like sins
Electrifying!
Told a close friend that this piece reads like a psalm and moved me to tears. What more can one ask from a writer?