Free You Saved Me, Too: What a Holocaust Survivor Taught Me about Living, Dying, Fighting, Loving, and Swearing in Yiddish by Susan Kushner Resnick

help.
    I always thought God was good, and kind, and not scary, so I don’t get the way the crowd ass-kisses God during Jewish services. Why all the praise and thanks, every other page?
You’re great, you’re great, you’re great
, the words declare;
of course you’re our one and only
. The God I believe in isn’t that insecure.
    Or powerful. I don’t believe that God answers our prayers anymore, though I throw one out there every now and then as a test. Now I believe she’s impotent to control the world; that she made the humans and gave us free will. This helps me explain why she didn’t stop the Holocaust. According to my version, God doesn’t start or stop anything, but I think she stays with us during those times when we need to pray. She holds our hands and props us up, helping us to keep going. Or she spectates on the good times.
    Like when I was watching Carrie run through a dress rehearsal of her bat mitzvah service and felt myself fill up with warm, gooey pride. Carrie was knocking it out of the park. She and the rabbi went throughthe prayers on the
bimah
, and I sat in the third row and God hovered on the ceiling. Crazy, right? But without the people and the judgment I perceived coming from them, I felt God’s presence. I thought it was a turning point—that from then on I’d sense her whenever I entered that room and that I’d love the Jewish experience. But I never found her there again. Maybe she doesn’t like crowds.
    God looks different to me now, too. She’s developed from an outline with blood vessels to a woman with lots of curls who wears a white toga and has the face of my friend, Abby, who helped people with AIDS in a godlike way before she died much too young. But even with the gender reassignment and abbreviated powers, God is still the same entity who lived outside my window. The same God who might have seen how content I was at age fourteen to wind a string of silver garland around a Christmas tree with my friend’s warm, happy family. The same God who kept me company as I sat outside in the cold sunshine while my playmates confessed their sins in a Catholic church that looked like a giant birthday cake. The same God who you think pushed us together.
    One day, I was trying to convince you to let me be your healthcare proxy and you were trying to come up with reasons to refuse. You’d already told me that all you needed was for David and me to visit you if you got sick.
    “What if you have a stroke?” I asked.
    “So what? I won’t know what’s going on.”
    “What if you’re in a coma? They’ll keep you hooked up to machines unless someone tells them not to. Is that what you want?”
    I knew you didn’t; you frequently didn’t even want to live while you could walk and talk. I knew I had you there. You said nothing.
    And then: “God sent you to me. That’s enough.”
    Enough for what?
    “The day I met you and little Maxeleh, God was with me. Just like when I go to Birkenau.”
    Impressive debate tactic. How was I supposed to compete with that?
    I was stunned by your words.
God sent you to me
. Who says something so beautiful in the midst of complaints and irrationality?
    God put her hands to her chest. Even she was moved.
1929
    Despite losing most of his money, your Zychlin grandfather kept his property and enough cash to give each grandchild five cents when he or she was born.
    He gave you so much more.
    When you were with him, you weren’t just one of six; you were the only one. So you spent as much time as you could with him. In the winter, you sat with him as he smoked his pipe and listened as Yiddish love songs played from his gramophone. In the summer, the two of you would walk to the town creamery. He would bring his own plate and order a scoop of cottage cheese and a scoop of sour cream, then take them back to his apartment where he’d stir them together and complete the concoction with a sprinkle of scallions. That taste—tart, creamy, oniony—would bring you