Just Hilarie

Passover 2024

On April 7, 2024

Every year at my Passover Seder here in Stockholm with my J.A.P.S. (my Jewish American Parents in Stockholm group) I say a few words before we start. This was what I said this year.

I want to welcome you all.

I am very glad to see you – glad that we can join together to celebrate Pesach, in these difficult times. And they are difficult, but I won’t say anything else about that.

To us the word, Pesach means to pass over, and that comes from the idea that the angel of God passed over the homes of the Hebrews, as our people were called over 3000 years ago, when we were slaves in the land of Egypt. That is why we call this holiday Passover.

But recently I have just learned an interesting thing about that word, Pesach, that Hebrew word. Now I don’t speak or read Hebrew. I sort of know most of the letters in the alphabet and can follow along the Hebrew words in the prayers in the prayer book. But this is what I just learned…The first letter or syllable in Pesach is Pe. And as a word all by itself Pe means “mouth” and the second syllable “sach” means speak. So, the word Pesach, also can mean something like “using your mouth to speak or to tell”. And that is what we are gathered here in this room to do tonight – like Jews all over the world do. Tonight, we will tell the story of the Exodus – the journey of the ancestors of the Jewish people from slavery to freedom.

And we don’t just tell this because maybe we might feel like it – we tell the story because in the torah we are commanded to tell this story, every year, at this same time of year. We keep telling the story so that every year it gets passed down from generation to generation. We are expected to tell this story to our children, so that they can tell it to their children. But even in places like Jewish nursing homes, they still hold a Pesach seder, even if the youngest person in the room is 75 years old and has heard the story many times. A reform Rabbi named Arthur Green explains “Even if we all know the story, we are commended to tell it again. The act of “Storytelling” for its own sake, you might call it, whether there is anyone “new” who needs to hear it or not. You might call this the miracle of Pesach.” Says Rabbi Green.

This year, this night, we are missing a bunch of our second generation of J.A.P.S. They are off doing other things and cannot be with us this year. I hope they will be with us next year. But as I look around this room, I see a whole new generation sitting here – ready to hear the telling of this story.

So, let’s begin.

The stories we tell

By Hilarie

On December 28, 2023

In Uncategorized

I recently spoke with a very dear friend who I have known a very long time on a one and a half hour skype call. We spent a lot of time talking about family and discussing our past. She told me some things about her parents I hadn’t heard before and I told some of the stories from my family. And this got me thinking about the stories that are passed down from our parents and grandparents. The way we tell them. The way we tell them as if they were true. I told her that the story as she heard it from her father might not have been the way it really happened. And she answered me by saying that that was the way it happened – her father wasn’t a liar, he told her the truth. I told her that I wasn’t calling him a liar but that his story of what happened in his life was just the way he remembered it. But it didn’t mean that that was actually what happened. He wasn’t a liar – he was human. Like the story from my grandfather about the boat he took in his travel from Poland to the USA in the early 20th century. When my cousin researched his history, she couldn’t find him on that boat. But another boat was in New York Harbor at exactly the same time and on that boat’s list was his name. He had seen that other boat when he arrived in America and instead of remembering the name of the boat he was on, he remembered the name on the side of the ship he saw when entering the harbor to his new world. He wasn’t a liar – he was human.

Humans tell stories. Well some of us do. Not all. Some are just silent, unable to make sense of the life they are living, unable to recreate it in words, unable to examine what their life is. But I think most of us humans tell stories. We have a need to explain and understand ourselves. Did a person not choose to go down a path in their lives because they felt it was better to stay at home or was it because they were afraid. Did a person become successful because their own father encouraged and supported their choices or were they just lucky? Did someone not follow their dream because they just didn’t want it bad enough or because they weren’t strong enough to buck a domineering mother?

Life is never a straight shining path. It is a crooked, winding, bumpy road with all kinds of divergent paths leading off to different directions. What fork you choose to take at any of those branches determines the path of your life – you rarely get a chance to backtrack and redo your choice. You can only move forward. But your mind can redo those turns you took. You can think back and tell yourself “I took that path because your father was there and I chose to marry him”. But years later, well along on the chosen path, deep down, you know that the reason you didn’t follow the path of your dream was because you weren’t brave enough to do so, and so, you took the easier path. And yes in many cases, having encouraging parents or advisors who can help you decide what is the best choice for you to follow is definitely an asset. Many of those forks in the road get walked without any forthought whatsoever. We humans just go where our feet lead us and then spend decades mulling it over and telling the story which we, with our human memories, remember about it. And that is the life story that our children or our friends get to hear and to pass on to others.

I think I must have been born a sceptic (or at least someone who was unwilling to accept at face value what others told them). Maybe not since birth but definitely since I was four years old. I was four years old when I needed to have my tonsils removed. The very nice doctor told me it wouldn’t hurt and afterwards, I could eat all the ice cream I wanted. When I woke up my throat hurt a lot and when I tried to eat the ice cream my mother gave me, it hurt even more. That very nice doctor lied to me!! And I don’t think I ever believed anyone else, or the stories they tell, wholeheartedly, ever since.

I know people who never fail to say how much they loved their parents or how much they respected them, or admired them, or looked up to them or miss them greatly once gone. And I have to admit, this makes me feel a bit jealous. Because I am unable to use any of those words to describe how I feel about my own parents. Now don’t get me wrong…my parents were not not horrible people. They didn’t beat me, they didn’t starve or torture me. They did the best they could with the limited means they had that were a result of poor decision-making earlier in their lives. I definitely loved them but… By the time I was 14 or 15 I was sure I wanted to live my life and make choices completely differently than what my mother did. And I give my mother credit for encouraging me to do exactly that.

Happy new year

By Hilarie

On September 18, 2023

In Uncategorized

Happy new year everybody…
Or rather, not to everybody…mainly to all my Jewish family and friends.
Happy New Year because this weekend was the start of the Jewish New Year – not the regular New Year that is celebrated with fireworks and such on December 31 but the one that we, the Jewish people celebrate – usually in the fall. This year, we are celebrating the beginning of year 5784. That’s a lot of years.

For me personally, it was a pretty busy weekend, preceded by a couple of pretty busy weeks preparing for this weekend.

On Saturday, my group of J.A.P.S. as I call them (Jewish American Parents in Stockholm…not the kind of JAPS who always have perfectly polished nails), arrived with their offerings of food at my apartment almost promptly at 2pm. We were 22 people crammed into my open-plan kitchen-dining-living room. Håkan and I had spent the last 2 or 3 days, cleaning, vacuuming and dusting the place – putting the miscellaneous crap we always have lying around in the kitchen-dining-living room out of sight in other parts of the apartment. It wasn’t spotless but good enough. Our small entry hall became filled with shoes, backpacks, jackets and empty bags. The kitchen counters and buffet table were filled with brisket, tzimmes, honey chicken wings, salads, cooked veggies and assorted drinkables. All the desserts were off to the side on the window sill. The large dining table was set up with candles, a bottle of red wine, a round challah, dishes of honey and a big plate of apple slices. Once all the hugs and hellos were done and the food organized, shoes were found and the disorderly group was sent scurrying down the stairwell (I took the elevator) to the front door and out across a ramp to a floating dock on Pålsundet. It was a beautiful day – warm and sunny with a feeling of still remembered summer. Motorboats of various sizes kept passing us as we gathered on the dock, probably wondering what this unruly group was doing there. Some of them waved to us. We were there to do Teshuvah and Tashlich as we have been doing every year for many years already.

Teshuvah can be seen as the process by which Jews atone for the bad things that they might have done in the past year and it requires a good amount of self-reflection. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides said there are 3 steps in this process: first one must adopt a sincere feeling of regret for one’s bad actions, then one needs to ask for forgiveness from those one has harmed and finally one vows to not do so again. We follow this process of atonement with Tashlich which is a symbolic “casting off” of the sins we have carried around with us for the past year. We do this by tossing something into flowing water – we used to toss bread crumbs but that’s now thought to be bad for the ducks who might gather around us. So this year we used defrosted corn kernels.

I passed around the papers that explained what we were to do and which had a few prayers on them that we spoke together. And then we threw away our sin-carrying corn.

Back upstairs again, we gathered around the dining table, passed around wine-filled small plastic cups and said the blessing over the candles I lit and then over the wine, the round challah Håkan baked, the apples and the honey and finally a prayer for a sweet new year. And then we could eat!! And schmooze and eat some more.

On Sunday, I managed to drag myself out of bed before noon and by 3pm I was at the Jewish community building with my neighbor and good friend Eva-Britt for a Progressiv Judendom i Stockholm activity. We had planned to hold a short afternoon Rosh Hashanah service followed by a shiur/discussion. Tim Kynerd led the service with his beautiful voice, helped by Monique Nilfors and Sonja Kalmering and with Nathaniel Glasser Skog and his son contributing with the music. Afterwards, Noa Hermale led the discussion. He talked about how thousands of years ago, the sighting of the new moon determined the start of the new year. And how it was not always self evident to the different rabbis of the time when the new year actually started. The natural phases of the moon was the calendar they used, not having a printed version to refer to. But what he also talked about is how Rosh Hashanah, a day when the moon is new is made into a holy day. How we humans can take an ordinary recurring event like the phases of the moon and give it meaning. And that idea spoke to me.

Rosh Hashanah is one of the most important days of the Jewish calendar – one of its most holy days, if you will. It is the time when most Jews, regardless of how “religious” they are, go to the synagogue to sit in communal prayers with their fellow Jews. I don’t go to the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah any more – I haven’t done so for many years now. I don’t find meaning there. And without meaning, can it truly be holy?

One of my guests at my Saturday Rosh Hashanah dinner party was explaining to me that since Rosh Hashanah was on a Saturday it was the custom to not blow the shofar like it usually is done. And since it was a Saturday, candles should not be lit and he went on to tell of other things that should or should not be done on this holiest of days.

But I don’t really care about all those guidelines or rules. We didn’t blow the shofar I own mainly because I forgot to get people to try. But I like the idea that Noa Hermale was talking about. He talked about how a wine cup on the sabbath is only an ordinary cup until we give it meaning. A candlestick is only important at chanukah because we give it meaning. I have been celebrating Rosh Hashanah with my J.A.P.S. in basically the same way as I did this past Saturday since my son was 6 years old. The Jews of long ago decided to give meaning to the new moon, to the day that started the month of Tishrei – they said that was the start of the new year and was holy. Every year I call my J.A.P.S. to gather with me to celebrate the arrival of the new Jewish year with a few prayers and a lot of food. For me this gathering has meaning and by giving it meaning it becomes a special day. It becomes holy.

And may this coming year bring sweetness to all of you. Shana Tova!

Life after life

By Hilarie

On July 8, 2023

In Uncategorized

My strawberries

Amongst my parent’s generation, there were a few men who, though they had reached the age when they could retire, they didn’t. Their wives had retired already, if they had worked, but not these few men. Their workplace was still willing to have them even though they might have passed their best before date. I assume they must have liked their jobs enough to keep working even when they didn’t need to. My parents retired as soon as they were old enough to do so, leaving behind them jobs that were just jobs and looked forward to doing something that they really wanted to do. But my parent’s friend continued working and kept on traveling to his job every day. If you asked him why he continued to take the hour and a half bus ride in to the city from the retirement community he had recently moved to, leaving behind wife and new friends, he would stare at you with a look on his face of incomprehension. Finally, he said, in a very quiet tone of voice, “If I retire, I am afraid that I will die.” He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He was serious. He was sure that if he should stop working, the next day or week or month after his retirement party, he would die…of something. He eventually did retire. He and his wife got to spend more time with their kids and grandchildren. They traveled a bit together. They spent time at the clubhouse of their retirement community. And eventually in the fullness of time, his wife died and soon after so did he.

I have worked since I was about 17 – nothing serious until I was about 25, when I got my first job in the field that I had studied in college. Since then I have managed to support myself as an Art Director, Illustrator, Production manager, Board artist, Speaker support slide maker, Website designer, Powerpoint designer, magazine designer and in general, whatever one can do in the commercial art field. I have never needed the typing skills my mother insisted I acquire to help put food on my table – which is a good thing since my typing skills are really not all that much to write home about.

But all that professional working life is now 7 years behind me…and I am definitely retired. Am I dead yet?

I am not completely without things to do. I have 2 pro bono clients for whom I volunteer my skills and knowledge. I basically work for free now. But I get a pension, so I’m OK.

One of these groups, a Writers Festival, thinks I’m great. They love what I do for them. They are fun to work with. The project is something I am also interested in. I feel like I am doing a good job for them. But that little nagging voice that always lives in the back of my head says, “Of course they like you. You are free.” But the important thing is mostly they listen to my suggestions and often do what I suggest. That satisfies my control freak tendencies. So I’m OK.

The other group is a Jewish group working to bring Reform Judaism to Stockholm. It is a group that I have been involved with since before I retired – almost 2 decades, actually – a long time. I feel I know most of those people well. We have been on on the same board of directors together for so long that many of them have become friends. There are a lot of tasks on that board that I can not do. No one in their right mind would ask me to take the meeting minutes – the mishmash of swenglish would be illegible. Neither would I be useful to do anything in regards to religious tasks for my knowledge of such things is extremely superficial, a la carte and personal. To be the contact with the greater Jewish community is also something I would not be well suited to due to my poor comprehension of how Swedish society works and my latent phone fear. My only real usefulness lies in my years of work experience as a graphic designer. So that is what I have been on the board – a graphic designer. I designed their logo, I designed the now very out of date website and made a new one in WordPress. I make whatever graphics they need for promoting the group. And I try to maintain the look of the brand. These are things I know how to do. These are things I have experience in doing. With this group I feel like I am doing something important. So I’m OK.

Unlike my parent’s friend, my concern about my post-working life – and my fear – is metaphorical. I am still walking around. I am still breathing. I am not worried – at least not too much, that I will imminently drop dead any minute now. But…am I still alive? Do I still have worth? Does what I know have any value? And why aren’t people doing what I tell them?

In the summers, I have been spending most of my time at our country house with my husband. We have filled our planters with topsoil and I have bought plants to grow there. There are 3 requirements I insist on for any plants I might bring home: The plant has to be an almost indestructible perennial and need very little care from me, the plant has to have flowers, and finally if it has a wonderful scent that’s great. I have planted two small lilac bushes, 3 mock orange bushes, a flowering bush called Ölandstok in Swedish and two strawberry plants. I also planted 3 clematis plants to climb up the wall behind the planters. So far none of my plants have died yet and this year one of the lilac bushes had wonderful, scented flowers and my strawberry plant had strawberries. I spend a lot of time looking at these plants. This seems to be my new thing-to-do. It seems to pacify my anxiety about what I am doing with my post-work life. For the moment at least.

I guess with my two pro bono “jobs” and my green, planted friends, I have found my life after my life. I hope, as I work to keep all of these things alive, they will also keep me alive.