In 1965, I married a man who called himself a WASA, a white Anglo-Saxon atheist, and I drifted away from the Jewish community. 

I was raised in a nonobservant home, so marrying outside the faith wasn’t much of a leap. A local rabbi said he would perform the ceremony if I agreed to celebrate Jewish holidays and raise my children as Jews. I had no idea how. 

In my childhood home, our celebrations, Jewish or otherwise, were mostly about food. I didn’t even know the Motzi, the blessing over bread. So my husband and I chose a Unitarian minister to perform our ceremony. We decided to raise our children Unitarian, which like Judaism encourages questioning. Some call Unitarianism, which does not accept the divinity of Jesus, the “demilitarized zone.” It worked for our family.

I loved my church community, but I kept flirting with a return to Judaism. I even wrote a series on Jewish Renewal as a reporter for the Oakland Tribune. Still, as a woman who married out and hadn’t raised her children as Jews, I feared that I wouldn’t be welcomed. It took the end of my 23-year marriage for me to jump in with both feet. 

Fortunately, I was welcomed back, though I occasionally heard murmurs, “How could you have abandoned this?” Once, at a synagogue meeting, an elderly woman lamented the rise of intermarriage. I raised my hand. “As long as we give people who marry out the message that they’re not welcome in our synagogues, they’ll find other settings where they’ll feel at ease,” I said.

Suddenly, the person I was raising as Jewish was me. I studied elementary Hebrew, learned the blessings over the candles (and bread), joined a Jewish singles group and went on Jewish retreats where I experienced Havdalah for the first time. I hosted a Passover seder with the help of an Israeli friend, who also gave me a Jewish name, Nataniela. In 1998, I finally celebrated my bat mitzvah.

But I still had moments of discomfort. A man I was dating told me that if his child went to prison, he would be upset but would still acknowledge him. If his child came out as gay, he would be uncomfortable but wouldn’t abandon him. But if one of his children married a non-Jew, that would end the relationship.

“A parent who cuts off a child in that way cuts himself off from God,” I said, looking him in the eye.

He returned my gaze. “Janet, do you really believe that?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

I eventually remarried — a Jewish man, this time — and together we navigate questions of family, faith and tradition. 

My husband tells the story of George, a neighbor who, like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” cut off contact with a child who got engaged to someone who wasn’t Jewish. I wonder: Did George ever see his grandchildren? 

I hope he softened in his stance. In my family, when my cousin was about to marry a Catholic woman, his parents decided not to attend the wedding. My mother intervened and persuaded them that if they wanted grandchildren in their lives, they needed to be there from the start. Thank God they were.

Times have changed. My synagogue, like many others, includes many intermarried couples who have opted to raise their children Jewish. I also have friends who raised their children as Jews, yet their grandchildren are being raised in another faith. To me, grandchildren of any faith are a blessing. We can show them our values and share our traditions without minimizing theirs.

The other night at dinner, my companions expressed concern about the increase of intermarriage. “What will become of our community?” they worried. My husband and I, who had both previously married non-Jews, replied that intermarriage need not close doors. 

Am I sad that my choices a half a century ago mean I don’t have descendants who identify as Jewish? I’m not as sad as I would be if I had no grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Between us, my husband and I are blessed with eight grandchildren and a great-grandson.

At some point, they may wish to explore their heritage, on their own. In the meantime, we will share our holidays, our blessings and our chicken soup. 

My daughter urged me to get on the stick earlier this year when a friend’s hoarder mother passed away and left behind the unenviable task of clearing out her home.

I’m definitely no hoarder, but I finally realized that it was time to downsize, donate and discard.

Starting this summer, Freecycle and Trash Nothing patrons began carting away redundant cookware, canning supplies and costumes from our Palo Alto home. I sifted through a century of books that filled seven bookcases. I even sold an autographed copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” to Faith Bell, owner of Palo Alto’s Bell’s Book Store, and shared a cherished family story. 

In 1962, when my father was director of sales at Viking Press, he came home from the company Christmas party filled with excitement and three special gifts: the Steinbeck novel, a stuffed French poodle with a “Charley” tag and a Chinese lacquer chest filled with $50 in nickels. Some weeks before, my father had made a $50 bet with Viking publisher Tom Guinzburg that “Travels with Charley” would become a Book of the Month Club selection. Dad won, and Steinbeck inscribed the book: “To Bob Silver, The only man I know who literally has a nose full of nickels.” Faith bought the book, the toy and the chest. 

Unlike my father, I didn’t have a nose full of nickels. But I had a kitchen, an attic, closets and a garage full of stuff that I didn’t need and my children didn’t want. My husband and I began with the easy stuff, borrowing a friend’s slide scanner to digitize our family’s photos. With that accomplished, I hauled heirloom china to UPS for packing and shipping to married granddaughters in Texas. I trekked to Goodwill with black bags full of clothing. We placed items nobody wanted on the curb for our neighborhood’s Big Cleanup Day.

The act of downsizing did more than clear out our home. It actually spurred our decision to move into senior housing. Just before the High Holy Days, after a grueling drive home from San Diego, I looked at my husband and said it’s time. Without missing a beat, he concurred. We are old. Eighty-something is not the new fifty-something. If we were going to move into a senior community, we realized that we should do it while we are still reasonably able-bodied and young enough to enjoy the activities.

Since we had friends and fellow synagogue members at Palo Alto’s Moldaw Residences, which shares a campus with the Oshman Family JCC, we began to explore its independent living facilities. Friends invited us to visit their apartments and to join them at a Labor Day buffet, and sales director Stacy Guthmann welcomed us to an outdoor pre-Rosh Hashanah celebration. 

By mid-October, we were sold. By the first of December, amid piles of boxes, we were ensconced in a top-floor apartment with views of spectacular sunsets.

It may be months before everything in our two-bedroom apartment is where I can find it, and storage is at a premium.  As I write this column, my husband and his daughter are installing shelf units and pullouts in the closets and under the sinks. 

It’s a process, and an adjustment. Before taking my first shower, I accidentally bumped into a hanging pullcord, which set off an alarm. I immediately called the concierge, who said she would alert the nurse’s station that the alarm was tripped by mistake. But she wasn’t quick enough. I hadn’t heard the knock on the door when I walked out of the bathroom stark naked to confront a visitor.

“Just checking!” said the female intruder from the nurse’s office as I grabbed a towel.

“You were lucky it wasn’t the fire department,” a woman remarked over dinner. 

There’s gonna be a learning curve.

In 1190, Clifford’s Tower became York’s Masada. 

On March 16 of that year, some 150 largely French-speaking Jews took refuge there from an angry, violent mob incited by townspeople filled with anti-Jewish religious fervor and local gentry eager to avoid repaying Jewish moneylenders. The Jews, including liturgical poet Rabbi Yom Tov, eventually chose to die together and set the tower’s timbers on fire, rather than allow the mob to kill them or force them to renounce their faith. 

The annihilation in this community in northeast England also conveniently wiped out the monarchy’s debts to financiers who helped cover the costs of the Crusades.

The tragic story was largely forgotten until the 1950s, said Avi Rubinstein, a York University student who leads York Jewish Walking Tours through the city, where remnants still stand of walls constructed by Roman invaders 2,000 years ago. 

One aim of the tours is to “bring Jewish life back into York” — with its estimated 100 to 200 Jews — while also uncovering York’s “somewhat forgotten Jewish past,” according to the website.

I met Avi this summer during a trip to England to visit my son and his family. I happened upon his tour while I was researching York’s Jewish history online and decided that perhaps I could learn something new.

Carrying sketches illustrating the city’s history, including its Jewish past, Avi met us and our local relatives at the oddly named Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate in the city center. From there, we walked to the base of Clifford’s Tower for a history lesson. The ruins of the 13th century stone tower are themselves a remnant of an 11th century castle, built in the time of William the Conqueror.

My husband and I first visited York 18 years ago, after my son married a woman from the region. Touring York opened my eyes to history I’d never learned in a classroom. During a spooky evening ghost walk in 2007, the tour guide opined that the blood from the 1190 mass suicide may have resulted in the reddish stains on the walls of Clifford’s Tower. At the time, I shuddered. But Avi laughed at the story about the stains, which he said may have been due to oxidation.

Sitting under an awning at the base of the tower, where a memorial tablet was laid in 1978, Avi told other stories about York’s Jewish history. In 1990, Chief Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jacobovits and Archbishop Stuart Blanche held a ceremony where we stood to symbolically nullify the notion that Jews weren’t welcome in York. 

The tragedy in 1190, Avi said, was not the death knell of Jewish life in York. As we walked through town, he pointed out a blue plaque on Coney Street marking the site of both the home and synagogue of Rabbi Aaron of York. In 1237, Aaron became the chief rabbi of England. But calamity arrived before the century’s end.

By 1290, King Edward I had expelled all of England’s Jews, who did not return until Oliver Cromwell lifted the ban in 1656. 

York, with a total population of about 220,000 today, never became a thriving Jewish enclave. Geography and the Industrial Revolution, rather than antisemitism, played a role. York, which is not on the coast, was a river port when the Romans built a fortress in 71 CE and when Vikings captured the city in 866 CE. But over time, erosion and flooding made it impossible for large seagoing vessels to navigate the River Ouse or its tributaries. By the time the Industrial Revolution gained momentum in the 19th century, Manchester and cities with strong waterways quickly overtook York as manufacturing centers, and those are the places where Jews migrated.

Perversely, York’s decline as a major commercial center had at least one beneficial effect. By preserving its frozen-in-time past, York has become a major tourist center, drawing more than 9 million visitors a year and bringing in $2.7 billion annually, according to the city. Major attractions include cobbled streets like the narrow Shambles with its overhanging buildings, a magnificent Gothic cathedral and museums that display the heritage of Roman and Viking invaders. 

Self-guided Jewish tours of York have long been available. But Avi, who comes from a family of historians, saw the need for a tour led by Jews and recruited fellow York University senior Izzie Solomon to co-lead. They are now preparing younger students to continue their work. The tours for small groups are normally free, but tips are appreciated.

“Most of our customers are Jewish and are actually primarily from England (usually from London coming up to York for a weekend),” Avi said to me in an email. “We do also get a lot of foreign Jews, as well as some non-Jewish York locals who are interested in hearing a new perspective on York’s history.”

All walking tours of York inevitably include Clifford’s Tower, the Shambles, the cathedral and perhaps a walk along the Roman walls. Avi took us to one of the more obscure sites: a hidden courtyard revealing the two surviving walls of Norman House, York’s oldest home. Rediscovered in 1939, the building was the home of Jews in the 12th century, Avi said. 

Today York’s Jewish community may be experiencing a small revival, aided by the York University Jewish Society and by Rabbi Elisheva Salamo, a San Francisco native.

In 2023, the York Liberal Jewish Community hired Salamo as its first resident rabbi in more than 800 years. Salamo worked at synagogues and Jewish organizations across the Bay Area for decades, including as a J. Torah columnist.

“Small Jewish communities hold strength beyond their size, and that was what I saw as I interviewed for the post,” the rabbi told me in an email. “It’s a special privilege to be part of navigating the pulls of Jewish life and the secular world here, as I am sure my spiritual ancestors, Rabbi Yom Tov and Aaron of York felt. When I tread the streets they walked on, pass the sites of their synagogues, I feel a special connection to the land and to recreating a vibrant community in a culture with different values. We are proud Jews in York, we believe that hope rises from the ashes, that memory serves to shape but not define us.”

With the blessing of her parents, my husband and I placed stones on the North Yorkshire headstone of Sarah Everard and sang “Adonai Ro’i,” a haunting version of Psalm 23. We hoped to bring a small amount of solace to Jeremy and Sue Everard, whose unbearable loss has reverberated across the U.K. over the past four years.

Sarah was abducted, raped and murdered in early March 2021 by a Metropolitan Police officer in south London. She was 33. The British press covered the tragedy extensively. Vigils took place throughout the U.K. Kate Middleton, now Princess of Wales, attended one such vigil unannounced and sent a personal note to the family. The crime also led British women to band together to raise awareness of violence against women and girls and to bring attention to crimes committed by police officers. 

The Everards will always be grateful for those efforts and for the support of friends, neighbors and people they had never met. That said, the tragic death of the youngest of their three children is a pain without end. They live with her loss every single day, visiting her grave in the churchyard not far from the University of York.

Ten years ago, we first met the Everards through the professional contacts of my husband, Allen Podell. An engineer-physicist-inventor, Allen was invited to speak at the university, where Jeremy is now a professor emeritus of electronics. At the time, Jeremy and Sue, a physiotherapist, invited us to dinner at their home. 

Because we enjoyed their company, we decided to get in touch with the Everards before returning to York in July. Since a lot can happen in 10 years, I did a quick search to update our information about the couple. The shocking events of 2021 leapt off my iPad. Wordlessly, I flashed the screen to my husband. He, too, was speechless.

“We were so devastated by the news that only now am I able to write,” Allen emailed Jeremy the following day. “If it were possible to share the pain, we would gladly grab a big bunch and carry it away.”

Jeremy wrote back, thanking Allen for his “lovely message” and extending an invitation to their home. 

We arrived with a bouquet of orange roses and a measure of trepidation. At first, as we shared tea, Allen and Jeremy discussed scientific concerns. Jeremy said that work was his therapy.

Later over dinner at a pub near their home, the Everards opened up about the grueling events of 2021. Sarah was abducted on the evening of March 3 and reported missing the next day. Just over a week later, her burned remains were found. 

We asked if it would be OK to visit Sarah’s grave, which is just a short walk from the pub. They nodded. As we walked to the churchyard, I picked up a couple of stones, which we placed on her headstone. Jeremy and Sue seemed pleased that we were honoring Sarah through our traditions. As we stood at the grave, Allen, who has a strong, rich voice, began to sing “Adonai Ro’i” because “it seemed like the right thing to do, as it was the only gift I had,” he said. I joined in, and when the text failed me, I sang wordlessly, sharing our prayer and our hope of offering comfort. 

Cantor Gerald Cohen of New York originally wrote “Adonai Ro’i,” or “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” in 1989 as an a cappella solo for the funeral of a friend. Since then, it has become a four-part standard of Jewish community choirs. Over the years, Allen and I have sung the piece with HaShirim, our Peninsula Jewish community chorale, and at High Holiday Yizkor services at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. But perhaps our most moving moment was singing it a cappella in a quiet country churchyard. 

On her right wrist, Hillary Farkas wears an alphabet bracelet with the name Brett. On her left wrist, she wears stretchy bracelets inspired by daughter Brett’s designs. 

Brett Farkas Komanovsky, her only child, died in 2022 of stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. She passed away in Charlotte, North Carolina, weeks before her 53rd birthday and the bar mitzvah of her second son. Hillary had traveled from her home in Cupertino to be with Brett at the end. 

“The last night of her life, we said goodbye to her instead of good night,” Hillary wrote on the Colorectal Cancer Alliance website.

Along with a picture of Brett, Hillary posted a personal plea asking people to schedule colonoscopies. And in December at Saratoga’s Congregation Beth David, she and fellow congregant Cyndi Sherman hosted a “Brett’s Bracelets ’n Beads” workshop sponsored by Beth David Women. At the event, participants made stretchy bracelets and raised money for colon cancer research. Cyndi’s daughter Jenessa Schwartz, a graduate, teacher and dean at Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos, passed away of colon cancer in 2023 at the age of 40.

“If only Brett had undergone a colonoscopy after she had survived breast cancer,” Hillary told me over dinner in Los Altos the night before Mother’s Day, a particularly sad time for her family. “If only” lingers in a mournful key because Hillary and her husband, Stan, had pleaded with Brett to have a colonoscopy, but she resisted.

“Brett should have had a baseline colonoscopy when she turned 50, or even earlier since she was a breast cancer survivor from 11 years before,” Hillary wrote on the Colorectal Cancer Alliances website. “But she didn’t.” 

My husband and I met Hillary and Stan Farkas a few months after she wrote to me in response to my February column about my return to Judaism. She remarked on our parallel lives as daughters of secular parents and how we both came back to Judaism as adults. A version of her email appeared in J. earlier this year. 

When Hillary first wrote to me, we didn’t know just how parallel our lives were. 

When I Googled Hillary’s name, I nearly fell off my chair. I realized that decades before I met Hillary, her daughter passed through my life. 

Back in 1993, Brett was one of only two or three Jewish students in a communications class I taught at San Jose State. I had fond memories of the striking, dark-haired girl who sometimes wore a cute cap. I would bump into her at a nearby bagel store where she worked part time. Brett always greeted me warmly. 

Wrote Hillary: “I got a real shock reading that you knew and remembered my daughter, Brett, even though I never mentioned her name in the story I wrote to you.”

She added that Brett would have said, “Of course, she remembered me. Who wouldn’t?”

The parallels between our lives are even more extensive than that. Hillary is a year younger than I am, and our daughters were born a month apart in 1969. In addition, they both survived stage 3 breast cancer, which Brett developed when she was 42. 

My own daughter, Niki, who turned 56 in May and is now a grandmother, was diagnosed at the age of 50. We have no breast or colon cancer in our family.

“Sit down before you read this!” Niki wrote to me in an email in 2021. “I have invasive carcinoma breast cancer that has metastasized and spread to my lymph nodes…. P.S. Emailing me back is much safer if you would like to do that, as then you don’t have to worry that I will see your sadness.” 

Amid Covid restrictions, Niki and I emailed, texted and shared favorite psalms and songs. I sent her Psalm 121, my favorite, which begins with “I look to the hills.” HaShirim, my Jewish community chorale, dedicated Leon Sher’s “Heal Us Now” to Niki, who watched us sing via Zoom. 

Over the next few months, Niki underwent a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy and other surgeries as well as chemotherapy. Unlike Brett, Niki also had several colonoscopies over the last few years. Her oncologist insisted on it.

Brett, too, underwent double mastectomies, chemo, radiation and other surgeries, but she chose not to undergo a colonoscopy until it was too late.

Now Hillary encourages people to get colonoscopies and lets them know that insurance covers baselines colonoscopies for anyone age 45 or older. Colon cancer is second only to lung cancer in annual cancer mortality, according to the American Cancer Society. About 53,000 colon cancer deaths are predicted in the U.S. for 2025.

“Don’t wait” to get a colonoscopy, Hillary wrote on the website. “There is no history of colon cancer in our family. And now … there is no daughter.”

When I was in kindergarten, I ate an apple on the school bus and tossed the core into the street in front of P.S. 13. The principal, who in my 5-year-old eyes loomed 10 feet above me, made me pick it up. Then she boomed out, “The girl with the apple core!” And she directed me to a garbage can. 

Not so long ago, humiliation was a routine disciplinary tactic. In fourth grade, I asked a boy who sat next to me why he wore the same checked pants every day. He raised his hand, telling the teacher what I had said. 

Our teacher angrily chastised me in front of the whole class, telling me that his attire was none of my business. Then she changed my seat to another table. The boy and his friends applauded.

Was I in the wrong? Certainly. But our teacher’s transgression was worse because she humiliated me in front of the class. Even at age 82, I tear up at the memory. 

Classroom humiliation did not dissipate as I grew older. Mrs. Smith, my sixth-grade teacher, was notorious. She lashed out with scathing tirades in a high-pitched voice that often reduced children to tears in front of the class. I recall one rant in particular.

“Dear little brother Alexander, wasting his time again. You’re going to get along fine in junior high,” the teacher said, dripping sarcasm. “Just remember, young man, it’s your funeral. I get my check at the end of the month just the same.”

Alexander went on to become a successful Long Island businessman. At our 50th high school reunion, he let me know that he still remembered Mrs. Smith’s rants and that his school years after sixth grade were considerably less harrowing.

I never saw anyone wear a dunce cap. However, the command to “stand in the corner” had a similar effect. During the Cold War, my social studies teacher took a more sophisticated approach. She would tell an impertinent kid to “go to Siberia,” which happened to be an area at the back of the classroom. My friends who attended Catholic schools report even worse experiences, including corporal punishment.

In the song “Sabbath Prayer” in “Fiddler on the Roof,” the Jews of Anatevka call upon God to “shield you from shame.” That’s because shaming or causing embarrassment is viewed as tantamount to a killing in Jewish tradition.

The principle of never causing shame is derived from Leviticus 19:17: “‘You shall certainly rebuke your neighbor, and don’t bear sin because of him.’ Even when we rebuke a fellow for a sin he has done, which itself is a Torah command, we must be careful not to embarrass the individual — lest we ‘bear sin because of him,’” according to an interpretation on Chabad’s website.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, aka the Velveteen Rabbi, writes: “Someone who embarrasses another person in public causes their face to turn paler (… hilbin et panav) as the blood drains away. When you shame someone, the Talmud says, it’s tantamount to wounding them and shedding their blood.”

A few years ago, I attended a Shabbat dinner at the Palo Alto home of Chabad Rabbi Yosef Levin. After the meal, a young woman who was a guest began singing alone. In most Orthodox homes, it is not the custom for women to sing in mixed company among non-relatives. 

The rabbi refrained from reproving the woman in front of others, but later he turned to me and simply said, “She doesn’t know.” Her misstep was innocent. But for him to embarrass her would be a serious transgression on his part.

I grew up in a home in which humiliation was not off limits. I wasn’t much of a dancer, and my parents would occasionally ask me to perform the military tap, to the tune of “Dixie,” in front of their friends. It took me a while to realize they were making fun of me. It has also taken me awhile to recognize that my own behavior is not above reproach. 

Years ago, when I was a fashion editor, I wrote a column describing my former husband’s unusual sartorial combinations. Was he upset? Of course. Did I learn a lesson? I’m still learning.

In my present marriage of 25 years, my husband has told me more than once not to make comments in front of others about matters that would embarrass him. Fortunately, he has the grace to reprove me in private.

When I joined a Unitarian Universalist church in 1975 in an effort to find a demilitarized zone for my children and non-Jewish husband, my mother proclaimed, “Hitler would have considered you Jewish.”

Her statement appalled me.

So Hitler was the reason I was Jewish? Why would I lend him that power? My roots, which I began to nourish after a midlife divorce, grew deeper for other reasons.

In the secular family of my childhood, being Jewish was not about pride. It was largely about antisemitism and the need to create a comfort zone within a hostile world. I was never taught that Judaism had a positive message. While I was given a solid moral foundation, I was not taught where that foundation came from. My mother’s version of the Ten Commandments included honoring parents, but not the Sabbath.

Like many assimilated Jews of the 20th century, my parents and grandparents sought to separate themselves from the “too-Jewish” immigrants who became targets of hate in America. But my family never conveyed why it was good to be Jewish, and I received no Jewish education.

Yet my mother, who had little use for religion, wanted me to join a Jewish student group when I went away to Oberlin College, where Jews were a minority in the 1960s. Why? It would increase my likelihood of finding a Jewish husband. It didn’t work. In 1965 at age 22, I married a non-Jew who wasn’t open to Judaism.

My father never made a secret of his distaste for ritual and synagogues. 

Two decades later, when he witnessed me lighting Shabbat candles, he laughed and told my daughter, “Janet didn’t learn any of this from us.” Later, when I began observing Passover, he sneaked bagels into my house. Yet he was ecstatic at my adult bat mitzvah in 1998 and when I married a Jewish man in 2000.

These days, I enjoy rituals that were spurned by my family. These are what brought me back to Judaism — not Hitler, antisemitism or even Israel. 

Before my first visit to Israel in 1998, fellow staffers at the Jewish Bulletin, J.’s forerunner, told me how wonderful it would feel to visit a country where Jews are the majority. But when I stepped into the Old City of Jerusalem, I was still a minority amid  cowled monks, kaffiyehed Muslims and black-hatted Jews.

As a liberal American Jew, the Jewish homeland was not where I felt at home.

While praying with Women of the Wall on Shabbat, I was told to huddle and to muffle my voice. The boisterous, dancing men on the other side of the divider had no such restrictions. I couldn’t stand the segregation. It made me feel unwanted and alienated. Weeks after my visit to Israel, I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah at my Alameda synagogue where I could sing my heart out.

Israel may be a source of reconnection to young adult Jews, who are eligible for free trips through Birthright Israel. But my path of return took place in the Bay Area. During a visit to a JCC, I discovered the Jewish Bulletin and took advantage of a free six-week subscription, which connected me to alternative worship services, Hebrew classes and singles weekends. At the Bay Area Jewish Singles Hiking Club, I experienced Havdalah for the first time during a weekend at Yosemite. I also met rabbis who welcomed me back.

There are many paths to Jewish reconnection. For some, synagogues may be a first step, which is why congregations need greeters, board members and clergy to welcome newcomers. As a single woman who attended alone, I was often ignored at post-service oneg Shabbats.

But there are other paths, including JCCs, adult education and cultural activities. Unfortunately, arts and educational organizations barely had time to start recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre refocused the Jewish community on Israel and antisemitism.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco has temporarily shuttered. The longrunning Jewish Coalition for Literacy has folded, and donations have dropped to other local Jewish nonprofits with missions unrelated to supporting Israel or combating Jewish hate.

Jewish survival is critical, and right now, Jews face multiple crises. But to grow our community, we must do more than advocate for the Jewish state and against antisemitism. We must bring Jews and others into the Jewish fold by showcasing what’s great about Judaism. That’s what worked for me.

When I was a teenager without a date for Dec. 31, the song “What Are You Doing New Year’s?” would set my misery into motion. 

My very worst New Year’s Eve was spent as a 20-year-old student in London’s chilly Euston Station waiting for a train I thought my boyfriend was riding. He wasn’t. Coffee with a proverbial milk skin and Cockney shouts of “’Appy new year, luv!” magnified my melancholy.

I remember all too well other times I faced the prospect of a holiday alone. 

Some 30 years ago, after a divorce and no place to go for Thanksgiving, I contemplated wallowing in sorrowful music. Think “All By Myself,” lifted from Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. My children were celebrating with their father’s family. My brother and my parents were visiting cousins in New Hampshire. 

Finally, I swallowed my pride, phoned old friends and scored an invitation. My hosts, in turn, asked if I could pick up their grandson from the Oakland airport, which was minutes from my home, so we both did mitzvahs.

Asking can be humbling as it involves admitting need. Yet humility is no shame. In fact, it is a soul trait in Mussar, the Jewish ethical tradition. That lesson came home to me in a children’s book I reviewed for this publication in the mid-1990s called “What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street.” 

Zeesie, a young girl in an immigrant neighborhood, attends her first “package party,” a community potluck. After dinner, she sneaks into the private “money room” in the back of the reception hall, expecting to find a treasure chest. While hiding, she discovers that the guests contribute to the money box or take what they need. Struck by the tears of a needy family friend, Zeesie adds her own gift money.

About 20 years ago, my second husband, Allen, and I decided to start hosting New Year’s Eve parties for folks who needed a place to celebrate. 

We began by hiring a pianist and inviting dateless friends to join us in singing in the new year. Over the course of two decades, folks arrived solo, coupled or in groups. Some dressed in jeans, others wore holiday finery. Our only proviso: What comes in with you goes out with you, whether it’s your dip or your date.

Unfortunately, our event became a victim of its success. The growing guest list — with friends inviting friends — outgrew the size of our house. 

At our last New Year’s Eve event in 2018, just weeks after we returned from a trip to Thailand, Allen was beset by what I thought was lingering jetlag. He slept while I put up the balloons, he slept while I arranged the food and drinks, and he slept during part of the party. After that experience, which turned out to be an electrolyte imbalance, I put that party to bed. I was done.

Yes, hosting is a mitzvah. Think of Abraham opening his tent to visitors. These days, when friends ask if we have room at our Thanksgiving or Passover table, we try to accommodate them. But there may come a point when we will need to recognize our limitations.

Such a recognition happened to my friend Kathy, who used to invite fellow choir members without plans to attend her Christmas dinner party. But a few years ago, Covid-19 and other considerations put an end to those open invitations. Now she and her husband enjoy Christmas dinner at a restaurant. 

Fortunately, Allen and I have alternate plans for Dec. 25. His daughter includes us in her annual Christmas pajama party. 

New Year’s Eve will be a different story. In our age bracket, big parties are a thing of the past.

This year we may spend the night at a San Francisco hotel and attend a cabaret performance, as we did a couple of years ago. Or we may toast 2025 at home with a glass of champagne. It doesn’t matter that much anymore.

On Feb. 13, Allen and I will celebrate the 25th anniversary of our wedding, which took place because a South Bay engineer answered my quirky ad in the then-Jewish Bulletin. Erev Valentine’s Day eclipses any New Year’s Eve for me.

This is a story of two Gertrudes in my family tree who died tragically, and too soon. One was Gertrud Feiertag (1890-1943), a noted German educator who was murdered at Auschwitz, despite her neighbor Albert Einstein’s best attempts to save her. The other was American-born coloratura soprano Gertrude Silver (1872-1907). She died in Brussels at age 35, of an illness that could have been cured today, just as she was about to return from Belgium to her family in New York.

The stories of the two Gertrudes — a first cousin twice removed and a great-aunt — move me to tears. They deserve to be shared.

My family did not know about the Berlin-born Gertrud, a first cousin of my paternal grandfather. Because all my great-grandparents had immigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century, we were unaware of relatives who had died in the Holocaust. Yet I suspected that if I probed, I would find them. A link to the Silver family tree on Geni.com confirmed my suspicions. Yellow Stars of David and memorial candles accompanied the names of Gertrud and her siblings. All died in the camps.

Closer to home, I knew my great-aunt Gertrude was an opera singer in Europe, but she was just a name and, unfortunately, it was the wrong one, as she had performed under the alias Gertrude Sylva. Then Ancestry.com led me to second cousins in Southern California who had fleshed out her story with amazing photos and stellar reviews.

According to her obituary in The Theatre magazine, she left New York for Europe in 1897 “to seek abroad the recognition on the operatic stage she had been unable to secure in this country. …Gifted with a fine soprano voice and no mean powers as an actress, her success on the continent was immediate.” As I continued my search, I unwrapped a rare gift: turn-of-the-20th-century recordings on YouTube.

The story of Gertrud Feiertag is also virtually unknown in America. However, the German Wikipedia site and others reveal stories of her heroism. Gertrud was a childhood educator who launched a boarding school in 1931 in Caputh, a few miles from Potsdam. Initially, the school sheltered and educated children of all faiths, including the late Jewish American journalist Tom Tugend. But in 1933, after the Nazis came into power, the school became a refuge for about 100 Jewish children.

Gertrud’s goal was not only to educate the children in the arts, Jewish culture and sciences, but to ensure their safety during horrendous times. To meet a growing need, she expanded the school, using Albert Einstein’s summer villa next door after he immigrated to America in 1933.

During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Nazis brought foreign visitors to the school to showcase progressive Jewish education. But in 1938, during Kristallnacht, townspeople vandalized the school, which the Nazis swiftly shuttered.

Gertrud returned to Berlin, where she worked with Jewish agencies to evacuate more children. Some of the children and teachers in Gertrud’s school survived the Shoah in England, where Gertrud personally shepherded children through the Kindertransport. She could have saved her own life but did not.

Gertrud “subordinated her own fate and was finally murdered,” said German public health researcher Benjamin Kuntz, who provided me with a translation of his 2021 talk at a ceremony in Caputh honoring Gertrud. She “has rightly gone down in history as an important reform educator,” he added.

In Caputh, a Stolperstein (brass plaque) commemorates her life, her work and her murder. Streets are named for her in Caputh and in Potsdam, where the university established the Gertrud Feiertag Scholarship to benefit female post-graduate and re-entry students.

With the other Gertrude, few Americans have heard of her, but now they can hear her on YouTube. The recordings from wax-coated cylinders are pocked with static, and Gertrude’s speaking voice sounds chirpy.

But boy could she sing.

On a 1902 Pathé disk, she recorded an excerpt from the famous mad scene in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” that displays her incredible range and talent as an actress. Listen to the laughing song (“L’éclat de rire”) from Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut,” recorded on a Bettini cylinder in 1906. Listen and weep.

I sent the links to Billie Bandermann, a voice teacher and director of HaShirim, a local Jewish choral group. “A powerhouse of a coloratura with a passion for drama,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, I play the recordings and research lives lost. I can best honor these women by telling their stories.

Columnist Janet Silver Ghent will speak about her book, “Love Atop a Keyboard: A Memoir of Late-life Love,” at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6, at Moldaw Residences, 899 Charleston Road, Palo Alto.

The Oakland Tribune, where I’d worked as a reporter for more than 12 years, was sold and essentially died in fall 1992, leaving me unemployed. I was 50, jobless and without a home after selling it amid a divorce settlement.

One of the first people I phoned was Marc Klein, editor and publisher of the Jewish Bulletin — the predecessor of J. 

Since Marc’s death on May 25, I’ve been reflecting on what he taught me.

When I phoned about job opportunities at the Bulletin, Marc wasn’t one to waste time by saying hello. Instead, he opened the conversation with “What took you so long?” 

When Marc told me he couldn’t pay me what I was used to earning, I accepted an editorial job at a state university. The pay was decent, but I was miserable. One night I walked through a downtrodden rose garden and then wrote about moving “among the ashes.” At the time, I was diagnosed with depression.

Six months after I was hired provisionally at that university, I was canned. My boss didn’t use the word “fire” or “terminate.” Instead, I was told that I was “not a match.” Oddly enough, my depression began to lift.

Then in the fall of 1993, I spotted an ad in the Bulletin seeking a copy editor. I opened my chutzpadik application letter with the phrase: “Why am I writing to the Jewish Bulletin when I know you pay bupkis?” Somehow, I still got the job.

“I’m offering you the opportunity to stay in journalism,” Marc said, knowing how important that was to me.

In 1994, when I purchased a condo in Alameda, where Marc was a member of Temple Israel, he welcomed me warmly into the congregation. In 1998, when I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah there, Marc told my father how hard I had worked and how proud he must be. 

And at the end of 1999, when I told Marc that I was marrying a man I met through the Bulletin’s “Such a Match” personal ads, he kvelled. In his toast at our wedding the next year, Marc teased that the groom had responded to an ad in a publication that he “didn’t even spend 75 cents for” because Allen had spotted my ad while taking in his tenant’s mail. Without missing a beat, Allen reached into his pocket and offered Marc three quarters.

Marc did indeed give me the opportunity to stay in journalism, and it was a match. I worked there full time for 12 years, then came back part time and have continued to work as a freelancer to this day, so I never really left.

Still, the atmosphere at the Bulletin was unlike that at any other newspaper where I had worked. I often felt like I was overhearing family squabbles in the back room of a delicatessen. If the noise in Marc’s office became intense, one of us in the newsroom would close his door. 

When Marc was happy with my work, he let me know. When he was disappointed, he would not mince words. “I’m somewhat in shock,” he wrote after I turned in a feature on Trimpin, a German artist who had created a kinetic Holocaust memorial. “You write so much better than this. I don’t even understand what the story is about. Worse, I don’t even care.”

Writers, like performers, need to develop thick skins because criticism and rejection are part of the process, so I saved that note and shared it with a writing group. 

When I ran the note past Marc a few years ago, he apologized. “Whoa, was I brutal in this email. I’m terribly sorry. I guess the pressure of the job too often took control of me,” he wrote to me.

Nurtured on hard news, Marc told it straight, so I always knew where he stood. When I reworked the Trimpin piece to his satisfaction, he wrote: “Much better. I think you are going in a very good direction with your approach. I appreciate very much that you came up with it so quickly.”

Tact took time and patience, and Marc knew they were not his strong points. When he needed to write a tactful letter to a prominent community member, he sometimes called upon me for help. 

After three decades as colleagues, I think we both learned from each other. Marc, thank you for bringing me into the world of Jewish journalism. You changed my life’s path.

When we reached Naoki Akita’s home on the outskirts of Osaka, we removed our shoes at the door, put on house slippers and climbed the stairs to the third floor. It was early May, and my husband and I were on our dream trip to Japan.

Naoki’s mother, Akemi, was waiting for us. She sat on a tatami mat, stirring a thick green paste of matcha for the tea ceremony. But first, we met the extended family, those living and departed. On the wall in front of us was a Shinto shrine, topped with kanji letters that symbolize world peace. To the left of the shrine was a photo of a revered family member, a philosopher who had passed some 100 years ago.

Shinto, Japan’s indigenous religion that predates Buddhism, has no scripture, codes or dogma. But practitioners honor the divine in nature. They also revere elders. On this night, we were the elders, honored guests in the three-generation, three-story townhouse, where Naoki’s parents share an apartment on the first floor. Naoki, his wife, Tomoko, and their 7-year-old son, Masaki, sleep on the top floor, with the kitchen and dining area on the second floor.

As friends of Naoki’s good friend in Ottawa, we received a coveted invitation to a Japanese home. Naoki’s sister, brother-in-law and teenage children were also invited to meet the Americans.

As Tevye proclaims in “Fiddler on the Roof,” what ties Jews together is tradition. But what creates bonds between cultures is the sharing of traditions. And in any culture, a good host glosses over the guests’ faux pas.

Before the visit, I knew to wear clean socks, dress modestly, bring gifts and bow frequently. I also knew not to ask for sugar for green tea, a gaffe equivalent to mayonnaise with pastrami. But I wasn’t prepared for ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers.

Aki, Naoki’s niece, explained the ritual in English. Akemi carried in a tray filled with several empty vases and another vase filled with assorted long-stemmed flowers. I was to choose a vase and a flower. 

I selected a lovely white vase adorned with red flowers and then a pink-tinged carnation that would harmonize. But when instructed to cut the carnation’s stem, I cut it too short for the vase and shook my head in dismay. Allen did better. His yellow alstroemeria complemented a slender blue vase, and his cut was perfect. Then we were told to contemplate our flowers. I angled my carnation to one side, while the family reassured me.

Before the visit, I knew to wear clean socks, dress modestly, bring gifts and bow frequently.

Fortunately, I did better during the tea ceremony. Akemi placed a bowl of green matcha tea in front of each of us and Tomoko gave us a small candy to offset the bitterness. We were surprised that we were the only ones to be served tea, but that is the nature of the tea ceremony, which is designed to create a bond between hosts and guests and a peaceful respite from worldly matters.

After Aki and Tomoko placed small plates of food in front of the family shrine, we ambled downstairs for dinner, mostly prepared by Akemi. Other family members assisted in serving the Japanese pickles, tempura and vegetables, followed by brown rice, out of deference to their California guests. Luckily, Allen and I are reasonably competent with chopsticks.

When Akemi set a small bowl of chicken soup in front of me with tiny noodles, reminiscent of my favorite Jewish soup, I asked for seconds. Akemi beamed.

Naoki speaks English well, and Masaki was eager to try out his English. He asked if we like pizza. Tomoko, who is less confident in her English, used a mobile phone app to translate and communicate. 

But some customs are not in the guidebooks or on our phones. When Allen returned to the table wearing slippers relegated only for bathroom use, his faux pas resulted in good-natured giggles. House slippers don’t enter the bathroom, and bathroom slippers don’t leave. The Japanese are fastidious.

After dinner, we exchanged gifts. We brought Stanford souvenirs, a golden poppy towel and a National Parks calendar. But we were surprised that the family showered us with presents too: teas, matcha-flavored candy, brushstroke prints and small towels. 

Then we shared our music, singing “You Are My Sunshine.” Haruo, Naoki’s father, knows the song and joined in. As Naoki drove us back to our hotel, we sang “Old MacDonald” with Masaki, who had learned it in his English class. We laughed at Allen’s animal noises. 

After Allen and I emailed our thanks, Naoki thanked us too and sent photos. “My family was overjoyed, and it was a great dinner time,” he wrote. “My parents say it was one of the best memories they have had at the end of their lives. Please take care of yourself on your long trip. We look forward to seeing you again.”

Later, he sent another note with a picture. “Good morning,” he wrote. “Your flowers are doing well.”

The family had placed my too-short carnation into the blue vase along with Allen’s alstroemeria. They were in harmony.

In 1965, when I married for the first time at age 22, I was determined to be the woman behind the man. I failed abysmally and divorced at midlife.

Now my second husband of 24 years is determined to be the man behind the woman. In fact, shortly after we married, he was hawking free copies of the Jewish Bulletin, the forerunner to J., outside a San Francisco Jewish Film Festival venue and shouting, “Get your red-hot Jewish Bulletin. It’s a great paper. That’s how I met my wife.” Now he’s promoting my new book on Facebook.

Grappling with a vociferous one-man fan club is an adjustment for me. Maybe it’s because I straddle two generations and two sets of expectations: the feminine mystique of the housewifely 1950s and early ’60s and the “I am woman, I can do and be anything” mystique of the post-liberation era. Neither one fits.

I’m neither a baby boomer nor part of the Greatest Generation that preceded me. I was born during World War II, at the tail end of the Silent Generation, though I never learned to keep my mouth shut. I am part of the in-between generation of women who experienced social upheaval after we finished college, got married and had children.

In 1960, when I went off to college at Oberlin, the median age for first-time brides was 20.4 years, according to the National Center for Marriage and Family Research at Bowling Green State University. Encouraging young women to register their patterns for fine china, full-page ads in Seventeen magazine pictured blissful couples atop the slogan “You get the license … I’ll get the Lenox.”

In 1964, during my senior year of college, I attended numerous showers and weddings. Today few of those friends are still married to their first husbands, and the Lenox, crystal and linen tablecloths may come out for Passover, if they’re used at all. Our Generation X children don’t want them. When my children entertain, they might use plastic plates from Costco.

We Silents were encouraged to marry young, but we were also advised to prepare for a career we could “fall back on” such as teaching, nursing, social work, librarianship. Employment agencies required typing tests — just for women — and they routinely asked married women, “What are your plans for a family?” The assumption was that women would quit work once their pregnancies became obvious and would be unlikely to return to the workplace.

Remember the PHT degree, as in “Putting Hubby Through”? In 1966, I refused to pick up a demeaning fake diploma at a University of Michigan Law Wives luncheon. It was bad enough that the words “student wife” were stamped on my university job application, dooming me to secretarial work while I earned a master’s in English.

At the time, educated women were groomed to be helpmates to husbands and to move when and where their husbands’ jobs required because men were the primary breadwinners. IBM was shorthand for “I’ve Been Moved.” Traditionally, women’s earnings were viewed as gravy that might help cover a down payment or pay for a washer, dryer and dishwasher.

Corporate-climbing husbands sometimes viewed their wives as decorative business assets on the order of first lady Jackie Kennedy: dressing well, hosting elegant dinner parties and peppering conversations with delicious tidbits about books, theater and art.

Then came the liberation movements of the 1960s and ’70s. Casting aside traditional core beliefs and expectations, vocal Silents fomented a cultural revolution. Inspired by women such as Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Nora Ephron, Robin Morgan and Jane Fonda, Silents went back to school, became doctors, lawyers and MBAs, divorced and came out of the closet. The widowed Jackie Kennedy became Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, living apart from shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and pursuing a career as an editor.

In my 30s, after earning a teaching credential, raising two children and moving to California, I finally found a job in journalism — as a fashion writer. It was an anomaly for a left-of-center Oberlin grad, but it was an entry. Then at midlife, divorced and with the newspaper business in freefall, I became a Jewish journalist. Who knew?

Now with the publication of my first book, “Love Atop a Keyboard: A Memoir of Late-Life Love,” my husband has become my helpmate. I could get used to this.

On the way to a writers’ group, I came to a bizarre realization: Pursuing a mate and publishing a book require similar strategies.

You need to package your product, develop a platform and sell yourself. You will face repeated rejection, and even success will bring stress. (Think weddings.) Fortunately, my book sales are starting to rise — though so is my blood pressure.

“Love Atop a Keyboard: A Memoir of Late-Life Love,” my first published book, reveals how I searched and found love again, in a toy store, no less. Twenty-five years ago, when I was 56, a singing Silicon Valley engineer answered my personal ad in the Jewish Bulletin, the forerunner of J.

“Cute writer seeks leading man for long-playing drama. … Willing to share marquee with woman your age who looks 10-15 years younger,” I wrote.

He called himself a keeper. Then he sent me a cartoon about how people who reply to singles ads send pictures of themselves when they were 15 years younger.

“You’re right!” I replied. “Here’s a more recent photo.” In my email, I attached a JPEG of Golda Meir.

When he rode up the escalator in the former FAO Schwarz in San Francisco, he flashed the JPEG of the late Israeli prime minister, pretending to search for her lookalike, and I laughed. That was our beginning.

Why did I write such an outrageous ad? I had nothing to lose. I was tired of being rejected by men in my age group who were looking for a woman in their 30s, so I took a risk. A year later, we were married.

In the singles game, rejection goes with the territory. One man in his 50s at a meet-and-greet once asked me if there were any women around age 28 in my hiking club because he wanted more children but didn’t want to take a chance on a 35-ish woman who needed to undergo amniocentesis. I told him my daughter wouldn’t look twice at a man older than her father.

“Why don’t you play with the kids your own age?” I suggested.

He laughed, allowing that he and his 2-year-old son were the same age, emotionally. On that I agreed.

Why did I write such an outrageous ad? I had nothing to lose.

I also met a man I call David the Date Amnesiac, who forgot that he had dated me several years before, so we had two first dates. Sometime after the second first date, he intercepted me as I was leaving a Jewish Bulletin singles event.

“How can you leave before we’ve met?” he said.

I looked him straight in the eye and said I wasn’t interested in getting together with a man who was toting up how many women he could date just once. Later I found out he had also dated another Bulletin employee, my physical therapist and the leader of my women’s group.

More recently, in my pursuit of writing and publishing a book, I was ghosted by dozens of literary agents. Then one brutally honest agent gave me the straight skinny: She said publishers weren’t interested in memoirs by relatively unknown older women — even though they’re a demographic that actually buys books.

Disheartened, I stopped pursuing agents and explored hybrid publishing companies, which co-produce a book that the author helps finance. Unlike self-published books, these hybrid books look professional and are carried by major bookstores and handled by distributors.

Hybrid publishing was not my first choice. It is an expensive proposition. In addition to forking over the money to finance the publication, I hired a website designer for janetsilverghent.com and a professional photographer, both of whom were worth it. Now I’m spending my time promoting the book instead of buckling down to finishing a novel I began writing 30 years ago.

Self-promotion does not come easily to me, but my efforts are starting to pay off. I’m selling my memoir to neighbors, friends and members of my choir and synagogue. Months after I sent an advance copy of my book to a book columnist at Hadassah Magazine, she included an upbeat mention in a roundup of feel-good books for dark winter days. Then orders on the publisher’s website began to grow.

The actual release date is April 2, when Amazon will begin fulfilling orders, and my anticipation and anxiety are building. Several times a day, I check my Facebook page, my emails, my LinkedIn account and notes from my publisher. It’s a nerve-wracking process, and I can’t concentrate. But at 81, I’m still in play. Mercifully, my doctor upped my blood-pressure meds.

Late-life publishing, like late-life dating, is not for sissies.

Thirty-five years ago, I packed up treasured family ornaments and put Christmas away forever.

I don’t shun Christmas — I still enjoy the music, the food and the festivities — but it doesn’t enter my home anymore. Instead, I bring the holiday to others.

In a touching scene in Leon Uris’ “Exodus,” kibbutzniks sing “Silent Night” in Hebrew to an American Christian nurse. I recalled that scene the year I visited the Palo Alto VA Medical Center with the Aurora Singers and sang “Silent Night” to a young veteran of the Iraq War. We both cried.

Several years ago, my husband and I joined members of Congregation Beth Am of Los Altos Hills to serve Christmas Eve dinner at a South Bay homeless shelter. After dinner, while folks were nestled on the floor in sleeping bags, my husband and I led Christmas carols. Rabbi Janet Marder, who was senior rabbi at the time, later drew us aside and thanked us.

“There’s more than one way to feed people,” she said.

I didn’t give up Christmas because of rabbinic tracts telling Jews that the evergreen trees represent eternal life and that holly berries recall the blood of Jesus. Those symbols came from pagan festivities that existed long before the birth of Jesus, which likely didn’t occur on Dec. 25.

I gave up Christmas for the same reason I now wear a Star of David. I gave it up because I reclaimed my identity as a Jew after decades of assimilation. Unlike my parents and even my American-born grandparents and great-grandparents, I had no reason to Americanize. They’d done it for me.

I often joke that my parents only began using Yiddish expressions when they heard them on Johnny Carson.

My paternal grandfather, a Shakespearean actor who performed across America at the turn of the 20th century, reprimanded my father if he uttered a Yiddish expression. And one set of great-grandparents served Blue Point oysters in 1911 at their 25th anniversary party in New York. This is the heritage that was passed on to me. I often joke that my parents only began using Yiddish expressions when they heard them on Johnny Carson.

But getting back to the December holidays: When I was a child, Hanukkah never crossed our threshold, and Christmas Day was a big deal. After the turkey and cranberry sauce was cleared away, my brother and I put on a show for the extended family, often lampooning our guests. Every few years my parents would decide that we couldn’t have a Christmas tree because “it wasn’t right.” In our Jewish neighborhood in Queens, New York, plenty of folks celebrated Christmas, though the tree was considered a bridge too far.

Feeling deprived, I gave myself permission to decorate a huge tree, make stunning ornaments and even bake fruitcake starting in 1965 when I married a man who wasn’t Jewish. After we split in 1988, I gave up everything but the fruitcake. I had fond memories of the holiday but wanted to create new memories instead.

Then in 2000, I married a Jewish man who had previously been married to a non-Jewish woman. When we married, he gave away his Christmas ornaments and stopped putting up a tree. One of his adult daughters didn’t understand why we couldn’t have “just a little tree.”

“A little tree is like a little pregnant,” I said, letting her know that we weren’t taking Christmas away from her or anybody else. We would still share celebrations at their homes, just not at ours.

We started to host low-key Hanukkah parties with singing and homemade latkes. Our poor little dreidels, chocolate gelt and even our menorahs are no competition for Yuletide. That said, we relish our year-round celebrations and Shabbat every week.

Once the holiday season starts, we visit senior residences with two of our choirs, singing both Christmas and Hanukkah songs with the Aurora Singers and Hanukkah favorites with HaShirim, a Jewish chorale we co-founded 20 years ago. During our visits with HaShirim, we bless the Hanukkah candles and invite the audience to join in. I love watching the glowing faces of elderly Jews as they sing the songs they remember.

Sadly, “Maoz Tzur” and “Mi Y’Maleil” are not the songs of my childhood. Jewish composers Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé and Johnny Marks wrote the Christmas songs I sang back then. But it’s not too late to make Hanukkah songs my own.

Preorder Janet Silver Ghent’s book, “Love Atop a Keyboard: A Memoir of Late-Life Love” (Mascot Books), at tinyurl.com/janetslove.

Rinsed-out cans go in the blue recycling bin. Yucky food scraps, napkins and tissues go in the green compost bin. Styrofoam goes in the black garbage bin. That much is clear. But the status of laminated milk cartons with plastic spouts confounded me, so in April I emailed our waste-management provider, asking about their final disposition.

Should I toss the carton, spout and all, into the green compost bin? Should I rinse the carton and remove the plastic spout first? Should I toss the entire carton into the garbage? A couple of weeks later, I was instructed to remove the plastic spout and then place the carton in the green bin.

Just try removing those plastic spouts, though. At first, I used a heavy-duty scissors, mangled the top of the carton and hurt my wrist. Then my husband bought utility shears, which enabled him to cut through the heavy cardboard, but the shears didn’t remove the spout. He eventually found a pair of  slip-joint pliers in what I call the “futility” closet. Those did the trick.

The plastic spout went into the garbage, and the paper carton went into the compost. Problem solved? Not exactly.

After months of struggling with the utility shears and slip-joint pliers, we received a newsletter from Green Waste of Palo Alto. The back-page headline in all caps: “YES, YOU CAN COMPOST THAT!” In smaller print: “Plastic spouts aren’t a problem, you can leave them on and they will be screened off at the end with the rest of the plastic material as well.”

I was ecstatic. My husband was not. He had finally perfected his spout-removal technique and was proud of his accomplishment. He squashed the milk carton with aplomb before hurling it into the compost bin.

RELATED: Is human composting the next big thing in Jewish death practice?

But apparently we were still doing everything wrong, according to a Treehugger article:

“No need to crush the container, especially because in some places this actually slows down the recycling process.”

The article goes on to illustrates the many reuses for empty milk cartons:

• Fill them with dirt and turn them into planters.
• Make cute containers for “storing any number of dry items that you’d like to be able to easily pour.”
• Make a “very cute bird feeder with just a couple of additional supplies (including bird seed), make a lantern (or multiple lanterns) for summer parties, or even Halloween.”

Oy vey! We try to take care of the planet. The key word is “try.”

At a choir party in our backyard, a bass singer looked curiously at a green plastic cord stretched above our unwatered lawn.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I think it’s called a clothesline,” I said.

“Oh yes, my grandmother had one,” he responded.

Later, a grandson informed us, “My mommy has a washing machine.”

We do not use a washboard, either for laundry or music-making, and we own both a washer and a dryer. But I do like to hang the sheets on the line. I find the process therapeutic. I hear the birds, I smell the flowers and I slow down. I may even sing. And when I slip into bed, those sheets wrap me in comfort.

But I can’t seem to stay on top of environmental dos and don’ts. Take paper towels. That same GreenWays newsletter, in an article titled “Zero Waste Living,” calls upon us to embrace the rag. Well, I tried that, but what should I do with rancid rags? Put them in the washing machine with other clothing? Toss them into the garbage? Wash them by hand and hang them on the line?

We do not buy drinking water in plastic bottles, and my husband makes fizzy water with a manual carbonator. We try to buy organic produce. I even buy organic gummy bears, though to tell you the truth, I prefer Jujyfruits, which are chewier. Yes, they contain corn syrup, sugar, natural and artificial flavors, mineral oil, carnauba wax, caramel color, artificial colors and God knows what else. But who cares? Not me.

We will keep trying. For a week or two, we put pails in the shower to recycle the water and use it to wash clothes, but we wound up spilling water on the way to the laundry room, so we gave up. So far, the recycling police haven’t posted our pictures on the compostable milk cartons. But that could happen. Stay tuned.

Growing girls, bored with mothering baby dolls, glommed onto a blonde with boobs and a burgeoning wardrobe. In 1959, Ruth Handler hit the jackpot with Barbie — now reborn at the box office, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s new blockbuster.

But Barbie was hardly the first commercial alternative for girls who were tired of being little mamas. In 1950, I had a Toni doll whose auburn nylon wig could be washed, curled and restyled. Within a day of receiving the doll, I shampooed her hair, set it with pink curlers and gave her a permanent.

After I styled her hair a few times, Toni lost her luster and I set her on a shelf. Another friend had a Tintair doll with a platinum Dynel mane that could be colored red or brunette. Then along came another blonde, Joanie Pigtails, who arrived in a carrying case with a couple of wardrobe changes.

But the dolls who wore hearts on their chest — symbolizing the candy hearts inside them, according to creator Johnny Gruelle  — were Raggedy Ann and Andy, and they got into mischief. I would seat them at the kitchen table with crayons and coloring books and step out of the room. When I returned, they had scribbled on the pages, writing ANN and ANDY in sloppy capital letters. Another time I found them hanging onto the knobs of our kitchen cabinet with jelly on their faces.

My mother never admitted a thing until I became a mother myself, and she arrived in my hospital room with two large boxes containing Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls for my daughter.

“Remember when they got into the kitchen cabinet?” my mother said, smiling. “They loved jelly.”

Believing that Barbie epitomized bourgeois consumerism, I didn’t buy the blond bombshell for my daughter. Instead, she received a lefty alternative known as the Sunshine Family.

The artsy-craftsy couple and their baby lived and worked in a van where their business was creating fake leather accessories out of plastic or from household odds and ends. The Sunshine Daddy, who was no Beach Blanket Ken, sported unruly, brown hair that spilled onto the top of his turtleneck. The blond, flat-footed, sandal-clad Sunshine Mommy wore a long, floral-print dress topped by an apron. Unlike Ken and Barbie, the Sunshine folks emanated love, Haight-Ashbury style.

Despite my best intentions, Barbies entered our household as gifts at birthday parties, and they came to no good end. One morning while my daughter was in grade school and her 3-year-old brother was at home, I smelled something burning in my daughter’s room. My son had mounted three of his sister’s dolls atop a lamp shade, which skirted a burning-hot lightbulb. When the dolls’ plastic limbs began to melt and their wigs began to sear, creating a noxious aroma, I came running out of the laundry room.

I was able to salvage one of the dolls, but the other two were toast. My son, in all innocence, thought he was creating a cozy house for his sister’s dolls inside a lampshade. He had no idea he was igniting a fire.

We took off for Toys R Us to purchase a replacement doll, but the store had no Barbies. The closest thing I could find was Growing Up Skipper, Barbie’s little sister, who sprouted boobs and grew taller when her arm was circled forward. She became flat-chested and shorter again when her arm circled the other way.

I picked up my daughter at school, delivering good news and bad news. “Here is a new Skipper doll,” I said, as she lit up. “But I’m afraid your brother has barbecued your Barbies.”

Sadly, the Barbie conflagration did not lay to rest our family’s flirtation with suburban pursuits. After our granddaughters were born, along came the American Girl dolls: Waspy Samantha from the early 1900s, Black Claudie from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, pig-tailed Molly of the 1940s and, yes, Jewish Rebecca from the Lower East Side in the 1910s.

Each doll has a storybook, plus an amazing wardrobe, as well as coordinating clothes for little girls. During a 2005 visit to the American Girl store in New York with my daughter and granddaughters, we overheard a well-dressed Manhattan mom lamenting, “These dolls have nicer clothes than I do.”

Each of those 18-inch dolls will set you back more than $115 now, not counting the extra outfits and accessories. A bare-bones Barbie, by contrast, is a bargain at around $25.

Our children and grandchildren are grown now, and their dolls were packed away or regifted long ago. But I will never forget my jelly-faced rag dolls and the burning Barbies.

When my son was 3, he played at being a bigshot on the preschool monkey bars. Like the other 3-year-olds, he’d place the hood of his windbreaker on his head, tying it under his chin and letting the rest of the jacket flap behind him like a cape. Then he’d shout, “Dah da dahhh, Superman!”

“When I do that,” he told me, “Nobody’s mean!”

At 3, my son learned it’s all about attitude. I wish I had known that when kids at camp called me a klutz. That klutz cloud followed me all through junior high until I learned the power of pretending: If I smiled and looked confident on the dance floor, nobody was mean. I’ve even come in second in ballroom competitions if I had a good partner. I can accept second place.

That said, no matter how many affirmations I may utter, I will never be a dancer or an athlete. I don’t have the chops. That truth was brought home to me in fourth grade when my ballet teacher demoted me to a class with kids from a younger grade, so I quit, turning my attention to the piano.

But in my dotage, my inner dancer is taking flight in Zumba Gold, the slower-paced classes at the Palo Alto JCC that are geared down for older folks who cringe at percussive movements and ear-blasting music. In these classes, I can keep up with the bubbes.

Occasionally, I can even let go with a good spin or execute a tango step with panache. Hint: Tango dancers don’t smile. But if I step into the regular Zumba classes, I slink into the back of the room because my panache takes a nosedive. Sometimes I’m on the wrong foot. Sometimes I’m moving in the wrong direction. And sometimes I barely get through the hour without collapsing.

Occasionally, I can even let go with a good spin or execute a tango step with panache.

Mat exercise is another challenge, particularly with sideways planks that exorcise (pun intended) my confidence. My 80-year-old oblique muscles are not up to the job, and maybe they never will be. But as others in the class have told me, “I can’t do everything, either. You’re here. That’s a plus. Think of the many people your age who can’t be.” Sadly, I think of my best friend from childhood who was a phenomenal dancer. Lately, she’s using a walker.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote it is “self-evident” that “all men are created equal,” but that doesn’t mean we all have the same skills. In junior high, my social studies teacher told me she would give me higher grades if I made nicer report covers. Other teachers marked me down because I had big, sloppy handwriting, a disgraceful trait “for a girl.” It’s not that I didn’t try to be neater. I just lacked the dexterity. Years later, when I was a fashion writer, I stopped doing layouts when my editor told me my strength was in my writing.

My husband has his own tale of woe. When he was a college freshman, he was in danger of flunking a required drafting class, during the days when all the work had to be done by hand. The professor thought Allen was a hopeless case.

“No matter how many times you repeat this class, you will never be able to pass,” the professor warned him. “However, I’ll make a deal with you: If you promise never to take another class in my department, I will give you a passing grade.”

My husband went on to earn around 100 patents, and he now uses software that does the drafting for him. Meanwhile, thanks to computer technology, I can draft a passable layout, but if I want something more than just passable, like a website, I rely on a designer. We all have our strengths.

As I was leaving the JCC recently, one of the Zumba participants who has a flexible body and a formidable style told me she enjoys my columns. I smiled and thanked her. But I still wish I had her moves.

In 1998, when my first granddaughter was born and I flew to San Diego to meet her, an empty eight-quart soup pot came along for the ride.

In my new role as Granny Janny the Soup Grandma, I wanted to ensure that baby Lindsay got a whiff of chicken soup, the stock that sustains us. Unfortunately, neither Lindsay nor her sister, Kelsey, ranks chicken soup among their favorites.

Where did I go wrong?

Text from Lindsay, now a nurse-supervisor: “I never really eat soup. I don’t think I like it. … But I’m sure your soup is great!”

From Kelsey, now a college senior: “I don’t dislike it, but I don’t find anything special in it, except maybe Panera’s soups.”

I’d like to say my soups are products of my childhood memories, but they didn’t come from my mother’s kitchen, even though she loved homemade soup. Nor did they come from my grandmother, as she was the only Jewish grandmother in my recollection who didn’t cook.

What I do remember is that when I was sick, a neighbor in our Queens apartment building would send over a pot of chicken soup.

These days, I am the soup-toting neighbor. The chicken soup may not be the stock of my childhood, but I hope it makes others feel better. I know it works for me.

I own a stash of cookbooks, but my soups never come out the same way twice. There are too many variables, including the chicken itself. I keep a bone bag in the freezer. Yes, I collect bones after family dinners, though I’m reluctant for dinner guests to catch me in the act.

When I’ve amassed at least three pounds — a turkey carcass is the best — it’s time to make stock. I fill a pot with water, toss in the bones, bring the pot to a boil and add an array of root vegetables, herbs and spices. When the scum rises to the surface, I use a small measuring cup to skim off the goop.

After the stock simmers for at least another couple of hours, I strain it again using a colander, this time removing all the bones and vegetables. Then I add sautéd vegetables and cooked rice or barley to the stock and call it soup. I may add leftover chicken or turkey at the last minute. Overcooked bird doesn’t fly in my kitchen.

Unfortunately, noodles don’t work terribly well either unless you’re going to eat right away.

Meanwhile, I keep experimenting. Penzeys’ Old World and Krakow Nights spice mixes help approximate some of the aromas I remember from decades back. I favor parsnips, celery, carrots, onions, leeks, garlic and soupçons of herbs from my garden. I tried to grow dill, but critters would polish it off before it landed in my soup, so I sometimes add fennel fronds.

My chicken soup is not like Grandma Sylvia’s, Aunt Sadie’s or Bubbie Frieda’s, nor is it the soup my husband’s mother made. She used chicken feet, which I can’t find in the supermarkets around here, though I found a website that sells them for $16.95 a pound. There are other techniques too. One friend plunges a whole uncooked chicken into a pot of water. She then serves the soup with bones in the bowl as well as vegetables that have been cooked to oblivion. It is tasty, bringing up memories of the legendary Lindy’s in New York, but it would not go over well with my family. While I’ve been known to enjoy mushy carrots and chicken that cooked for hours, my husband likes his carrots crunchy and his poultry minimally cooked.

When I bring soup to sick friends or relatives, their praise is effusive, and they share their own childhood memories. But after my stepdaughter’s first child was born, she commented on the “strange animal protein” floating in her bowl. Was it a fly? No, it was dark meat! Her family favors white meat, boneless and skinless. My other stepdaughter is freaked out by what she calls “carcass,” and one year when I added giblets to the turkey gravy on Thanksgiving, both sisters greeted it with cries of “eww, gross.”

Soup is all about time, and while an Instant Pot or a pressure cooker can speed the process, soup is still a time-consuming affair, what with shopping, chopping and straining. Maybe that’s why it’s the province of grandmas like me. What I’m really doing is creating memories.

So instead of discarding that carcass, send it my way. Ditto on the giblets.

This column is adapted from Janet Silver Ghent’s forthcoming memoir, “Love Atop a Keyboard.”

Two years after I married Allen in 2000, I decided to put my Alameda townhouse on the market, but first I needed to make sure everything worked. That’s why I took down the broken track for my window blinds and put it in the backseat of the car. My plan was to package it and ship it to the factory in Oregon.

A couple of days later, when Allen picked me up at the Caltrain station, he informed me, “Oh, by the way, I fixed your blind assembly.”

“You fixed it? How did you do that?” I said, incredulously.

“I just happened to have the spare parts in the garage.”

That’ll teach me to stop nagging him about the state of the garage, which I rarely enter. I’m afraid I won’t be able to find my way out amid tools of various vintages, discarded hoses, pipe fittings, wood scraps, bicycles and spare rolls of toilet paper.

After 23 years of marriage, I am learning to accept Allen’s quirks. Bottom line: He saves us money. On three occasions, General Electric sent repair crews to determine why our microwave-convection oven didn’t operate in convection mode. One of them told me it was unreasonable to expect the oven to reach 400 degrees in less than an hour. Then GE sent replacement parts that fixed nothing.

The final visit from GE was a charm, but the fixer was Allen. While the innards of the oven were exposed, Allen looked at the assembly himself. Interestingly, the oven’s thermostat and heating element were practically touching. After the technician left without solving the problem, Allen took apart the oven. He cut a piece of aluminum from an empty coffee can and used it as an improvised shield. Then he wrote a letter of explanation to GE, which rewarded him by extending the warranty and sending him another oven light bulb.

Pre-Allen, the men in my life were not fixers. My father, a World War II veteran who was saved from combat by his typing skills, used to boast that he had the lowest mechanical aptitude in the history of the U.S. Army. My first husband also did not inherit the handyman gene, so I learned to tackle simple repair jobs myself, using a do-it-yourself pamphlet written by women. That’s how I learned to rewire a lamp.

He looked up at me, laughed and said, ‘Bring me a pillow. I need a nap.’

My do-it-yourself experience came in handy when I became Mr. Fix-It’s apprentice. When our dishwasher wouldn’t drain and began flashing an F11 error message, I consulted the manual: F11 means the dishwasher won’t drain. Then we watched a short repair video on YouTube and followed the steps: Remove the lower spray arm, check the holes for clogs. Remove the filter system and clean it. Scoop out the water. Remove the non-return valve and rinse it. Spin the impeller several times in both directions. Then put everything back. We did all that, but the onerous F11 signal flashed again.

Time to call customer service?

You’ve got to be kidding!

In the garage, Mr. Fix-It found an old plastic hose and inserted it into the little plastic valve that sits above the sink. It’s called the dishwasher air gap, but I have no idea what it does, other than occasionally gushing water all over the counter. Then he found an improvised fitting in the plumbing drawer and mated it with the hose. He screwed the fitting onto the faucet and forced the hose down the air gap. Following that, he backflushed the dishwasher drain line through the air gap, creating a puddle in the bottom of the dishwasher. We bailed out the water, put everything back together and ran a short cycle.

The dishwasher drained.

We have no idea what we fixed.

Once the dishwasher was working again, we noticed that the white plastic air gap was crumbling. Allen found a turquoise one online. We removed the old air gap and attempted to connect the new one. As I stood at the sink, Allen lay on the floor, calling out orders: “I need a 5/16 wrench. No, I need a 3/16. Just hand it to me. OK, I’m going to feed the new air gap through the hole. Tell me when you can grab the turquoise contraption. You got it?”

“It’s crooked,” I said. “You need to angle it to your left. Sorry, to your right. Now what?”

I screwed the white plastic nut to the turquoise thing and topped it with a gleaming new steel cover. Mission accomplished. But Allen stayed on the floor. He couldn’t get up. He looked up at me, laughed and said, “Bring me a pillow. I need a nap.”

This column is adapted from Janet Silver Ghent’s forthcoming memoir, tentatively titled “Love atop a Keyboard,” slated for publication by Mascot Books.

In 1960, when I entered Oberlin College, my prized possession was a manual Underwood Olivetti typewriter with a stylish, blue leatherette case. Using correction tape or thin corrasable (erasable) typing paper, I could erase typographical errors — in theory. Unfortunately, reams of paper wound up in the trash. If I decided that paragraph three should be the first paragraph or eliminated, I had to retype everything. Before computers, typing a paper for a class was an ordeal, often involving multiple drafts.

Even when I wrote articles for the Oberlin Review, my college newspaper, I typed them out on short sheets of draft paper, each numbered. At the bottom of the final page, I typed “30-30-30-30,” which meant “the end” to a linotype operator. The coding, said to have originated by Western Union in 1859, was still used by journalists more than a century later.

Twice a week, I walked to the Review offices, housed in an old building behind South Main Street. Chet, the linotype operator, retyped my story, ordering rows of metallic type in a vertical box. Then we would roll the galleys with ink and create paper proofs. When the linotype operator made a mistake, he would type “etaoin shrdlu,” which meant “ignore that line.”

Rolling proofs was a messy process. So was changing typewriter ribbons, and professors would write, “You need a new ribbon” in the margins of our essays. Not all their notes were that constructive. In Freshman Composition, my papers were pocked with snide comments like “Ohhh,” “Huh????” or “Gobbledygook” — all of which meant “nonsense.” Once I was damned with faint praise: “You write well when you’re not trying to.”

Between mediocre grades and an abortive romance, my self-esteem was shattered by the end of first semester. The good news: I had nowhere to go but up. It wasn’t an easy climb, particularly for women who came of age in the early 1960s. Margaret Mead told the women of our senior class that if we settled for a typing job, we’d be typing for the rest of our lives.

However, Mead was an anthropologist, with an office in the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side of New York. I don’t believe she knew what it was like a couple of miles downtown, where women, fresh out of college, sought editorial jobs in New York publishing circles.

Like it or not, typing was the entry point, and a cum laude degree didn’t alter that fact. A month after graduation, I landed a position at Holiday magazine, grossing $75 a week while typing manuscripts with five carbons on an old manual typewriter. Slowly, I began taking on copyediting and researching duties without extra pay. After six months, I resigned to go to grad school.

With a small fellowship, I entered the University of Michigan, married a law student, and discovered that the epithet “student wife” after my name doomed me to a hateful secretarial job in the university library. I finished my master’s degree, taught English briefly, and put my career plans on hold to raise children. Then, in the 1970s, when the paths into professions eased for women, my entrée into newspaper work was as a fashion writer at the Contra Costa Times, an anomaly for a 1960s Oberlin grad. I moved on to features, food and other areas, eventually winding up at the Jewish Bulletin, the forerunner to J., as a copy editor.

Thank God I can type, a skill I picked up at a weekly class in junior high. Thank God my father could type, since it kept him out of active combat during World War II, but not out of the onerous task of graves registration.

Dictating my articles doesn’t work for me, since I think with my fingers. Scientists may not have discovered a direct path from brain to fingertips, bypassing speech and possibly conscious thought altogether, but I believe it exists. Maybe they will find it in my autopsy, but for now, it keeps me alive.

On a trip to England, I saw a light blue Underwood Olivetti typewriter on display in a museum in Manchester. Yes, it was a beauty, and I loved my light blue Olivetti. It was elegant, and it had a key for typing acute accents, which was helpful for my French papers. I have no such affection for the MacBook Air that sits on my desk when it’s not on the road. It’s just a machine. Yet, it works, and so do I.