I have been so engrossed in the US election and the preparation for the chagim, that I confess I have not been as diligent as I should be in following events in the wider Jewish world. Now as I play catch up on the events of the last few weeks, I am stumbling on pieces that I want to share.
Here is an article from the New York Times magazine from a couple weeks ago entitled Evening in Jerusalem. It is a bittersweet recollection of a grandson (now living in Los Angeles) of an Iraqi Jewish woman in Jerusalem. Savta (the Hebrew for "grandmother") is from a world away, both metaphorically and literally.
According to my husband, his savta was not dissimilar in circumstance and manner from the savta described here. She came from Basra Iraq and moved to Abadan Iran as a small child (from where later on she would make aliya on the creation of Israel). She died some months before I met Adam, but I like to imagine we would have enjoyed sharing some Nana tea as we spoke in broken Hebrew.
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