For Now

A Hanukkah Wish and a Story

by Jess Hope Katz

“For Now”

This is a picture of my parents when they were younger. They raised me to believe that hard work and determination is a Jewish value. I have never forgotten that lesson.

It’s the first night of Hanukkah and I have a roof over my head. It’s the first night of Hanukkah and I have food to eat, water to drink, and people to love. It’s the first night of Hanukkah and I have a job to provide me with the means to live my life, and one I genuinely enjoy. It’s the first night of Hanukkah and I have a husband who is a sweet and good man, who works hard so we can have a good life. It’s the first night of Hanukkah and no one is attacking my home or my workplace. It’s the first night of Hanukkah, and I’m safe… for now.

For now.

This is what it feels like to be Jewish. The idea of “For Now”-I wish I could explain to people the privilege of safety, and what it is like to wonder when the shoe will drop, when an attack will start, when your family will have to flee. Many people in the United States know what this feels like. But the majority of White, Cisgender, Christian people that I see every day at work and where I live probably do not. This is my attempt, and probably a poor one at that, to explain why my Judaism informs not only who I am, but what I stand for.

I grew up in a neighborhood in the NYC Metro area where there were a good amount of Jewish people. I never had to question if someone knew what Hanukkah was, or that we had the High Holy Days off from school, or when Passover was. No one asked me what Latkes were, or how Matzoh Ball soup is made.

And then I started teaching in Paterson, NJ and everything changed.

This picture is of my students in our “Girls With Pearls” Club in Paterson boxing up and wrapping gifts to young mothers with baby supplies for “Oasis” a Women’s Shelter in Paterson, NJ

And it wasn’t for the bad. Paterson, NJ taught me many lessons that have forever altered who I am as a teacher, and as a human being. And for that I am always grateful. I remember having lunch with some old friends in a well off suburban town, near where I grew up, and we were waiting to get a table. This woman and I are in line and begin chatting and she says to me, “Oh, you’re a teacher THERE? Aren’t you AFRAID? I mean, I’d be scared to get out of my car every morning!”

And I stiffened my back up, and turned to her, very slowly and deliberately and said, “I was raised to believe that every child deserves a free and equal public education.”

And then I walked away.

We got to our table and my friends asked me what was wrong. I explained that there was just an ignorant woman I was dealing with, and that I was fine. So we brushed it off and moved on with our meal.

But I didn’t. This woman thought she knew what Paterson, NJ was- a town full of people that were not like her, so they were to be feared. A town full of people from various cultures, speaking a variety of languages, worshipping in unique ways- how could she relate? How could any of the sheltered people in the area I grew up in relate to what it’s like to have to suffer not having enough? Could any of those people understand the idea of being seen as an “other” and something to fear? Probably not. The closest thing they felt to that was when they had to buy non- name-brand shoes. Since then, I have moved away from that town. But the air of superiority still reaches me, and sometimes in the most strange places.

I swore to myself that if I ever taught, I would want to teach kids who didn’t have the advantages I had growing up. I would teach kids who needed a good teacher, who needed an advocate and an ally, someone to believe in them when the world didn’t. And I did just that. For fifteen years I taught in urban environments. And I learned that the most important lessons a person can learn do not come from an overpriced private college, but from a third floor corner hallway in an old public school building, where a former prison security guard explains to a short, white Jewish girl, what it means to have the lived experience of a 17 year old black boy. And that empathy doesn’t have a color, or a religion. It is universal, like pain and suffering.

This is a picture of my AP Lit students at Kennedy High School in Paterson. They are sitting in the library having a breakfast club meeting to discuss Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. We would have these every time we finished a novel.

My father’s father, and his cousin had to escape Germany when the Nazis came. They lost all of the rights they had worked so hard to earn. My grandfather was going to be a judge. He was educated, articulate, kind, just what my father and brother are. But he was also exceedingly brave. He came to the United States and instead of being welcomed with open arms (as Ellis Island promises us with the Emma Lazarus poem inscription) he was stripped of all of the education he had in Germany. He had to start over here. And he did.

This is a picture of my mother, me, my Papa and my Grandma. This is the man who sacrificed his career and his life, so I could have one.

He never became a judge. He passed away young. But he left a legacy of the meaning of hard work and fortitude. Of not giving up when things become too hard, and of doing what is right instead of what is easy. Being Jewish to me, means doing what is right instead of what is easy. There is a famous quote by Rabbi Hillel that says,

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?”

I believe that living a Jewish life is living an empathetic life. Living a Jewish life is caring about people beyond the ones you are related to, ones who have the same skin color as you, or ones from your neighborhood. Being Jewish is a set of spiritual principles about how to live your life, and at the end of the day, how to be a good person. We don’t do what we do for accolades. We live in quiet humility, in the hopes that another person will be changed for the better.

So when people talk about Hanukkah and what they are going to get for Hanukkah- like presents and all of that, I smile to myself. I love presents as much as the next girl, but Hanukkah isn’t about presents. It’s about the miracle that happened then, and the miracles that happen every day. It’s about the small acts of kindness that happen all around us. It’s about the folks who stand up to injustice and who rally together. It’s about the folks who know that miracles are just that- that in the end hard work is the thing that really gets us through. Having the integrity to stand up for what is right is really what it means to be Jewish. And It doesn’t matter where you are from, or what your background is, because hard work is universal.

And so is kindness.

I am safe- FOR NOW.

I am blessed- FOR NOW.

I am content- FOR NOW.

I am at peace- FOR NOW.

And for that I say, Amen.

Happy Hanukkah to you all. And may you celebrate the folks who work hard to make your lives wonderful. They are the true heroes of the day.

This is my mother, father and uncle sitting around the table at my Uncle’s home in Brooklyn, reading from the Passover Haggadah, as we gathered in unity and prayer. I hope to gather again with all of them soon.