Till a Hundred and Twenty Years : A Memoir

Review by Rabbi Jack RiemerThere is a rule in writing: whenever you write about what is most personal-you are writing about what is most universal. In this facinating book, Jo-Ann Middleman tells the story of her childhood and of her family, and yet I am certain that every person of her generation who reads this book will identify with it and will think of the parallels to their own childhood and their own family. They were a very special generation, that group of immigrants who left Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1920. They left their old world behind, and went on to new cultures and languages, a whole new way of life. Bound to each other in close-knit, sometimes suffocatingly close, family units, they found the meaning of their lives in "di kinder," who belonged not only to the parents, but almost equally to the entire clan. Jo-Ann Middleman brings her zany relatives back to life with great love, and warmth and humor. She regales us with hilarious stories: about "a family who can turn an ordinary trip to the beach into a gantseh megilla," or how Bubby, and Aunt Sophia conspire to foil the evil eye, or how Bubby, Zady, Aunt Sophia and Uncle Irvin encamp weekly "by Johnson's" ( Howard Johnson's to you and me). And then there are the poignant stories of how they coped with the never-ending crises which are our lives. Two scenes moved me the most. One is when Jo-Ann comes back home to visit her Aunt Sophia. Zady has died, and Sophia is trying to pack up the house in which she and her mother and father have lived for almost half a century. Stuff is everywhere: in Zady's room, the "sun poller," the vestibule ... As Jo-Ann wanders through the rooms, everything she sees reminds her of a story: the breakfast room window, Bubby's footstool, the old-fashioned telephone. She must say goodbye to this house, this sanctuary of her childhood. She struggles to hold on to every memory. Anyone who has ever had to break up a parent's home, anyone who has ever taken a last trinket as a souvenir, and tried to explain to the next generation what it means, will identify with this scene. The other theme in the book that moved me deeply was the theme of the birthday cards that Jo-Ann remembers getting every year. At first there were two, one from Aunt Sophia and Uncle Irvin, and one from Bubby and Zady-both full of mushy sentiment and both very expensive-for nothing was too good for "di kinder." And then there was one card with three signatures, after Zady died, and then there were only two signatures, and then just one, and then there were none, as one by one the relatives died. Life is change, and there is no way to hold on to the present-that is what Jo-Ann and all the rest of us have to learn as we grow up. In the end, what is it that people leave behind? Some possessions, some assets, but above all, family stories. Blessed are those families who have a sensitive and skilled heiress like Jo-Ann Middleman, who is

If you were raised by a loving extended family (or wish you had been), you will revel in Jo-Ann Middleman's book, "Till a Hundred and Twenty Years". In it she presents her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles with all their foibles and eccentricities, while they quietly maneuver over who has control over whose life. It made me nostalgic for my childhoo