They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat. - by Penny Orloff

 

Antibiotics were born about the same time I was. Suddenly, bubonic plague and spinal meningitis and syphilis and other fatal bacterial infections were history. Wiped off the face of the earth. All these decades later the resistant little progeny of that tiny percentage of the bugs that antibiotics couldn’t kill are still here, refined through the determination of their exterminators to an unfathomable degree of resilience and bad-assery. Survivors. And armed to the teeth.

On the anniversary of last year’s October 7 slaughter of more than 1400 people, with the resulting conflict still upon us, I find myself musing on survival. In December, as every year, my family will assemble for the first night of Hanukkah— a thousands of years later, annual remembrance of the Maccabees, a resistant little family of Yids (their name means “hammer”) who, by a miracle, survived a lengthy siege designed to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. An ancient iteration of Hitler’s Final Solution.

Most Jewish holidays are exactly the same: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.

Babylon, Egypt, the Romans, the Spanish Inquisition, the Cossacks, Vilna, and worse... And all these centuries later the resistant little progeny of that tiny percentage of Jews that even Hitler couldn’t kill are still here, refined through the determination of their exterminators to an unfathomable level of resilience and bad-assery. Survivors. And armed to the teeth. If you’ve got mischief on your mind, you don’t wanna cross paths with an Israeli. 

Left unmolested we’ll dink around and amuse ourselves with literature and astrophysics and medicine and music and – oh – comedy. But after thousands of years of unintentional genetic engineering, threaten us at your peril. 

What is that indomitable thing? What is that resilient stuff my family is apparently made of that has survived to remember the Maccabee brothers, and light the Menorah, and recite the Kaddish for our dead, and then sit for hours scarfing latkes and chopped liver? With so many of our ancestors cut down by so many enemies—or by the diabetes and heart disease and cancer that plague such an inbred little tribe—how did we survive? 

My mother was an only child. Her mother got off the boat at Ellis Island with her little tribe of parents and siblings and grandparents, the battered and scarred sole survivors, the last remnant of a final pogrom that took out the rest of the shtetl. For all our PTSD and hypervigilance and mishegas, what is it with my family? How are we the ones still standing? Why us?

She was a lonely little girl in Toledo, Ohio, my mother, until the age of five when she met Eleanor on the first day of kindergarten. At last, little Ruetta Zimmerman had a sister. Eleanor and Ruetta were inseparable for three and a half years. 

When they were in 3rd grade, Eleanor’s family moved away. My mom was heartbroken. She carried the grief of that loss for years. 

Eight months after my mother married my father, in the summer of 1947, two months before my sister Tami was born, he took her to a boxing match. Dad greeted Bernie Lubin, another middle-aged Jew with a much younger, very pregnant wife. Eleanor Lubin took one look at my mom and screamed, “Ruetta!!” For the next 56 years the girls were inseparable. 

Eleanor had three boys—Bobby, Marty, and Stanley—and then a girl, Shelley. My mom had three girls—Tami, Penny, and Rikki—and then a boy, Mike. Eight kids in six years. Eleanor’s first born, Bobby, was the oldest; my brother, Mike, the youngest. Our families lived three blocks apart. Because our mothers were always together, the eight of us grew up almost as siblings.

It was L.A. in the 60s... drugs, sex, and rock and roll, Baby.  

Eleanor’s 2nd, Marty, was devastatingly handsome. All the girls had a crush on him. Marty committed suicide by drug overdose before the decade was out.

A year later, while we were all still reeling from that loss, Eleanor’s youngest, her daughter Shelley—my sister Rikki’s best friend—came home stoned one night, went to sleep, and stayed there in a coma for three months. When she woke up she had the mind of an infant. She couldn’t speak or be toilet trained. Eleanor took care of her in the family house for the rest of her life. 

Eleanor’s much older husband, Bernie, died of a heart attack at the age of 63, leaving Eleanor to cope with Shelley. She had help. Bobby—by now a millionaire clothing manufacturer—and Stanley were there every single day. Stanley never did find work, but his mother and brother supported him in style. Stanley had a heart of gold; he was cheerful and funny. Wherever he was, there was sunlight. 

Stanley died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 53. Now it was just Eleanor and Bobby. And Shelley in the next room. A few years later, in late December of 2002, Bobby was murdered in his palatial Hollywood Hills home. They never found the killers.

Eleanor hung on another year, her stage-4 cancer feasting away at her while she struggled to survive, unwilling to surrender because her death would mean Shelley would finally be “put away.” But, ultimately, the cancer won. 

We buried them one at a time. My mother and father and all four of us siblings and my parents’ seven grandchildren, our little tribe buried Eleanor next to Bernie and Marty and Stanley and Bobby. No children or grandchildren will ever recite the Kaddish for them. The end of that family. Just—gone. 

The famous Jewish guilt is survivor guilt. 

All eight of us kids came up in the same Los Angeles. We went to the same schools, we took the same drugs and crashed our cars and hitchhiked and courted the same dangers. Now well into our 70s, my siblings and I remain in robust health and vigor. My parents’ seven grandchildren are all healthy and successful. There are five great-grandchildren. Every July, the tribe gathers to recite the Kaddish for my parents on the anniversary of their deaths. 

Three thousand years ago there were perhaps three million Jews in the world. Today there are 14 million Jews in the whole world. That any of us, at all, have survived is a miracle. Jewish guilt is survivor guilt. And we who survive—we atone. Our penance is memory. We live on to tell the tales, to remember, all of it, everything, every year. 

They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat. 

For those of my race who have forgotten, I remember the four Maccabee brothers. I remember the slaughtered in Babylon, in Egypt. Slaughtered by Greeks, by Romans. I remember my ancestors tortured in Spain. The pogroms, Vilna, the Camps. October 7, 2023. Last month’s murder of hostages. The stabbings last week, and yesterday. Mom, Dad, Eleanor and Bernie—I recite the Kaddish for you all.  

Penny Orloff was a working actor and dancer in Los Angeles when a Juilliard scholarship took her to New York. She sang more than 20 Principal Soprano roles for New York City Opera, and she played featured roles on Broadway under directors Harold Prince and Joseph Papp. Theater, concert, and opera engagements took her all over the US, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Her solo show, “JEWISH THIGHS ON BROADWAY" –based on her novel of the same name—toured the US for a decade, including a successful run off-Broadway in 2005. Her current show, “SONGS AND STORIES FROM A NOT-QUITE-KOSHER LIFE,” is on hold until the theaters open again.

She is the author of "Art as Lifework, Life as Artwork," a creativity seminar and workbook offered nation-wide since 1991; and is still procrastinating on her new book, "Who Would You Be If You Had Nothing to Bitch About?" A Tarot reader for over 50 years, Penny has used the cards in her counseling practice for decades.

She is a regular contributor of stories to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and has worked for a dozen years as an arts journalist for various online and print media.

More at: Penny Orloff – An Artist's Life