A Eulogy for my Grandmother

Eulogy for my Grandmother

Rose Sarah Telles (1920 1918 - 2011)

Aug 1 2011

If you asked my grandmother when she was born, she might have said that she was born one July day in 1920 in Odessa. Well, that’s not quite right. Her sister—ten years her senior—used to tell Grandma Rose that she was born in the winter, not summer. And 1920 wasn’t really the right year; since she didn’t have a birth certificate, she could choose her year of birth – either to make her younger or eligible for social security. And it wasn’t Odessa. She was born in a village 130 miles from Odessa!

This ambiguity about her origins typified my grandmother; she was totally unencumbered by logic and specifics. What did it matter? She was here, filling the room with laughter and love. She had a story to tell and had a talent for finding someone to listen, whether you knew her or not! Even now, across the country, there are thousands of people she met in airports or restaurants who know about her Sammy, her father’s fruit stand, or her opinions about worker’s rights!

Reizel Sura Broitman was born in 1918 in a small shtetl in Ukraine called Savran. Her father was a successful lumber merchant—successful enough that her oldest siblings, Anita and Aaron, were well educated in the gymnasium. Fate wasn’t as kind to her; she was born in the thick of the Russian revolution, with pogroms terrorizing the Jewish communities throughout the Pale of Settlement. As a young child—my son’s age—her family fled Savran to points west. They gave up everything to leave, suffering poverty in Bucherest before taking the train through Serbia to Trieste, Italy and onto the steamship S.S. Wilson to Halifax in 1924. Five years later, after stops in Toronto (where her brother Joe was born) and Philadelphia, they finally settled in Brooklyn, her home for the next 48 years.

She once told me that she met my grandfather—Sam Telles—because she was walking down the street and overheard a group of people talking in Yiddish about communism. Surprised to be hearing Yiddish—ridiculous, considering the number of Yiddish speakers in that part of Brooklyn—she stayed to listen. She saw him and fell in love. She worked as a garment worker and her brother was very involved with the garment union. The need for worker’s rights to protect the everyman was key to her philosophy, and this fire for equality stayed with her throughout her life. I remember one story of her, late in her 70s, chastising a group of seniors in Rockaway for their lack of support for the school budget. Didn’t they know how important it was to the children?

My grandmother married my grandfather in 1938. She swore, paradoxically, that they were married by a very religious rabbi and that they didn’t have a ketubah! (Incidentally, I was amazed to find the ketubah in her personal papers a few years ago. Turns out they were legit!). They raised three children while my grandfather worked at his family’s fur store. They also helped raise a granddaughter and took care of my great-grandparents. Through the depression, war, family squabbles, and serious illness they worked hard to keep a family together.

My grandfather’s 1972 death was the shock of her life – a shock that she never overcame and never forgot to remind you about. But, despite of her seeming inability to move forward with her life, she picked up and left Brooklyn to be closer to her daughter and son in New Jersey. I am so lucky to have had her living just a few doors from me growing up, taking care of me when I was sick, making salmon croquets and once baked zwi-bach, and playing Chinese checkers with me on demand. She was a remarkable storyteller and always gave her shoulder to me to rest my head – even when I was too tall for that to be comfortable. She turned her love of children into a career, first watching a handful of kids in her house to fill the gaps between the end of the school day and the end of the work day, and then working as an aide in two local Jewish nursery schools. But she wasn’t just any day care aide – it is rare for one person to have so many kids call her grandma or Mora Shoshana. And for all her love of other people’s children, her pride and adoration of her own children (Phyllis, Shelly & Steve, Marty & Ina), grandchildren (Shira, Eric, Jennifer, Selene, Randi, and me) and great-grandchildren (Sam, Jonah, Jacob, Sophia, Asher, Paul & Joss) was boundless.

This is the woman that many of you knew. Loving, kvetchy, thoughtful, illogical, and incredibly generous. She would go out of her way to drive past my house growing up, and then grill my mother about the reason for the particular non-standard placement of cars in the driveway to make sure that an out of place vehicle didn’t mean someone was at home sick. And no amount of pleading would convince her that you really didn’t want to take a banana or hardboiled egg as a memento of your visit with her. Whenever I spoke to her, she only wanted to know what developmental milestone my children were reaching.

My grandmother embraced her Jewish identity, although she became a regular temple goer relatively late in life. She was a Hadassah Woman of Valor, a passionate supporter of Israel (anyone here buy a tree from her?), and a lifetime member of White Meadow Temple. She didn’t miss a Shabbas service for many years, always sitting in the same seat - next to my grandfather’s memorial placard. I’m heartbroken but happy to know that the placard below his will no longer say “reserved” – that they are together again, the way she wanted it to be.