On June 23rd I participated in a storytelling show sponsored by TC Jewfolk entitled “MN Mammelehs: Stories from the Tribe.”
It was an honor to be chosen (so to speak) and a big, BIG challenge to stand in front of 500 people in a suburban synagogue, telling a story about “having or being a Jewish mother.”
I didn’t have one and don’t usually feel like I am one. But I do have this very Jewish story, and the show’s producer (the wonderful Galit Breen) invited me to tell it. Milo took it like a champ, my friends were beautifully supportive, and I met a dozen lovely women. It was a good but deeply weird experience, and afterwards I felt just as ambivalent and confused and conflicted as I always do. But I definitely felt less alone here in Minnesota.
We’re each doing a podcast episode on our story but in the meantime some of you have asked to read it, so here it is.
It’s 2025. My son is 15.
He arrives home from a day at his progressive school, slamming through the back door, dropping the backpack, scooping up the cat. I am in the kitchen, ready with the “how was your day, honey?” Lately, this typically earns me a “fine” before boy and cat disappear into the basement.
Not today.
Today, I am blessed with a full report. Through the cloud of pretzel dust produced by his chattering mastication, I am told that in literature class he has started a module on the Holocaust. I admit: this is interesting.
He proudly continues that he has dropped the knowledge. He has informed his classmates AND teacher that Adolf Hitler was NOT actually motivated by German nationalism, and was in fact an ecological anarchist! You see, he wanted to eliminate the false constructs of states entirely, since the Jews hid within them to escape the “natural” race wars that Hitler presumed we would lose…
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow your roll, kiddo.
You…SAID all of this? Out loud?
In front of…the goyim?
Yes, yes he has.
He expects me to be proud, and of course I am. But I also immediately panic, spinning into damage control mode. Wait, did you tell them where this knowledge comes from? That you are quoting me quoting Timothy Snyder, and not even recent Timothy Snyder but pre-On Tyranny-Snyder which, you may recall me saying, you’re not allowed to do since you haven’t actually read Snyder yourself?
No. No, he did not add this context.
I start to object, but my son is ready for this. He returns my attention to 2020. When we’d recently moved to Minnesota from Los Angeles. When the pandemic was raging. When he was an only child trapped at home with his parents.
When his fearful stir-crazy mother began reading from Origins of Totalitarianism at the breakfast table. Not once: daily.
In my defense! I wanted him to understand that unfortunately, totalitarianism is not currently confined to the dustbin of history, and if he is going to be a Jew who has so far declined Hebrew school and Bar Mitzvah training on the grounds of avoiding more homework…this is the least he can expect.
He wanted ME to understand: no thank you. He was not willing to forsake Fortnite for anti-fascism training, he was fine, he was 10, and my whole crusade was a little much, actually. Life was overwhelming enough, maybe we could get a brief break from Holocaust education? At least until high school.
At the time, in 2020, I’m afraid I did not concede his point. I won’t say I overpowered him, but neither did I shut up as requested. He carried on the proud Jewish tradition of driving his mother nuts by arguing, and he held his own. But the end result was that I continued to burden him with a LOT of information about the Holocaust, perhaps earlier than was strictly necessary.
I had done what parents often do: I tried to give him the knowledge and experiences I had as a child. I didn’t stop to ask myself if they were necessary, I assumed they were. I didn’t see that my son is not me.
For instance, he is not being raised in a sea of flinchy, post-war Jewish intellectuals in Western New York in the 1970s. He was raised in Los Angeles until he was 9, then turned 10 in Minnesota where we know SOME Jews but not, you know, a LOT. And now at 15, Bar Mitzvah or no, he has become his own man in this historical moment.
His head is not ringing with the noise of impassioned Jewish elders arguing over the ways in which we are obligated to respond to the Holocaust. My son has not had Hannah Arendt thrust into his chubby prepubescent paws by the black-gloved mechanical hand of a shouty, bearded political science professor, in response to the innocent question: “what are you guys talking about?”
My son, at 10, was playing with Pokémon and reading Dogman books. When his loving mother thrust Hannah Arendt into HIS chubby prepubescent paws and asked him to spend his one precious life deep in a dense, nearly-500-page exploration of human cruelty…he said no.
He is a Jew, but he is not me. I envy his no, because I said yes, and sometimes wish I hadn’t. And while it DOES seem useful to study the mechanics of autocratic regimes right now…I can see that it might not be helping to heal the generational trauma.
So there in my kitchen, the question is called again: how much exactly does he need to know? Which burdens are rightfully his to bear, and which am I loading onto his shoulders simply because I carry them on mine?
And again in my 2025 kitchen, as he always does, he gives me my answer. He’s got this. He is 15. He is reading Eli Weisel (Night). He’s telling me what he knows. He’s telling his CLASS what he knows.
It still feels unsafe somehow to spare him a daily drenching of 20th century European Jewish history, but in its place we talk about what’s happening today—in Europe, in the Middle East, here at home. He has grown up arguing about what to do, how to be, how to help others, how to heal the world. We are arguing right now.
In that moment in my kitchen, debating my son and myself, one fact becomes clear: he is not lacking for impassioned Jewish elders. There is one standing right in front of him.
And he may not have done all the reading, but he has certainly done all the listening. He actually does know what he’s talking about. He knows his history. He knows who he is and where he comes from. He may want a break now and then, but he’ll never forget.
(Photo of me & Milo by Julie Caffey, all others by Sydnee Bickett.)
