Illumination

Richard Lazaroff

Description

Illumination shines a bright light on the trials, tribulations and triumphs of American Jews. Rachel Walsh is our engaging guide through the challenges faced by many Jews: the lure of assimilation and secular success, the pain of antisemitism, and the search for a spiritual grounding in the modern world. Illumination compels the reader to engage in this multi-generational family saga in which all must seek an answer to the eternal questions of faith and a meaningful life.
"Illumination shines a bright light on the trials, tribulations and triumphs of American Jews. Rachel Walsh is our engaging guide through the challenges faced by many Jews: the lure of assimilation and secular success, the pain of antisemitism, and the search for a spiritual grounding in the modern world. Richard Lazaroff weaves a compelling multi-generational family saga in which all must seek an answer to the eternal questions of faith and a meaningful life."
- Gary Huber - Rabbi Emeritus - Congregation beth tikvah
Rachel Walsh is a modern day woman in an interfaith marriage trying to sort through her feelings about her Jewish faith while navigating life as a busy pediatrician, mother, and wife. A chance meeting with the rabbi who co-officiated at her wedding leads to serial meetings where, together, they examine issues holding her back from allowing faith to enrich her life and the lives of the community where she lives.
The book will especially appeal to lovers of historical fiction as this four generational novel follows the immigration of Rachel's ancestors from Kiev to South Haven, Michigan all the while examining historical events over the last one hundred years affecting American Jews.

Sujets

• Jewish
• Holocaust
• Jews
• The Holocaust
• Fiction
• Holocauste

Informations

• Publié par: LifeRich Publishing
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781489740861
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ILLUMINATION
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
RICHARD LAZAROFF
 
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Richard Lazaroff.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.
 
 
LifeRich Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.liferichpublishing.com
844-686-9607
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4087-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4088-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4086-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022904982
 
 
LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 02/08/2023
CONTENTS
Prologue
 
The Family Tree
Summer 2016—South Haven, Michigan
1892—Kiev, Russia
Fall, 2016—South Haven
1895—Bad Axe, Michigan
Fall, 2016—South Haven
1898—Benton Harbor, Michigan
Winter 2016—South Haven
1909—South Haven
Winter 2016/17—South Haven
1909—South Haven
November 2016—South Haven
Spring 1910—South Haven
Spring 2017—South Haven
1920—South Haven
Spring 2017—South Haven
1924—South Haven
Summer 2017—South Haven
July 3, 1933—Chicago
Summer & Fall, 2017—South Haven
1934—South Haven
Fall, 2017—South Haven
1937—South Haven and Chicago
Oct/Nov 2017—South Haven
Spring & Summer, 1944—South Haven
Winter/Christmas 2017—South Haven
Spring 1947—South Haven
February 2018—South Haven
Fall, 1955—South Haven
Spring 2018—South Haven
Fall, 1960—South Haven
Fall, 2018—South Haven
February 1965—South Haven, St. Louis, Selma
Winter 2018—South Haven
September 5, 1972—South Haven
April 2019–South Haven
1977—South Haven
April 2019—South Haven
June 1982—South Haven
April 2019—South Haven
1988—South Haven
June 2019—South Haven
August 2000—South Haven
Christmas 2019—Jerusalem
 
Author’s Notes
Acknowledgments
Questions for discussion
PROLOGUE
The Baron de Hirsch Fund was established in 1891 with a mission to get Jews out of Eastern Europe and Russia by promoting the development of Jewish settlements and trade schools. To this day the Fund survives providing services and assisting Jewish immigrants to integrate successfully in the United States.
“What is more natural than that I should find my highest purpose in bringing to the followers of Judaism, who have been oppressed for a thousand years, who are starving in misery, the possibilities of a physical and moral regeneration?” The Baron de Hirsch, Paris 1891
THE FAMILY TREE
Samuel Goldman & Helen Glickman
Children—Jacob (b.1909)—Isaac (b.1912)— Charlotte ( Lottie b.1918)
Charlotte Goldman & Daniel Zlatkin
Children—Jack (b.1942)— Joan (b.1946)—Alan (b.1948)
Joan Zlatkin & Joseph Levitt
Children—Paul (b.1965)—Michele (b.1967)— Rachel (b.1972)
Rachel Levitt & Bill Walsh
Children—Andrew (b.2002)—Hannah (b.2004)
SUMMER 2016— SOUTH HAVEN, MICHIGAN
It was truly the best ten minutes of each and every week for as long as Rachel could remember. Her life was good, happy—though sometimes conflicts and disappointments seemed to cloud over even the best moments. And she was always rushing. Rushing to her pediatric office or home to Bill and the kids. Therefore, the simplicity of taking out her candlesticks, alone, lighting both of them and saying a Hebrew prayer she had been taught as a child was just the break she needed. She did not consider herself a religious person, but Rachel did believe there had to be something greater going on. She remembered a college course she took freshman year at Brown where the professor talked about Abraham Joshua Heschel and his description of the ineffable. It was something about parting company with words...a “tangent to the curve of the human experience.” Yes, she believed strongly in something greater, something one could not explain. But just as Heschel described the ineffable, the arc of her life and her acceptance of faith might be described as two parallel lines never to intersect. Lately, this caused her to feel as if there were a hole inside, at the core of her being. As if the parallel lines ran along each side of her body leaving a gaping space between.
Rachel had married outside her faith and chosen to accede to her husband’s strong devotion to the Catholic church. Or was her husband’s faith simply the result of growing up in a small town where Catholicism ran unopposed? In any event, they committed to raising their children in a single religious tradition. Still, those ten minutes every Friday night when she lit the Sabbath lights were almost like Transcendental Meditation in the sixties or the Mindfulness Movement of the current day—just her and her great-grandmother’s candlesticks. Though Rachel had never met the woman, the candlesticks were a palpable link to her past.
Rachel was a pediatrician. It often took several hours after finishing at the office for her mind to settle down and leave the problems of her patients behind. Every day was long and pretty similar to the previous one. She called those Groundhog Days, like the movie.
Just occasionally, there was an opportunity to shine and the day her partner called her in to examine a two-year-old child was one of them. The child had a hard, red, swollen cheek and Rachel listened while her partner explained his diagnosis of buccal cellulitis. He was nearly certain but wanted Rachel’s corroboration. If he were correct, the child had a serious bacterial infection requiring admission to the hospital and a septic work-up involving pain, many needle sticks and even a spinal tap.
As her partner finished his explanation, Rachel turned her attention from him to the child, and then to the child’s parents who were standing anxiously by the examination table. The importance of establishing facts for herself had been drilled into her during medical school and reinforced in residency training. At the back of her mind, she could hear her mentor, Dr. Phillips, saying to make a correct diagnosis you must start with a “good history followed by a thorough physical examination.” She questioned them, her manner brisk but kind. What had the child been doing in the last twenty-four hours? Where had he played? What had he eaten? It turned out the child didn’t need all that poking and prodding. His parents just needed to avoid giving him popsicles in the future.
Who would have thought she would ever see a case of popsicle panniculitis, inflamed inner cheeks from cold exposure, in her career?
Usually, pediatrics was less glamorous, full of blocking and tackling to see thirty patients a day with common colds, diarrhea, rashes, and school avoidance. And the phone calls. Parents were anxious; helicoptering was the term in vogue. Who could blame them with social media having so many wrong answers swirling at their fingertips. This hovering over their children, ready to intervene before physical or emotional injury had an opportunity to occur, had become the new normal in parenting, reinforced by pressure from friends and grandparents alike.
The practice she chose to join in South Haven was exhausting and not what she had expected after finishing her hospital residency training in Ann Arbor. There, the focus was on sick children—Rachel being taught to order as many tests as necessary to quickly and accurately make a diagnosis and follow clinically proven treatment protocols. But the practice of pediatrics away from a university teaching hospital was quite different. The children she saw were rarely so sick that they needed to be admitted. No, their presenting problems were subtle and rarely solved by a knee-jerk reaction to perform more tests.
Though it had taken a couple of years to become proficient, honing her skills of listening and observing, she was now an excellent clinician—seeing herself as part detective, part social worker, and part psychologist. No longer was a physician expected to be paternalistic, calling all the shots at times without a patient’s explicit consent. Best practices called for shared medical decision making where a doctor needed to, first, educate patients about the science behind a diagnosis in order to next, together, make the best treatment choices in an efficient and compassionate manner. Though more time consuming, Rachel liked practicing in this manner. If she were not a doctor herself, it was how she would expect to be treated when someone in her family was ill.
Rachel continued to gaze at the candlesticks allowing her mind to wander further. Somehow over the last twenty years, in addition to establishing a thriving pediatric practice, she had caught up socially, married Bill, and pushed out a son and a daughter.
Today, the kids were still at soccer practice and Bill was picking them up after his full day teaching biology at a local high school. She wondered how they were doing as parents. After all, on a daily basis she saw all ki