Motherhood, The New Addiction by Linda Koplovitz

Recently I was told by my daughter that I should stop thinking about her so much and get a hobby. Well, I realized that substituting caring and thinking about her with a hobby would be like trying to cure a heroin addiction with a Band-Aid.

Here's the problem: I became hooked on Baby Kisses

and Baby Hugs, and Curing Boo Boos and how does one substitute a hobby for a hug. I don't think it's possible. One day I have a baby, needing me so much and the next day I have a 28 year old saying, "Get a Life!" Well, I had a life. How did I lose it? My life was my family and working full time. I still work full time. How do I accept that the family has changed.

I know that there are self-help books and 12 step programs for addictions, but what about "How not to be a Mother, once you've been one."

Maybe I should write the 12 Step book on how to cure the addiction of Motherhood. That would be a good hobby.

First Step: Go through house and remove all pictures of child. When you are addicted to cigarettes, it is best to remove all cigarettes from the house if you want to stop smoking, right? All pictures have to go.

Next Step: All belongings of said child to be shipped to new address of child. Everything that reminds you of your life together must be eliminated to avoid relapse.

Step 3: Stop listening to music, because every song on the radio, especially music of the '80's will remind you of being with your child. Especially avoid, Rick Astley and Tori Amoss.

Step 4: Remove all Artwork from walls that could possibly remind you of Child.

Step 5: Make a list of Child's favorite foods and stop purchasing those grocery items. Food has a way of triggering the mind to experience a time when you sat across the kitchen table and ate that food with your child.

Step 6: This is the hard part. Tape down phone and don't call child everyday to see if she is feeling ok.

Step 7: Cross off all holidays on the Calendar as to not remind you that it's a time when you possibly could visit your child.

Step 8: Everytime you think of your child, take a leather belt out of your closet and use it to self chastise. Ok, maybe I'm going too far, but you get the picture.

Step 9: Ask doctor for a perscription for an addictive drug, like Valium, to help get over the need to cry all the time.

Step 10: Take Tums to try to get over the nauseous feeling of loss.

Step 11: Put the House up for sale so that all the surroundings will never be there to remind you of the love that's lost.

Step 12: Pack your bag, travel around the world...(Remember not to go to places such as Rome or London.) Leave heart behind, no need for it where you are going.

My experience with Anti-Semitism by Linda Koplovitz

I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia in the late 1950's & 1960's. We were Jewish but my family had always been friendly to everyone. I played with the neighborhood kids no matter who or what nationality or religion they were and one of my parents' closest friends were a couple who had 6 kids. We found out that they were Catholic. The mother looked Italian and the father looked Irish. Well we all gathered together while the parents talked, the kids played.
My sister, brother and I knew we were different only a few times a year. During Easter, we were not permitted to eat their candy because it was also Passover,

with Jewish dietary restrictions in play and during Christmas, they had a tree and we did not. However, I remember being invited over their house on Christmas to watch them open their presents and to share their hospitality in the way of delicious cookies.
My parents were very trusting people, maybe too trusting. My sister was permitted to go away to a 2-week Summer Camp one year. My parents were not told any details with the exception that she would be with friends from school. When she came back, she told me that she was Christian. At the camp, she was not permitted to play at all the camp activites or eat dinner until they all prayed to Jesus. My parents hushed it up and never mentioned it again. But I took it personally that someone could steal my sister's mind and make her believe that she was not Jewish.

I think if it were me and this had happened to my child today, there would have been a huge legal case to deal with. As a child myself, I learned all I could about what being Jewish really meant and I tried to re-educate my sister. But I was only a child myself and not able to cure brainwashing.
For me I never felt the sting of Anti-Semitism during my early years. Later when I was about 18 years old, standing on a corner, waiting for a bus, someone drove by and yelled at me, "Christ Killer!"
I realized then that people do know who you are. People talk and that person, who yelled at me, knew me through his acquaintences and that he and his acquaintences were saying bad things about me behind my back all the while smiling to my face.
It made me think that all those lovely Catholic children that I had played with when I was a child, really didn't like things about me. That was my first hurt and when I realized that people could hate you because of the difference in how you pray or who you pray to, it broke my heart.

That was my first shock. I was shocked because No. 1, I didn't know who yelled at me and No. 2, what does that mean? So I went back to the books to try to figure out why someone would call me a Christ Killer. I had to learn the story of Jesus in order to defend myself.

I wanted to fight this bad feeling that I had and pick up a sword like Joan of Arc and defend myself and my people. But in the 1970's that's a bit too dramatic. So instead, everyone I met who was not my religion got an education because the minute I became someone's friend, I got it all out. I'm Jewish, I believe in the One God. The same God that Jesus prayed to, I pray to. We do not pray to Jesus because if Jesus lived, he would have been a man, not a God and Jews feel that Jesus, if he were real, he would not have been any different than any other Jewish child of God and that no one child stands above any other. That was the short lesson.
After knowing me for awhile, one might get the lesson that, "All religions are a mythology and the Jewish People are united by the common mythology and the Study of the Torah. We do not even believe that there was anything called Jesus. It's just another fairy tale like Beauty and the Beast or another story like Hercules, the son of a human woman and Zeus."
But even though my friends got an education, my acquaintences still talked about me behind my back.
After my husband and I purchased our very first home in a sleepy little town in North New Jersey,

we were invited to an annual party of the Real Estate Agent, who sold us our house, to thank all his customers. A stranger walked over to me and told me that if I had lived in his neck of the woods, they would be burning a cross on my lawn.

Well, by then I was experienced, so I was no longer shocked by Anti-Semitism; I was empowered. So I said, "In my neck of the woods, we would have fed you to the lions!" and I walked away feeling pride that I could combat a nasty remark with a retaliation of an equally nasty remark. But the idea that my Real Estate Agent talked about us to his other customers always made me a little sick to my stomach when I thought about it.
I understand now why some people, less confrontational might enjoy living in a Ghetto of sorts. I now understand why the Jews of Israel might enjoy living with their own kind. Imagine a nation of all the same type of people, where your neighbor doesn't secretly hate you for being different. I can understand why Israel has always been so important to all Jews everywhere. It's a place that we can go to, a haven, if we are tired of fighting the outside world.
Once I had children, I was fearful for them. How could I protect them from Anti-Semitism. One day, my daughter came home from Kindergarten and said, "Mommy, we learned about the birth of God today." Well there it was. The Elephant walked into the room or should I say the 3 camels. My first battle over my child having to learn about Anti-Semitism was Christmas in a public school. That's not only Anti-Semitism, it's Anti-American. We have something in this country called Separation of Church and State. In 1985, public schools were not supposed to teach religion. I immediately called my Rabbi and asked him, "What can I do to stop this." He more or less told me that there was nothing I could do except ask to go to school to teach about Chanukah. So that's what I did and every year I would go to school with a Prayer Shawl, a Chanukah Menorah, Candles, Dreidels (Toy Tops) and Chunukah Gelt, (Chocolate Gold Coins). I compared Judah Maccabee to He-man Masters of the Universe and the bad Syrian King that took over the Jewish Temple as Skeletor. I told the story of Chanukah whereby Judah and his brothers fought the first battle in recorded history that defended religious freedoms. And maybe Christmas couldn't be celebrated today if it were not for the Jews who fought for those basic Freedoms.

Once my daughter told me that the little girl across the street told her not to tell

anyone that she was Jewish because they won't like her. Well I told my daughter to go back to that little girl and tell her that "Jesus was Jewish and everyone liked him."
To this day, just like during the time of Judah Maccabee, I still feel that Jews are fighting for basic Religious Respect and Freedoms.

Woman a poem by Linda Koplovitz

And God said, Let there be light.

Light meaning awakening of new life.

And God after seeing Adam, knew that this imperfect being, would require guidance and love.

So God created Woman.

And, I, God, will give this new creature gifts.

I give her, what I possess and love most. Life!

I give her the gift of bringing forth life and loving life as I do.

And I give her the talent to manipulate Adam so that his strength does not over power her.

For all her strength will be needed to populate the Earth with Life and Love.

Let Adam be her servant, to lift what is heavy and to shelter her from storms.

For she is the nurturing being of all.

And let Adam not be jealous that I prefer her wisdom and compassion.

So I bequeath Woman a new gift,

to satisfy Adam, as no other creature can,

as to hypnotize him into submission.

Since I, God, love all my children,

even the imperfect beings on Earth,

I will not cast Adam asunder,

but give him the ability to learn from Woman.
Let the evolution of man begin.

DNA and self discovery by Linda Koplovitz

I have always been interested in my family's roots. I knew that we were


Russian Jews on all sides of the family. My mother's family Broudy / Cohen came from somewhere near Lithuwania and my father's family Finkel from Kieshniev. But because the people who worked at Ellis Island, could not pronounce the family names, many of the names have been changed and untraceable. My family came to America in the very late 19th century to the early 20th century.

My father had a very rosey pale complexion with brown hair and brown eyes. My mother looked Mediterranean, and looked Italian with dark hair and dark eyes. When my mother was a young woman many compared her to










Dorothy Lamour from the Road Pictures of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.


I favored my dad, turning out with very pale complexion, light brown hair, with blonde streaks in the summer, and blue eyes coming from Grandmother, Sarah from my mother's side and Grandmother Fanny from my father's side, who both had blue eyes.

My cousin Carolyn, (Cookie for short) sent me an e-mail, which contained information from the National Geographic Website about a Genome Project, which traces family DNA. I thought that this was very interesting and immediately went on the website. I ordered a DNA sampling kit, which only cost me about $100. The kit consisted of instructions with an ID number, a glass tube and a swab. I was to take a scraping of the inside of my mouth and put the swab into the glass tube container and send it back. In a few weeks I could go on-line to the National Geographic Website and plug in my ID number and get the results of where my family came from and migrated to.


This was very exciting. So in about 4 - 6 weeks, I went on-line and plugged in my number and printed all the information that had been listed.








Since my printed map and information said that I was from Africa and that I was still in Africa and never migrated out, I shoved the information in a drawer, embarrassed that I was taken for a ride. I knew that this wasn't my DNA results because I was white and Jewish and if I started in Africa, then surely I would have left by now.


About a year later, my husband and I were watching Public Television together, when a program came on about Spencer Wells and the Genome Project through the National Geographic Organization. As we were watching, my husband says to me, "Didn't you participate in this study? I'd like to see your results." Well I laughed and said, "Sure you can see the results, but the results can't be right because the results say I'm 'Black.' "


Well my husband, who is a scientist, takes my results and becomes obsessed. He buries himself in research to determine how this could be. He figures that only 1% of the entire Jewish Population have my DNA. He lets his imagination carry him away, thinking that I must be related to Moses' Ethiopian Wife or the Queen of Sheba. He starts treating me like I'm royalty. I become the center of attention and he starts telling everyone his discovery. This is very exciting and affects my daughter also, since this Mitochondrial DNA is handed down from Mother to Daughter.


In my name my husband joins geneology groups for me and I start getting e-mails from Women who are Caucasion, Jews, such as myself, who have the same DNA as I do and are wondering why our DNA results from the National Geographic Genome Project say we are all Black. Then I start getting e-mails from Black Women too. We are all DNA cousins and start calling ourselves such.

One of the women in the geneology group starts doing her own historical research and a few theories develop.

One theory is that during the Spanish Inquisition, Jews escaped Spain to an Island off the coast of Africa, which was also used as a location to transport slaves from Africa to the Americas. There a Fulani woman,

fell in love with a Jewish man

and went with him as he migrated through Africa, northeast through the Mid-East to eventually end up in Eastern Europe. She must have had a genetic mutation, since everytime her offspring would marry a man who carried the blue-eyed gene, her children had green or blue eyes. I would be the decendent of this Fulani woman.

If this theory is correct, I am so proud to have such a rich history. I wish I could have shared the news with my parents, that underneath this white complexion and blue eyes, I'm black and I came from Africa. My parents had passed away a few years ago but if they had been alive today, surely this news would have killed them.

What being Jewish means to me by Linda Koplovitz

Most often one is given their identity by one's parents. When you find out who you are, what you are, it is up to you to find meaning.

First when you are a Jewish child in America, you realize that Chistmas is not for you. All the other children are talking about their decorations on the Christmas tree and candy canes and Santa. At Easter time when all the kids are eating chocolate covered bunnies filled with coconut, when you're Jewish, it's Passover and you are not permitted to eat the same foods that your classmates are eating, especially the candy.

Then as a child you find out that there was a Holocaust and children just like you were burned in ovens. There are questions, why? The questions go unanswered a long time. There are nightmares that they will find you again.

So in the beginning you feel different, you feel left out. But when you are a child, you are thinking childish thoughts.

You have to look at your life in a positive light. So as I look back, I remember Passover celebrations with my mother's family. All the women were in the kitchen preparing a feast, while all the rest of the family sat around a beautifully adorned table with white linen table cloths and glass wine goblets. The smells of chicken soup and brisket and the women chattering as they are making knishes and preparing homemade gefilte fish and borsht with sour cream fills the air.

All the family, cousins and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents all together laughing and enjoying each other was so much more important than a Christmas Tree or an Easter Egg.

We were Jewish, we were special and we loved each other.

So as a child matures through life, she or he is trying to find meaning of what it is to be Jewish. Besides the actual learning of the bible stories and the study of the Torah, where do we get our pride from?

I got my pride by finding all the other Jews that did good deeds in life and in history or who were famous. There were all the Actors in Hollywood, who changed their names, like Kirk Douglas was Issur Danielovitch, Ross Martin was Martin Rosenblatt or Paul Muni was Muni Veisenfrient. There were great scientists like Albert Einstein. And there were even Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Ohio residents and the authors of comic book superheros such as Superman that were Jewish. And let's not forget Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield, proud parents of Ben & Jerry Ice Cream.

What fun to tell my friends that I was Jewish just like these famous people. Unfortunately my sister never acquired this Jewish Pride, was stolen away by a Christian cult group when she was young and never recovered. It was a summer camp and all the children were made to pray to Jesus before enjoying the festivities. When she married a Catholic man, she converted. For me, that was not a possibility. I was too wrapped up in Jewish Pride. To this day, I am sorry for my sister.

When I became a mother, it became even more important for me to get in touch with my religion and my people. My sons will have a Bar Mitzvah and my daughter a Bat Mitzvah, if she wanted one.

When my youngest son was born we joined a small group of Parents and children who were meeting for Sunday School in someone's house and not in a Synagogue. This was a unique group because the Parents stayed with the children and helped participate in study and arts & crafts. It was a wonderful experience for I was a child again, learning again. And this time I was mature enough to appreciate what I was learning. I found new meanings in the old bible stories. And with the help of my friend and Rabbi, Kenneth Block, I discovered the rich mythology of my own faith as well as other faiths.

I have come to realize that all religions are mythology, but what makes being Jewish so special is our history, our common mythology that unites us to be good people and do good in the world. Being Jewish means standing up for the little guys, like in the Superhero comic books; truth, justice and the American / Jewish way.

There is no other religion but this: Truth, Justice and doing good for one's fellow man.

We say, God is one. What we need to say is that we are One People, One God, United in Common Good. We are God's chosen people to be good and do God's work here on earth. Our rituals, our Passover Meals, our lighting of the Chanukiah are all reminders of our being Jewish and one with God.

When I look into the eyes of my children I want them to know that our history as a Jewish people is up to them. They have inherited the legacy of carrying our love of each other, our migration, pilgrimage, and survival forward through all time by telling our story to their children.