Aunt Rose & Uncle Beno (Published May 9, 2022)

  My earliest recognition of being Jewish was going to my Aunt Rose and Uncle Beno's house each Saturday night when I was around five years old.   Aunt Rose was my mother's sister-in-law.   Uncle Beno was not my mom's brother but rather Aunt Rose's new husband. They had survived the war and the Nazis and made it to Los Angeles. 

Everyone in the house spoke Yiddish and Romanian, and perhaps some French.   I wish now, I would have learned Yiddish, or at least remembered what was said, but I can only remember a few words.  I found this so interesting as my dad, not being Jewish and not knowing Yiddish, seemed to have fun though he could not communicate with anyone, other than my cousin Lica, who spoke some English.    

We would have a large dinner and then everyone would play cards or other games.  Dinner was long as there was lots of talk at the table.  I found this very boring as I was the only young person in the house.  After dinner I would go into Aunt Rose & Uncle Beno’s bedroom and watch TV, always falling asleep at the start of Gunsmoke which I hated. 

My Aunt and Uncle lived in Rancho La Brea which at the time was filled with Jewish immigrants.  There would always be others over for dinner.  I did not understand the significance of their struggles to get to the United States of the suffering they had endured several years earlier.  My memory is that there was always talking, laughing and some singing.   

My Cousin Leca was an adult when I was only 5.  He spent a lot of time at our house when I was a young child.  One time he went to the school in place of my parents and somehow met and fell in love with a teacher at the school.  They got married, the first Jewish Wedding I can remember.  Because she was a relative, I could not have her as a teacher.  Most of my friends went into her 5th-grade class but I had the other fifth-grade teacher. I was made at Lica for several years for marrying the teacher.

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