Most of my life I haven’t felt like an immigrant in America. An outsider sometimes; a minority often; but since I was born two generations late for a direct experience, the shtetl and the sweatshop felt sepia distant. Zeesie showed me that it’s closer than I think.
Zeesie is the seven-year old protagonist of the children’s book “What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street” by Elsa Okon Rael. She has burrowed her way into my heart and quickly felt sublimely familiar.
On her seventh birthday, Zeesie receives an elegant party dress and her own dollar bill, which could buy a tin of colored pencils or a songbook. She dreams of what to do with her money.
Zeesie also gets the chance to attend her first “package party.” In a rented ballroom, her family’s lantsleit (people from the same town) offer their finest home-cooked dishes, which they then purchase in a live auction.
There’s music and dancing, joking and eating. Zeesie’s family friend, Max Mendelson, acts as emcee: “We gather once more for a good time and to do good. The money we raise tonight will help bring over more of our loved ones from Zborov.”
With her long brown braids and Yiddish-speaking world, Zeesie became my vision of my mother as a young girl, with her own long dark braids and her greenhorn parents. Indeed, as I read this story to my children recently, my mother sat across the room, Yiddish rolling off her tongue as I stumbled over the transliterated phrases.
It’s not that I’m nostalgic for a romantic view of Jewish immigrant life in the Lower East Side. Rather, I see that I am part of this story. I am Zeesie’s daughter, born into relative privilege with a smattering of Yiddish ringing through me.
At the package party, Zeesie is witness to the culture of giving that is intrinsic in her community. It is not only a story of a little girl and her particular family but it seems to reveal the roots of American Jewish philanthropy.
These new immigrants in New York’s Lower East Side didn’t have much, but they gave to help their brothers and sisters. They gave to support those on the other side of the world. They gave whatever they could afford.
This story cuts straight to the reasons I believe in giving to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. By supporting individual organizations, we can uphold our specific interests or niches.
Indeed, we can feed the poor and help to provide services for the disabled. We can help offer Jewish education for children. We can care for the elderly with dignity and respect. And we can create thriving communities of prayer and spirituality.
But by giving to the federation’s annual campaign, we reach the foundation of the Jewish notion of community. Our donation is not cause- specific, but part of the greatest vision of Jews caring for Jews — across the Jewish world and beyond our personal circle.
I know that my donation is part of the funds that support aging Jews and Jewish renewal in the Former Soviet Union. I know that my contribution reaches Jews in Israel and Argentina. I am comforted to know that my small gift helps Jews live as Jews around the world.
Giving to the annual campaign supports local needs also — from students to the elderly, providing food, shelter and education. My gift is part of creating a Judaism that will be relevant for my children and grandchildren.
Zeesie and her father teach me another bit of wisdom, too. At the party, each of the men takes a turn entering a special “money room,” a private room where men come to give what they can or take what they need.
Zeesie’s father explains: “No one is supposed to know who has given or who has received. And, this is the most important to know, it’s as much a mitzvah — a good deed — to take when you need, as to give when you can.”
Those people, our parents and grandparents, gave with dignity and received with equal dignity. Let us follow their example.
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