GREAT AUNT DOROTHEA MENDELSSOHN; OR, FOAM ON THE WAVE

Abstract

6 6 Y G R E A T A U N T D O R O T H E A M E N D E L S S O H N ; O R , F O A M O N T H E W A V E L I L Y T U C K On my mother’s side, I am related to the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was born in Dessau, Germany, in 1729. By the age of six, despite many health problems, which included scoliosis, he had learned the entire Bible by heart. By the age of fourteen, besides Yiddish, his first language, he spoke German , Latin, Greek, French, and English. Mostly self-taught, Moses Mendelssohn never went to university, nor did he ever hold an academic position. He supported himself by working in a silk factory. In 1762, he met and fell in love with Fromet Guggenheim, a young girl from Hamburg, who was blond and beautiful. However , when Guggenheim saw Mendelssohn for the first time – she knew him by reputation only – and saw his stunted misshapen figure, she began to weep. ‘‘Is it because of my hump?’’ Mendelssohn asked her. ‘‘Yes,’’ Guggenheim admitted tearfully. ‘‘Let me tell you a story,’’ he said. ‘‘According to a Talmudic saying, a proclamation of the name of the person I will marry was made in heaven when I was born. Not only was my future wife named, but it was also said that she would be hunchbacked. ‘Oh, no,’ I said to myself, ‘she will be deformed, bitter and unhappy. 6 7 R Dear Lord,’ I said again, ‘give me the hump instead and make her fair and beautiful.’’’ Fromet Guggenheim was so moved by his story that she dried her tears and they married. The two lived together happily and had ten children, six of whom survived to adulthood. They were Dorothea (originally called Brendel), Rebecka, Joseph, Henriette, Abraham, and Nathan; the four who did not survive were Sara, Sisa, Hayyim, and Mendel. Moses wrote movingly about one of the latter to a friend: ‘‘Death has knocked at my door and robbed me of a child, which had lived but eleven innocent months; but God be praised, her short life was happy and full of bright promise’’ – a short life he goes on to describe. He ends his letter with: ‘‘You will laugh at my simplicity, and see in this talk the weakness of a man who, seeking comfort, finds it nowhere but in his own imagination. It may be; I cannot believe that God has set us on His earth like foam on the wave.’’ My father’s family was also German and Jewish, but when I was born in 1938 in France, I was baptized a Lutheran in a beautiful long white lace gown which had belonged to my father, a fact that leads me to believe that he also had been baptized. Neither of my parents, however, was religious. I never heard them mention God, nor did I ever see them inside a church – except to sightsee. I, on the other hand, as a child was fanatically religious. I am not sure why – perhaps, because we lived in Peru, a Catholic country, and perhaps, too, because my French nanny, who was truly devout, took me to mass on Sundays. I distinctly remember that every night I knelt on the floor beside my bed and said the Lord’s Prayer in French, ‘‘Notre Père qui es aux cieux,’’ and how I added a long list of the names of family members, friends, pets, and stu√ed animals to be blessed. On my night table, I had a small marble statue of the baby Jesus. The statue rested on a bed of white cotton, and each night I kissed it. No one, I decreed, was allowed to touch it. One day, however, the Peruvian maid, cleaning my room, did touch it; worse, she dropped the statue of the baby Jesus on the floor and his foot broke o√. How to convey my outrage, my fury, at this sacrilege: I bit the maid’s hand so hard I drew blood. Of the six Mendelssohn children, only Rebecka...