“Is He Jewish?”
AS MY GRANDMOTHER’S
ALZHEIMER’S progressed, she became fixated on two questions. When my sisters and I visited her at the memory-care facility, she always asked if we had boyfriends. If the answer was yes, she had a follow up: “Is he Jewish?”
Up until just a few months before her death, my grandmother attended Friday night services at our Reform synagogue almost every week with the help of an aide. By the time I was old enough to wonder what kept her coming back—belief? The music? The social scene?—it was too late to ask. But long after she’d lost the ability to remember much about our lives—where we lived, who was doing what at work or in school—she continued to ask about our romantic partners. My family joked, darkly, about the extent to which the communal imperative of Jewish reproduction had become ingrained in her psyche, a stalwart train of thought that hung on even as other memories fell victim to disease. Our answers to “Is he Jewish?” were always “no,” which never seemed to trouble her much. “That’s okay—he’s a nice guy,” she would say when reminded that my sister’s now-husband was raised Catholic. Nevertheless, at the next visit, she always asked again.