1 - Why Edith Stein? Why Regina Jonas?

Summary

To explain the origins of this book, I need to tell a story. It is a story of my growing up, and of my father's family. It is a story of how I came to ask the questions I ask in this book about Edith Stein, about Regina Jonas, and about the intellectual and spiritual traditions that give shape and meaning to their lives and work.

It is the late 1960s, and I am waiting at the New York City harbor. I am a young child. A big cruise ship pulls in, lined with row upon row of decks and windows. It has just come across the Atlantic from Europe, and my relatives, whom I have never met, are on this ship. Three distinguished elderly ladies come down the gangplank. They have a warm, sad feeling to them. We take them home in our Buick station wagon to our suburban house in southern Westchester. They speak a strange language, one that I have not heard before: German interspersed with Yiddish. There is a dark cloud over their heads, but beneath it I can see a golden light that emanates from them. They are my paternal grandmother and Bubbe Esther's nieces from Vienna and Geneva.

When they unpack their suitcases in my younger brother's room on the third floor of our 1910 Tudor house, they hand me a German book on the history of ballet. Alma Tannenbaum, the middle niece, has learned in letters from her aunt – my Bubbe – that I am studying ballet. I fall in love with her. My heart goes out to her. I want to know more about her and her sisters. I keep asking my grandmother Granna (my maternal grandmother, who lives with us at our Mount Vernon, New York home), “Why does Paula take pills?” Granna says, “They are survivors of the concentration camps.” I ask, “What do you mean, ‘concentration camps’? Are they like sleep-away camps where children go in the summer to have fun outdoors, and play games with other children?” “No!” Granna replies, but she does not explain further.