My Response To "The Ghosts Of My Grandmothers"

My Response To "The Ghosts Of My Grandmothers"

Perhaps the Malach Hamavet spared Helen Rose in memory of her savtot. As Tanakh states, "the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward", since Savtot Devorah v'Vered are awaiting HaTechiyat HaMetim.

Incidentally, the names Helen, Rose, Mark, and Anna (and variants thereof) are all in my paternal family. An example:

One of my own great-great-grandmothers, Anna Amalia Munková Trudnyaková, either was named for her deceased sister or took her name and claimed her baptism date as her own birthdate at some point*, presumably to honor her. She had daughters named Elizabeth Helen and Anna Margaret, and her parents were Sh'mu'el and Rosalia Korschová Munka.

At least one of her descendants is named Mark, meanwhile; and in full disclosure, one of them is my cousin Mark, whom is sadly deciding to brand himself as the shanda fur die goyim known as "Legit Viva"—for which we clearly did not become Anusim, and part of why (I assume) some of us remain Anusim.

*Anna Amalia Munková Trudnyaková was not baptized. The only baptism record which reconciles any and all dates that she gave as her birthdate is that of her sister. I assume that, by the way, her parents were not risking getting another daughter baptized, since two, Paulina and the first Anna Amalia, had died previously.

Update (September 25, 2016 and Elul 24, 5776), re "Please Stop Telling Me I'm Not 'Really' Jewish" (The context is that some people are being extremely hostile toward the author re any possibility that her daughter may choose to be Catholic.):

If you learn take nothing else from what I say, at least take this away from it: Jews—including Jewish Catholics like Sts. Teresa de Avila and Edith "Teresa Benedicta" Stein (z"l), Aaron "Cardinal Jean-Marie" Lustiger my dad's paternal grandma (a sister of Elizabeth Helen and Anna Margaret)—have believed in a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, and quite a few other Jews agreed to disagree with the Jewish Christians—see, for example, in the New Testament when it talks about Gamaliel: while, despite legends, he did not become a Christian, he tolerated the Jewish Christians of his time. As Gamaliel's granddad said—and as my dad's paternal grandma (z"l) albe-imperfectly lived—"The sum of Torah is this: don't do to others what you don't want them to you. The rest is commentary—go and learn it."