You Look Very Young

“You look very young…” was my greeting as I walked into the cigar and tobacco shop that I had been coming to for years.

I laughed as I kept walking in, knowing that my ID sat in my car, in one of the few parking spots right out front of the shop.

“I can go get my ID if you would like, but I will be turning 40 this year.”

Our town is small. We will be getting our first superstore this year, a Walmart. We have a few smoke shops, but I had been a faithful customer to this one because the owner was a sweet Egyptian Muslim, who I was thankful to consider a friend. He, I learned, had recently retired and sold the store to some “friends of the family.”

My voice followed my gaze as I locked eyes with a new face, brown friendly eyes met my laughing blue ones.

“You must be the youngest brother, the one that will be staying to run the shop now” I stated, quickly followed with, “I can go get my id, if you would like.”

Surprised by my knowledge, which was just derived from a couple friendly conversations with his older brother. The young man broke out into a beautiful grin and exclaimed, “No worries! You just looked very young walking in the door.”




I made my purchase and our conversation continued the length of the store, as he walked with me, himself behind the counter and on a ledge and I on the floor.

As we reached the door and the end of his domain, I asked where his family is from.

“Yemen” was his reply with pride.

I lived in Israel and am Jewish, I said and proceeded to share how I missed the communities of families working together. How much I have enjoyed seeing his brothers and father come together to renovate the shop.

“And how was it?”, he asked referring to Israel as he leaned over the counter.

“I had just so many Muslim friends, we were all just people living in the same neighborhoods.”

“You see”, he said with a twinkle in his eyes, “they all think that we are not supposed to like each other.”

He proceeded to tell me about his grandfather. After his grandmother (his grandfather’s second wife) died, his grandfather fell in love with the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was so beautiful but she lived in the Jewish village on the other side of the hills from his grandfather’s village, in Yemen. Her family denied her the ability to go and marry this Muslim man. He was so stricken with her beauty that he said that either she can convert to Muslim or he will convert to Judaism.

My new friend leans back off the counter as if that was the end of the story.

“Well?” I ask impatiently, “What happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know, they did not marry.” He shrugged off the words, as if the results of the story were irrelevant. His demeanor as he stepped back from the counter made me reflect on his words earlier, “They all think that we are not supposed to like each other.” It was irrelevant whether his grandfather married the beautiful Jewish girl, they were not supposed to like each other but they did anyway. To me, that was what made the story.

I think over my family stories and think of all the times they were not supposed to like so many aspects and people in life, and yet they did anyway.

My family stories were different from his and yet they both contributed to a Jewish woman and a young Muslim man, enjoying their connection, in a small town at one of the three smoke shops.




I am about as Jewish as a human being can get, genetically speaking.




Both sets of parents came from two sets of parents that were fiercely Jewish, in the day and age when being Jewish was a nationality, long before the state of Israel, or any religious overhaul. A time when it did not matter if you were devoutly religious or not, if you were Jewish then you were a part of a community.

My Father’s father started a lumber yard in Manchester, England, thus changing our last name to Miller. My father’s grandfather is buried on Mount Sinai and my grandfather is buried in Israel as well.

My father’s mother had stories of driving an ambulance during the second world war, which she had never done before, and proceeded to go under a short bridge, taking off the top of the ambulance.

They were orthodox Jews and kept to their Jewish community, although, the grandma I knew lived in an old guest house, tucked behind the main house where my aunt and her family lived. The driveway to their home weaved behind a church that has been there since the 1400’s, in the hills of northwest Wales, UK.

She loved her tea and had a St. Bernard that loved two slices of toast with Marmalade for breakfast. When she would visit us in California over Christmastime we would get a “Hanukkah” bush, although she later told me not to tell my father, but she had been sending Christmas cards to her friends for years. The glee that streamed from her eyes over this secret, still imprints the corners of my cheeks. They were not supposed to like each other but she sent Christmas cards, just the same.

My mother’s father was born in Brooklyn, New York after his parents signed in through Ellis Island. His mother died when he was 9 and his father mended shoes and tended to my grandfather and his two sisters. My grandfather went on to become a MD, PhD who published more than 100 articles and chapters in professional journals and books. He was also past President of the Santa Clara County Medical Society; the Santa Clara County Psychiatric Society and the California Psychiatric Association.

Yet the Saba (Grandpa in Hebrew) I remember never talked work or religion, or even politics. He would say there was a string from the back of his eyelids to his stomach, so when he ate, his tummy would fill up, pulling the string down and his eyelids closed. It was always out of his control.

He would introduce us to flying, first soaring above him, on his outstretched legs and then in his little rental planes that he would fly over to visit us in. He was tender, present, and I have only been learning, after his change of address, what an amazing intellectual he was.




Yet these words I write are for my Safta, my mother’s mother. The grandparent that shaped me the most. We are coming up to her 10-year physical separation. I miss the community that she awakened in me and where I feel so lonely without her.

She showed me what is was to be Jewish as a nationality, with silent pride.

She was born in the land of Palestine, before it was the state of Israel, in a small Jewish community. She had celebrated over 70 birthdays on June 25 only to find out that her mother had passed away in May of the year of her birth, which would have put Safta’s birthday more likely in February or March.

She was adopted by a beautiful couple, although her two older brothers remained in the community orphanage. She was raised by a loving mother and father who were very active in the political scene of Israel, before it was a state of Israel. Her adopted mother died when she was 10 and she then went to live with her grandmother in Switzerland. During the second world war she was a nurse in the French brigade in Paris and first met my grandfather there, who was serving at the time for the US.

She spoke of this time being greatly influenced by music and dancing, when after months of dancing she was told that it was not appropriate to dance with colored soldiers.

“But they make the best dancers.” was her reply,

I imagine it with much of the same grin that would cover her face when she would talk about it. Swing music and all sorts of old rhythms were a daily companion to her life. Music often filled the space within her walls, never once did she talk about the fear that must have been rampant, being a Jewish girl at that time.

I did not know her during this time, or as she came to the USA to receive an inheritance and learn English. I did not know her as she met and married my Saba or as she had her four children and then left without a word, when my mother was only two. I did not know her when she traveled the world with her second husband and I do not know when she returned to Israel. I do know that she was living there when my parents met and got married there, in 1976. I do not know when she reconnected with her brothers or how long she lived in Israel after leaving her homeland at 10.

The Safta I remember was always quietly present. I fell in love with her Jewish nationality, and how she lived it out, during a 3 week visit to Israel with her when I was 17.

She never kept kosher, but I don’t think she ever fell in love with bacon, which means she never tried it. She never went to synagogue, that I know of, or hosted any of the holiday meals, but sorrow would cover her eyes when her great grandchild would ask what a menorah is.

The 3 weeks that we spent traveling around, visiting her family, and going to old stomping grounds, somehow became the entire torah of history that I needed to define what my Jewish nationality means to me and how much more beautiful life can be when you are open to things and people that you are not supposed to like.

She took me into the communities of her Jewish family and introduced me to her sister-in-law, who, like most of the older Jews, was much like a prickly pear, pokey on the outside and sweet on the inside.

We would eat at her old fine dining seaside restaurant, which was overpriced and awful compared to the street foods. As we took the buses around she would casually point to old neighborhoods and say that she used to live here, there, or work here or there. She showed me her homeland, with just a twinge of pain and immense pride of where she came from and the life she has lived.

It was not as though seeing her in Israel brought out any more of herself or her Jewish nationality, it was like admiring a beautiful, strong tree for years and finally seeing it in her forest. Amongst the prickly pears and traditions, amongst the struggles and the energy of thriving, I saw in my Safta what being of Jewish nationality looked like, surrounded by family in her homeland and living much of her life on her own. She was her own community, with the dignity, pride and knowledge of herself and her people.




So, when a Muslim boy leans across the smoke shop counter and says, “We are not supposed to like each other,” the Jew that my Safta awakened in me responded with: “But this is just my nationality, we are all just people, take pride in your nationality and move past the barriers that keep us from liking each other.”

I have hope when I see that my youngest had signed our annual PCT hiker trail log book with what we should be mindful of: she wrote “My mom’s Grandmother.”

At 7 years old I can only cling onto this hope that she will continue to be mindful of her mom’s grandmother, throughout all the trails she travels in life.



That she will walk gently upon this earth, proud of her lineage, proud to have my Safta’s imprint upon her soul, proud of her Jewish nationality, and yet more importantly that she always remembers to be open to liking life, and that we are not supposed to.