_{Photo by freepik}

Jewish life before WWII, across Europe, in towns and cities, flourished, contributing quietly to their respective locales (in spite of millennia-old discrimination), rich with meaning, connection, and tradition.

The Yiddish word for family is “mispucha.” Yet it meant so much more than the immediate block of parents and children that we have come to identify as being the traditional family. The mispucha included grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even close neighbors who felt like blood relatives. This great intermingling of relations, blood or otherwise, cultivated a shared sense of love and support. It is partly why Jewish families survived and even thrived despite the oppression that was afforded to them daily.

John W. Weiser, in his memoir A Thousand Kisses, captures the warmth of the Jewish family, describing how “each kiss was a promise, a thousand kisses a lifetime of devotion” and telling the story of his own family’s struggle to hold onto that devotion as the world around them darkened.

_{Photo by prostooleh}

Jewish Household Values as a Foundation

As in every culture, the values Jewish families upheld in the household were critical to their success and accomplishments.

In particular, there was a premium appreciation for education among Jews. Learning was not reserved for the rich and the gifted, but was open to every Jewish child, whether boy or girl. The value placed on knowledge meant that Jewish communities produced scholars, doctors, lawyers, and musicians far out of proportion to their small numbers. That is why it’s not surprising that there were (and still are) plenty of Jewish intellectuals running up and about.

Charity was another value that was held in high esteem amongst Jews. Giving tzedakah was not seen as an optional kindness but as a required act of justice. So much so that every Jewish home had a pushke, a little box for coins, and children had to learn that some of what they had belonged to those with less. This system of mutual aid meant that no Jewish family starved if others had bread.

Respect for parents and elders came next, with the children kissing their parents’ hands every morning and the grandparents living with the family or very nearby. Old age was not a burden but a blessing for Jewish families.

Weiser recalls how his own grandmother “knew the name of every ancestor going back seven generations.” That kind of systemic memory kept Jewish heritage and ancestry alive in a tangible way.

The Warm Embrace of Jewish Community Life

Jewish community life extended the family circle outward, with the kehilla, or organized community, which handles a wide variety of things from synagogues to schools to kosher butchers to bathhouses.

The kehilla also helped poor brides receive dowries, orphans find homes, and strangers walk through town safely.

That invitation was always automatic, almost like a law.

The synagogue stood at the center of Jewish community life, but it was not just for prayer: it was a courthouse, a schoolhouse, a meeting hall, and a social club all in one. Men gathered there every morning and evening for services, and boys studied in the adjoining cheder while women had their own societies for visiting the sick and preparing burials. Everyone had a role, from the humblest water carrier to the wealthiest merchant. This dense web of relationships meant that no one faced joy or sorrow alone.

Jewish families celebrated life-cycle events together as a community.

• Brit milahs brought everyone to the baby’s home eight days after birth, while bar and bat mitzvahs meant the whole congregation watched the children become adults.
• Weddings were enormous affairs, with dancing that lasted for hours, uniting two families in holy matrimony.
• Funerals drew crowds because honoring the dead was a sacred duty.

Preserving Jewish Heritage and Ancestry

Jewish heritage and ancestry mattered deeply to every mispucha, and families could tell you not just their parents’ names but their great-grandparents’ trades and towns.

Many Jews kept detailed family records in the front of their prayer books, passing down stories of rabbis and miracle workers in the old country. Children grew up knowing that they belonged to a chain stretching back to Mount Sinai.

Genealogy was not a hobby but a responsibility for the whole family. Knowing your lineage determined who could marry whom, who got certain honors in synagogue, and who inherited which blessings.

The Kohanim, descendants of the ancient priests, had special roles in this regard, while the Leviim, their assistants, had others.

Even ordinary Israelites took pride in their tribal connections, and Jewish families taught children to say, “I am from the house of my father, and my father from the house of his father,” all the way back.

Weiser describes how this sense of ancestry had to become a lifeline for a people whose past was slowly being erased: when the Nazis tried to erase Jewish identity, families had no choice but to cling harder to their stories, whispering the names of grandparents as they hid in attics and sewing family records into the linings of coats.

An elderly relative of Weiser’s had this to say regarding the importance and significance of retaining cultural memory: “They can take our homes, but they cannot take our names. The names are written in heaven.” That fierce grip on heritage helped survivors rebuild after the war.

_{Photo by pikisuperstar}

The Fragile Beauty of a Lost World

Before WWII, the Jewish diaspora was never truly safe. There was widespread poverty, rampant and deadly discrimination, and pogroms in the Russian Empire and across much of Europe that killed thousands.

Yet, despite the hardships, Jewish life still pulsed, filled with wonder, faith, and love, with the mispucha a fortress against a hostile world within which children felt safe, elders felt honored, and everyone knew exactly who they were.

Weiser’s A Thousand Kisses shows how that fortress came under attack, writing of his own family’s escape from Vienna just ahead of the Nazis and going to Hungary, then to Brazil, and finally to America. Along the way, they lost everything except each other.

The book’s title comes from a family custom: each morning, children gave their parents a thousand kisses, a ritual that sustained them through separation and fear. “We kissed like we were storing up for a famine.”

Buy A Thousand Kisses today. Read it to your children, and pass on the kisses.