First Yahrtzeit

The term Yahrzeit  comes from the Yiddish (German)  literally meaning  "year time".  It is an annual remembrance of a loved one who has died, and occurs each year on the anniversary of the day of death.  It is one of the traditions of bereavement in Judaism.  The word bereave comes from old English:  be + reave ;  the word reave  meaning to to steal or rob - i.e.  being robbed of  a loved one.  And that is how I feel.

Fine Art Lover

Mama, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. April 2001

She loved fine (visual) art - a trait that continues with me. Although we had plans to travel together to the Hermitage museum and the Rijksmuseum,  time caught up with us after she retired.  One thing I like to do is take photographs of the art on the walls.  You can see some of these in my Google+  public photo albums.

A few pics below from the winter of 2001 (in Cambridge, winter means January until the summer solstice).

Fogg Museum, Cambridge MA,  Jan 2001

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Annabelle Cohen, Fogg Museum, Jan. 2001

A Quick Mama Post

I think about her every day.  

Annabelle Cohen

She Loved Her Job

Mama was a professor of biology.  She taught students of all backgrounds.   Many of them sent letters and cards annually.  Also, she received them after courses were over or when the students had settled into new positions.

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Here is one example.

Cultured, Literate and Musical.

Mama was highly cultured and literate.  She read novels, biographies of authors, and certain histories.  Her vocabulary was huge;  her grammar: impeccable;  her spelling:  immaculate.

Music

She had a great ear for classical music.  She told me stories about going to classical concerts all over the city - many were free or had very cheap seats.   She also remembered the days when New York had several classical music radio stations with almost no advertising.

Literature

Reading was a joy for her since childhood.  The New York Public library system  was a way for poor kids to have access to all the great literature.   Mama took advantage of all that New York had to offer her.   Her lifetime of reading started with American literature in school.  She rapidly expanded her repertoire.

Books acquired around 1947

Malraux, Proust, Gogol,  Thomas Mann, Maxim Gorki, the Brontes,  Ivan Turgenev,  Stendhal,   Goncharov,  Anatole France Lytton Strachey,  Thackeray,   Balzac,  Trollope,   Tolstoy , Henry James,  Zola ..

Here's an image of a tiny fraction of her items - copyrights dated around 1947. In that post-war period, there were several reasonably priced imprints:   Penguin Books,  JM Dent's classic  Everyman's Library,  the Oxford World's Classics,  and many others.   Many of these were British companies who printed in England and America.  Britons were very poor after the war.   In America,  Random House,  founded in NYC in 1927,  published great world literature.  AA Knopf was founded in NYC in 1915.   She took her books with her wherever she went.

She loved Russian literature including war history and biography -  Yevgenia Ginzburg,   Ilya Ehrenburg,  Vassily Grossman,  Solzhenitsyn,   Anatoly Kuznetsov author of  Babi Yar..,   more to come..

New York Times Reader

Mama had been getting the New York Times via home delivery for 33 years according to her newspaper

Cambridge, 2001

delivery service Mitchell's.  The delivery label says "Needs by 6AM" ,  around the time she left the apartment to catch the bus..   The articles and crossword puzzle got her through the long commute to Staten Island.

Annabelle Cohen

Annabelle Cohen,  my mama, is no longer with us.   I plan to post some pictures and remembrances. This one is from about two weeks ago.