Delivered as a eulogy for Hilda Barcan Fishback in December 2014
Grandma Hilda was 87 years old when I brought Bruce to his first Fishback family Thanksgiving. He was at the time researching potential causes of arthritis for his Ph.D., and before Grandma arrived at the house, Mom pulled him aside. She told him, “Whatever you do, don’t mention arthritis, or Grandma will go on and on about all her medical problems.” Bruce complied. At one point during the meal, the salt shaker appeared to be broken. Every Fishback took their turn trying to repair it, and unsurprisingly, none of us could, as we’re far from being the handiest family on the block. Finally Bruce gave it a try, and he fixed it in about 10 seconds. Someone, I forget who, blurted out, “You know, if this arthritis thing doesn’t work out, you can have a nice career as a handyman!” Grandma suddenly became alert; her eyes grew wide. “Arthritis?” “Yes,” Mom grudgingly explained to her, “Bruce researches the causes of arthritis.” To which Grandma wagged her finger and replied, “I’ll tell you what causes arthritis. You get old!”
Grandma certainly got old. She lived to be 95 and a half. When you find yourself using “and a half” as a suffix for your age, you’re either really young or really old. And with old age comes a repertoire of sayings that show up like clockwork whenever a particular subject is broached in conversation. For example, whenever the subject of the plight of the Jewish people would come up, Grandma would predictably chime in just once, to say, “What they don’t understand is that Jesus was a Jew!” As if this startling epiphany would put an end to all conflict.
But Grandma had another saying in her old age repertoire that did in fact contribute meaningfully to the conversation. As an educator, I’d occasionally offer my musings on curriculum, pedagogy, and my radical proposals for fixing American education. And Grandma, predictably, would chime in just once, to say, “But what about the handicapped?” Her mildly politically incorrect terminology aside, Grandma had a point. In her mind, if an educational approach did not make room for the most severely disabled students, it didn’t receive a passing grade in her book.
Grandma dedicated her career as a teacher to assisting the students who were most in need of assistance, as well as training other teachers who worked with these students. Her dedication was rooted in her identity as the mother of her own severely disabled child, in a society that was eager to shun him and his contemporaries—out of convenience, out of fear, perhaps out of guilt. Grandma’s personal and professional mission was to ensure not only that these children’s needs were met, but that they and their families had access to a sense of hope and dignity. Over the past few days, it has become clear to me that those who knew Grandma in her middle age saw her as someone who helped them believe in themselves and construct a positive self-image that they carried with them throughout their own childhoods and into adulthood.
In the field of teaching and learning, the best way to discern if someone has understood a concept is to see if they can transfer the concept, if they can apply the concept to a new and unfamiliar situation, without being explicitly instructed to do so. Grandma Hilda’s ultimate test of transfer arrived on the morning of July 20, 1997, at age 78. The night before, Dan had come out to our parents, leaving them distraught, afraid, and lost. Our parents had always identified as good liberals, but this hit so close to home, and they had so many questions and so little reliable information. Dad decided to call Grandma to break the news to her. Grandma listened. And her response to my parents was clear: Never stop loving your child. And never stop advocating for your child.
This response might seem a no-brainer now, in 2014, but recall what it was like in 1997. Just one year earlier, President Clinton had signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Just two months earlier, Ellen DeGeneres had come out on her sitcom, which was cancelled soon after. In the public consciousness, gay and queer people largely were laughing stocks or tragic outcasts or men dying of AIDS. In 1997, as a closeted gay teenager, I could not conceive of a day when it would ever be safe for me to be open about my sexual orientation. And Grandma, mind you, was not a product of the sexual revolution. When the Stonewall riots occurred, in 1969, she was already 50.
So what prompted Grandma’s instantaneous and unconditional support for Dan, and later for me? She was not following the headwinds of the moment. That was never her style. She was, instead, demonstrating a clear and deep understanding of the values she had been putting into practice and into action for decades. This was her test of transfer. And she aced it.
In the final year of her life, Grandma Hilda got to meet her great-granddaughter Lydia and spend quality time with her. Grandma was too old, and Lydia too young, for them to get to know each other, but as Lydia grows up I want her to know about the great-grandmother sitting with her in those old photographs from 2013 and 2014. I want Lydia to know of Hilda’s strength and determination and resilience, of Hilda’s sense of social justice and political idealism. I also want Lydia to know of Hilda’s authenticity, her compassion, and the way she was able to make people feel like they mattered, like they were worth something, like they deserved their dignity and their future.
Grandma Hilda’s life wasn’t easy. But it meant something. It made an impact. Grandma helped make our society a better place than it was when she found it. And in the process, she influenced countless children and families, and, most of all, her own family members. Thank you, Grandma. I love you, and I’ll miss you.
Delivered at a PFLAG event in June 2008 to honor Barbara Fishback
My mother, Barbara Lewell Fishback, grew up internalizing the value of conformity. Her father, Harold Lefkowitz, followed the lead of a cousin and changed his family’s name to the WASPier sounding “Lewell” before my mother was born. For nearly a year, a twenty-something Barbara avoided revealing her Jewish identity to her unabashedly anti-Semitic boss. Yet when she finally took a risk and “came out” as Jewish, she recognized for the first time how a simple push against the wall of conformity can alter the perceptions of others for the better.
More than two decades later, my younger brother and I both took risks in coming out as gay to our conformist mother. We were never concerned that she might be homophobic, yet our heads still echoed with that familiar refrain from our childhoods: “One day, you will bring home a nice Jewish girl.” This, to us, was the essence of our mother’s conformity. Not only would we marry a girl, and not only would said girl be Jewish (not to mention nice), but we would also bring her home to our mother, ostensibly to gain her approval of our traditional union. Other than this “Lewell” daughter’s refreshing comfort in her Judaism, our mother’s wish was no push against the wall of conformity.
I came out two years after my brother did, and I am clearly the more conformist of her two sons. My mother experienced nachus in seeing me receive a master’s degree, earn a modest yet respectable salary as a schoolteacher, and eventually bring home a nice Asian guy—not exactly a nice Jewish girl, but close enough to gain her enthusiastic approval.
My brother Dan, however, is about as nonconformist as one can get, and my mother has overcome many misgivings about his identity in the eleven years since he has been out. Dan favors tight clothes purchased at thrift stores, writes songs and theater containing carnal references that make our mother cringe, and poses for promotional photographs wearing lipstick and eyeliner.
When our mother was interviewed about Dan three years ago, she explained, “Have I understood his being gay? Absolutely. No problems with being gay. Do I understand the bad language? No. Do I understand the clothes and the get-up and the outfit and the shaving his hair and all of that? No. I mean, I’m a mother; I can only go so far. Will I get there someday? Hopefully. It’s part of the journey.”
This journey, fittingly, has empowered my mother to provide nonconformist LGBT persons opportunities to feel comfortable conforming. Since starting a family of her own, and with roots in that transformative day when a young Barbara Lewell came out as Jewish to her boss, my mother has steadily crafted a meaningful Jewish identity for herself through her membership in a reform synagogue in suburban Maryland. Similarly, with roots in those other two transformative days when her sons came out to her, my mother has built and led LGBT-themed groups and services at that synagogue and has actively reached out to LGBT Jews to make them feel welcome and supported at what is, to many of them, an inherently conformist institution.
My mother fondly recounts the first of what has now been many Pride Festivals at which she has set up a table representing her synagogue. A transgender woman approached her with a sentimental look in her eye. “Temple Emanuel,” the woman said to my mother. “I became a bar mitzvah at a Temple Emanuel back in my hometown. I never thought Temple Emanuel could welcome me as I really am. It means so much to me that your temple has a table at Pride!”
It also means a lot to me, and it means a lot to Dan. My mother has always understood the value of belonging to communities rooted in a shared tradition, and the beauty of my mother’s journey is that her understanding of this has been enhanced, not diminished, by her embrace of the nonconformist aspects of her two sons. My mother is not and never will be a radical. Instead, she is a progressive: she helps our society make progress by making it safe for nonconformists to conform and by transforming what it means to be a conformist. And I continue to be proud of this nice Jewish girl’s admirable journey.
Delivered at a gala for Jews United for Justice in October 2015 to introduce honoree David S. Fishback
My younger brother Dan and I came out to our parents in the late 1990s, before LGBT rights had become the prominent political issue within liberal households that it now is. So our mom and dad had to educate themselves. Together, they joined PFLAG and began pushing their synagogue to become more inclusive. And my dad, who already had a background in civil rights activism and education advocacy, joined a committee tasked with revising the health curriculum in Montgomery County Public Schools.
As the chair of that committee for many years and now as advocacy chair of the local PFLAG chapter, my dad has been a very public and very passionate voice on behalf of kids who need to know that being something other than cisgender and heterosexual is not a disease, that there is nothing wrong with them, that they can live fulfilling lives. He has worked tirelessly, using his decades of legal experience and political intuition to out-maneuver powerful forces lined up against the effort, many of them funded by Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Council. Every time he debates a social conservative on a local news program, Dan and I hear from our friends about how proud they are of him and how we are so lucky to have him as a parent. This year, he published a guide for successfully fighting right-wing opposition to school curricula and presented it a few weeks ago at the national PFLAG convention in Nashville.
Dan was not able to be here this afternoon, but I’d like to read his words here to close this introduction. Dan writes:
My dad often says that he got into this fight because ethical sex ed might have helped his sons when we were in school. But the truly revolutionary impact of his work is on kids who are very unlike his own. Because we always knew that our parents loved us. And more and more, I realize that this is a rare privilege. So many other queer and trans kids do not know this, in many cases because it just isn’t true. And so the responsibility falls upon the rest of us to love queer and trans children, and to put that love into action. I love my dad not just because he loves me, but because he loves queer and trans people, and he used that love to change the world.
Dad, thank you for helping to change the world and for modeling for your own children and our community’s children the wisdom, resilience, and dignity required to do it right.