As each holiday and "life event" nears I realize how much I regret not asking Saba how he did things, that I failed to ask Savta why she did what she did.
Saba, ע''ה, died more than a decade ago. Savta is "hanging in there," but at "80-something" her memory isn't what it was.
I did manage to ask him some questions and I tried to learn at his side when I visited him in Bet Shean, but I never thought there would come a time when I wanted to ask him something and he wouldn't be there to give me an answer or point me in the right direction.
It may not be "proper" to say you miss someone who has died, but let me put it this way: I miss his answers to my questions that, despite my resources, only he could answer.
The questions aren't always of a Grand Scale. Usually they are answers to the mundane or arcane. For example, Why do people get upset in a Moroccan synagogue when a person crosses his legs?
Not an earth shattering question or one that would stump the talmud hakham, but one that bothered me enough to ask it.
The answer, it turns out, is typical Jewish mentality - as the Ashkenazim say, "Yiddisher knop."* It seems, Saba told me, that in Morocco it was considered an insult to cross you legs in front of a judge. It that is so, how much greater an insult to cross you legs before the Judge of Judges ! (What I learned after Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was hanged, and his enemies slammed the soles of their shoes against his statue - it's the sole of the shoe, shown when legs are crossed, that is the insult. Did Saba know that? Does it matter? The main thing is that he knew why I shouldn't cross my legs in synagogue.
North African traditions often don't align with Mizrachi - Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi - traditions. In fact, Morocco being a rather large country you can find different traditions within the border; even different pronunciations of the same Hebrew words.
Sometimes a North African tradition seems to be the same as an Ashkenazi tradition, and the Rema is not unknown in North Africa. But Morocco has its own hakhamim and centers of Jewish learning.
Coming up on Rosh HaShanna I wish I could ask Saba what signs were on the table in Bene Malal, Meknes, Fez, or Tafillalt. I don't remember the order (seder) of the Rosh HaShanna meal: kiddish, natelat and then …
* motze lehem or
* the signs (date, etc.)
Had I paid better attention I would have been able to pass this along to my sons.
But I didn't, and now I regret it.
The point of this harangue is to strongly encourage you to talk to your elders - within your family and within the community - and to record their memories.
We are too often in a hurry to get "someplace" that is at best only a temporary stop that we fail to appreciate the traditions of our parents and grandparents.
Record their voices; write down their memories. Even if it means nothing to you, it might mean a great deal to your children and children's children.
Sure, I have resource materials, but it's simply not the same.
* The only Yiddish I know is Hebrew, so please forgive my poor attempt.
