My mother, Shoshana Bryen, was formidable. She was driven in all things, but two stand out: Her children and her country. With respect to her children, she was a force of nature in our lives. She was always willing to push us to do our absolute best, to advocate on our behalf, and to offer her thoughts on how we might navigate any particular challenges. Aside from her three children (Ari, Sarah, and Mollie, plus Gabrielle from my father’s first marriage), she made many others her children as well.
Rebecca and Shira Singelenberg, Zainab Marks, and others benefited from her advocacy, her coaching, and her desire to see them thrive in their personal and professional lives. But there were even more. My mother was a fierce advocate for immigrants. She loved the idea of new Americans – decent and hard-working people who came to this country to live better lives and create opportunities for their children. She took pleasure in knocking down bureaucratic hurdles for them, feeling that they were, at the end of the day, a deep injustice that prevented excellent people from living productive lives.
She loved America deeply. She was also an ardent Zionist. In her mind, these two ideas were inseparable, and she devoted her working life to convincing people of this. A world with some space for Jewish sovereignty was, for her, an absolute necessity. It served as a reminder to others that Jews belonged in the modern world, and that treating them with decency and respect was an obligation of civilized peoples.
America fulfilled this obligation — not without struggles, of course, but ultimately. It was one of the few places Jews could thrive without being themselves sovereign, and for this, it was worthy of her love and respect. Understanding why this was, was for my mother a lifelong endeavor. It made her a student of history, American history in particular. She read extensively on it, but she also loved living in the city that was America’s political center. She loved walking in Washington, D.C., appreciating its monuments and architecture, surrounded by the history of the country she loved.
That she was so driven meant that she rarely changed her mind — and when she did, she would often pretend she had always held that particular belief. This amused her children to no end, even when it periodically frustrated us. Being driven also meant that she lacked the ironic detachment one needs to tell a joke effectively. In fact, I can recall no moment in my life where she succeeded at this.
But ultimately, for our house, it never made much difference: My father had the comic timing, and the children inherited it from him. We put it to great use at the dinner table on Shabbat, doing our best to one-up one another with sarcasm, gallows humor, and snark. In retrospect, we were all seeking to make my mother laugh uncontrollably, and we succeeded most of the time. At the point where she had finally broken down with laughter, she would “complain” that we were all our father’s children, and say we were demented.
Those times around my parents’ table were some of the best of my life: eating, drinking, talking, and laughing. They taught me more than I can ever fully account for — about friendship, about the world, and about family. Those times will be deeply missed, as will my mother.
Ari Bryen is an Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies, and Associate Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University.
