In his recently published memoir, “Lost In America: A Journey With My Father,” Sherwin Nuland contrasts his father’s religious feeling with that of his maternal grandmother. This grandmother, whom he called “Bubbeh,” lived as part of the family in their crowded South Bronx apartment when the boy Sherwin was growing up.

“Bubbeh’s Jewishness,” her grandson  writes, “unlike Daddy’s, was of a deeply spiritual sort, though she had no formal schooling. Hers was a homogeneous blending of religion, old-world superstition, and folklore, and its elements were inseparable.

Her relationship with God was so personal that she often addressed him in the diminutive, as did other shtetl women of her generation, He was Gotenyu, ‘my adored Goddy,’ as though she were speaking directly to one of her beloved grandchildren, but one with all the direction of the universe contained in His powerful goodness. She believed with an intensity that guided her life and enabled her to endure in face of tragedy after tragedy.”

Of his father, by contrast, the author writes: “My father, on the other hand, believed because he was a Jew, and Jews are expected to believe, at least on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when fate and destiny are determined. For this reason, he rattled out the prayer without thought–unless it was of the magnitude of Untaneh Tokef–and admonished his sons to do the same, lest some awfulness befall them.”

Bubbeh had emigrated from Russia in 1903 to New York, there to join her husband and two sons. She brought her four daughters with her, but the oldest of them died, as did the three male members of her immediate family. This woman stood four feet, ten inches tall, and never did learn to speak English. Yet, her Yiddish was the dominant language of the home where she came to live with her extended family.

The portrait of the grandmother’s spirituality is beautiful in its old-world simplicity rooted in a culture that sharply contrasted with that of New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. The promise of better days in America  never came through for her; instead she experienced the death of those closest to her. So God was her refuge and she prayed to Him for support.

That she had such a familiar relationship with God is a sign of her deep spirituality. It did not make any difference that she had hardly ever been to school because her Jewish tradition had taught her a trust that personal tragedies could not ultimately upset. Though her religion was not “pure,” mixed as it was with superstition and elements of folklore, it gave her a vivid sense of the beyond and moved her to find inspiration for her difficult life.

The prayer life of the author’s father, Meyer Nudelman, differed from that of his mother-in-law in many ways. Perhaps the most important was that it lacked the heartfelt intimacy with God that she experienced. At the weekly Sabbath and during other holy days, Meyer would perform the ritual in what seemed automatic fashion, racing through the prayers without any sign of the wonder and awe that they stir in deeply religious people.

However, one can make mistakes in judging other people’s practice of religion. The memories of his son may fail to recognize in his father’s prayer important elements of true religion that underlay his practice. Who ultimately knows how much spiritual sustenance Meyer received from his carrying out of the rituals?

His son says that Meyer believed “because he was a Jew.” That is not a bad reason for belief. It may not express the highest ideal held up by the religions of the world but this approach does maintain contact with a spiritually rich tradition. Even if his own faith remained weak, he had the advantage of being part of a community of faith. In a sense, his own spiritual shortcomings could find support in the faith of others.

The Nudelman household was often a cauldron of conflicting emotions as its members struggled with the pressures of poverty, disease, and cultural confusion. But religion, although realized so differently in the lives of Bubbeh and Meyer, served as a source of strength as the family faced these great challenges.

Richard Griffin