Hey Jude

A Mondegreen

I don’t remember when I first learned about the Shoah. Like a lot of parents, mine didn’t want us to have to know about it, and I don’t remember it being covered in either Sunday or regular school until about fourth grade, so in my memory I was older than you might expect, about 10 or so.

I believe, but could be mistaken, that my first real knowledge of what happened came by accident. I was home—either sick, or just already back from school—and watching television. This is back when there weren’t a lot of channels, and a black and white movie about the Holocaust was playing. (Mom and Dad were both at work, and Delores, our housekeeper, didn’t pay much attention to what we watched.) There was a scene where women and children were being escorted into the shower, and a little girl says, “Mommy, it smells like peaches.” (Am I even remembering that wrong? Did she say almonds?) The movie scared me, and I turned it off and turned on the radio.

Certainly not immediately, but in my memory immediately, the song Hey Jude came on, and I misheard it as “Hey, Jew.” (A mishearing of a phrase that sounds like the original, but has a different meaning, is called a mondegreen.) Maybe I’d always misheard it that way. The song had been out for awhile by then. Or maybe I’d never really listened to it before.

The song was, I thought, meant to comfort us as Jews and let us know everything was alright now, that we were safe and the bad times were over. (That is, of course, not what the song is about, though I like to imagine Sir Paul McCartney would be glad that at the time I thought it was and felt better.)

I woke up this morning with the song in my head, the line “take a sad song/and make it better” reverberating. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do that in this moment, and it’s not an easy task, but I understand the necessity of it.

So, tell me friends, how are you finding ways to make the sad song better right now? What are you doing both to find joy right now and, in the words of the song, start(ing) to make it better? My mother always says, after Mr. Rogers, “look for the helpers.” How are you helping? I want your ideas, because I would like to be being a better helper myself.