Renee Bravo

As many of you will know, my grandma was one of the best speech makers, whether at some important Board of Deputies meeting or High Holy Day at shul or a small family gathering, we have all been moved and influenced by her poignant words. She always managed to find the right tone and just the right amount of wit and humour. So to speak at her funeral as her eldest granddaughter is quite a daunting task. But I’ll do my best, Nana.

there was nothing ordinary about Nana

I believe I can speak for all of Renee’s grandchildren here, that in the simplest of terms, Nana was everything a Nana should be and more.

She took time to carve out a loving, meaningful and individual relationship with each and every one of us. We all had our time with Nana, to play together, discover new things with her and to listen and soak up her wisdom, her wit and her endearing quirks.

Nana always talked about herself as being plain and ordinary. But there was nothing ordinary about Nana. She was special and above all lots of fun.

As a child, she would often delight me with a dinner menu when I would come over after school. It would read something like this:

Bubble and squeak

Egg with soldiers

And Nana’s Mush (she could never get her meatballs to hold their shape).

put your coat on, we’re going outside to run and scream

Nana didn’t believe in toys, yet she had a knack for effortlessly turning everything into a fun game. We’d build tents from bedsheets, play table tennis on her dining room table, collect sticks and stones and worms which we’d keep on her balcony. It wasn’t uncommon for Nana to say to us, “Come on, put your coat on, we’re going outside to run and scream”.  And we’d do exactly that.

Nana always had her grandchildren at the forefront of her heart and mind. She would collect odds and ends for what she called the modelling cupboard. This was an entire cupboard in Nana’s kitchen devoted to stashing old cartons, egg boxes, toilet rolls and scraps of paper and card which my brother and I would use to fashion into all kinds of models.

you can learn an important life lesson from gambling

She would keep stale bread in her freezer for us to feed the ducks with and stash of odd buttons in a jar for that special time that she would first teach us how to use buttons (instead of money) to play blackjack. Nana was always very proud about teaching her grandchildren how to gamble. She said you can learn an important life lesson from gambling, which is to accept the cards that life hands you. And at the very least, you’ll learn how to add up to twenty-one.

Nana taught me so many things; how to read music, how to sew, how to knit and how to play scrabble and even golf. She took me to my first ballet, my first pantomime, my first art gallery and so much more. While my parents were busy setting up our new life here in England, Nana was an integral part of what was probably a huge transition for myself and my brother at the time. Moving to a new country, starting a new school, making new friends etc. I don’t remember too much of that time of my life, yet I vividly and fondly remember the experiences I had with Nana. The creativity and sense of fun she imparted and the love and devotion she has given each and every one of her grandchildren remain within each one of us.

As adults, we all continued to enjoy her company, enjoying art and theatre together, playing scrabble, watching the football, the golf, the snooker, the tennis and even the boxing, often while eating Nana’s favourite, fish and chips. With Nana, we all felt at home. Understood. And accepted. Even if I’m sure at times it’s debatable as to whether she really accepted our life choices, we all felt her unconditional love. And for that I’ll be eternally grateful.

I’m especially thankful that my three children got to know and spend time with Nana. They always knew a visit to Nana would include an open invitation to the biscuit tin and a chance to make a mess without reprimand. In fact, after arriving home from my last visit to Nana at Whips Cross this week, my three year old, who hasn’t seen her since April, asked “Did she give you a biscuit?”.

when a person dies, their spirit has the power to create a ripple effect

There is a lot more I could say about my grandma, especially her devotion to her grandchildren and her family in general, but I think I’ll end with a quote that she herself often used.

“Imagine for a moment a stone being gently dropped into a still pond, sending ripples outward in all directions. Similarly, when a person dies, their spirit has the power to create a ripple effect that extends far beyond, touching every aspect of our lives.”

Nana, I’m sure I can speak for every person standing here today, that the ripples you have created in your life will continue to reach far and wide for many years to come.

Thank you for everything, Nana. Nobody does Nana better than you. We love you and will miss you dearly.

When Aunty Evelyn, my Nana’s little sister, passed away Nana told me that when the time comes she wants me to speak at her funeral. My heart dropped.

It wasn’t the thought of her passing that weighed on me, I’ve been preparing for that for many years. It was the idea that I could somehow do justice to the person Nana was to everyone gathered to bid her farewell.

Writing this has been very hard, and whenever I would fumble, I found myself asking, why would Nana burden me with such a difficult task?

look past the curtain, and see the whole picture

Fortunately, in trying to answer this question, I found Nana left lots of breadcrumbs for me to find along the way in her words and writing. Nana never shied away from sharing her thoughts with the world, and did so in sermons, articles and even radio broadcasts. But more than anything, I associate her with letters to the editor.

If she were to answer my question, I imagine it would have come in the form of such a letter, and would have sounded something like this:

Dear Sir,

Life, as I’ve often mused, is rather like sitting behind the curtain in the women’s section of shul. You never quite see the whole picture, and you can’t help but feel you’re missing out on something important.

Facing death is no different. I keep telling my grandson that I’ve had a wonderful life, but a horrible death, to which he inevitably replies, “Better than the alternative”. This might be true, but I’ve never died before. It might be wonderful, and in fact, I look forward to finding out. I know this is hard for him to hear, but I have found that trying to find something good and positive out of something sad is always a comforting exercise, and I want him to find this out for himself.

As he sits down to write what I am sure is the hardest thing he has ever written, he will inevitably go back to my own writings. I always considered my words the best part of me, and my grandson will undoubtedly search for himself in them. As he rereads my parting words to my beloved husband, he will remember just how happy I was in life, and how loved I always felt.

My husband was always a feet-on-the-ground person, looking things straight in the eye, seeing the truth. I was the poet, the dreamer, the romantic. He made sure we did all the sensible things, and I showed him how to touch the stars. My grandson is more like me, looking further out at what could be, or should be, rather than what is, but he often struggles to look past the curtain, and see the whole picture.

When my husband died, I would think about the future, and the awful realisation that I would never again know the magic of the love of that one special person. Never is such a long time. But I refuse to go quietly into that twilight. There are mountains to climb, songs to sing, battles to be fought.

My grandson will struggle with the idea of never talking to me again. He often told me that I was his only true sounding board. He probably thinks the person he needs to talk to the most at a time like this, is the one person he can no longer reach. But looking back at the first few months of my widowhood, the words which helped me see past the curtain were not from family, poets or rabbis, but from a little old lady my husband used to take to a day centre for the elderly. She offered her sympathy, and spoke of him with great affection, how kind he was, and always with a smile. Then she thanked me. I didn’t understand what she meant. “What for?”, I inquired. She replied, “If you had not been the woman you are, he could not have been the wonderful man he was”.

When I die, I said, I’ll take her words with me as a reference. I hope my grandson reads those words and feels the same way about my impact on him. I hope my presence, my words and most of all, my questions, helped him become a person who can see past the curtain and see the whole picture.

As this is my last letter, please allow me this last opportunity to leave you with a parting thought on curtains at shul. If the reason for the curtain is men who cannot look at a woman without thinking lewd thoughts, then surely it is the men who should be put behind a curtain? Is this not a terrible insult to our men?

When I was young, I was not particularly attractive. Now that I am old, even less so. I am short, fat and ugly, with buck teeth and bandy legs. If there is any man who is distracted from his prayers by the sight of me, psychiatric help is available under the National Health Service.

Yours sincerely,

Renee Bravo

So, the last time we met, we were gathered here together to mourn Renee, and to accompany her on her final journey, to lay her to rest next to her beloved Harry.

At her ninetieth birthday party, all her family and friends were present when she spoke these words:

“I am ninety years old and if I go tomorrow, I do not want anyone to mourn for me because I have had a wonderful life and have been blessed.”

many hats

Today, we are all here to honour her memory and to celebrate her life. This very special lady, who, during the course of her lifetime wore very many hats. Actually, she literally did wear many hats. Her hat collection was legendary. She had a hat for every occasion. My husband always used to joke, if you see a hat driving a car, it’s my mother-in-law!

Anyway, back to the metaphorical hats. Not only was she one of the first graduates of the Open University gaining a BA degree, amongst her many other notable achievements she was also;  the Lifetime President of the New Essex Masorti shul, Lady Captain of Abridge Golf Club, a member of the Board of Deputies for twenty five years, Chairman of the Wanstead Jewish Literary Society, Chairman of the Three Faiths Forum, Chair of the League of Jewish Women, regular speaker at Limmud, and I could go on.

You are beginning to get the picture.

lady of letters

And, when she wasn’t busy with all of that, she would write, and she was a brilliant writer; articles for the Essex Jewish News, letters to The Jewish Chronicle and to The Times. She would also frequently write to many different Rabbis, Rabbis of all persuasions, always questioning, always probing, always looking to push the boundaries. I do not think that there is a rabbi in the land who had not heard of Renee Bravo. She was the quintessential lady of letters. When she wasn’t writing letters to the rabbinical fraternity, she would turn her attention to the more mundane. She wrote once to Channel 4 asking them to advise the producer of the Rikki Lake Show that they should provide tissues for the participants, who when talking about their lives would be reduced to tears, thus protecting the viewer from the unedifying sight of these people wiping their noses on their sleeves. She wrote to Cherie Blair congratulating her on becoming pregnant with her fourth child at a late stage in her life, empathising with her and relating how her own mother had also fallen pregnant at a late stage in her life as well. She even got a reply from Cherie thanking her for her kindness and written on notepaper from number 10 which gave her a real kick.

This was the public face of Renee Bravo, but to us, she was Mum, Nana, Auntie Renee. And so it is this side of her that I want to talk a little bit about today.

In her final years, when she was ailing and increasingly needing more care, people used to comment that I was such a wonderful daughter, looking after her, spending so much time with her seeing to all her needs, and I would always respond by saying that when I needed her she was there for me and that now it was my turn to be there for her. When we arrived here back from Israel in 1982 my mother literally brought my children up, enabling us the time and space to set up our business. She was an incredible grandmother, to which all of her five grandchildren will attest. What they learnt from her was invaluable in so many ways. And she taught them so much more, which I know impacted on their lives. She took them to galleries, museums, parks, she taught them how to play golf, how to gamble, how to be bored. If they were staying for supper she would give them a menu, which would consist of, the usual kiddie fare and the third option would always be NANA’S MUSH. They of course invariably chose NANA’S MUSH. I have no idea what this consisted of! Our mother was not known for her culinary skills.

bigger fish to fry

The creativity and sense of fun she imparted to them was a joy to behold. She loved words, found them fascinating, and one of her bookshelves was devoted entirely to dictionaries. She would enjoy reading a dictionary for pleasure. Every Friday night after dinner we would play Scrabble. She generally slaughtered me and yet even when she became more and more incapacitated, her ability to see the words was always there.

The intellect was indeed exceptional, but the everyday nuances of life were, for her, just not worth spending time or thought on, because she always had ‘far bigger fish to fry’. For instance, on shopping. She would go into the local pharmacy to buy a new perfume and on being asked which brand she would say “I’ll have whatever you can’t sell”. And when it came to cooking, she would say “You put the chicken in a dish, stick it in the oven, turn the oven on and wish it luck.”

Remaining with the topic of shopping, I came in one day, and she was surrounded by three large piles of books. Well, being surrounded with books was normal for her, but this was exceptional. I asked her, “Mum, where are all these books from?”.  She said, “Oh, I have just joined a new book club.” I said “How lovely” ,and she replied:,”Yes, it’s a book club which sells books which have been published but not actually sold.” This was the quirky side of her that we all loved and cherished.

She also had what I called ‘Renee-isms’  when she would come out with something so profound and so smart. A few years ago we were discussing technology, or rather getting to grips with it. She said, “The trouble today is that the computers are getting smarter and the people are getting stupider.” When she was in the care home she would spend a lot of her time sleeping, and quite often I would be discussing something, and she would wake up, say something quite brilliant and fall back to sleep. On this particular occasion we were discussing a certain TV presenter (the football presenter who shall remain unnamed,  I do not want to be finding myself in some legal nightmare) who had been in the news. And she dozed off, then she suddenly opened her eyes and said, “The trouble with him is that his celebrity is greater than his contribution to society.”  I asked her where she got that quote from, she said, “Me,I said it!”.  I then said,  “That is really rather clever,” and she replied “Well, I am really rather clever”, and promptly fell back to sleep.

the core of her identity

For Mum, her Jewishness was a huge factor in all that she embraced; in her campaigning, her reading, her writing, her social interaction. It was at the core of her identity.

She always said as a Jew living in the UK, there are two things you should do. Firstly, to march past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day with the Jewish veterans. She would say, nothing makes her more proud than being able to honour the fallen, as a UK citizen and a proud Jew. And every year she marched until she could no longer, and then Adam and I would wheel her in her chair even up to her final year. Each year she would declare with a certain degree of excitement which group she had chosen to march with; The Board of Deputies, The Masorti movement, WIZO, The League of Jewish Women-she had them all to choose from. Secondly, and finally, to visit Auschwitz. We did do a back to the roots tour to Poland some twenty five years ago visiting most of the camps, culminating in an extremely emotional trawl through the archives in the Jewish Museum in Warsaw, where we were able to locate the names of her forefathers and where they were born. This was for her a real life enhancing experience. Her acute awareness of how lucky she was to have lived her life, free, and able to practice her faith without fear of persecution was always a feature of her spiritual being.

In March this year, I returned to Poland on a visit with a group. There were around forty of us including Rabbi Yanky and in fact there were fourteen rabbis in tow. By the way, if any of you are thinking of visiting Auschwitz, I would highly recommend taking along fourteen rabbis. It definitely enhances the experience. And as we were standing in Birkenau, at the entrance to what was one of the original gas chambers, I lit a memorial candle and, as I was listening to the rabbis intoning the kaddish, I said a silent prayer to Mum adding to myself that I had indeed fulfilled my role, and will always be filled with pride to be Renee Bravo’s daughter.

You can rest in peace now, Mum.

For חיה רחל בת יצחק הלוי ורבקה

When I wrote the hesped, the eulogy, for Mum for her funeral, it came easily. It seemed that I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it. Thinking about a speech for the stone-setting has been the complete opposite.

it has been during the festivals that I have felt her absence so acutely

It has been almost ten months since she passed away, ten months of being in a world without my mother in it. She died at the end of July, and even though  in latter years she had not spent most of the חגים, the festivals, with us in Israel, each one was for me, the first one without her being in the world. Because her Judaism was such a huge part of her life, it has been during the festivals that I have felt her absence so acutely.  The first חג was Rosh Hashana, then Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur, I took with me to Beit Knesset the prayer book that she used when she was with us in Israel. And I found in there the list, in her hand-writing, of all the people she said Yizkor for. Our father, Harry, her parents, our father’s parents, her siblings, Dad’s brother, Uncle Jack, his wife Magda, Uncle Cyril and even a few more. I duly did as she had done, of course adding her to the list. And now I ask myself, is this something I should continue to do? Carry on with her list? It is something I can do to keep her memory alive and something which she, I think, would be happy to know was being done. If I do so, I will be, so to speak, carrying her flag. And she did indeed carry and wave many flags.

Sally spoke about hats, I will speak about flags.

So then came Succot, and we built our Succah without Mum being in it. Without Mum coming into our Succah and benching lulav with her home-made, consciously non-halachic lulav. So this was one of the flags she proudly waved. Her belief that the spirit of the law was more important than the word of the law. That having four distinctly separate species was the message, and that that message could be delivered even if one didn’t have the exactly correct piece of greenery. As you all know, she loved Succot and insisted on building her version of a Succch wherever she happened to be, and if the dimensions were not exactly according to the Torah – well, the spirit of being in a temporary dwelling was still achieved. I don’t know how many of you had the pleasure of being entertained in her little Succah on her little balcony, but that memory is quinte ssential Renee, I believe. And then came Simchat Torah, with all its new heartache. And on to Chanukah. Mum had a striking Chanukiah that son-in-law Chaim gave our parents as a gift when he first came into the family. After she died, Tzvia took it back with her to Israel, and lovingly lit it this past Chanukah, the first Chanukah without her Nana in the world. This is the kind of flag-waving which would have made Renee so happy.  And then came Purim; a Purim without Mum experiencing that special joy of seeing her great-granchildren dressing up. And then of course came Pesach, a festival she always loved, and we had our first Seder without Mum in the world. And she really did love Pesach, the changing of the כלים, the preparation of the seder plate. She wasn’t fazed by our custom in latter years of holding a vegan sedar, in order to accommodate our children’s preferences. Using a beetroot instead of the shankbone and an avocado stone instead of an egg fitted right into Mum’s flag-waving belief that these things are all symbolic.

Spent my life trying to get women interested in the Synagogue, and the Synagogue interested in women

And now we come to England, for the first time since she passed away. It is the first time in the forty seven years since we left for Israel, that we haven’t had her home to come to. Little things that mean so much. One of the things I am sure you all remember and appreciate about Mum was her openness with her home. Her home was always available for anyone who might need it;  whether it was to accommodate her congregation when they were temporarily without a home, for anyone to stay in it, whether she were there or not, hosting the legendary post-Yom Kippur family meal. You name it, her home was available. And I believe that everyone felt “at home” there. She was always very enthusiastic in waving the flag of the mitzvah of הכנסת אורחים, of opening one’s home to others. It gave her the greatest of pleasures. Of course the two main flags she waved throughout her life were the flags of her Judaism and her Feminism. Her Facebook profile states “Spent my life trying to get women interested in the Synagogue, and the Synagogue interested in women”. We can honour her memory by keeping those flags flying in any way we can, however difficult that may be.

The flag of family was another one of her favourites; and of course we have continued to wave that flag in an extraordinary way since she has gone. Her grandson Gidi and his beloved Becca have brought a new great-grandchild into the world, as we welcome Ethan Isaac, איתן יצחק. And they have chosen to remember Renee by taking her name, Bravo, as part of their new family name, Bravo-Rose.

Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching

However, there is another one of her flags that I would like to remember today. And that is the flag of the elegance, wisdom and appropriateness of her spoken word. You will see that on her tombstone, we have written the verse: “Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching”. This line is from Proverbs 31, which we all know as “Eshet Chayil”, a woman of worth or a women of valour – there are various translations. The irony of it is, she was not in fact a fan of this piece. She did not relate to most of it; as she herself said, “When you read it, you wonder how many hours there were in a biblical day!” However, the line that we have chosen is simply so apt. She was such a wise woman, and we had so much to learn from her, and her teaching was certainly with kindness. Standing here at her stone-setting, and thinking about the last ten months without her, I am aware that Steve and I now have a penchant for saying “If Mum were here she would have said……….” Her contributions to the conversations were always so relevant, so apt and so wise and also generally so memorable, that we find ourselves wanting to share them even now.

Perhaps that is our way of living our remembrance of my mother, of חיה רחל בת יצחק הלוי ורבקה.

Rest in peace, מנוחה נכונה, a perfect peace, next to your beloved Harry.