Laura Albert, Editor-At-Large, Lemon Magazine

Jews On Skis

by Laura Albert

"Jews do not ski!" I was told as a child after I marveled at the imagined, glistening world my non-Jewish schoolmates were whisked off to during their winter school breaks.

I heard my maternal grandmother's voice: "We escaped from glacial tundra, to what? To pay for the honor to go break limbs?" Actually, she was born in America, but carried the history of her family's role in the Jewish Diaspora. Her mother had traveled to America under the harshest conditions, caring for six children - two her own, the eldest four the offspring of her husband's first wife, who had died under the Czar's rule.

But why couldn't a Jew ski? In TheSpy Who Loved Me, James Bond is pursued by Soviet agents. He escapes by skiing gracefully down a craggy Austrian slope. Bond is not a Jew. He drinks martinis. He can, of course, ski. Bond is such a virtuoso skier he is able to eliminate Russian henchman Sergi Borzov while maneuvering down a ninety-degree mountainside because one of his ski poles is also a gun.

I was twelve when I saw this movie, the same age as my paternal grandmother when she made her way from Austria to Brooklyn, crossing the Atlantic on a ship that was torpedoed on its return voyage to Europe. I was named for her. But she had not skied her way to freedom. She had no special devices or gimmicks, or any resources at all, unlike my mother's father and his family who had paid off Cossacks to make their escape. I had heard the stories about how everyone came to America, but nobody told how he or she crossed Siberia on skis. They hid in smelly carts and survived steerage.

I believed we survived because, as Jews, we have a good relationship with God. But Bond is a non-Jew, a goy, and the goyim have "devices." style='letter-spacing:-.05pt'>They got skis, ski-poles that are really weapons, and olives impaled on silver toothpicks. Being a Jew, I worried about being ready for disaster; what with global warming, we might soon find ourselves back in Tundra. It is good to be prepared, so I worried if knowing how to ski was going to be the key to future Semitic survival.

Growing up in New York, I developed survival skills that were handy in places that might scare some people. I know my way around a mosh pit from my time going to Punk Rock clubs in NYC's East Village. I know how to slam dance while wearing combat boots. But I didn't learn how to walk in ski boots without my rear and the snow making frequent contact.

And then there was the equipment. I know how to pull a shopping cart across six lanes of hostile traffic, but nobody taught me how to balance a rucksack just above my butt so that it wouldn't feel like I was wearing bra straps designed by de Sade. The smiling Wasp Sherpa who rented the gear just assumed we all belonged to the scouts, went camping with our folks, and would never carry our gear like shopping bags from Whole Foods. "How," I asked my ancestors, "did you schlep your stuff through Siberia, and why isn't that instinct hereditary?"

My son and I arrive at a small resort with a name that would be instantly misinterpreted by any New York downtowner: the Sugarbowl. Either the name or the cold air makes my nose start to run. It is early morning and I am on the balcony of a room that looks out over ski lifts that ascend into cloudy mists. I've never seen snow stay white like this. On Upper Broadway, the taxicabs could transform streets of wonderland white into black slush within an hour. This is snow meant to escape on, to blur memories away in. As I step outside, I blink at the softness of a few flakes of new snow, lightly touching my face like a parent gently placing another cover on a sleeping child.

I want to taste a familiar memory of snow, walking on snow without sinking in, sliding down slopes without falling, but I fail to feel the familiarity. The fearful thought flies in again: It is because I am a Jew and my kind of Jew doesn't ski.

My child goes off with a child's instructor and I am with someone who coaches adults. My son is as blasé as if he were learning a new variety of kickball. I wonder if, perhaps, I should be with the kiddy group and he with the grown-ups.

My ski instructor reminds me before we disembark the lift: "You stand, you lean forward, and that is how you get off." I imagine that my expression is the same Moses saw on the faces of the Exodus bunch when he said, "Ya step off the edge, the ocean parts, we leave Pharaoh-land."

I want to trust that it is going to work that way, that you can go ahead just by standing and willing yourself to move forward. Where is the escape in that? I stand; I fall backwards; the chair whooshes over my head.

They stop the lift. I am in the snow, looking around but not seeing much. The instructor's hand finds me, helping me back to an upright mode.

"Everyone falls the first time."

In front of me, the slope is as wavy and lumpy as the top crust of an unbaked apple pie, and I am a raisin on tiny toothpick skis.

My instructor moves in front of me to help me down the mountain. I feel as if we're hovering on an airy featherbed.

I have already transformed into James Bond guiding my young grandmother over the white cliffs. I have become both the little girl struggling to escape and her protector. Somehow, instinctively, I will know what to do.

"Keep your legs spread. That's it, good!"

I've got it. It's easy.

"Open your eyes!" he yells as we pick up speed.

I am vaguely aware of a distant ache as I am skiing atop the snow. Is it that we Jews are survivors because we adapt fast? My mother told me once that her father was 18 when he came to America, yet he spoke English without an accent, except for once, when he pronounced the word "wart" with a "v" instead of a "w." The history of survival is in my DNA.

I stare at my bent knees and let them invite me out into an endurance I feel that I am just starting to possess.

"I'm going to let you go now," the instructor says. His hands fall away as we move faster downward. "You're on your own!" I am not, but I will reveal nothing. 007 knows not to say who he is, what he is, what he is recording, or they might not let him go. I have them all with me, all of my grandparents, every one who found a way to escape.

My instructor assists me in carrying my gear and deposits me at lunch. Laughing, he tells me, "I never saw a beginner ski down that mountain with their eyes closed!"

"Oh, I knew the landscape."

"I thought you didn't ski before."

"Yeah, I didn't. But I got friends; they ski."

My son comes in after his twentieth or so run down the slopes. He is rosy and frosted, smiling at his expertise, born of nothing but leisure, the pursuit of a sport. "Want to go again later?" he asks.

Bond, 007, always has the right weapon for each situation. The secret to survival is one of adaptability.

That afternoon, I watch as my son shows me how easily he maneuvers over the slopes. I follow behind him, imitating his easy motions, gliding downhill. Sometimes Jews do ski, I realize. They might even remember why.

Yes, Virginia, There is a JT Leroy

Lemon Op-Ed