Dr. Shahar Madjar

The spectrum of human romantic relationships seems more confusing than ever. Monogamy is still as simple as plain vanilla, but when exactly do you start calling someone a serial monogamist? What is the difference between serial-monogamy and a polygamy? What the heck is sologamy? And what is the difference between old plain cheating and polyamory?

With these questions on my mind, I decided to clear things up, at least for myself, and write down a few very short stories. Here is the first in a series. It is about my uncle Yoske who, in my imagination, comes as close as one could ever be to a monogamist.

My first memory of Yoske–I was about 5 or 7 at the time–is from a wedding, or perhaps it was a funeral, I am not sure. He was a short, stout man with a few hairs on his head and thick glasses in a black frame. One of his eyelids, I think it was the left one, drooped. At first, I thought Yoske was winking at me, but his face was serious and devoid of a smile. I saw him pacing back and forth, away from the crowd of guests, contemplating something of dire consequence. He was whistling to himself an unfamiliar tune, composed of only a few, repetitious notes.

“Let’s say hi to uncle Yoske,” my mom said. She took me by the hand and walked with me toward Yoske. He stopped whistling and stood still for a moment, smiled only slightly, and when I extended my arm to shake his hand, he said, “sorry young man, I don’t shake hands. You know,” he said, “there are billions of bugs out there, we don’t want to help them spread around, do we?”

Over the next several years, I learned more about Yoske. He had immigrated to Israel from Poland, and became a successful entrepreneur. He owned and operated an aluminum factory in downtown Haifa. In a series of transactions with several partners, he made a small, yet significant fortune. My father, a businessman himself, told me to never become a partner of uncle Yoske. “Yoske will come up with an idea,” my father warned me, “and ask you to invest your hard-earned money. In the end, you will be left with his worthless idea while he would run away with your money.” I took notes. I was about 10 at the time. I wanted to be either an artist, or a pilot. I never intended to engage in the unforgiving world of aluminum.

There are good-intention-Yoske stories too. One year, during Hanukkah, Yoske gave me an aluminum dreidel he made in his factory. Like all dreidels, Yoske’s dreidel was four-sided spin-top with one Hebrew letter etched on each of the sides. Together, these letters formed an acronym for a Great Miracle Happened There. The dreidel brought excitement to my heart. I immediately saw myself playing the Dreidel Game. Yoske’s dreidel, though, did not collaborate. It spun awkwardly, defied the laws of physics, and, perhaps miraculously, it always fell with the side showing M, for Miracle, up.

My mom admired Yoske. “My sister, Hannah, is the luckiest woman on Earth,” my mom used to say, “She married Yoske a man as solid as a rock. A man solely dedicated to his wife. A family man.” Indeed, Yoske was married to my aunt Hannah until death set them apart. Together, they raised two beautiful girls. Yoske had no interest in other women. Each morning, Hannah would greet Yoske at their kitchen table with a glass of milk and two butter cookies she baked according to a recipe she invented. At lunchtime, he would return from the factory so they could eat lunch together. And at nights, they watched Mabat, the daily TV news show, then went to bed. The couple’s life was monotonous, without undue drama, and, from the outside, happy.

When the couple was in their 80s, auntie Hannah became pleasantly confused. Doctors called it Alzheimer’s disease. One day she left the house. A policeman brought her back after several hours. Days later, she died.

One or two years after aunt Hannah passed, Uncle Yoske met Ruth. Ruth took one look at Hannah’s cookie recipe and said she could make the butter cookies, no problem. When Yoske tasted Ruth cookies, he nodded his head in approval. The new couple married a few months later.

I will return with more stories about the wide spectrum of human romantic relationships.

Editor’s note: Dr. Shahar Madjar is a urologist working in several locations in the Upper Peninsula. Contact him at smadjar@yahoo.com or at DrMadjar.com.