Meet Regina Gradess
Regina and Roger Gradess
Regina Gradess may be BHC’s most far-flung member. She’s a born and bred Manhattanite who’s never set foot in New Hampshire. Our Aliza Holtz is a neighborhood friend. During the pandemic, Aliza suggested she Zoom BHC’s Kabbalat Shabbat services. Regina was so inspired by our congregation that she is now a “singing” member of BHC.
Regina has lived in the same Mitchell-Lama middle-income Cooperative apartment building for most of her life. It is a multi-generational, multi-cultural, vertical village in a Northern Manhattan neighborhood that is filled with immigrants, refugees, migrants and their families. She believes this environment has given the children in the building an acceptance of different cultures, and has taught them the danger and inaccuracy of stereotyping.
Regina chose a career in social work. Her sensitivity to people in need clearly was shaped by her parents’ experiences. Her mother, z”l, was a Holocaust survivor who was arrested in Hungary, sent to a ghetto, forced on a long winter walk, and imprisoned in a concentration camp. There, she witnessed skeletons stacked up along the edges of the camp. For the 4 months before the camp was liberated, she received mainly turnip broth to eat. The family adds a turnip to their seder plate to recall her mother’s ordeal. “Never forget that what happened to me could happen again,” her mother warned her.
In 1945, when the Nazis were defeated, Sweden gave her mom refuge and rehabilitation. She located an uncle and aunt who helped her immigrate to New York.
Regina’s father, z”l, was born in Manhattan. He was a schoolteacher in underserved public junior and senior high schools. At home, Regina recalls sitting with him as he wrote checks to many charitable and social action organizations. She’d read the literature that came with each request, in this way learning about the suffering and need in the world. He taught his two daughters that “all people are equal, and when possible, we should help those in need, expecting nothing in return other than a thank you.”
Regina started in public school - until her 1st-grade teacher asked all the good little boys and girls who went to church on Sunday to stand up. Her mother was livid. As an alternative, her parents enrolled her in a yeshiva, where she began learning to recite prayers and to read and write Hebrew. When she was in 3rd grade, the family moved into the Cooperative apartment building, and after that, she attended public school. She also went to an Orthodox shul which had an afterschool program.
She met Roger, her future husband, while she was attending The City College of New York. The couple lived in mid-town. Once they had an infant daughter, however, they returned to the same Cooperative apartment building where her parents lived. They’ve never left. Their daughter, a public-school media and library specialist, has an apartment in the same building. Their son, an environmental lawyer, lived there until after the pandemic; he has since purchased a home in the suburbs.
Roger had been raised Christian, but his father’s Judaism intrigued him. The couple attended a conversion class which opened Regina’s eyes to the beauty of Judaism in a new way. They became Reform Jews. They also follow the teachings of Richard Alpert (also known as Baba Ram Dass), incorporating both teachings into their lives. They raised their family at Beth Am, The People’s Temple, a local Reform shul.
During college, Regina had a part-time job at a nursing home. This experience taught her that she loved being with older people. She earned a Master of Social Work from Yeshiva University and went on to a union job (!) assisting people with moderate dementia to make a new life for themselves in a 24-hour-a-day health care setting. She helped the staff, residents and families work smoothly together as a caring team.
One of her fondest memories is of assisting a resident’s daughter to reenact her wedding in the dementia unit’s living room. The daughter recognized her father wouldn’t have been able to sit through her wedding. As the ceremony progressed, a previously very quiet resident, who had been a cantor, began to chant the wedding prayers. His voice reached the ceiling. “People need opportunities to bring out their abilities and compassion,” Regina believes. “Without opportunities, how do we know what’s still inside any of us?”
Soon after she retired in 2007, Regina joined other volunteers in organizing six solo, group, or themed art exhibits a year. The exhibits take place in the Armin and Estelle Gold Wing art gallery, which is in Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation’s beautiful art deco foyer. As time passed, she became the main volunteer curator, which, she says, “has been a pure labor of love.” Now that she’s a grandma (her boy has two sons), she curates only four exhibitions a year. To learn more about these exhibits, the reader can visit HebrewTabernacle.org/artgallery.
Regina’s photographs have been selected for her local subway station and made into postcards for a local organization. She also creates assemblage shelf art. “I have a hobby of taking broken mechanical things apart and discovering the creative beauty in their designs.” When she is in an artistic “flow,” time stands still.
Regina may have retired from paid work, but she remains a social worker at heart. She enjoys friendships with those she meets in the neighborhood and on her travels through Manhattan. “My motto is ‘proceed with love and caution,’” she said. She knows she’ll meet others who might be in need, so she carries dollar bills folded into $3 packets, as well as bags of new socks, hats, gloves, and books to share. “Sometimes, when the chemistry is right, people invite me to sit with them. We talk about our lives for an hour or two, always ending in a hug, and sometimes in a photo as well. I try to discover the interesting, wounded person within and help them shine. These serendipitous meetings are a blessing that HaShem has provided for me.”