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Why crowds of young professionals have been lining up to get advice — and hugs — from other people’s bubbes.
by Sophia Solano for the Washington Post
Sandy Bonner expected the relationship questions. When the 70-year-old volunteered to put in a few shifts this fall as a Jewish-grandmother-at-large in downtown D.C., she knew she would be asked to counsel people struggling with their love lives.
It was the other lamentations that surprised her. Each night on the job she was met with a line of beleaguered young strangers: overtired caretakers, war-torn couples and — in droves — the overeducated unemployed.
From where she sat, two feet and about five decades apart from the people who came seeking her wisdom, it was obvious these Washingtonians had an abiding problem.
“They were anxious about being anxious,” she said.
They needed, Bonner sensed, someone to assure them everything would be okay. Wrap them in a hug, tell them how handsome they are.
That’s why the bubbes (Yiddish for “grandmas”) set up shop outside Sixth and I Synagogue in Penn Quarter, offering advice, Werther’s candies and, at the first sign of tears, a packet of tissues. Leaders at the synagogue recruited the women in response to the rising angst they sensed among the city’s residents and federal workers.
Some advice seekers were just walking by when they saw the septuagenarians lined up on the sidewalk for the first edition of “What Would Bubbe Do?” Many who stopped weren’t Jewish; a few weren’t even sure what a bubbe was. But they wanted advice. “Think about how deep that anxiety has to go,” Bonner mused, “that you’re going to sit down, kind of on a whim, with a complete stranger and tell them your problems.”
When Bonner saw Sixth and I’s call for volunteer grandmothers in its newsletter just before the high holidays, it seemed like an opportunity to apply the skills she has honed throughout her life. As a lawyer, she learned to ask the right questions. As a mother and grandparent, she learned to listen for the answers.
She was one of more than 20 grandmas — current and former nurses, teachers, rabbis, social workers — who signed up to offer the very particular mitzvah of telling people what to do.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and pain and loneliness in our city and in our world,” said Michelle Eider, one of the organizers. “And while our bubbes can’t solve all the problems, I think, sometimes, it’s just enough to have someone willing to listen.”
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