I think the last time I was in attendance at one of these was maybe 1963, or earlier. My maternal grandmothers family, the MacMullens used to hold a “clan gathering” (family reunion) every year at Kankakee River State Park. This always occurred on the Sunday closest to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses and therefore to Israel. Now days Moses is said to be the first person to download data from the cloud unto a tablet.
I know what you are thinking: a Scottish clan? Jews? Yep. Like many European Jewish families, my grandmothers family was chased around the continent a bit. From somewhere in the Balkans, the Bonewitzes<sp?> were chased away, probably as the result of a pogrom or pogroms, and eventually landed in the Scottish Highlands. There they changed their name to MacMullen and adopted that clans tartan, as well as a boatload of Scottish custom. So the MacMullen clan gathering was a mixture of Jewish and Scottish cultural adaptations.
I remember the men wearing kilts with matching kippah, some wonderful BBQ chicken, burgers, and assortments of salads, chips and deserts. There was a little train ride that carried kids all around the park. There were bagpipes and Highland Games including the tug-o-war, the hammer throw and tossing the caber. The Rabbi from our synagogue on the south side of Chicago was also in attendance.
I remember some of us discovering that if you ate a lot of angel-food cake you could drink all the Coca Cola you wanted without getting sick.
A Scots-Jewish “kippah,” made from the official Jewish tartan
I don’t remember attending one of these after Shavuot 1963 (when I was going to turn 10 years old). Whoever was the organizer of this even either passed away or got sick or just stopped. So this has become a fond but very vague memory after all these years.
