The Color of Water: Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

In August 1992 James returns to Suffolk to further investigate his mother’s past. James has recovered his uncle Sam’s death records, as well as the graveyard where his grandmother, Mameh, is buried. He’s discovered that Dee-Dee dropped out of high school right before Mameh died, and though he suspects he could track her down, he decides not to bring more pain into her life.

James makes his way to the Suffolk synagogue, the very same building where his grandfather led congregation and his mother sat in the audience. He has recently learned that because his mother was born Jewish, he is technically Jewish too. Unfortunately this religious bond doesn’t help him with the new rabbi at the Suffolk synagogue, who knows James is black and as a result seems unwilling to aid him in his research.

James thinks back to a 1982 trip to Suffolk when he met Aubrey Rubenstein, an office worker whose father had taken over Tateh’s store around 1942. He made some phone calls and connected James with other Jewish people in the area, who James describes as “truly warm and welcoming, as if I were one of them, which in an odd way I suppose I was.” Rubenstein described James’ grandfather as a good teacher, but a corrupt man who didn’t live up to his potential. Mameh, in contrast, he called a “fine lady.” Rubenstein recorded a message for Ruth on James’s tape recorder, but James never played it for his mother, worrying it would make her too emotional.

Back in 1992, James wanders around Suffolk. He imagines how his grandmother (Mameh) must have felt—isolated and lonely, in a loveless marriage far from her family. In this moment, James begins to understand his family history, and therefore himself. The ache he’s felt since childhood transforms into a new sense of humanity. He realizes the greatest gift anyone can give is life, and he decides to live his life in a way that gives life, instead of taking it away.