Though I didn't trek 3000 miles cross country, I still managed to come away with a different perspective about those formative years.
Unlike many in the tiny hamlet, I was not born in Suffern. We came there in 1968. I was ten years old and my brother who had been jumped and beat up by 4 guys near Queens College sent my parents scurrying for the suburbs. Our next door neighbors from Jackson Heights had moved to Spring Valley, a neighboring town with a significant population of people with Hebraic Seasonings.
We found a house in Suffern, where Tribe members were not so plentiful. The welcome mat was not exactly laid out for us. And I found myself in several scuffles with kids who had never met or smelt a Jew.
The only one they knew was nailed to a crucifix at their local church.
This shaded, understandably, my leanings towards the townsfolk. Not unlike the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen shares Easter dinner with her very gentile family.
"Please pass the mayonnaise."
That's not to say, things didn't improve. They did. I made friends. I did well as a student (with embarrassingly little effort.) And I discovered I could entertain students and teachers with some well timed wiseass remarks.
Yet the "otherness" always lingered. Nourished no less by my father, who was always on-guard for antisemitism. It clouded my view. And not in good way.
Perception was not reality. In fact, through social media and reconnections with classmates from the past, I have discovered many of them are now in happy interfaith marriages. They celebrate Hanukkah and Passover, as if it were their own. And not the mystical rituals of some strange cabal of Hebrew speaking beanie wearers. That's not to say there weren't some Jew-haters and I should mention, racists, there always will be. But the people keeping me at arm's length was me.
Time does heal old wounds, even the self inflicted ones.
1 comment:
Anti-semitism is a light sleeper.
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