“You Are a Jew and Don’t Forget It.”
“How many you keeuds don celebrate Christmas? I know Benji May don’t. He’s a Jew!
I remember those words like it was yesterday. Sitting on those mats in second grade class, realizing that the teacher was talking about me in that Oklahoma twang, with the emphasis on the word: “Jew.” Every year until after I graduated from junior high school, I endured the annual ‘reveal.’ All year long they thought I was just like them until..I wasn’t. And every time my cover was blown it felt like a hot poker went into my gut and out through my shoulder blades.
Later, as the only Jew at Casady, a prep school in OKC, it was a bit more intense when my head met a locker or two, compliments of the class bully: “We don’t want your kind here.” In my freshman year in college as a Navy officer candidate at OU I remember coming into the dorms at night: “I don’t believe it. May is a Jew? Who’d a thought?” My commanding officer, acknowledging the antisemitism in the ranks, told me: “You need to stay so we can fix this scourge.” “ You’re the Commander. You fix it!!” Later, after I joined a Jewish fraternity, I began to feel a bit more like I belonged…kind of…
I had this ambivalent sense of being a Jew. In Oklahoma I wanted to disappear into the Christian multitudes living in the American heartland. But I wasn’t one of them. I was a Jew and I always would be.
And my view of the Jewish people was one of weakness not strength. I remember so vividly those films and pictures of the Holocaust. European Jews sent off to the gas chambers in rail cars by the thousands singing in Hebrew: “Next year in Jerusalem, “or shot, executed in such numbers that the Germans’ machine guns jammed from overheating. I was ashamed to be a member of a people who thought so little of themselves that they allowed the Nazis to butcher them. But wasn’t I even worse? I was too embarrassed and frightened even to admit I was one.
Israel
I visited Israel the first time when I was 20 with a couple of weeks left after studying the German and Russian Languages in Munich Germany and St Petersburg Russia (Leningrad at that time).
The minute I landed in Tel Aviv I began to feel like I belonged for the first time in my life. As I listened to people speaking Hebrew, the tenor and sounds of the language sent a nostalgic shudder of pride through my body. I remember seeing those young, confident soldiers-men and women-of the IDF walking the streets in their olive-green uniforms with Uzi machine guns over their shoulders. This was a whole new world for me. A paradigm shift. I reveled in the stories of grizzled Sabra IDF commanders and IAF aces as they recounted their military strategies and battles leading a nation to victory. I remember how proud I was seeing a squadron of Israeli jet fighters fly over Auschwitz on Yom Hashoah. I thought about the transformation of my own life from a people- pleasing frightened doormat to a mature, brave man. And it took me almost a lifetime. I drew the similarity from a beaten down, cowering Jew, ashamed of his birthright to the indomitable, strength in the phrase: “never again.”
I remember when I was in Sunday School, carrying a lot of this embarrassment about being a Jew when one Sunday I read a beautiful, colorful book created by children from a Sunday School class in NYC about a man named Mickey Marcus. Here was a strong Jewish man- a West Point graduate and military hero in WWII- who became the first Brigadier General of the Israeli Army since Judah Maccabee.
After the 67’ War my backbone began to straighten like many other Jews, studying in detail the life of Yoni Netanyahu, another Israeli hero of mine.
These are My People
As time passed, I had the good fortune to become Global Director of Corporate Alliances for Disney. One of my dreams was to do something for Israel at Disney. God must have received the message because completely out of the blue I was approached by the Weizmann Institute of Science, desiring to broaden their name and ‘brand’ in the US. As a language major, I began to teach myself Hebrew so we could work with the amazing scientific team at Weizmann. They came to Disney and we went to Rehovot. It was a great time. Long story but a real dream for me because I could finally ‘do something’ for Israel. I retired three years ago after a two-year assignment in Paris where I experienced what French Jews went through under the Vichy government, seeing the continuing residue of the Holocaust, firsthand. I don’t know that Americans have any idea what the European Jews endured in WWII.
Still a Stranger in a Strange Land
As an adult of a certain age now, and especially within the past four years, I still feel like a stranger in a strange land. I do not know America anymore. But I know one thing: I do not belong here, and I never did. Whenever I have been in Israel and heard the Hebrew Language, I am always transported to a place with people that give me that warm, knowing feeling of finally coming home. Maybe it’s just a desire from the heart to come to a place where I can rest among my own and feel truly accepted. Three years ago, when I was in Vienna, walking down a main thoroughfare, my ear caught a snippet of a Hebrew conversation slicing through the wall of German speaking people in the street. I whirled around and saw two men, obviously Israeli, speaking with each other. This feeling of complete warmth and happiness came over me as I approached them with a ‘ma nish ma?’ ‘Atem Israelim? ‘What’s Up!’ ‘You Israeli?’ They both smiled as they nodded. We had a short conversation and they both gave me a hug and a kind wink as I went on my way back into ‘no man’s land’ with a broad smile as warmth and pride flowed through my body. I felt so close to being one of them. Yet so far.
I remember forging a friendship with a brilliant Israeli scientist-a geologist and volcanologist as well as a reserve Brigadier General in the Israeli Defense Force. A sabra, Ariel is tough as nails with a twinkle in his eye.
He’s the kind of man that makes me proud to be his friend; proud to be a Jew.
Almost Home?
Now at 70 years old I ask myself what could this country offer me so that I feel like a true American? My grandfather came here in 1900 from Russia, always with gratitude for America. Certainly, it was better than antisemitic tsarist Russia. After the last four years in the US, I feel even more alienated than before. I don’t think it’s better in the US than a land of our own. For me, that land is Israel. Stay tuned…
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please support our mission and join us as a Premium Member.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Talk to you soon.
Photo: IStock