FEATURED JOBS
Sometimes in our little sporadic sectarian skirmishes (the Owings Mills JCC/Shabbat issue, family holiday meals, etc.), those of us who are not as observant as our traditional friends, relatives and neighbors often forget about what they go through in their daily lives in America.
This slapped me upside my head the other day.
My last blog entry, as you may or may not recall, dealt with my almost 7-year-old son and I hearing a bizarre anti-Semitic comment made at a recent Fort McHenry Flag Day gathering. The reason for the comment was that a family walking behind us had the audacity to be Orthodox and wear traditional attire. (Me, I thought people were allowed to dress in the manner in which they choose in America, as long as they weren’t buck naked.)
Anyway, I happened to see a neighbor a day or two later, and I told him about how shocked and upset I was about this dork yelling out something against Jews because he happened to see folks in yarmulkes and long dresses. But my neighbor, who is Orthodox, just stared at me incredulously.
“Alan,” he said, “don’t you know I deal with this all the time. All the time. Where’ve you been? It’s a way of life for us.”
He proceeded to tell me about how when walking to services on Shabbat, he and his family are routinely harassed and ridiculed by motorists and other passersby. One non-Jewish neighbor’s kids occasionally yell, “You’re going to hell!!” One driver has a penchant (and reputation) for stopping in the middle of Smith Avenue on Shabbat and leaning on his horn for a long time when he sees an Orthodox person or family crossing the street or walking along the sidewalks.
And this is in Pikesville, mind you, not Ames, Iowa!!
My neighbor told me he’s had pennies thrown at him on occasions. (If anyone threw pennies at me, I must admit, I think I would get myself killed in some kind of melee.)
Furthermore, my neighbor told me about when he was hospitalized as a teenager after being jumped by a group of anti-Semitic idiots while attending a yeshiva in the Midwest. He also told me about how he was once at Lexington Market and a kind, elderly woman told him to get out immediately, because she heard some thugs saying they were going to mess with him because they could tell he’s Jewish.
After telling me all of this, my neighbor smiled and laughed gently. He could see the look of horror and indignation on my face. “You’re naïve,” he said to me, “you just don’t know what it’s like out there. We’re used to it. Your guy at Fort McHenry, he was just a kook. I don’t worry as much about the kooks as the other kinds. They’re the ones who scare me.”
Maybe I am naïve. I’ve never doubted that dressing as a traditional Jew (or any other kind of outwardly religious person) draws its share of stares, moronic comments and occasional juvenile behavior in our society.
But to this extent—where one is subjected to fairly constant belittlement in a largely Jewish area, to the point of hearing about an anti-Semitic comment and not even being alarmed or spooked by it – was a real wake-up call for me.
A couple of years ago, when chatting with a close Jewish friend about anti-Semitism, he simply looked down at one point, took off his glasses, shook his head woefully and said, “They just hate us so much. They hate us so much.”
I’m not sure I’m willing to go to that point of capitulation. I still believe that the majority of people in this country believe in the freedom of religious expression and practice, and don’t really care if I wear a kippah, turban or a nun’s habit.
But hearing my Orthodox neighbor’s stories about what he goes through reminded me that – OK, cue up the maudlin violin music—Jews of all stripes and flavors still need to stick together. Maybe we’re not really “One,” as our Jewish organizations like to tell us during solicitation drives. But if we think we’re out of the woods and completely accepted by secular American society, we need to think again.
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