It was late afternoon when I returned a phone call from a woman requesting couples therapy for she and her husband.
“I don’t routinely see couples, but I’d be happy to give you some names of therapists who could be helpful,” I offered.
She was appreciative and answered, “Thank you, and if you could, perhaps not a New York City Jew.”
I’m a Jew. I didn’t go to temple as a child, learn Hebrew, have a bas-mitzvah or marry a Jew. But I wear it like an invisible prayer shawl, wrapping me in permanence. Both my parents are Jews; my father grew up in Detroit, ate Kosher and wasn’t allowed to turn lights on on the Sabbath.
My mother was a New York City Jew who celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas. My siblings and I were raised not going to temple, but reading psalms on Sunday morning. We held small red leather books and would sit in our living room reading out loud. We lit Hanukkah candles, hung Christmas cookies on our tree and strung popcorn.
No matter how confusing it may look on the outside, I am as clear about being a Jew as I am about being a woman. But I remain as confused and shocked by anti-Semitism as I was when I was a child.
We were the only Jews in our neighborhood, and I thought that was just part of being Jewish. Jews were different. It always felt comfortable, until I was old enough to know better. My friends told me that Hanukkah was invented for Jewish children who didn’t celebrate Christmas. They told me I couldn’t be Jewish, “You’re nice.”
I remember my mother’s words when I asked to watch the fireworks at the Bedford Country Club. “Honey, you know they don’t allow Jews as members.” The fireworks lost their sparkle. Later that summer, I competed in tennis on their pristine clay courts. I was frightened they might notice my curly Jewish hair and ask me to leave. My mother didn’t come and watch that match. She said she had a dentist appointment, but I don’t think so.
We never used the word anti-Semitism, not in Westchester in the 1960s.
We held on to our own prejudices as much as our neighbors held on to theirs. I never knew where the temple was in our town. Our Brownie troop met at the Presbyterian Church; I went to preschool at the Unitarian Church; and I had piano lessons at the First Congregational Church.
Churches were activity centers with that “library quiet” and very hard floors. Sometimes I’d go to Catholic Church with Carrie Callaci. We’d wear Kleenex on our small heads. I just did what I was told, but again was frightened I’d be asked to leave.
Because my father’s side remained more religious, we always attended the bar mitzvahs of my Detroit cousins. I loved the feel of my dad’s black shiny yarmulke that he kept in his sock drawer. He’d pull it out for these special occasions and I’d proudly sit next to him as he read Hebrew as easily as I read “Nancy Drew” mysteries. It was there that I belonged.
And decades later, as I hold the receiver to my ear, I am as appalled at myself as I was at this stranger. I gave her two names of Denver area therapists and hung up the phone. Religious differences have disrupted world peace for centuries. Shamefully, my avoidance of that truth, for only a moment, made me a contributor to continued conflict. For that stranger will perpetrate again.
I apologize to myself, to all Jews and to all minorities for ignoring ignorance late one Thursday afternoon. I help individuals remember so not to repeat sorrow and hardship. Thus, as long as I remember a child’s fear on a faraway tennis court, my voice will never again be silenced by those less educated.
Priscilla Dann-Courtney (cillacourtney@aol.com) is a clinical psychologist.
