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One day my old man stayed home from work. He said to me, You and I, we’re Jews. We’re Jews and you’re not going to school
today, you’re going to synagogue with me.
What are
Jews, I asked. His face was set and his
voice was low. I became afraid.Jews don’t believe Jesus is the son of God. We don’t celebrate Christmas. We have Hanukkah. Do you remember it from last year?
I did.
Today is our new year. It’s called Rosh Hashonah. We count the years from when God created the earth. Christians count the years since Christ’s birth. We have over five thousand years. And today we have to go to the synagogue.
My mother dressed me in my best clothes and a warm coat to keep out the October cold. I was stiff and quiet. My mother was quiet too. I’ll see you later, she said.
My old man took me outside. I didn’t say anything, but he answered my silent question by telling me that my mother wasn’t Jewish. She wasn’t going. We walk to temple on Rosh Hashonah, he said. He took my hand and led me uptown to the synagogue.
I had seen the sand-colored building with the big shiny dome before, but I never knew what it was. Entire families were pouring inside the doors, hurrying in from the cold. My old man gripped me tightly and pushed me in. I was afraid of being in that unknown place and afraid of my old man. He sounded and looked like he did when he tried to do something, pass a car on the road or adjust the antenna on the TV: his voice was low and deep, and his jaw worked silently. There were no jokes or play allowed when he was like that. If what he was doing didn’t work he would stamp his feet and scream.
I was afraid he would do that in the synagogue. I was afraid of all the people, even though they smiled and greeted me using words I didn’t understand. Afraid of the caps, the yarmulkes, like the one my old man slapped on my head. He pulled it out of a big wooden box. He took one for himself, too. A man has to wear this in the synagogue, he said. You have to cover your head in God’s house.
We squeezed inside a long room full of folding chairs, crowded with people dressed in their best clothes. My old man handed me a book and we sat down. My old man pointed out the man in a white robe standing at the front of the room. He was the rabbi, and I was supposed to pray along with him. I was supposed to read the prayers in the book in my hand. My old man said, In Hebrew you read from right to left, not left to right, like in English. I don’t know this alphabet, I whispered. I only know the one I learned in school. My old man whispered too: On one page is the Hebrew, and the opposite page is the English. Try to match the words across the pages!
I couldn’t.
It was a very long day and I didn’t understand what was happening. I stood up and sat down many times and soon I was very tired. I saw people using their bibles to touch something wrapped in cloth that was carried up and down the aisle by the rabbi. My old man told me to take my bible and touch it, too, but I couldn’t reach it. He touched it and then he kissed his bible.
Finally the prayers were all done. A lot of people talked to my old man and they all invited him to, Come, come! They wanted him to join the synagogue. He told them he belonged to a temple in the Big City. Then he took my hand and led me home, where my mother was waiting with hot soup and sandwiches.
My old man told me that day that I was born a Jew. He was a Jew, and because of that, I was a Jew. My mother told me different. Before I was born, she and my old man decided if I was a girl, I would be taught about Jesus. And if I was a boy, I was to be raised a Jew. It was their choice that decided what I was. My old man heard this and was mad. He’s a Jew! he yelled. He was born a Jew! My mother said no more and served me lunch.
She had prepared my favorite sandwich, ham and cheese. For my old man there was roast beef. A Jew doesn’t eat ham or pork, he said. And never meat with milk or cheese. My mother knew this and never served it to him. When she cooked pork chops for supper she used to fry him a small steak and on Passover she would buy matzo. She did these things in the long-ago days, when I was little. But that didn’t last.
But I was a Jew and it was Rosh Hashonah and she served me a ham and cheese sandwich. It was my favorite, like Christmas was my favorite holiday. This was part of the war, a secret, newly unfolding front.
I stopped eating when my old man announced that Jews don’t eat ham. I waited, stomach twisting, for a fight. I wondered if I should put the sandwich down. My old man said no more. Confused, but hungry, I finished the ham and cheese.
My old man defined himself as a Jew and I was his Jewish son. Why was I allowed ham and cheese and Christmas? Easter presents, too? I had to go to temple on the High Holy Days. That was all the observance he required of me. It seemed a compromise was going on, and a few things were forbidden. For instance, I was not allowed in church. When my old man found out a babysitter took me with her to church on Ash Wednesday, he raged. I took no ash; instead, I cowered in the rear pew, not comprehending. But it was still wrong. And my mother, a Catholic, said no prayers, no Grace, hung no Crucifix. Our bible was Old Testament. I think in light of this my old man made no issue over pork roasts and Christmas trees. If he had understood in time how my mother would exploit this he might have fought it. When it was too late, he didn’t. He protested, but it was bluster, threats without backbone. My old man was not a determined man, and he gave up and let me fall away from him and the Jew he wanted me to be.
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