Letter to the Editor: Growing Understanding

I am pleased that The Philadelphia Inquirer printed the following recently submitted letter.  With warm wishes in this tragic, dangerous time of deepest possible suffering for all concerned, SaraKay

To the editor:

When I was young, my mother became ill, and I went to live with my grandfather. Though I could not understand his references to the pogroms or concentration camps, I did learn from him that the world hated Jews: “We are not family, and never will be.” I remember my joy in 1945 when Bess Myerson became the first Jewish Miss America. Waving her photo in the Baltimore Sun, I spoke with much excitement: “Look, Pop. You’re wrong. Look, we are not hated. We are family.” My grandfather shook his head. “This only happened because of the guilt about the camps, when no one stopped the Nazis till it was too late,” he said.

A few years ago, my husband and I attended a Seder where survivors of concentration camps spoke of changes in America, ones reminiscent of their experience in Germany as Hitler was gaining power. They referenced extreme right and extreme left movements “fanning the flames” of hatred. At that time, neither my husband nor I had ever experienced antisemitism personally. That has changed.

Raised in a modern Orthodox setting, I never parted with a knit suit with a matching beret bought many years ago for going to synagogue with my parents. Recently, invited to an Orthodox bar mitzvah, I took the outfit to an excellent dressmaker I’ve known for years. As she was pinning the suit to alter it, she asked where I was going to wear it. A week or so after the event, I took some of my husband’s shirts to her shop to be laundered. She greeted me with a look I had never seen, and a tone I had never heard. “Did you have a good time at the bar mitzvah with your rich Jewish friends?” she asked with contempt.

Now, following the barbaric assault on Israeli civilians — where atrocities too horrific to wrap one’s head around took place — the world is protesting Israel’s response to that brutality. “What,” asked a thoughtful and intelligent friend, “do you think that Israel did to provoke the massacre?” As she concluded her sentence, I was no longer at a cocktail party. I was instead at my grandfather’s kitchen table.

I often dream of Pop. In past dreams, I look for him everywhere, but cannot find him. Amid today’s horror, my dream changed. I do find him; he grabs my hand and I tell him he was right: Jews will never be family.

SaraKay Smullens

Philadelphia

To The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 25, 2023