“Is it time to leave?” I started asking my husband when the white supremacists in Charlottesville chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” He didn’t say “Nance, you’re being paranoid,” but I heard it in his voice.
Then when the gunman killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, I asked again, “Would you leave?” This time, he said, “Where would we go? Who wants two 80-year-olds who can’t contribute anything and will only drain their systems?”
Maybe I was paranoid — but then, when Elon gave the Hitler salute at Trump’s inauguration, I said, “You’re not worried?” He said, “It can’t get that bad.” And I almost screamed, because I could hear my grandmother’s whole family in Germany say those exact same words: “It can’t get that bad.”
I quoted what Billy Wilder, the Hollywood director, said about his getting out of Austria just in time; he said, “The optimists stayed and ended up in the gas chambers. The pessimists ended up with pools in Beverly Hills.”
Growing up, all I wanted to do was what my parents wanted to do. And that was to assimilate. To not call attention to ourselves, to do anything and everything to not be too Jewish. To be American.
I was born in 1941. The modern state of Israel was only seven years younger than me. As a kid, I spent a lot of my babysitting money buying trees, one dollar at a time, to be planted in the land of milk and honey. They sent you a beautiful picture of a tree in acknowledgement. My dream was to go to Israel and see my own personal forest.
My parents only went to synagogue on High Holidays. My sister and I were the first bat mitzvahs in our town. I loved being in the synagogue. The burgundy velvet seats, the choir hidden up above singing those mournful minor-key melodies. I loved singing in Hebrew. There was nothing more beautiful than watching my grandfather daven in the Orthodox shul, which was right next door to our Conservative synagogue.
To assimilate meant leaving behind some of what I treasured. I understood what my parents meant — the world was not a friendly place to Jews — and I know they meant well, trying to protect us so we’d have it easier than they had.
I made a concerted effort to be friends with all the Gentile kids. There were times where I would be in a group feeling relieved that no one knew I was Jewish. And if by chance the word leaked out and someone said, “You don’t look Jewish,” I took it as a compliment.
In those days, everything was measured by the mantra: “Is it good for the Jews?” When a horrible crime was in the news, the first thing we said was, “Is he Jewish?” The relief when he wasn’t, the shame when he was, was visceral.
When Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, you would think my family had done it personally, we were so proud. When Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in the World Series on Yom Kippur, it felt like the whole Jewish community exhaled our long-held breaths as we basked in a sense of collective pride. That act of actually not only admitting but proclaiming our Jewishness granted us temporary immunity.
Over the years, anti-Semitism has risen its ugly head, and if it went underground for short stints, it was always simmering underneath the layers of hate. But it’s been decades since I not only didn’t feel I had to hide my Jewishness, but have been proud to be Jewish. In the world where I have been living, it has seemed bad times for Jews (with an occasional negative incident here and scary thing there, like the complicated horror show in Gaza) were over.
While I was writing this column, actually in the act of typing, I looked up, and on the TV an image of Pete Hegseth, our secretary of defense, flashed across the screen. The camera zoomed in on his tattoo, “Deus Vult,” or “God wills it,” which is a rallying cry from the Crusades and a motto of Christian nationalism.
So is it time to leave?
P.S:. I have no intention of ever leaving this safe, beautiful community. I only have those paranoid thoughts once in a very, very occasional while. And I, too, am an optimist. Somebody once called me a pathological optimist (thank you). I do believe in the goodness of humans. I think love will always be triumphant. I just had to get this off my (for-the-moment) pessimistic chest.
Nancy’s essay is a mirror for many of us. The focus, for me, is the back and forth taking place within aware Jewish families. Is the assimilated American Jewish experience these days paranoid? Is it “good” not to be “too Jewish” the way our first generation/survivor parents imagined? The same back and forth happened to many assimilated, educated German Jews in the 1930s: Should we leave? Nah, this is Germany, we are proud Germans, we contribute to society. But we may not be safe. No, no, we will never leave our safe, beautiful community.
Many Islanders use a local Facebook group to spew the false language of “genocide, apartheid, and war crimes”, contributing immensely to why America is not so safe for Jews anymore. Martha’s Vineyard is no different from the rest of America in this regard, even if people aren’t actually beaten up on the island streets for wearing a fringed garment instead of a keffiyah. If I were young and strong I’d pack up my family and make Aliyah so that I and those who come after me will not again have to worry about being accepted in a world that doesn’t much like us– and doesn’t much care if we are erased. If you read social media comments on the topic, every single day you see multiple variations on “Hitler should have finished the job” comments. Pretending there are not Islanders who feel this way does not help us.
Nancy’s essay is a testament to why the world must have Israel.
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