My Reaction

I can't fully express how I felt at that moment. It was so very long ago. But the fact that I still remember the conversation should help you to understand the impact it had on me. But, I really shouldn't have been surprised. After all, I was one month shy of celebrating my 51st birthday. And I was a first generation American whose parents came from Russia in the early 1900's to escape the pogroms. If you've seen "Fiddler On The Roof" you know what I mean. When I first saw the play I felt that it had been written about my family.

Remember Fiddler on the Roof?

My parents were like the couple in "Fiddler On The Roof". They fled Russia to get away from the pogroms and the antisemitism that was rampant there. My father, grandfather and uncles came to New York City in 1904. They came with little more than the clothes on their backs. Even though they did not know English they were soon able to get work to support themselves. Two years later they had saved enough to bring my mother, grandmother and assorted aunts and cousins to the United States. Included in the group was my brother, Charlie had been born in Russia after my father had left. Over the next eighteen years five more children were born into our family. On September 14th, 1924, I was born, the youngest and smallest member of the family. I was a premature baby and weighed only 2 pounds 10 ounces at birth.

Until I reached the age of 6, we lived on the lower east side of New York. I began to learn about Jewish ghetto life in America and of the discrimination and prejudices that existed in our country from early childhood. One day, when I was about 5 and in kindergarten I was called a "Christ Killer" for the first time. I didn't know what that expression meant, but I knew that I didn't do it. It was the hatred in the accusation which frightened me more than the words.

I remember running home to my mother. We lived at 35 Market Street in Manhattan just a few blocks from the Williamsburg Bridge. I can remember rushing up the stairs to our sixth floor tenement apartment, crying "Momma, Momma." While I don't remember the exact words my mother used to comfort me, I believe that in calming me she spoke partially in Yiddish and partially in broken English and said "Zunnela (My little son), don't cry. Let me tell you something very important that you have to learn.. There is "us" (the Jewish people) and there is "them" (the "goyim", the Christans). They hate us. And we have to stay away from them. Everything is all right now. Stop crying. No one is going to hurt you. We are in America. And you are safe. Just stay away from them."

As clearly as I can remember the next thing she did was give me a glass of cold chocolate milk.

I was a skinny kid ...

Years later, when I was nine, I was a very skinny kid. I had to swallow spoonfuls of beef liver extract and cod liver oil. I hated both. We now lived in Brooklyn. It was still pretty much a ghetto. Forty percent of the people in Boro Park at that time were Jewish and forty percent were Catholic with the remaining twenty percent being made up of all others.

Picture this scene ...

Our block, Forty-third street between Fort Hamilton Parkway and Twelfth Avenue was about 85% Jewish. We lived at 1143 - 43rd Street. While not a six story tenement, it was a four story walk up. No elevator. We had a four room apartment, a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom. And while there were six kids in our family, at the time only three of us lived at home.

My brother Sam and I shared a bedroom. Mom and Pop shared a bedroom and my sister Dorris slept on a folding bed in the living-dining room. We were crowded as you can well imagine. And bathroom time was sometimes crisis time. But it was 1933 and things were really tough out there in the real world. We were living in the middle of the Depression. Fortunately my dad and three brothers were able to find work during those years, and so we managed. But that doesn't mean we escaped the antisemitism that seemed present everywhere.

It happened again ...

I remember one hot summer Sunday morning when I was playing stickball in the school yard at Public School 131 at Fort Hamilton Parkway and 43rd Street. It was almost noon and our game was over. The teams split up and headed for home. As I walked from the school yard dressed only in shorts and sneakers, I saw this lady heading right for me. She was a large woman dressed completely in black, wearing a black hat and carrying a black purse. The closer she got to me, the more I noticed her piercing look. It frightened me. I remember stopping in my tracks because I didn't know what to do. She kept coming right at me. And as she got up to me she hit me in the chest with her big, black pocket book and said "Get out of my way you dirty little Kike!" I fell to the sidewalk in total amazement. And then I started to cry. I got up and ran the hundred yards to our apartment house. As I ran up the steps I was again crying "Momma, Momma". Again my mother had to comfort me. And again my mother reminded me that there is "us" and there is "them", the 'goyim', the Christians. They hate us. And the best thing we can do is to stay away from them.

Back to Shirley

So Shirley's comment that Friday morning in August 1975 had a significant impact on me.
What she was really saying is that "You're no longer part of 'US'. You have become part of 'THEM'!"

My first book, Betrayed! describes in considerable detail the struggle I went through when I was first forced to consider the question "Is Jesus the Jewish Messiah?" If you haven't read it, you might want to obtain a copy. I will retell part of the story now, because it sets the stage for all that follows.