Prejudice...My Mom's Secret War

Mom as a child.

My Mother had a secret war. She didn't take it to the streets, or join with others to wage it. In her heart she held beliefs that were mightily opposed to the popular opinion of her time. She taught me that African Americans were not N****s, as the neighbors said. They were "colored people, or Negroes". They were people like us. But she taught these things quietly, as if fearing someone would overhear.

The most powerful, long-lasting oppression she held within her was the oppression of Anti-Semitism. She falsified her applications for work after she quit high school because they asked for her religion. She wrote, "Protestant", instead.  In one of her first jobs she was routinely called the "Jew Girl". This she wanted to avoid in the future. When I was small, she counseled me to never tell anyone I was half Jewish. We lived in a second-generation Roman Catholic neighborhood in Willowick, Ohio. I told, anyway. I thought, if they like me, and they know I am half Jewish, won't they change their minds? They didn't.

Later on I sang as a professional in many synagogues both in Cleveland and Alexandria. Park Synagogue in Cleveland accepted me in an all Jewish professional choir, but asked me to pretend that I was a practicing Jew (!). I enjoyed being immersed in the Jewish tradition every year for the High Holy Days. It gave me so much contact with that "other" half of my family roots. Mom was already a Christian convert.

In her seventies, Mom still kept her feelings to herself, not wanting to offend. At a social occasion, attending with her dear, Lutheran, second husband, Gordon, a woman ranted about the Jews. Mom told me about it afterwards. "Mom, did you say anything?!", I asked. "No. I didn't want to embarrass her", she replied. I felt as if this war of hers was lost. She still couldn't reclaim her own sense of identity, self-worth, and voice.

My mother lived her whole life in a state of inner war. One force was her shame that, as a Jew, she felt unworthy in the larger culture. The other was her outrage against prejudice in any form.

When Barak Obama ran for president she was ecstatic. Never mind that she always called him, "My boy" when she saw him on TV (the irony was lost on her--I chuckled privately). She was over the moon when he was elected. In a way, it was her revenge for years of mental oppression. As a Jew who was born in the twenties, she identified with the struggle of Black people in America.

But even though she lit a Yahrzeit candle every May for my Grandmother, she told only me. It was her secret that she had a Jewish heritage and was born to the "chosen people".

I applaud and celebrate the amazing decisions of the Supreme Court for both Blacks and LGBT folk. My mother would have been thrilled about the recent decision. I only wish she could have spoken out for herself.