A couple of mornings ago, while waiting for the infamous A-train to take me to Harlem before boarding the cross-town bus to the Metro North station, I noticed a woman looking staring at an open, slightly worn out book, thick but small. My intuition told me that it was the Torah and she was a Jew reciting passages. I walked behind her and confirmed the Hebrew written on the pages, and at the same time I noticed her lips were moving rapidly.
The Yeshiva University of New York is a few blocks east of there, though her association with it might not be so obvious. Still, there are lots of Jews in Washington Heights, according to the pianist. She herself isn't a practicing Jew; often she doesn't even know what people do. Most Russian Jews aren't very religious; after all, they did emigrate from an ultra-secularist country that didn't have much patience for any religion.
Nevertheless, ever since we started dating, I have become even more aware of Jews around me. Jews have played a very curious role in my life in this country. Before I came here I didn't even know they existed. And as I grew up, I guess I heard about the Holocaust, and you can't escape the remembrance of the Holocaust if you are go to school in New York City. I have no connection to it and didn't understand why I needed to know it more than other destructive events in history. Most of my teachers were Jews, though one time I remember hearing teacher grumbling about how silly it was that some people "even considered Jews a separate race." Whether its Jewishness or Anti-Semitism, I never got away from Jews. And living in Sheepshead Bay means it's impossible since it was swelling with Russian Jews as the next neighborhood, Brighton Beach, was bursting at the seams with Russian Jews. Most of my junior high school classmates were Jews. I even started learning Russian then because of a Russian (Jewish) girl.
In high school I had a crush on two Jewish girls. One didn't care for me much, and she was very religious, and in retrospect, she was very Jewish not only in terms of culture, but also in terms of physical look. The intenseness of the curliness of her hair was matched only by the fervor of her religion. Later I learned (from that other Jewish girl) that she went to live in Israel and got married, though it's not clear to me if she got married while living in Israel. Her name was Rena, and now I can even write it in Hebrew. How crazy is life?
Besides the exposure to so many Jews, the other important role Jews played in my life is galvanization of my pro-Palestinian sentiments. There isn't really an obvious connection, but my political stance in the matter is greatly influenced by my upbringing in a very pro-Jewish environment. I've always had a liking for Jews, even though I didn't really understand their culture much, and what the fuss had been about all these thousands of years. I mean, for a long time I didn't understand why they were so hated, so persecuted. They seem to do fine in New York.
My connection to them also had an element of commonality in the immigrant experience. One day some gentile told me that the Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia are sort of like the Jews of Europe. The Chinese have had a long history of living among themselves in these foreign countries, and many have had jobs in commerce, like the Jews, and like the Jews, they valued education and grabbing on the best parts of society possible. And like the Jews, they often became targets of anger from the host nations when things went bad.
This idea was further reinforced from a long conversation with the pianist, who told me a little more about the pogroms in Russia where mobs would go about killing Jews and destroying their homes. And as she was telling me this, and expressing her thoughts after much analysis of what had been happening to her people, I felt an even greater bond with the Jews.
And so it should seem a little strange that I would side with the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. But of course, to draw that conclusion is to fall in the trap that Pro-Israelis always lay: to be on the side of the Jews you must be on the side of Israel, for Israel's existence is linked to the continued existence of the Jews. Anti-Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. That's obviously a pathetic argument that I don't subscribe to. I believe that the Jewish people deserve a land of their own free from persecution by any hosting nation. But what strikes me as incredibly difficult to understand is how a people who have suffered so much would feel righteous, even vindictive, to exact a similar kind of suffering on its own neighbors. Politics in the Middle-East is complicated, but in the end, I still can't understand how you can build a wall around a people, caging them in, in the same way the Germans and the Russians and all the Europeans who had built walls around the ghettos. To side with the Jews is to side with struggle against oppression, to draw from the suffering history of an incredibly resilient people and apply it to today, including, and especially in, the case where the Jews are the ones with better weapons, the ones calling themselves the hosts.
This entry isn't about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It's about this girl I saw on the subway platform. She had curly hazel hair, very pale but not sickly white skin, and a face very serene, a serenity I often identify with Jewish women. It is one of the reasons I like the pianist so much. Since the first time I saw her, and every time thereafter, I saw a very kind person whose kindness I associate somehow with Jewish women. And in many ways she is very kind to everyone, and extremely kind to me. I don't know if it's because she likes me a lot or she is just naturally kind. When I saw this woman with the Torah and her lips reciting some passage repeatedly, I felt a sense of warmth knowing how fortunate I was to have a wonderful Jewish woman in my life. I don't know for how long, but already the footprints she has been leaving behind in the dense forest of my heart will always remain warm reminders of my fortune.
We know very little about each other, of course. But her Jewishness was very important in our initial connection. After all these years of being with Jews for different reasons, it seems amazing but also obvious that I would end up at some point with a Jewish woman who though very secular is very proud of her Jewish culture. She is also very proud of Israel and, as she said, would defend it against any arguments. That's a part we haven't explored. I don't know if she knows about my very fervent stance with the Palestinians, but we haven't made the right connection to start expiring that. However, she has opened up my eyes to Israel, to a young country with one of the oldest histories in the world, if you can understand the paradox.
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