His Opinion

Some forty years ago years ago my husband called on a potential client during after-hours at the client’s factory. This man listened to my husband’s pitch patiently and then spoke.

“I see you’re Jewish,” he began, for Avraham was proudly wearing his kipah. He then began his tirade how the Jews were in a conspiracy trying to take over the world and so on and so forth. Shaken, and realizing that the two of them were alone, my spouse mumbled some sort of lukewarm reply and made his escape.

Now, four decades later, he sometimes fantasizes the reply he wishes he’d given. It would have gone something like this:

You’re right. We all get along and do have a conspiracy. We all want to take over the world. Hollywood, the banks, the press, science, you name it. I’m one of the leaders. And do you want to know what else? We’re from outer space. That’s why we wear these skullcaps. To hide our antennas.

Fantasies are fun but anti-Semitism is no joking matter. As I write these words I’m caught in time between the Torah reading of Balak this past Shabbat and the fast of the 17^th of Tammuz which will be observed on Thursday. Balak was the king of Midian who hated the Israelites enough to hire Billaam to curse them. The fast of this week marks, among other things, the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem when the Romans did their best to totally annihilate the Jewish people. In other words, the hatred of Jews is nothing new.

As old as it is, it is even more illogical. There are those who resent us because we’re rich. Others complain that we’re poor. Some complain that we keep only to ourselves and some say we’re always pushing ourselves into places we aren’t welcome. There’s the epitaph “dirty Jew” and the resentment that more of us didn’t die in the Black Plague because we were more hygienic than this rest of the world at that time.

The list goes on and on. I haven’t forgotten the criticisms of my friend in our college dorm. This was a nice girl, someone who shared her class notes with me, but she wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable to criticize Jews for going to the gas chambers like sleep to slaughter in front of me. Not did she mind condemning Israel for a retaliatory attack against terrorists.  If we’re docile they dislike us; if we fight back they dislike us.

The more I learn history and study life I’ve become convinced that there’s little we can do to change how the anti-Semites will judge us. I’m very thankful my husband did not answer his adversary the way he later imagined.  I might have never seen him again.

However, I wish the beginning of his fantasy speech was true. I wish we all did get along. And I wish we’d worry more about how The Almighty is judging us than the anti-Semites. They hate us. He loves us. His opinion is far more important.

My novel, Growing With My Cousin, is available  on line at  http://www.feldheim.com/growing-with-my-cousin.html or https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Cousin-Ester-Katz-Silvers/dp/194635113X