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January 1939 Atlantic Monthly
"'Mother,' I said quietly, 'remember the greatest Man who ever lived was a Jew – Jesus.' That held her for a minute. 'Yes,' she murmured, 'it is the great paradox.'" by Anonymous I Married a JewI.
My husband's father and mother are Jews. My parents are both what Mr. Hitler would be pleased to call 'Aryan' Germans. I am an American-born girl, and the first to defend my Americanism in an argument; yet so strong are family ties, and the memory of a happy thirteen-month sojourn in the Vaterland a few years ago, that I frequently find myself trying to see things from the Nazis' point of view and to had excuses for the things they do—to the dismay of our liberal-minded friends and the hurt confusion of my husband. Here we are then, Ben and I, a Jew and a German-American, married for four years, supremely happy, with a three-year-old son who has his father's quick brown eyes and my yellow hair. Ours was a fervent love match, made more fervent by the fact that we had to wait in secret for two years until Ben earned enough at his profession to support a family. He had known other girls and, as I was twenty-five before we married, I had had my share of other men's attention. Consequently our marriage was not the hasty, impassioned leap of two people soaring on the Icarian wings of a first love. That which was between us was calm as the night, deep as the sea; in the light of it we both knew that forever afterwards he would look upon other women, and I upon other men, as pale wraiths. We determined that no obstacle should prevent our union, and obstacles there were a-plenty as soon as our families learned our intention. 'Child,' entreated my mother, who deep in her heart had always hoped that what she referred to as my superior intelligence, careful upbringing, talents, and attractiveness, would land me a husband well up in the social levels, ‘bethink yourself what this means. Married to it Jew, you will be barred from certain circles. They can say what they like shout Germany, but democratic America is far from wholeheartedly accepting the Jews. Remember that Ben couldn't join a fraternity at his university. Remember there are clubs and resorts and residential districts that bar Jews. Remember there are a dozen other less tangible discriminations against them.' 'That makes not it whit of difference, to me,' I stubbornly maintained. 'I love Ben. I'd marry him if he were a Hottentot.' 'But, child, remember the racial and religious differences between you. Remember that your children will be pulled in two different directions.' Ben's mother and father attend an orthodox synagogue, observe the dietary rules and all the ritual holy days. Ben, however, like a large percentage of modern and intelligent young Jews, looks with affectionate tolerance on these parental habits but eschews them for himself. He goes to synagogue on Rosh Hashsna to please his mother, and during the rest of the year wavers between agnosticism and downright atheism. All this I pointed out to my mother, adding, 'Ben does not ask me to cook kosher, if that's any comfort to you. And remember that, although I love the teachings of Jesus, I belong to no sect or church. It's not as if the shadows of a priest and a rabbi stood between us.' Then my mother pulled out the oldest and bitterest chestnuts that have been hurled against the Jews accusations as old as the Roman Empire. 'The Jews are essentially an Oriental race,' she stormed, 'East is East, and Jews and Christians cannot really meet any more than Christians and Chinese. Jews are sensual, aggressive, ostentatious, cunning - that is a heritage they can never overcome. They accomplish things in business because they are shrewder than Christians and never hesitate to seize an unfair advantage. They accomplish things in science yes, but mostly windy theories like hose of Einstein and Freud. Jewish painters like Picasso and Modigliani are clever but never great. Jews in the theatre - well, you have seen what they have done to Hollywood. The moving pictures are full of sex and sensuality, and cater solely to the Jews' god, money. Has there ever been a Jew who could approach Beethoven or Raphael? Has there over…’ It must not be inferred that Mother, because of her German background, was particularly anti-Semitic. I have heard the same things from the lips of plenty of one-hundred-per-cent Americans, 'Mother,' I said quietly, 'remember the greatest Man who ever lived was a Jew—Jesus.' That held her for a minute. 'Yes,' she murmured, 'it is the great paradox.' 'And other great Jews,' I added quickly. 'Spinoza, for instance, and Epstein.' Mother looked at me a little sadly. She wasn't licked, but she was for the moment out of arguments. What Ben's mother said to him I can only conjecture, for he has never told me. 'Ben,' she most likely said, 'it grieves my old heart to have you marry a Shiksa rather than one of us. The old persecutions are rising again throughout the world. We have need, as never before, to stick to our own people and traditions.' But, loving Ben above the rest of her children, she probably also said, 'Well, then, if you love her and are sure that she is the one woman for you, you have my blessing. Above everything I want you to be happy.' Our mothers met, embraced, and promptly forgot their differences in purely feminine discussions of wedding plans (we were to be married by a civil judge to eliminate difficulties), motherly landings of their respective offspring, and the honeymoon. Once marriage loomed up as a certainty, not another word against Ben's race or religion escaped my mother's lips. She could have maintained this negative attitude and still have preserved the family peace. But gradually, as she learned to know Ben better and saw how fine he was, and how good to her daughter, there came shy words of affection and admiration. 'He's a fine young man with a great future,' I hear her tell her friends, with pride in her voice. 'The Jews make excellent husbands; so I've always maintained.' 'But,' she always adds, 'I am happy to say Ben is not at all Jewish in his make-up. He doesn't look Jewish and his ways are not Jewish, In fact, you wouldn’t think he was a Jew at all.' II.
Naturally, to our friends, the most interesting aspect of our marriage is its interracial side, I know that even now many of them, aware of my pro-German leanings, still chuckle behind our hacks; 'Well, well, our little Nazi Gertrude had to go and marry a Jew, of all people.' At, one time at another almost every one of my intimates has asked me sotto voce, ‘What is it like, living with a Jew? Is he very Jewish? Do you ever discuss the differences between you?' It was this that finally propelled me to our typewriter - to tell the world how it really is between a Jew and a Christian, since the world is evidently so intensely interested. I wish I could say that, because Ben and I have worked through to complete happiness, there is no reason why Jews and Gentiles everywhere cannot live peaceably and happily side by side. But I am afraid that this harmonious relationship can come about only when Gentiles stop being one-hundred-per-cent Gentiles and Jews one-hundred-per-cent Jews—when both sides drop their false pride of race, their hidebound, worn-out, traditions, and meet each other halfway. Yes, we discuss our differences. Our discussions are not frequent because I seldom think of Ben as being Jewish, and he seldom thinks of me as a Gentile. We are just Ben and Gertrude to each other. It is that way when you love. But when we do have discussions we fire away freely. I know that in many Christian-Jewish alliances it is thought wiser and more conducive to marital harmony to treat these differences as nonexistent, to shroud them in a veil of silence. Ben and I have always looked upon this as an unhealthy practice. To throttle a subject and make it forbidden, we think, leads to distortion and often to explosion. However, in our discussions, it is always I who must choose the more tactful way, for Ben, poor darling, still has the Jewish hypersensitivity toward all criticism of his race, for which he and his people are not to be blamed. In the beginning he couldn't take it at all, though he loudly proclaimed that he invited argument, that he wanted to learn the Christian point of view in order to understand more clearly the century-old friction between the two groups. All right, we would have at it. He would start by saying there was this and that about the Christians that he never could stomach. I would agree with him or condone the matter as the case might be, then point out a few Jewish traits that have irritated Gentiles. The moment I did that, he began to look like a crushed and visual embodiment of the 'Eli, Eli.' The least word against anything Jewish he took as a personal criticism of himself. 'Ben, dear,' I told him, 'when you attack the prevalence of crime in America, do you suppose I think that you are implying that I am myself a criminal?' It took some little time to drive this point home. But then up shot another one. Every criticism or Jewry was a vaunting of Christian superiority. 'In their hearts most Christians think of us as "dirty Jews,"' he mourned. And I had to comfort him: 'Ben, if I say the English are too smug, the Germans too clumsy and pig-headed, the French too material, does that mean that I see no good in them at all, that I call them "dirty English" or "dirty French" or "dirty Germans"?' That too, took time to penetrate. Of course we argue about religion. I have been to synagogue with him on the day when he goes, Rosh Hashana. I have found the singing, the music, and the preaching fine, and not so different from Catholic or Episcopal services. I find little difference between Catholic saints and Jewish angels, between the miracles encountered by Moses and Elijah and those by Jesus. I have admitted that I found strange, and a little comical, the presence of men in black derbies at the altar, the squeaky notes of the Shofar, or ram's horn, the continuous giggling and gossiping throughout the long services (Ben has told me you cannot expect people to keep quiet for six hours at a stretch), the absence of that reverent hush that makes the Catholic or Episcopal service inspiring. For his part, Ben finds genuflections, incense, the intricacies of the Mass, choir boys, processions, holy statues, holy water, and prayers to Christ as a divinity, equally strange, he does not understand how anybody can believe in the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. 'Well,' I parry, 'but you believe that the Jews, and nobody else, are God's chosen people. That sounds funny to us.' My personal belief, which really has no place here, is that these are symbolical rather than literal truths. To me the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth mean that the Christ consciousness can be born only in the heart that is immaculate and pure, even as 'Israel' means any and all who live in the ways of God. Ben says there may be something in that, but he does not really believe it because he is not at all sure there is a God. Again, I must tread softly when we talk about religion because, while Ben thinks it perfectly enlightened and proper to ridicule the various aspects of Christian religions, his lips clamp shut when I venture to suggest that Judaism is at least as dogmatic as Catholicism and as jealous of its own, that the Jewish church plays polities quite as much as Rome, wields an international influence equally strong, and, to an avowed agnostic like himself, should present at least as much ritual balderdash—the prohibiting of milk or butter at a meal where meat is eaten, the wearing of prayer shawls and hats by men worshipers at services, the tearful wailing of the cantor, the swaying back end forth of the worshipers at synagogue prayer. No, Ben is not a churchgoer, but instinct says that the Jewish church is of his people and as such should not be ridiculed or criticized. Like most Gentiles, I read both the Old and the Now Testament of the Bible, but neither Ben nor any of his Jewish, friends have, so far as I can ascertain, ever honored the New Testament with so much as a glance. I find much in the Old Testament to make me understand the Hebrew character, and I believe a Jew could find much in the New Testament to help him understand the Christian character, though he does not believe in the divinity of Christ, and though he may not believe that Christ ever trod this earth. Even if the New Testament were sheer fantasy, Saint Matthew and Saint Luke speak as much wisdom as Moses or Solomon.
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