This is the essay which I submitted to my first-ever writing contest earlier in 2010. While it won ABSOLUTELY no awards, I still stand-by it as a pretty decent piece. I'd be curious to know what other people think
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Broken Glass
Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile.
Here I am
The only living boy in New York
Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where,
And we don't know where.
--Simon and Garfunkel
Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" transports me, every time I hear it. I leave my adult life, my husband, my daughter, and fly away.
"I know that you've been eager to fly now."
I hear those words, and I am on a bus with my mother, her Simon and Garfunkel cassettes tucked in my backpack. My walkman headphones press on my ears and I listen to this song while reading The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time. I am awkward and quirky and fourteen years old.
We were on a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. In its first year, the museum drew bus-groups from up and down the east coast, and Mom and I couldn't ignore the opportunity when our synagogue, Temple Ohav Shalom, sponsored a trip.
Much of the trip was a blur; the museum itself was overwhelming in its most innocuous moments. Stepping into a cattle car that was used to transport people across Europe was one of the most horrifying moments of my life, as was seeing piles of shoes and glasses that murdered Jews left behind at concentration camps.
But I can clearly remember my fourteen-year-old self as I sat on that bus, curled up in a seat. Paul and Art sang in my ears as I read Anne's words for the first time. While the singers sang of strength and silence, Anne opened birthday gifts. She fought with her mother, her sister, her father. She felt afraid but was comforted by the endurance of a chestnut tree outside her window. She fell in love; she had her first kiss. She was me and I was her and we were the same age, separated by 50 years and the walls of a hidden apartment.
This was the first time I was able to bypass the paralyzing fear of the Holocaust, and focus instead on the humanity of its victims.
It was the first time I let go of my own fear which began when, four years earlier, the Holocaust came to New Jersey.
I was one a few Jewish kids growing up in a mostly Catholic town. I was the only Jewish kid in my grade school class. There were other Jewish kids in other grades, but when I sat at the lunch table during Passover with peanut butter and jelly on matzohs, everyone else had bread. I knew I was a little different, and to this day, I hate matzoh.
That's not to say I wasn't fully integrated into my town - I was. My best friend was Catholic, as is my father. I spent as much time in church as I did in synagogue, but I identified myself as Jewish. I liked Stars of David instead of crosses, and loved dancing to the songs on Shabbat.
Growing up Jewish in late 20th century America, you knew about the Holocaust. You knew your ancestors were killed by the train-load. You comprehended the horror of Kristal Nacht. Broken glass on a street raised the hair on your neck.
So by ten, I had a wealth of knowledge about Nazis. I knew about gas chambers, and Swastikas reduced me to tears.
I also wanted little to do with Ohav Shalom, or, particularly, Hebrew School. I already knew that Abba was Daddy and Ima was Mommy, so what more did I have to learn? A fear of public speaking made me dread my looming Bat Mitzvah. Plus, none of my friends from regular school were Jewish, and while most of them went to CCD, they got to do that together. I had to spend my time with girls with whom I had nothing in common, and one particular boy who made my skin crawl.
Greg. His name was Greg and as I remember it, he was mean. Vicious. He was overweight, and I was under, so he outweighed me by fifty pounds. Light brown hair, light eyes, freckles, he looked more Irish than Jewish. But he was there at Hebrew School, every Tuesday and Thursday, same times as me. And he was mean.
The number of days my mother found me on the back steps of the synagogue, in tears and with new bruises on my arms, increased instead of decreased after she talked to our Rabbi's wife. No one could make him stop. I don't remember antagonzing him, but I remember him punching my arms and shoving me into walls.
And those walls were hard.
While the upstairs of our Synagogue was beautiful, with tall glass doors and windows, and yellow bricks that shone like gold in the sun, Hebrew School lived in the basement. Cinderblock walls, painted vomit-yellow, were only occasionally hidden by the artwork created by our small hands. Bulletin boards were covered with cheery Hebrew Alephs and Bets, but there were no windows letting in the late afternoon light. It was a dreary place, unimproved by my weekly beatings.
That said, it was our space, familiar as it was dreaded. It was a home to all us Jewish kids.
One day, when I was ten and my brother Daniel and I were home by ourselves, our mother called. Daniel answered. He was thirteen and in charge of me when no one else was home.
"Hi....no....really? What? Oh, ok...sure, I'll go...no, Grandmom's around, she'll stay here."
When he hung up the phone, I knew that "she" meant me. I didn't want to be left behind with my grandmother, so I tackled my big brother.
"No, you can't go anywhere without me. I'm going. I'm gooooooooiiiinnnnggg."
I had no idea where I was going. I just knew Daniel couldn't go without me.
He fought valliantly, but no amount of arguing, persuading, bribing or hair-pulling could convince me to stay home. Mom's friend Sheila arrived to pick up Daniel, and I hopped in the back seat quite happily. Daniel sat up front like a grown-up, and he and Sheila spent the short drive to our synagogue chatting. I wasn't paying attention - I was too busy staring out the window at the stunning day.
I was unprepared for what I saw when the car parked and I opened the door.
The yellow bricks shone like gold in the sunshine, like always, but scattered across them like bloody wounds were red Swastikas.
Everywhere.
The tall front doors were shattered. Glass shards covered the concrete steps. They glittered like diamonds and I thought, "Wow, the streets must have been beautiful after Kristal Nacht."
At ten, I got it. I knew what was going on.
The Holocaust had come to New Jersey.
I started trembling and reached for Daniel's hand, but he and Sheila were already walking towards the building. I didn't want to be left alone so I hurried after them.
We stepped on the glass. Crunch crunch crunch. We climbed through the doors we had no need to open. The red Swastikas were everwhere; the walls bled hatred. I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't stop walking.
The foyer glittered as we stepped in. The late afternoon sun lent an eerie glory to the wall of rememberances, where synagogue members were honored with engraved gold plaques that boasted the history of hundreds of families. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Ruchelman parents; in memory of the Levines' great grandmother.
We walked through the heavy doors into the main congregation room. Chairs were scattered here and there, and red paint splattered the walls and floors.
And the Ark was destroyed, a Swastika burned across its wooden doors. The Torah scrolls, which had led us in countless songs, which only recently lay on the podium while Daniel sang his Bar Mitzvah verses, were ripped and crumpled on the floor.
I almost threw up.
I followed Daniel and Sheila through the congregation room and out the rear doors to the basement classroom stairway. I didn't want to go - I hated those stairs under the best circumstances, and now a trail of Swastikas and shattered fluorescent bulbs lead our way.
Downstairs, the cheery Hebrew letters, and pictures of smiling Jewish Avot and Imahot were slashed, torn, tattered. Their eyes and noses and ears littered the floor.
I shuddered, and Daniel noticed. His arm encircled me, and he led me out of the darkness.
I did not cry, though. Not then, even though I was convinced Nazis had invaded my hometown. Not even though I thought my mother, brothers and I would be taken to a concentration camp that night. Not even though the hatred in that temple weighed a million pounds on my ten-year-old shoulders.
I did not cry.
Outside in the waning sunshine, the press converged, newspaper reporters and photographers swarming around the parking lot. We came out through the kitchen door, and our Rabbi stood below the steps with a reporter. He gestured for us to join him.
Daniel, at thirteen, was mature, articulate, brilliant. A reporter's dream to interview - the candor of a child mixed with the intelligence of an adult.I was the younger one. Immature, with a tendency toward hyperbole. Plus I was shy. Overwhelmed. Terrified.
I was the one quoted in the next morning's newspaper.
That night, the tears came. I knew the soldiers were coming; I could hear their boots on the street. I knew we would die. Another Holocaust had started and I was its first victim.
I feared what life would be like in a concentration camp; I worried that death would hurt. I wondered if my mother would always be with me, and how my non-Jewish father would cope with the loss of his family. I was unsafe in my bed, even with Daniel sleeping in the bunk above me.
It turned out that the destruction was caused by acquaintances of Greg, my abuser. He had antagonized them and in their youth, ignorance and spite, they targeted a place that was important to him. I never imagined he cared, but then, I never saw him again. Perhaps his family moved, ashamed by the destruction their son had indirectly sparked.
But I also never went back to Hebrew School after that day. I lost my religion that sunny afternoon; I never again set a comfortable foot into the synagogue. No matter how many times the walls received fresh coats of paint, the blood-red Swastikas never faded.
That sunny spring day instilled in me a need to understand the mentality that allowed the Holocaust to occur, the hatred that caused people to kill. I've read books and watched documentaries that made me scream. I took that trip to the Holocaust Museum with my mother and watched her cry silently as we walked its silent halls. I've read and re-read Anne Frank's diary until I can recite full passages. I've seen footage of men reduced to bones, women forced to parade naked before Nazi doctors. I've tried to understand and I have not succeeded.
It's bizarre. I want my daughter to grow up aware of these things. I want her to love Anne Frank as much as I do, but I hope she doesn't mourn Anne's death with tears. I want her to know that she is Jewish, but I never want her to be afraid because of it. I want her to be aware of hatred so she is not ignorant, but I hope she is never the victim of it. I want her to learn, but be protected and safe and happy.
And I hope that one day, we can listen to Simon and Garfunkel before laying in her bed to read about Anne Frank together, and I hope she will sleep well knowing that she is safe.
