The Summer I Tried to be Jewish

© 1999 All Rights Reserved........By Margaret Karmazin

I was turning dangerous at Youth Fellowship. As president, I was expected to lead the Sunday evening meetings in the usual don't-rock-the-boat manner with a short reading from the Bible and a few reassuring words to follow. Instead, I decided to educate my flock about religions other then their own. Over several weeks, they heard about Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and more. In my youthful egotism, I imagined I was raising their consciousness and maybe I was. But the minister was upset. Behind my back, there were whispered exchanges with parents, my own and others and they were all relieved when I ‘stepped down' voluntarily.

The trouble was, winds were stirring in my psyche. I sensed distant lands, exotic peoples riding on camels, dark eyes flashing. I heard temple bells, dancers clicking their fingers, priests in orange robes chanting. The chancel of the Methodist church, filled as it was with powdered, flabby armed ladies sitting bent necked over hymnals, forcing their overheated husbands to suffer through long winded sermons was far, oh so far, from my idea of God, Life and Adventure that it made me wince.

Even the boy I occasionally dated disgusted me with his so obvious Teutonic ethnicity. Those rosy cheeks, those pale eyes, his white, fumbling fingers as he tried to sneak under my clothes, pretending it was accidental, like I'm supposed to believe he had, perhaps, spastic attacks, each one ending with his hand further up my leg. It made me sick.

Two streets over, there lived a boy who had thick, dark hair and brown, close together, intelligent eyes. His nose was aquiline, his cheeks olive flushed with dark salmon. At night as I French kissed my pillow until it was damp, it was he I pictured sneaking up on my body, not the pale boy my mother wanted me to like, a son of her friend from College Club. Every night I fell asleep unbearably excited.

This boy was a Jew. I found out one day when I asked my friend, Sandy, "Is Mark Italian or what?"

"Hell no," said Sandy. "He's Jewish. Don't you remember when he had his Bar Mitzvah?"

"When?"

"We were in seventh grade. My parents were invited. Weren't yours?"

"Why would my parents be invited?" I asked indignantly. "We don't even know them. So what was it like?"

"I wouldn't know. I didn't go. I think my mom said she ate like a pig."

So he was Jewish. Immediately, I imagined the Holy Land and everyone dressed in flowing, striped robes. There stood Mark, the tallest of the lot, leaning on a staff, overlooking all the land and sheep he owned. And I - my name was changed to Sarah I had long black hair tied in ropes on the sides and I wore a low cut robe that showed off my cleavage. In the background, I heard insinuating flute music. Mark turned to me and fixed me with his penetrating, dark Jewish eyes

My mother had her head in the oven, not to commit suicide (it was electric), but simply to clean it. Behind her, I was scrubbing burner pans with steel wool. Suddenly I said, "I don't believe Jesus was the Son of God anymore. I don't think He died for our sins. I don't believe any of it."

Mother hit her head on the oven as she backed out of it about a hundred miles an hour. Her voice took on the sharp edge of hysteria it so often had. "What did you say? Oh my God, oh my God, my daughter is going to hell! To hell, Janice, that's where you'll be going!"

I remained maddeningly calm. "Do Jews go to hell? They don't believe Jesus is the Son of God and died for their sins."

Mother had on her beady-eyed pursed lipped, why-are-you-trying-to-kill-me look. "You're not a Jew! God makes an exception for them, but not for you! You've been raised a Christian and for you to go to Heaven, you have to accept Christ!"

This sounded extremely illogical to me, as did pretty much everything else about Christianity these days. "But why would God let the Jews get away with stuff we can't? And if He does that, why aren't Buddhists allowed to get away with the same stuff? Who wrote these rules down?"

She broke into loud sobbing. "What have I done to deserve this?" she wailed, eyes rolling, under chin wobbling. Not an attractive sight for the conversion of the heathen. More than ever, I longed for the refreshing view of the firm, young, Jewish flesh of Mark.

Coldly, I said, "If God is merciful, He would hardly send me to hell for sharing the beliefs of millions of others on this planet. For that matter, if He is merciful as the church so often claims he is, He would never send anyone to hell!" Then I turned my back and strode with dignity from the room. I heard my mother weeping as I stomped up the stairs.

Sandy spent the night at my house and I talked her into walking with me three times past Mark's house. One time, I saw a curtain move in the window and assumed it was he, possibly admiring my budding breasts and shining Protestant hair. I knew no one to introduce us. He was to be a senior and I a junior and none of my friends hung out with his. Besides, I was hideously shy with boys.

Never mind, I decided I must prepare for the future meeting, indeed for our future together and so I prevailed upon my brother, whose best friend was Jewish. "Best Brother on Earth," I hailed him, "I need the help of Matt's mother. She likes me, right? So maybe she'll do what I want."

"Which is?" Greg asked.

"I want her to each me how to be Jewish."

"Are you nuts?" Greg asked. "Matt hates it."

"I don't care what that runt hates or loves, " I replied. "Just see if his mother will do it." With a heavy sigh, Greg picked up the phone.

Two days later, I walked briskly to Mrs. Cohen's house where she awaited me with several books, a plate of applesauce bread, and an inscrutable smile. Before we got down to business, I was forced to admire some medal her oldest son had won for swimming. But soon she was facing me on the sofa, opening her books and beginning on all the rules a Jewish household was supposed to follow.

After a few minutes, I broke in. "But I saw you eat cheesecake after Travelogue and you'd already had some of my mother's pate crackers. That was dairy and meat."

"Well, I'm Reformed," she explained. "We're a bit lax on the kosher rules."

" I'll be Reformed too," I said briskly. "So what do I have to do to become Jewish? Memorize all this stuff or what?"

She suppressed a chuckle. "Maybe we should go over some stories in the Torah. I think you'll find them interesting."

I listened politely. I'd had a thorough Bible education in Methodist Sunday school and already knew most of the tales. But it was pleasant to sit there on the occasional afternoon and soak in Mrs. Cohen's kind hospitality, yummy home baked treats and gentle lecturing. What she had in mind, I did not suspect. It never occurred to me that she might not choose to go against my parents' own religious control of me and that possibly she was in communication with my mother on the subject.

School reconvened and I excitedly returned in my new clothes, gawking about to find Mark, but only catching rare glimpses of him as the wild crowd barged through the halls at change of class. Through some complicated grapevine work, I determined that Mark did not have a girlfriend and that he was planning on becoming a research scientist in the future. Immediately, I signed up for the Biology Club and waited on pins and needles for the first meeting.

"Biology Club is totally boring," Sandy told me. "Mostly, they just sit there and yap while Mr. Cooper stands in the hall flirting with Miss McDonald. I think one time they took a 'field trip' to the football field to look at some dumb kind of grass. Another time they looked at slides of hair. That's about it."

"I don't care," I said. "I won't be there for science."

Sure enough, he was present. I was so lovesick just watching him that I thought I might throw up. My mouth was so dry it was sticking together and I feared it would suck my teeth out when I tried to open it. I slipped into a seat in the back.

"Why, it's Miss Cline! A budding new biologist in our midst! Why don't you come up here closer and join the rest of us?" Oh no, it was Mr. Cooper in his facetious mood. He was either in a mean, sarcastic mood or in this one. I hated them both. Meekly, I approached the group.

"SIT DOWN!" he bellowed and the only free chair was next to my god and master, the source of all my hopes and pain. Without glancing in Mark's direction, I lowered myself into the chair next to him.

I didn't hear a word Mr. Cooper said for the rest of the meeting except for something about going to see the slide show on insects soon to be given at the junior high by the local chapter of University Women of which my mother's club was a branch.

As we rose to leave at the end, I heard Mark's voice for the first time. He said, "Don't you live near me?" and he was definitely speaking to me since there was no one else left in the row.

I squeaked, then found my tongue. "Uh, I believe so. I mean, I think so. I live on Glenview."

"Right," he said. "I'm on Northmont. I think I've seen you walk by or something."

God, how embarrassing. My God. "Um maybe," I managed to reply. "My girlfriend lives on Center and I have to pass by to get to her house." There, that covered it.

"Oh," he said.

Up close, he wasn't as godlike as I'd imagined. He had a big, shiny zit on his forehead right over his nose. It kind of glowed and looked ready to pop. In addition, he had a prominent Adam's apple that jerked up and down when he talked. But I was willing to overlook such trivial faults and still found his beautiful, thick dark hair enough to live on for the time being. 'See you later," he said as he turned down the hall to the right and I turned to the left.

I was thrilled, for the most part. Although that night, for once, I didn't maul the pillow and just fell right to sleep.

The next meeting with Mrs. Cohen brought a disturbing philosophical dilemma. We came to a passage in the Old Testament I still insisted on calling it that about a woman who committed adultery. The people took her to the outskirts of town and, on authority from the bigwigs, stoned her to death. Mrs. Cohen read this quite calmly, as if it were par for the course. I was shocked by her attitude. Was this supposed to be okay?

"It's the Law," she stated matter-of-factly.

"The law!" I said indignantly. "Who would make a dumb law like that? What about the man? It took two to tango, didn't it?"

"Nevertheless, that's our way," she insisted.

"But-but in the New Testament, the same thing happens. They take this woman out to stone her and Jesus comes along and says, 'Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone '"

There was a long pause while we looked at each other. Simply and quietly, Mrs. Cohen said, "That's the difference between my religion and yours."

We both knew the lessons were over. Later it would occur to me that Mrs. Cohen and my mother would congratulate themselves on how well they had handled me.

Mark turned out to be a normal person, reasonably nice, a bit nerdy, who occasionally had bad breath and rather hideous acne outbreaks and I lost all interest in the Holy Land.

I last heard he is a podiatrist and on his second wife, a shiksa with a sister who's a nun. I went on to fall in love with a Chinese guy, after which I dated a Jordanian, a Puerto Rican and a bad humored Swede. Eventually, I married a man of Scotch-Irish descent who was raised Methodist. We both scorn organized religion and meditate once a day.

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