Who
Am I?
By David Truskoff
04 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
What
a wonderful world. All one has to do is go to Israel and become a citizen,
get a bonus, bulldoze down someone else's house and get one built for
you for free. You need not worry about the last resident and his children
starving because God gave you the land and God is on your side All you
have to do is claim to be Jewish.
As a small boy I had to endure
the pain of not knowing who I was. My parents moved to a town in New
Jersey that was populated mostly by Catholic polish immigrants who were
brought over by the slave traders with help from the church to work
in the rubber and textile mills. They were greatly influenced by the
anti-Semitic Detroit Radio priest father Coughlin, who often referred
to the president of the United States as President Roosenfeld. At Easter
time, when the priests came around to bless the kielbassa and Ham and
get their hand out, Polish kids threw rocks at me
because I killed Jesus.
At school we had to start
the day by taking turns reading from the bible. The teacher always gave
me the same page to read from. "The ungodly are not so, They are
like the chaff that the wind driveth away." I could feel her eyes
burning in my back.
My father's family in the
old country were non-practicing Russian Orthodox and my mother's family
Orthodox Jews. Neither of my parents were religious, although my mother
did keep a set of kosher dishes for family visits.
I have never been a member
of any church or temple, and I was astounded years later when I was
in Israel to listen to the debates over who is or is not a Jew. I remember
when I asked my mother. "Mom, am I a Jew?" Her answer was
always the same. "I am a Jew so therefor you are a Jew. That's
all there is to it." "But if you don't come from Jewland and
you call the rabies gonifs how can you be a Jew?" My mother never
called herself a Jew. She said she was an American of Russian Yiddish
descent. That didn't help me because then Yiddish was a derogatory word
like the infamous N word.
It was all so confusing.
If your family came from Ireland you were an Irish American. If they
came from Italy you were an Italian American. My parents came from Russia
so how come I was a Jewish American. I didn't mind being a Jewish American
and I still don't.
Israeli Law of Return is
not a law at all because it still defies definition. Russian is a second
language in Israel and most of those who speak it are not religious
Jews and many do not call themselves Jews at all. Wikipedia includes
the following paragraph "the registering of "nationality"
on Israeli Teudat Zehut ("identity card"). This is also controlled
by the Ministry of the Interior, which has generally only registered
as a "Jew" those who meet the traditional definition according
to the (Orthodox) Chief Rabbinate. However, in a small number of cases
the secular Supreme Court of Israel has forced the ministry to register
as Jews individuals who did not meet that definition." WHAT?
Uri Avnery said, "Anyone
who calls himself a Jew is a Jew." WHAT? My wife insists that Jewish
means religion and genetics has nothing to do with it. It is an important
subject because those who blindly support Israeli aggression do so because
they feel if there is no "Jewland" i.e. Israel and they do
not belong to any religious group they are faced with the same dilemma
I had.
That is forever asking the
question, who am I? To them Jewish is not religious, not political,
but simply a nationality.
I solved it long ago with
the help of Avnery. When I brought him to America for a book tour, my
mother was already too sick to talk to him, but he taught me to separate
Zionism, religion, and the awful Israeli politics from my mother's beautiful
Yiddish culture and I am free to oppose the madness of greater Israel.
David Truskoff
www.erols.com/suttonbear
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