Growing Up Jewish

I am a Jew, born and reared among the marsh grasses and playing fields of the South Carolina Lowcountry — Beaufort, to be exact. It was a lovely, pleasant town, if one did not look at it too closely, of waters and woods, of antebellum homes, august oaks and Spanish moss, of peaceful, introverted slums, quiet cemetaries, the old, dilapidated Ritz Cafe, rumored to have been a whorehouse, one pool room, a shoeshine boy, the old men of the town breakfasting at Harry's, neighborhoods of gable and eaves and backyard ball games and kids collecting Coca-Cola bottles and going to the store and exchanging them for gum and candy on Saturday mornings.

Like the town itself, my childhood was a pleasant, happy one — if perceived and examined superficially; if not, of course, it was a normal one, pleasant and happy on the one hand, but lonely and desperate and self-conscious on the other. It depended on mood, moment and perception.

I will tell you this: as a child old enough to ride a bike, meandering through the obstacle course of oaks and shrubs along the riverbank, my Saturday mornings were fabulous. At age 9, I ate lunch at Harry's Cafe with my best friend, C.G. Wells. We went all by ourselves; we read Kid Colt — Outlaw, Blackhawk, and the Durango Kid on the curb in front of Luther's Drug Store. We peeked in the dim, smoky pool room where the high school kids chalked up their cue sticks and yellow Rack! to the young black man. Mr. Harvey, the owner, always called us by our last names and made me feel uneasy. (He knew our mothers didn't want us hanging around there.)

There was short, squat Mr. Green, the recreation director, all business, who ran us out of the gym every Saturday morning. The talk was of air rifles and BB guns and the 12-pound bass someone's father (not mine) caught; The Great Novak hypnotized teh entire town; the Cisco Kid came to the Breeze Theater and C.G., who had saved more West End Dairly coupons than anyone else, walked across the stage and was presented, by the famous cowboy himself, with an air rifle. Cokes were seven cents, popcorn a dime and every Saturday afternoon in the theater, our ears filled with gunshots and our eyes bulged at Indians and wagon trains.

Because of the nature of my culture, my mother, a talented pianist, a den mother, one who played benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal, was, I felt, the strictest mother in town, except for perhaps Alan Goldfarb's. But his mother was crazy. (Later Alan married a gentile and his parents disowned him. For them, he existed no more; his name was unspoken in their home. My mother instructed me not to ask, "How's Alan?")

Gentile parents, however, did not suffer from worry and anxiety. They trusted their kids. They treated them, well, as they would like to have been treated. How did I know? I'll tell you: their kids smoked and drank and, for these two reasons, were popular. If you didn't smoke and drink, you were out of it. I remained on the periphery, observing the action, until I could stand it no more. Once I lit up and drank my first half pint of Jim Beam, my ratings soared. By the time I entered college, a small Southern college, I was the most popular kid on the campus.

I was born in 1044, oblivious throughout my childhood, as were many small-town Southern Jews, to the screams and cries of the Holocaust victims. At what point do you tell a child who is prospering socially in a small Southern town, one whose best friends are gentiles, that on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean Jewish boys such as himself had b een systematically, without exception, betrayed and murdered; must a small child ask himself, "Could it happen to me? Here?" To have a friend one must trust; with maturity comes skepticism, and with skepticism a loss of innocence. What is the proper age?

I used to wonder why my parents told me so late — my ignorance embarrassed me then. Yet I thank them now for not telling me too early. What parent wants to disturb a happy childhood?

In high school my life changed, not because I was aware of the Holocaust, but because I wasn't. There were 40 Jewish families in Beaufort, I was Bar Mitzvahed and we had a synagogue. Still, still ... who was I?

What institutions — what culture — defined me?

All I knew, and even this notion was vague and unsettling and a source of pride all at once, was that I was different.

One entered high school in Beaufort in the 7th grade. I was terrified and fascinated and at times thrilled. What did I witness? I saw Ida Mae Outlaw (her real name) and Randi Hughes duke it out daily at recess; I saw Harvey Cox slug Billy Grambell; I heard about the quickness and artfulness of J.J. Arbinger with a knife. Kids played "split" in the alley behind the school and smoked in the Smoking Area behind the lunchroom.

Kids lived by instinct, yet any discussion of emotion was taboo; it was unheard of. Instead, you got drunk and fought or drove fast or just plain bragged. This was the '50s, and I lived in a mean town. Nobody knew what a Jew was — I was safe — but what disturbed me, without my realizing it, was that I didn't know either.

My town was physical. You were admired if you suffered the misfortune of being a male, for what you could do with your hands. In the summertime high school kids built houses, built concrete, climbed telephone poles; the best of them, certainly those we most admired, drank and screamed and fish-tailed down Highway 21, raising hell. They beat up Marines. Their dads fished and hunted and replaced broken window panes and tinkered under the hoods of their Fords and installed wiring in their basements. Their kids talked of four-barrel carbs and four-on-the-floor, of how much liquor so-and-so could hold, of what Lenny's Chevy could do around the quarter-turn, and of girls

I am speaking here of boys. Small-town Southern boys. Who defined them? Who were their examples?

Their fathers.

My problem was clear and simple: my father couldn't even change a light bulb. He was a wonderful father. I loved him very much. He was strong, sensitive, attentive, very easy to be with, a fine listener. But I am talking now about things that matter to a kid; I am talking of what counted back then, and if a father was a good father, well, that was assumed. The problem was, mine couldn't do anything. Anything that counted: hunt, fish, throw a curve, work with his hands, teach his kid to fight, drink a little beer with the boys.

He couldn't even change a flat.

Get this. In Beaufort, South Carolina, he voted for Adlai Stevenson. In 1952.

How did I handle that? I told the kids that Stevenson was a Jew. They all believed me. He did look like one, and he was smart. Jews were held in high esteem in my town!

"Still," they said, "Stevenson? We like Ike."

"But my father doesn't," I insisted, "because, well Ike is a Christian."

"So? So what? So are we."

"My father doesn't like you either. He hates all Christians. So do I. That is why we killed Jesus and drink the blood of Christian babies."

"You're going to hell, Bernie."

"It's good blood. Great blood. Careful, I may want yours..."

"No offense, Bernie, but, well, I mean, you folks in your religion..."

"Yes? Yes? I'm waiting."

"Well, Bernie, you folks in your church do not believe that Christ was the Son of God?"

This would always occur at recess. Crowds would gather. I felt as if I were Jesus, and they were anticipating my Sermon on the Mount.

"No," I would say, "we do not."

I would raise my hand like a sceptor, for quiet, and I would say: "it is our belief that Jesus Christ was an [expletive deleted]."

They flew in a thousand directions, avoiding the expected bolts of lightning. I stood on the Mount, invincible, unafraid. Nothing could happen to me. To me, after all, he was just a man.

Later, when I was a bit older and spent all of my waking hours in an attempt to become charming, I would respond this way: "Jesus Christ was a great man. He was a Jew. All Jews are great men. I am a great man."

I like that — even now I like it; it amuses me — but, well, to come right out and call Jesus Christ what I had called him at school, that was something else altogether. I will flat out tell you: to those beltless, duck-tailed, swivel-hipped rednecks, all mean, tough kids (to J.J. Arbinger even), I suddenly became everything they wanted to be: brave, foolhardy, reckless. They might fight, they might drag, they might drink, but none would dare allow themselves the thought that Christ might be an [expletive deleted].

I said it.

I was admired.

They thought I was the bravest man who ever lived. I was, and they'll tell you this to this day, legendary.

They were scared of me. I was protected by Jesus Christ. All I needed was to raise my hand and invoke his name and the entire school headed for the hills.

...

Professors searched in vain, since I was jewish, for intellectual substance, then walked awawy scratching their heads. I was a phenomenon.

A stupid Jew.

I wanted to have fun, like the gentile kids. They never worried.

Because I was a Jew, impotent in a gentile world of four-barrel carbs and girls and Daddys who shot four-tens, I had little in common with the gentiles. Because I was a Southerner — a dope, in other words, a devotee of the unexamined life, a happy idiot, one who aspired only to bliss and contentment — I had nothing in common with the Jews.

Daydreams I had; racing for a touchdown to the cheers of the town, Annie Mae Eubanks in the back seat of my father's Plymouth, crooning "Moonlight in Vermont" at Carnegie Hall. A true thought, however, never really passed through my town, and so I never became acquainted with one. I'd heard of them, and every once in a while, contemplating a blue sky under the Spanish moss and gardenias on the riverbank, C.G. and I tried to imagine what one might be like, but then we'd get lost among the smells and the fragrances and the cool feel of the grass and the friendly passersby and the reassurance of the lone rowboat that had been there for years. My guess not is that a thought was as unwelcome in my town as Godlessness.

Feeling, feeling, however, was action. And while you could hit somebody or mouth about it or fishtail down Highway 21 or get drunk or fish or hunt or build something, all of which was considered perfectly normal, the most healthy, respectable action assumed the form of sport. The whole town showed up for sports events. A Friday night high school football game was our Atlanta Symphony, Alliance Theatre and Atlanta Hawks and Falcons all rolled into one.

there was no action however, that I could handle. Where my father came from, if you worked with your hands, your neighbors avoided you. As I said, he hired carpenters to change light bulbs. I was never taught to use my fists. A Ford engine was as unfamiliar to him as the third ring of Saturn.

I had no model. A kid began with baseball, midget league; I was a kid. But their dads had spent years throwing to them, while mine listened to the Charleston Symphony on his Philco Console.

What amazed me, that first afternoon of midget league tryouts, was how hard that ball was. I'd never felt one, never held one in my hands. It felt like a rock. Then they put us — all the kids — out there on the outfield grass and the coach, whose name was Al, waved this big stick and he hit the damn thing at us. He was a coach, an adult. He was supposed to be a man you could trust. My parents had trusted him. What was happening?

I acted quickly and decisively.

"Duck!" I yelled to my teammates. "Duck!"

Suddenly the world paused on its axis and all the sunlight in heaven shone exclusively on the little league baseball field in the small Southern town of Beaufort, South Carolina.

All was silent, but for the sound of a baseball landing in the moist grass, rolling toward the outfield wall. I looked up slowly, carefully.

Not only had no one else ducked, they were all agape, their gloves mere appendages, staring at me in bewilderment, astonishment, incredulity. So was Al, his bat on his shoulder. Flies buzzed unnoticed around their mouths.

It was the first time I'd ever seen Al look uncertain. His cigar rolled and rested in the left corner of his mouth. "What the hell are you doing out there, Schein?"

"I don't know," I said truthfully.

He scratched his head, "Me neither."

George Arbinger (J.J.'s younger brother), said, "He's scared of the ball, Al."

"Oh, sure, George," I said sarcastically. "Right."

But of course I was. That sneering little jerk was right. Fear wasn't even the appropriate term. Terror. The damn thing was hard. What if it hit me in the face? Worse, my groin? It affected me with the horror of a grenade or a bomb. It made me want to run for cover.

The problem for me as a Southern male was this: could I admit to that fear? Of course not. Men were strong and silent. Men, so went the myth, backed up their words with their fists.

A fist was even more frightening than a baseball.

I could not admit any of my fears; they were considered shameful, in Beaufort, South Carolina, unmanly. And more than anything I strove to be a young man: cool, calm, not easily aroused, but once in a crisis, able to handle it without a change of expression. My mother once said, "Show me an easygoing Jew and I'll show you an ulcer." But anxiety, the handmaiden to the Jew, was anathema to the Southern male, and intensity, the source and wellspring of Jewish passion, was tiring, if not impolite, to Southern women. In this languid, green, carefree ambience, what was a Jew to do?

Hide!

Further, if emotions were shameful, one hid them not only from others, but from oneself. I not only lied to George Purvis and Al and my teammates about my fear of the ball, I lied to myself. I looked out my 6th grade window one afternoon and saw my younger brother, red-faced and frightened, being chased by a pack of bullies; the image remains to this day because the emotions I felt — guilt, embarrassment, shame, anger — were never expressed. One had to be casual, indifferent, in my town, or else wipe out the whole pack in a single blow, an equally unrealistic alternative.

Suzanne Whitesides gave me the shaft. Oh, how I loved her. How did I feel? Ugly. Desparate. Mad. Sad. How did I behave? Indifferently. I got drunk and jumped into the backseat with as many girls as I could and never knew why. Often I behaved in inexplicable ways. A kid shoplifted from my father's grocery, bragging about it in school; I behaved indifferently and a few days later was depressed, but couldn't figure out why.

Often, in my adolescence, I found myself depressed, not knowing why.

It was because I didn't know who I was.

That's the problem with growing up Jewish in the small-town South.