I am not an anti-Semite. But I did learn how to be one in school. Catholic school, that is, which I attended for first, second, and third grade, in that order.
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\nI was reminded of this by a conversation with a cousin-in-law who had similar experiences. We exchanged our Catholic school stories at the recent Easter gathering. He was enjoying this exchange because his experience has been that people have not believed what he tells them about Catholic school, as it all seems so extreme. It is true that many Catholic school stories do sound unbelievable, or at least, they sound like jokes, and those of you who were either not Catholic school students or who went to some strange progressive Catholic school may just find these things too outlandish to believe.<\/p>\n
Some of these stories even sounded like jokes when they first happened. I remember this: The first day of class, and Sister Maria Cantelopes (the names are slightly changed to protect … me) saunters in front of the room. She is holding a brand new pointer. In case you don’t know, a pointer is a round, tapered wooden stick about a meter long with a metal ring on the fatter end (for hanging it) and a rubber tip on the other, thinner end (for pointing). She holds the pointer up for all to see.<\/p>\n
“See this?” she shouts. The room falls silent.<\/p>\n
“This is my new pointer. I get a new pointer at the beginning of every new school year. Do you know why I get a new pointer at the beginning of every new school year?”<\/p>\n
Silence. But you can smell the fear.<\/p>\n
“Because at the end of the school year …” And whoosh, a second pointer, apparently hidden among the folds of her long black habit (a habit is a nun suit) comes flying up and is now held aloft in her other hand.<\/p>\n
She’s standing there like Moses with the tablets.<\/p>\n
“Because at the end of the school year THIS is what my pointer looks like.”<\/p>\n
The pointer is taped at several points along its shaft. Apparently, this pointer has been broken multiple times and repaired with blue tape that looks kinda like duct tape.<\/p>\n
Sister Maria Cantelopes turned at that moment towards student Derick Smith. “Derick!”<\/p>\n
The boy jumps a little and starts twitching.<\/p>\n
“Tell the new students what I do with the pointer.”<\/p>\n
Derick mumbles something we can’t hear.<\/p>\n
“ENUNCIATE!”<\/p>\n
Derick jumps again. And says more clearly “It is for knuckle rapping, sister. If you’re bad.”<\/p>\n
WHACK! <\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n The old taped up pointer is wielded with great skill and slams down on Derick’s desk right between his hands, which he has already placed palm down on the desktop in a seemingly subconscious effort to supplicate himself to the sister. The pointer does not hit him, but it does break in half.<\/p>\n “Usually, I do this across the knuckles, not in between them. And sometimes your knuckles break the pointer. Then, I might get mad at you. Don’t make me mad at you.” Sister Maria Cantelopes already seems pretty mad, but we all stare at our desktops and subconsciously sit on our hands.<\/p>\n Now, I assumed at the time that Sister Maria Cantelopes was bluffing. “This is all a big joke,” I thought. I was not frightened of this nun as the other students were because I had about 20 nuns in my own family … two Black Franciscans and an entire flock of Charities. (Charities are the “flying” nuns, thus I use the term “flock.”) I had seen their dark humor at work from the inside. Sister Maria Cantelopes was pretty impressive, but I was not that impressed.<\/p>\n But then about two days later, I was proven quite wrong. Derick, who was left over from the previous year, did something wrong … I could not say what …. and WHACK<\/em><\/strong>! … He got it right across the knuckles. The pointer broke and everything. We all had to wait to resume the lesson that had been under way so that Sister Maria Cantelopes could tape up her stick. I noticed that she broke off the far end of the stick. Good move. If you broke off the near end it would not be as effective of a … tool … for subsequent whacks. Sister Maria Cantelopes was a real pro. Outstanding aim, too.<\/p>\n But I’ve digressed even farther than usual. Back to the point of this post…<\/p>\n The anti-Semite training was only a small part of the broad range of negative experiences, but it is was especially memorable because it was so damn insidious. When I was a kid, up through third grade, almost everyone I knew, and in particular, everyone on my block or nearby seemed to be Christian, about half Catholic and half “Protestant.” There was a Baptist church nearby but no one ever seemed to go there. We assumed that no one went there because it was haunted (this church is actually written up in some of those books that describe haunted houses and such). We never saw actual Baptists. But the main point here is that we never ever saw, or at least never talked about, any Jews. In first and second grade, the closest thing I had ever seen to a Jew was the Taoist woman who lived over our backyard fence, and that was not very close.<\/p>\n So the nuns told us about the Jews. They told us that the Jews had killed our god. They told us that the Jews had been payed off to vote for the execution of Jesus Christ (god) instead of some other guy. They told us that when the apostles did something wrong, like denying Christ, it was because they were reverting to their Jewish nature. We were told how to recognize Jews, and that we should avoid them. Most interestingly, and most unbelievably, but I swear to you on a stack of …. whatever … that we were told this in first grade, we were told to never watch a Jewish ceremony because if we, as Baptized Catholics, ever saw a Jewish Ceremony we would turn into a skeleton on the spot. These nuns had anticipated the end of every Indiana Jones movie to be made decades later.<\/p>\n Now, here’s an interesting story. From my house, you could go down the block and turn right, and walk to the firehouse, and turn left, and you’d be on Federal street. If you moseyed on down to the end of Federal street, just past Billy Casper’s house (he lived on the right side of the road, and he had chickens and dogs) you’d get to the end of the street where there was a square fronted brick building with a fancy set of steps leading up to a big door, and over the door was a big star. We assumed that this was an old no longer used Marshals office. The Marshal, or the Sheriff, would have worked here keeping everyone in the town safe from bad guys, and so on and so forth. Here … to this set of steps on the front of this building … was where my friends and I would often go to play “Cowboys and Indians” (yes, this was some time ago) and whoever got to be the Marshall .. well, this was their office.<\/p>\n I imagine you’ve guessed by now that this was not the Marshall’s office at all. It was, in fact, the old Temple. This street … Federal street … and nearby Summit and Delaware Avenues were part of a Jewish Enclave. But during the 1950s a new neighborhood sprang up starting only one block away, and most of the Jews who lived in this neighborhood moved to newer, and nicer houses over there. The beginning of this new neighborhood was on the other side of this building, and indeed, there was a large temple built there, with the back, now offices and storage where the main temple once was, now faced the old street and the new front of the temple faced the newly built street with the nice houses. Even though the building was right there, entrance and egress, and the parking lot, were located in another neighborhood.<\/p>\n Over time, of course, I did figure out that some of my neighbors actually were Jewish. One of my favorite people in the neighborhood was Morris Marachni, who owned the hardware store. I learned that Morris was not only Jewish, but that he had escaped from a concentration camp. He was later sponsored for immigration to the US by Mr. Bryn. Mr. Bryn owned the clothing store next to Morris’ hardware store. Mr. Bryn was also Jewish. And so on and so forth. Lots of my neighbors were Jewish, but they never made much of that, and this was never noted in my house, and the nuns and priests did not seem to be very much a part of the neighborhood … they kept to themselves in the convent and parish house, next to the church and by the school they taught in. So they were not out there with us pointing out the Jews so we could avoid them.<\/p>\n In third grade, even though I was in Catholic school, I had a “lay” teacher (a non-nun, as it were), Mrs. Brennan. Mrs. Brennan noticed something about me: I could read as well as anyone, herself included. Oh, and the math we were learning … I could do it all in my head and did not need any instructions from her. Oh, and the science was totally nailed down. You see, in those days, there were not too many books for kids like there are now, so I read all my brother’s books, and he was in high school, and all his books were high school textbooks. And, I was just a smart kid.<\/p>\n So Mrs. Brennan suggested that I be tested, and I was, and they pulled me out of the Catholic school and sent me to a special class in a different school where everybody else was also really smart.<\/p>\n And half the kids in that class were Jewish. And that was the beginning of my long and productive, interesting and instructive, daring and never regretted engagement with my new Jewish community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am not an anti-Semite. But I did learn how to be one in school. Catholic school, that is, which I attended for first, second, and third grade, in that order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6QX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}