Anti-Semitism
I live in Utah and as a result, growing up I was not exposed to Jewish people. My mother was involved in the civil rights movement though. My mother is ex-Mormon of pioneer stock and so we were always outsiders in our community in Salt Lake City, as a result we had a good deal of experience in dealing with discrimination. Finally one morning in Jr. High School a friend in my first period class "Sharon Pollock" told me she was Jewish.
She looked like she could grow up to look like Barbara Streisand but I didn't know Barbara Streisand was Jewish. I think my mother had been so concerned with the plight of Blacks, I hadn't been aware of Jewish people.
Human evil but still, as a side note to the Black situation. I told Sharon, "Really?"Cool" And we went on being friends, with me goin I knew the horror of the Nazis and I thought it was another manifestation og home telling my mother that, "I now I have a Jewish friend as well as a Catholic friend." There were no brown or black people in the school so that was about as diverse as it got. Years later when I was dating my future husband, he played his Shelly Berman record for me and I thought it was great. I figured, with a first name like Shelly the man would have needed a sense of humor. My husband said he thought it was maybe a Jewish thing. I said, "He's Jewish?" My husband said, "Well, yea." I asked, how did he know and he asked, how could I not know? The voice, the name? I had never learned the rules, I was Jewish blind.
Many years later again, my daughter was working at an unpleasant job to help earn her way through college. It was customer support for the Quaker Oats account that was subbed by a local company. She would come home and tell me about the horrible New York Jewish woman who call and scream "Is this kosher?" Then they would use terms that my daughter had never heard before because they have to do with Jewish customs having to do with food. They would harangue her because she had to have them explained. These women were rude and seemed to think the world and my daughter owed them something. I would remind her of Sharon Pollack and tell her, "They can't all be that way." I look at what happened to the Iraqi Shiite people at the hands of the Iraqi Bath party people and wonder where the holocaust survivors were when their fellow human beings were enduring what they had at the hands of the Nazis. I go and see the movie "The Passion" and wonder why the Jewish people aren't pointing out the parallel. Instead they are dragging phony authorities out to lie about what went on at that time. I know what they say isn't true. For instance, what was the Apostle Paul doing when he became a Christian and why did he go to Rome? It seems to me that the seeding and fuelling of anti-Semitism is coming directly from the radical faction of the Jewish community and not from the likes of me or Mel Gibson.
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