Susan's Story

To read Chapter 14 of Susan's Story, click here

To read Chapter 15 of Susan's Story, click here

The following work is copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

Chapter 13. Temple Israel

 

Rash of Funerals

Each tomorrow
sees the end
of yesterday;
Friends,
vestiges
of young years
falling away,
as we plod
to the cemetery
day after day

     Rabbi Selwyn D. Ruslander’s face had the radiance of a man full of love for all descendents of Adam and Eve.  He was the reform Rabbi of Temple Israel in Dayton.  Dick and Sel had met years before when Dick went to pay his respects to the Jewish Navy Chaplain while stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Dad Rosenberg, a career officer in the regular United States Navy, had instructed his son that this was proper etiquette.  Apparently, it was a courtesy no longer frequently observed, if observed at all.  Dick said that Sel (for so we called him once we became friends), was surprised and delighted that he came to pay a call on him without having any particular problems or without wanting anything in return.  They chatted for awhile before the Rabbi pulled out a bottle of Scotch Whiskey from his desk drawer and poured for the two of them. They drank l’chaim together while continuing their conversation.

     Then Sel took Dick around to introduce him to all the other chaplains, showing him off as an exemplary specimen. Not only was Dick a naval officer but his father was also one.  Sel and his Christian colleagues seemed to think that it was a rare find among Jews.

     When we learned that this same Selwyn Ruslander was now the Rabbi at Temple Israel, we decided to attend services there on the first Friday night after settling in.  “There are three Synagogues in Dayton”, Dick informed me, “Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform but we’ll probably want to join this one.”  Indeed we did.  I still remember the impact of Sel Ruslander’s sermon.  He was talking about the social responsibility of Jews…that it wasn’t enough just to come to services or to pray or to observe the holidays….that a good Jew, in addition, needed to give of himself to the Jewish Community and to the Community at large.  We needed to do our part in making the world a better place.  “Oh, yes!  This is the Synagogue for me!”  I whispered to Dick.

     After services, that evening, we met Fay Green who had been in Dick’s confirmation class in Cleveland many years before.  Fay sang in the Temple Israel choir.  "How did you like the music?” she asked.  “Do you really want to know?”  he said, then told her that he preferred more traditional music.  Fay eagerly responded., “Oh!  Will you serve on our music committee?”  She also asked Dick and me if we would sing in the choir after first establishing the fact that we could read music.

      At the very first rehearsal I was placed with the altos.  One of them turned to me after singing a piece of music and asked, “does the director know that you’re singing an octave below the rest of us?”  From then on, I sang with the tenors.  I enjoyed being a choir member and was able to learn the Hebrew words to some prayers and the Jewish music they were set to.  In this way, another small bit was added to my Jewish education.

      We joined the Synagogue and enrolled our children in Sunday School.  While it’s true that in Philadelphia we had gone to Rabbi Chanover’s Synagogue for the High Holidays and it’s true that we attended services with our comrades in Haifa, Temple Israel’s congregation in Dayton was the first I had ever really felt a part of. I joined the Sisterhood and was almost immediately put on the Board.  As a matter of fact, I joined every Jewish Organization in the city.  Hadassah, Council of Jewish Women, B’nai B’rith, are the few I remember now.  It was a way of making friends. It was a way of keeping a Jewish connection and a connection to Israel, and it was a way of following Rabbi Ruslander’s concept that being a good Jew meant giving of self to the Jewish community as well as to the community at large.  In time I came to realize that being active in volunteer organizations had nothing to do with real friendships but I very much liked the feeling of belonging and helping.

     Sometimes I would differentiate attitudes in American Jewish suburbia from those in Israel.  Shortly after joining the Sisterhood, for instance, I attended one of their luncheons and sat at a table with friendly strangers.  Before being served, we were asked to stand for a moment of silence in memory of a member who had recently died.  When we sat down again, one of the women at my table said to me, “Oh, it was so sad.  She had just gotten wall to wall carpeting and everything….”

    One other of Rabbi Ruslander’s sermons has stuck with me all these years.  His topic was about Jews who reject Judaism even though they know nothing about it.  Those who won’t come to services, won’t join study groups, won’t participate in any way because they say they don’t believe.  “How,” he asked, “can people reject something they have never known?”  “If”, he went on, “after spending some years studying Judaism and its precepts and what it stands for, a Jew decides to reject his religion, then I can find no quarrel with him.  But what I can’t understand”, he said, “are those Jews who are completely ignorant about Judaism and have no idea what it stands for….how can they reject it?  You can’t reject something you’ve never had.”   I thought of my Philadelphia family.  His words hit me hard. 

     On May 9th, Bob Greenfield called and told me that Daddy had been asking to see me.  I called Dick, called Miriam Marks.  Dick called me.  He was on his way.  Miriam called me back.  She had found someone who would stay with the kids while I was gone.  Milton Marks, in the Travel Business, had made reservations for me.  Called Philly.  Told them I’m on the way.  On May l0th I wrote

                  “I’m hungry and cold and we’re all alone up in the clouds and I want to see my Daddy”

I spent three days in Philadelphia.  On my first day there (May 11, l956), I wrote,

                   “Felt a great deal of satisfaction being with Daddy.  He has accepted death and he talks about it and

                  I feel more comfortable than I did when I had to pretend.”

May 12, 1956 –

                 “I shall always associate the songs from “My Fair Lady” with my dying Daddy.  They borrowed the record from Louise & Bob and Mother plays it whenever Daddy’s awake and he loves it.  Uncle Harry came over (my father’s brother)  and he and Daddy cried together.  Uncle Harry kept saying, “What’ll I do when you’re gone?  What’ll I do?”

May 13, 1956 –

                 “Said goodbye to Daddy this morning.  He said, “Thank you”.  I said, “Thank YOU!  We held hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and kissed each other.  Am on plane back to Dayton now filled with memories.”

        Shortly after my return from Philadelphia I received a call from Rabbi Ruslander.  “I understand that your father is very ill”, he began. “Yes”, I said.  The Rabbi told me that he worried because sometimes when people see loved ones suffering, they cry out against God.  He recommended that I read the Book of Job and thought that I might find some answers there.  I read the Book of Job at his suggestion.  It meant little to me.  What meant a great deal to me was that he, Rabbi Ruslander was concerned about my relationship with God.  It seemed to me that here was a man who cared about all the right things.   As I remember it now, I wonder if I’ve ever cried out against God.  I don’t think I have.  I don’t believe I will.  I accept things that cannot be explained as things that cannot be explained.  I accept what is as IS without questioning. 

     We had just returned from a fourth of July outing with the children and were trying to unlock the kitchen door when we heard the telephone ringing.  It was a call from Philadelphia (I forget who) telling me that Daddy had died.  I was dry-eyed when I told the children.  Somehow, I was numb and felt nothing. 

     Up until my father’s funeral I had only been to one other and that was in Haifa when our downstairs neighbor died.  Bruno Steiner’s body was wrapped in a white shroud.  There was no coffin.  His corpse was wheeled to the grave site on a rickety gurney as his widow and the rest of us followed behind on foot.  His lifeless body was placed gently into the grave, heavy stones were placed on top of him and earth was shoveled to cover him and the burial plot.  Prayers were said, and I thought, “Ah, yes!  So this is death”, coming to terms with its reality and understanding fully the concept of  “For you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  It was shocking but it was also a relief to know and to recognize death for what it is and to connect it with life and God’s goodness for all that it saddens us and causes grief.

     The burial of my Father was completely different.  First of all, we gathered at the funeral home and viewed his body.  He was dressed in a business suit and tie.  His face had been made up and puffed out so that the old and sick Jewish face I had come to know as he suffered from the pain of cancer was now completely erased.  The charade of dignity was covering him.  This looked something like the father I had known before the disease ravaged him but I wondered,  “Why hide the last part of his life?  Why pretend it never happened?”  My sister, Peggy, could not bear to look.  She was terribly affected. 

     We rode to the cemetery in the usual line of cars with headlights indicating that it was a funeral procession.  Once there, the coffin was transported from the hearse to the grave on what must have been a Cadillac of gurneys.  There was not a squeak, not a bump, but a smooth and soundless gliding over to the grave which had a little canopy over it, as I recall.   The coffin was placed on an elevator-like contraption and as we stood there, silently, waiting for him to be buried, (Dick said he recited a quiet kaddish because he couldn’t bear the fact that nothing was being said).  The coffin was then lowered just a little bit, symbolically.  Peggy couldn’t stand it and ran away from the scene.  “Come on, let’s go”, my Mother said and we all walked from the spot, leaving my Father to the grave-site attendants.  “Death must be faced.  They’re pretending that death does not exist”, I thought, remembering the Haifa funeral.  Afterwards, we went to Louise’s and it was like a nice party.  Drinks and hor d’ouvres were served while Bob read my father’s will.

  

     Carol’s Bat Mitzva took place in November of ’56.  My Mother traveled to Dayton for the occasion.  It was the first time she had left Philadelphia since Daddy died.  My in-laws also came and possibly other family members.  Carol was so much more knowledgeable than her American Bat Mitzva classmates were.  She was also much more knowledgeable than I was.  She knew Hebrew.  She had studied Bible as a subject at school in Israel.   Recently I asked her what her memories were and she told me that Canter Russ had prepared her.  She said she had found the lessons extremely interesting.  “For instance he told me that the marks (“the tamim”) of the texts represented what used to be the high priests’ hand signals to the reader.  Only later, were they printed out as a guide.”  Carol also told me that the talk she gave filled her with a profound feeling of satisfaction…. she had worked hard to prepare it and that when she spoke she felt like an adult who had, at last, been able to say all she wanted to say from the depths of her being.  She felt euphoric about having been heard.  She said that when she went downstairs to the kiddush being given in her honor, she could feel herself slipping back into childhood again, conversation became trivial and she was disappointed.  I knew none of this.  I remember sitting in the front row at the Synagogue, feeling terribly nervous for Carol who had had a bit of stage fright before the service began (or maybe it was my own stage fright).   I didn’t understand one word of the Hebrew verses she read but I could tell that she did it well and with poise.  I don’t at all recall what she said in her talk but I do remember how proud I was of her.  I knew she had done wonderfully.  Yes, this was the way I wanted to do it….to belong to the Jewish community and raise our children as good and educated Jews.  Rabbi Ruslander spoke afterwards saying that Carol’s classmates didn’t think it fair that Carol knew Hebrew already when they had to struggle so hard to learn it.  “Maybe she should have been required to do her Bat Mitzva in French”, he joked.

    I remember preparations for the feast…..the guifillte fish, the brisket, the turkey….my mother was helping.  It was rare to find her in a kitchen but she was overseer for the cooking of kasha to accompany the brisket. ….Lilly was helping….I forget who came to eat all this food but I remember that it was delicious and that everyone was pleased and happy.  I remember that we gave a party for Carol too.  It was in our basement.  Carol had been to Bat Mitzva and Bar Mitzva parties and advised us about the kinds of food the kids liked.  We did exactly what she told us.  We wanted to do it like every one else did.   There was a DJ.  There were uncomfortable boys and girls going through with the games and jollity forced upon them.  There was a lot of noise.  Mother and I were sitting in the living room when Carol came up to complain that she wasn’t having a good time.  “Nobody is”, she observed, “they’re just pretending to be having a good time but they’re not”….”Then you go down and pretend too,” my Mother snapped, and ordered my unhappy daughter back to the basement.  Carol could not pretend.  She was always true to the self she wanted to be.  One day when she came home from school she complained, “The girls in my class talk about such unimportant things like what color nail polish they like best and I think that is so dumb”.  “I think it’s dumb too”, Betsy chimed in, “but I pretend to be interested.”  Carol considered herself to be an Israeli and she would not accept the frivolity of American life.  Perhaps she felt that doing so would be disloyal to her Israeli friends and their values. All the same, while she did not want to fit in, being an outsider seemed to make her miserable.  On another day, Carol came home from school very upset.   At lunch time she announced that she was not going back to school…EVER!  and that was that!   I continued serving lunch to her, Betsy, Dan, and Mike and sent them back to school.  I put Jon down for his nap and then said to Carol, “You are a big girl and I can’t pick you up physically and make you go to school and I don’t know how to help you solve your problems.  You must go to school.  It’s against the law not to go.  But there is a place called “The Jewish Family Guidance Center” and I’m thinking that maybe we could go there and talk to someone and learn what to do”.  Carol agreed to go with me.  I drove her down to the Center, feeling as if I was being a very good Mother.

Mrs. Eulo, ( that’s what her name sounded like.  I have no idea how to spell it), could see us though we had no appointment.  Mrs. Eulo spoke to us both, then asked if she could see Carol alone.  After what seemed to be a long time, she came out with a smiling Carol and said that she would also like to talk to me alone.  I followed her into her office and learned that, in her opinion, Carol was fine and would be fine.  “Perhaps you have problems”, Mrs. Eulo suggested, “and if we can help you with your problems, it might be possible to make things easier for Carol.”  I agreed to make an appointment to return and Mrs. Eulo became my guru.   Psychology became a new religion for me.

  

     One of the prayers we say in the morning is: “Always let a person be God-fearing privately and publicly, acknowledge the truth, speak the truth within his heart.”  At the time of Mrs. Eulo, I didn’t say Jewish prayers in the morning, but I had always wanted to “speak the truth within my heart”.  It is not always easy to recognize and acknowledge the truth, however, nor is it easy to hear the “still small voice” within oneself.   I wish I could remember the many insights Mrs. Eulo helped me attain.  One important one, as it related to Carol and me, was a coming to grips with my great need to be popular.  In addition to wanting to please God, I made great efforts to make others happy.  This was so that I might be well-liked, loved and admired by as many people as possible.  In my quest to fulfill my needs, I was putting pressure on Carol, as an extension of myself, to be in fashion and acceptable.  I thought I could teach her how and that, if she would only listen, it would be to her advantage.  I nagged her about losing weight.  I kept suggesting that she call this one or that one or that she invite this one or that one or that she say this or that and, quite naturally, the more I pushed her, the more she resisted my prodding.  I’m afraid I only made her more unhappy instead of lessening the despair she was in as had been my intention.  Possibly she sensed that I was disappointed in her, somehow.  What she had especially needed, during those initial days in Dayton, was a mother who accepted her for the person she was and who recognized the very fine qualities she did possess.  I was finally able to understand this after many sessions with Mrs. Eulo and her gentle suggestions.

     Meetings with Mrs. Eulo helped me learn many other things about myself and about dealing with those I loved.  One I remember in particular.  My Mother had given me a hand-me-down jacket.  The jacket had black buttons with gold rings inserted in the buttons.  Some of the gold rings had fallen out and were lost so that there were plain black buttons and black ones with gold.  Every time I wore the jacket, Dick would say, “Why don’t you get new buttons so they will all be alike?”  I never did.  One day, as I was leaving after an appointment, Mrs. Eulo admired my jacket.  “Oh, yes!  Here’s another thing that annoys my husband,” I said, telling her about the buttons and meaning to show her the kind of picky person Dick was.  “Yes it’s strange how different things are important to different people", she murmured as we said goodbye.

      After each meeting , I usually went over the whole conversation in my head.like a re-play….”then she said, and then I said”.  When I got to the part about the buttons, instead of replaying the conversation accurately….”Here’s another thing that annoys my husband”, I heard myself saying, “Here’s another thing I do to annoy my husband”.  I was a bit shocked, but I was also amused that it came out like that and told Mrs. Eulo about it the next time I saw her.  She pointed out that sometimes, instead of expressing our anger directly, we find round-about ways to get back at the person we are angry with.  It was an astounding bit of insight for me.  On my way home, I stopped to buy new buttons for the jacket.

     With Mrs. Eulo’s help, I was able to identify and put aside many false gods.  I began to realize how unimportant some of the social pressures that enslaved me really were.  Recently I discovered a separate piece of very thin paper tucked away into my diary of that time. On it was a prayer I had written.  My writing had been done with a light pencil and was somewhat difficult to decipher but reading the words reminded me of what I had gone through.

                      “Oh, Lord, God of the Universe

                      Sometimes I forget Thee

                      But today……nay, for several days

                      I have felt Your presence.

                      Until today, I have pushed aside

                      the reckoning I must needs have with                

                      myself and the……..  ( here the word is illegible)

                      but today it is impossible to further ignore

                      Thy power.

                      I have been a vain and silly woman

                      and I ask Thy forgiveness.                    

                      I have been more concerned

                      with preserving my beauty

                      than with increasing my goodness.

                      Today I know which of Thy gifts

                      has the most value

                      I have been yearning for material goods

                      rather than spiritual happiness.

                      until today I existed…deaf, dumb, and blind

                      from today I hope I will keep these precious oracles

                      opened as Thou hast once more opened them for me,

                      so that I may live in the power of Thy Glory.

                      I sing thanks unto Thee for Thy patience, love,

                      and understanding.”

  

     All of us had adjustment problems after settling in to our new environment.   Some were more noticeable than others.  Danny, for instance, would become upset out of all proportion when we tried to speak Hebrew at home.  I couldn’t understand it.  I tried hard to find out why it bothered him so.  Finally, he blurted out, “because I’m afraid that if I speak Hebrew I’ll forget my English.”  “But, Danny,” I said to him, “you speak English.  You have always known English”.  “But I didn’t know how to play in English”, he replied.  It was true.  In Israel, we spoke English at home but the minute the children stepped outside, Hebrew was the language they spoke with their friends.

     Though we were unaware of it at the time, Dan has told us what he suffered during those early days in America.  He felt like a foreigner and he wanted to feel like everybody else.  We did not help matters when we would introduce him to people by saying, “and this is our Sabra” (Israeli- born).

     The secretary at Temple Israel was on the phone.  “Would you and your family be interested" she asked, “in attending an inter-faith, inter-racial family camp for a weekend this summer?”   Before I even knew what it was all about, I had a YES! reaction to the question.  I learned that the camp would be held on the campus of a boarding school in Germantown, Ohio and that it was being sponsored by the Federation of Churches.  “Temple Israel has been asked to participate,” the secretary went on, “and Rabbi Ruslander hoped that your family might want to represent the synagogue.”  Apparently, there were no other members of the congregation who were interested in going and he thought it important that Temple Israel send a delegation. After talking it over, all family members decided unanimously that oh, yes! We did!

     The red brick dormitory of the school was situated in a rustic, wooded area.  Married couples roomed together in a room with bunk beds.  Children were four to a room, separated according to age and sex but not race or religion.  Betsy says she remembers rooming with a black girl who borrowed her comb.  “I remember feeling squeamish about it”, Betsy said, pretty certain that it was because of the girl’s color. 

     There were all sorts of activities planned for us: Michael distinctly remembers what he made in arts and crafts and he remembers the bird walk and the star gazing.  He feels that his ability to get along with all kinds of people stems from that time. Danny, too, recalls weekends at the camp as something important in his life.

     I remember lectures and discussions, sports and games. I remember our family standing before the group and chanting our Erev Shabbat “benching” (grace after meals) in harmony after which Dick explained what we were saying. 

     Actually, the inter-racial aspect of the gathering was far more important to me than inter-faith.  When I was a child returning from summer camp, my mother came to the station to meet me and had been driven there by our newly-hired black chauffeur. George was the first black person I had ever met.  Now, we had learned at school about how Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, and I began to sing every Steven Foster song I could think of (also learned at school), to let the driver know that I knew about his people’s suffering, to let him know that I understood.  I sang “Old Black Joe”, I sang, “My Old Kentucky Home” and I was just getting into “Carry Me Back To Old Virginia” when my mother, suddenly realized what I was doing and shushed me with a sharp “Stop that!”  From then on, I had always felt uncomfortable and unnatural with black people and tried to hide my discomfort by smiling and showing good will to all.

    At the inter-racial camp I was able to mix naturally and freely with blacks and to have many a frank and interesting discussion.  “What?  You think you have to love or like EVERY black person you meet?  Why do you think that?  I don’t”, a black librarian said to me.  The thought was astounding.

  

     In addition to whatever new concepts I gleaned at the inter-faith-inter-racial weekend, my knowledge and understanding of others was further expanded because of Dick’s work.  By now he was Vice President in charge of Dayco’s International Division and we therefore entertained many foreign guests in our home.  Among them were visitors from India.   Dick told me about them one day.  “Two of them are Jains (strict vegetarians), one is a Catholic, and one is a Zoroastrian. They’re practically starving to death.   When they order just vegetables at the hotel they get something like boiled carrots. Can we have them for dinner?”  Of course I said of course.

     I made heaps of spaghetti with an abundance of vegetables in the sauce.  I also prepared meatballs and served them on the side for anyone who might care for them.  I’m certain that I also served a good tossed salad and desert.  When they arrived, I met Mr. Desai (the Jain), from Bombay, his brother, Hasmukh, a student at the University of Chicago, Mr. Dinshaw, a Parsee who was a Zoroastrian, and Mr. Thomas, a Catholic from Kerala. As we partook of some drinks and snacks in the living room, our guests seemed polite but quite stiff.  I sensed a difficult evening ahead.  When I served the food, however, Hasmukh helped himself to meatballs and announced to his older brother, Chandrakant Desai, that he was no longer a vegetarian because he had been studying science and since then had decided that religion is no longer relevant.  An ardent and heated discussion ensued with the Jain, the Catholic, the Zoroastrian and the Jew (Dick) all trying to convince Hasmukh that he was wrong and that religion was important.  They hammered at him from all angles and I was beginning to feel sorry for the poor boy but he held his own well.  The evening was congenial and went on far into the night.  We all became very close friends.

     The next year when we decided to go to the family camp again, Dick invited Hasmukh to come as a guest speaker.  His presence and his ideas and his questions made for some very interesting discussions and added a great deal to the thinking at the camp.

  

     How did all this change my thinking?  It didn’t.  My faith remained steadfast but I came to understand how important it is to listen to other points of view not necessarily to accept them, but to respect and honor the other person’s convictions as being valid for him.  I could see how varied we human beings are, our starting points, our experiences, and the conclusions we reach.  Possibly, one of the reasons I am writing this is to explain myself as one of many human beings in search.

      My longing, my efforts, my need to find common denominators with all human beings reached a setback when we went to Japan.  “Taking your wife to Japan is like bringing a sandwich to a banquet”, I heard an American man saying in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo.  The year was l959.  We had flown to Scotland, Norway and Denmark, then over the north pole to Japan.  We stopped to refuel at Anchorage, Alaska on July 4th, the day that Alaska was declared to be a State.  We still have the newspaper, bought at the airport, with the headlines proclaiming statehood.  Up until our three week stay in Japan, my natural friendliness and eagerness to get along with people served me in good stead.  Dick was as proud of me as I was of him. It was different in Japan.

      Japanese men did not take their wives with them when they were entertaining business associates.  One of our hosts explained to me that the word for “wife” in Japanese, is “Oksama”, which means “Furthest corner of the house.”  “Our wives are shy”, he said, and this way they are protected, relieved of the burden of having to entertain and have conversations with strangers.  The Geishas are professionals and they know how to do it.”  We have a photograph of Dick and me at one of the many Geisha parties we attended.  I have a big, fake smile on my face.  I look huge and uncomfortable next to the posed Japanese Geishas. I found myself looking in the mirror and wishing that my eyes were dark and slanted and not round and blue.  I was wishing myself shorter and slighter.  I seemed like a monster to myself.  I couldn’t speak the language.  I didn’t know the politeness code.  Dick was enjoying himself thoroughly and that made me angry with him.  I was unable to make contact with people and nobody paid any attention to me.  I became aware of what it must be like to be in the minority physically such as a black among whites or an Asian among Caucasians….or me, among the Japanese.  In a way, it’s the “Ugly Duckling” story.  Because my physical appearance was completely different from others, I felt alienated and I felt ugly.  It was a lesson learned but it was painful. 

     We were in Japan for three weeks.  Dick and I quarreled nearly the entire time we were there.  It is possible that I was temporarily mentally ill.  I ranted about the position of Japanese women.  Dick said, “You have to understand these people and their traditions and customs.”  I went to visit the mother of one of Dick’s business associates.  She was an American Japanese who had grown up in the States, attended UCLA, met her Japanese husband there, married him and came to live in Japan.  “How do you think it is for me?” she asked, after I had tried to express my feelings about the Geishas.  “When the Geishas bring my husband home at three o’clock in the morning, I am not there to greet them.  ‘Oh, you’ll lose face’, my friends tell me.  ‘You must be there to greet the Geishas and to receive your husband.’  I won’t do it”, she declared bitterly.  Another woman told me that when her husband went on a business trip, she was glad that the Geishas were there to take care of him.  “Men are so helpless”, she said, “This way I know he is well cared for.”

     All the prejudices I didn’t know I had, came to the fore.  War movies portraying the Japanese as cruel and sinister re-played in my consciousness.  Sayings such as “they’re very polite but you can’t really trust them” became truths for me.  Dick, on the other hand, was doing business with a man who had served as an officer in the Japanese navy.  Both men were able to overlook the fact that they had been enemies fighting against one another in World War II.  They respected one another and became friends.  I thought my prejudices were wrong and kept trying to fight them within myself.  I was miserable.

     I had heard that there was a Synagogue in Tokyo and decided to attend services there on a Shabbat when Dick was having a business meeting.  He said he would join me there later so I took a cab (with written instructions in Japanese telling where I wanted to go and how to get there from the hotel.  The concierge had taken care of this for me.  When I got in the cab I handed the driver the concierge’s message.  It seemed a very long drive and the cab driver and I made the trip in complete silence.  Finally, he pulled up in front of a building.  “ Jews Velly Lich!” he said, indicating the Synagogue.  I’m afraid that the services there did my bruised spirits no good.  The Jewish place of worship was also a country club for Jews living in Tokyo.  Afterwards Dick came to join me and we sat around the outdoor pool talking to people. It was interesting to meet some of the Jews of Tokyo and a bit of relief to be with people who spoke English for a change, but I actually found them very empty.  Country club types whose conversations were trivial.

     From Japan we traveled to Hong Kong.  There I spoke to people who told of Japanese cruelty during the war.  “I saw a Japanese soldier throw a baby into the air and kill it with his bayonette while the mother watched”, one man told me.  The people of Hong Kong HATED the Japanese and thought they were quite right to do so.  They did not struggle, as I did, to overcome their hatred.  And why did I try so hard to change my feelings?  Because I believe that God created us all and my childhood need to love and be loved had not diminished.

     We had such a happy reunion with our children when we returned to Dayton.   We brought them gifts (kimonos, Japanese dolls, Japanese books), told them stories of our travels, played games the Geishas had taught us, sang the songs, and yet there was a darkness to my soul.  I puzzled over what had happened to me in Japan.  I still do.

Click here for the next chapter of Susan's Story