This will end the pain, I thought, moving the tablets around with my thumb. My parents were out to dinner. I had raided their medicine cabinet for whatever I could find. I was pretty sure that if I took enough of everything, I could end it all. I was tired of feeling so alone and so misunderstood.
We were the only practicing Jewish family in my suburban town of Durham, North Carolina, in 1966. But it often felt as if we were the only ones in the whole South. My father was an immigrant from Eastern Europe, the son of a rabbi. My mother was from Brooklyn. They both spoke with thick accents at a time and in a place that didn’t look too kindly on anyone who stood out.
My father was a salesman who sold dry goods to service stations. We lived modestly, but sometimes his customers teased that we—as Jews—were hoarding money. Occasionally, when I helped my father deliver merchandise, a particular patron would greet him with “Hey, Jew Boy.” Those words embarrassed me, but they weren’t as bad as the day that one of his customers looked down at me and said, “You brought your little Jew girl.” That made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was young when it happened but knew enough to realize his words weren’t kind. I felt unwelcome and painfully reminded of the weathered swastika that someone had painted on the back of our house several years before.
And then there was school. My classmates were all Christian. No one mistreated me, but no one made an effort to understand me or my faith. It was clear that I wasn’t one of them. I never would be.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February/March 2020-Ausgabe von Mysterious Ways.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February/March 2020-Ausgabe von Mysterious Ways.
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Ivy Dishes
“My mom found a house for us to look at,” said my fiancé, Jon. “It’s in Richfield, not far from where I grew up.”
The Duet
“Can you perform a hymn for us next week?” my pastor asked me after Sunday service.
The Girl in the Dream
Was this a church? The high, vaulted ceilings made it seem like one—almost but not exactly.
News From Around Our Wonderful World
Liverpool, England Joanne Carr is hailing her son, Dougie McInerney, as her guardian angel.
A Light in the Blizzard
I stepped on the gas and shifted into drive, then reverse, then back into drive again.
Straight From the Fish's Mouth
Florence, Italy. I’d been there before on one of those scruffy five-dollar-a-day youth-hostel jaunts through Europe, but now, just graduated from college, I was wondering what to do with my life.
Divine Callings
Have you ever felt called to a purpose?
Dad's Voice
As I reached to turn off the lamp on my bedside table, my eyes fell on the card my brother Isaac had given each of us siblings on what would have been Dad’s sixty-eighth birthday.
Ben's Answer
It was midafternoon, and I was already curled up on the couch in the living room with no plans to move.
A Doll's Hat
My fears around the surgery built all day.... God, please let me be as strong as my young patients are.