The Jews that We Are

. . . you have inherited its burden without its mystery. —Elie Wiesel I.   March 1979 and I am watching Nazis march through Chicago. The bold type of the Sun-Times describes a small band of hoodlums, undereducated boy scouts, the better to be ignored. My grandfather, back hunched over his Bible, agrees. Jews like myself should stay home, should lay down our stones and pray like the Jews that we are. II.   Grandfather, you are easy to love with your long beard and the way you sway like a palm branch in the storm. It is easy to romanticize your spiritual search, worldly naiveté and wise rabbinical words. You belong in the books I read by Singer, Peretz, Sholom Aleichem. But their characters are ignorant of the chapters to come. You know where their prayers will lead. III.   A circle. Six Nazis. Your wife in the middle. One soldier says all Jewesses are whores and the others agree. You say nothing. Years later you'll decide to speak: "Do we not serve Hitler's purpose, we who would sooner renounce our beliefs than assume our burdens?" IV.   A generation after the Holocaust and I know no Hebrew. No Yiddish. No Torah. I fast only on the Day of Atonement and even then I've been known to cheat. A generation after the Holocaust and I apologize for my grandfather's bent back and wild gestures. I used to tremble to the rhythm of his prayers. I feared the mysterious words that kept us from the devil. Now, from my window I watch Nazis march. Their feet strike the pavement like the ticking of a clock. I am a Jew a generation after the Holocaust. Poorer, my grandfather says, without a past than he, who has no future.