"I Stand with the Jews"
What does that mean?
Second of two parts
A canopy of oaks and maples rose overhead. Green understory
surrounded me: pinxter azaleas and thorny Japanese barberry. Bluets – tiny
wildflowers – blossomed underfoot. Up ahead, Marc approached me with his
typically hale and hearty, "Hello, Danusha!"
I shoved my rosary in my pocket and removed my headphones. I had
been cheating. I should have been focusing, with the binoculars around my neck,
on the migrating spring warblers that make Garret Mountain famous among
birders. Instead I was listening to Gregorian chant and praying the rosary as I
hiked. "Hello, Marc," I said, as I migrated from internal
contemplation of the eternal to external society and the ingeniously plumaged
sprites zipping around us.
"Look at that color!" Marc exclaimed.
I pointed my binoculars in the direction Marc indicated. He had
spotted a purple finch.
"I can see," I said, "Why Roger Tory Peterson
called them 'a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.'"
Marc is, by many estimates, the best birder in the state. Of
course we are all, in our own ways, the "best" birdwatcher in
compliance with our own needs and desires, but Marc racks up awesome numbers of
the species he sees annually.
Marc's surname harkens back to Chelm, a city in Poland once famous
among Jews as a site of folkloric fools. My favorite Chelm story: the local
wise men declared that if you drop a buttered slice of bread, it will always
fall on the buttered side. This conclusion reflects the pessimistic worldview
typical of both Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe. Of course, eventually,
someone dropped a buttered piece of bread and it fell buttered side up. The
wise men of Chelm debated this astounding event and determined that the slice
had been buttered on the wrong side. Chelm stories arose from a culture that
valued scholarship enough that it could spoof scholarly folly.
Mindful of Marc's identity as someone other than our state's best
birdwatcher, I wondered if I should say something.
I had told myself, if the opportunity arises, I will say
something.
Was this the moment, though, to say something?
I felt timid, but also determined. If we keep waiting for the
perfect moment, we never say anything.
"Marc," I ventured. "I want to say something about
something other than birds."
"Yes?" Marc said, turning his attention from the purple
finch to a streamlet that might be playing host to a Louisiana waterthrush.
"There's been a rise in antisemitism."
"You think?" Marc said, his voice rising, in an
atypical, for him, sarcastic comment.
"Yes, and I just want you to know that I'm not Jewish…"
said the woman who had been praying the rosary and listening to Gregorian
chant. "But I want to be an ally. I'm on your side."
I'm glad I said something. If the moment arises when Marc could use some support from someone like me, he knows I'm here.
