I come from a rather small town approximately 45 minutes west of Boston. As a small town, it is also something of a bubble. It is the sort of sleepy place where very little ever happens, and children grow up thinking that what they read about in the paper could never happen to them. I had seen my share of prejudice by the time I turned seventeen--on the news, in the papers, in the desecration of synagogues--although very little had been directed at me, personally. As there were a good number of other Jewish students in my school, people really thought very little of it. I knew that there were people who hated me without ever having met me, just because of my religion--but it did not affect me. All this was to change the summer that I turned seventeen.
I was in Israel, the Homeland, the place that I had heard about for as long as I could remember. It was the summer of 1990, my last before I would graduate from high school. I was with 42 other kids between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. I was expecting the best summer of my life. And it started out that way. We were traveling all over the country, hiking in the deserts, swimming in the clear blue lakes, scaling the sides of mountains, and shopping in small stores every place we went. As it turned out, it was the shopping that led us to trouble.
We were in the area of Ben Yehudah Street, famous for its small shops and cobblestone streets lined with bull carts. This was a mecca for young artists, jewelers, and weavers eager to sell their wares for incredibly low prices; bargaining was the name of the game. Our group split up, and we were all off, running into friends that we had made from other tours. My friend Beth and I went off by ourselves, eager to scour the shops where we were everybody's friend. We would enter the store, and upon hearing our voices the shopkeepers would shout their greeting. "Hello, my fine Jewish-American friends! What can I show you? For you, a bargain. Such nice Jewish girls, coming to visit their homeland. For you I will make a gift." And on and on. We were high on life. Nowhere had we ever been so accepted, so universally loved. We were about to quit for the day, when Beth saw a ring that she loved in the window of a shop. So, giggling, we decided to go into just one more store. There was something different, from the moment we entered. No welcoming calls, no friendly shopkeeper urging us to, "Come in, come in, look around. Make yourself comfortable. Enjoy." Entering further, with our voices low, we looked for the owner who could show us the beautiful ring in the window. We should have left then, as soon as the quiet enveloped us, but we never thought of doing so. Both of us just thought that the keeper of this shop was not as outgoing as the others.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large man appeared. Assuming that he was the shopkeeper, Beth approached, asking to see the ring. Beth began her request in Hebrew (which she speaks fluently), not sure if this man would understand English. "Americans?", he asked as he came nearer. Beth responded in English, as the man seemed to speak at least a little of our language. He reached out and touched the Magen David which hung from a chain around Beth's neck. This was nothing shocking. It is an intricate design, delicate and lacy. Her father had given it to her only a few months before suffering a fatal heart attack. "You are...Jewish." His voice had taken on an edge, and both of us began to feel as though we should leave. Beth flinched, and together we started to meander toward the door.
We should not have taken our time. We should have run. All of a sudden, the man seemed to burst into a flame of hatred. He began screaming about the Americans, the rude children that thought they could do whatever they wanted because they had money. Then he began to hurl obscenities at us. Had he left it at that, insulting America, we would not have been hurt so terribly. I mean, Americans do not have the best reputation in other countries. When we were still a step or two from the door, he screamed, "Get out you kike bastards. You little American bitches, you kike whores...do not ever come near my store."
Believe me, the tirade was enough, we never would have gone near his shop again. But this man did not think that it was enough. Two men followed us. Followed us to a relatively deserted street where we stopped to have a private conversation about what had just transpired. These two men grabbed us, telling us that we would not scream if we were as smart as all "American kike bitches" think they are. They told us that they were going to give us a taste of what would happen if we ever went into their store again.
I keep the photograph in a frame on my dresser at home. Beth and I are dressed for an evening on the town. It is only if you look closely that you can see that the two of us each are sporting a black eye. Not just a little bruise, but a real shiner. The kind you get when a man twice your size decides that he does not like the looks of you. The kind you get when you have an accent that is a little bit different, or you practice a religion that is not like someone else's. The kind that you get when a hate crime is committed. The kind that you get when a person is so consumed by the hatred prejudice creates that they do not care that they knocked out a seventeen year old girl weighing a third of what they do. The kind that reminds you that you are probably lucky to still be alive. I can almost guarantee that I saw a gun in the breast pocket of one of the men's shirts. I can also almost guarantee that if either of us had tried to defend ourselves, we would have been killed. The rest of the trip passed without incident. Everyone was concerned, but this sort of thing does occasionally occur in Israel. There is very little that can or will be done. The bruises faded, as did the memory of the attack--for everyone but Beth and me. Neither of us will ever forgive, or forget. Both Beth and I are interested in the law. We want attacks like this to end.
As I said at the beginning of this paper, prejudice can and does kill. I realize that to a family who has had a relative killed because of prejudicial hatred may think that what happened to me was not such a big deal. They might think that I should shut my mouth and thank G-d that nothing worse occurred. And I do, but I also realize that prejudice needs to end, and I try to do what I can. I give speeches on the subject, urging people not to hate people for circumstances not under their control. I started giving these speeches in 1991. I entered the Lion's Club Speech Contest: "If I had the power to change one thing in this world it would be...." I wanted to change prejudice. Making it through several rounds, I passed my message on to many spectators. I have also chosen to discuss prejudice many times as the subject of my speeches here at college. Most recently, I gave a speech in lecture which served its purpose. People stopped harassing the professor, who is from another country. As a child-care worker, I try to teach "my" kids not to hate anybody, to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I think that I am making a difference. I hope that I am. It was not just my body that was bruised on that warm clear night in Israel, it was my life. I'll never arbitrarily hate someone, and I will always be aware of the injustices in the world--something which could have been different. But nobody should have to experience the pain and the fear that I felt that night to keep them from hurting others. They should be taught peacefully, and it should start today. You know, prejudice caused Hitler to murder upwards of eleven million innocent people, and we say that it could never happen again. But it could. Think of what could happen if that man in Israel had just a little bit more political savvy. . .