This is where I would like to share my mother’s experience that is similar to your own. Several ladies in our building went to the same Catholic church. It drove my mother nuts that any conversation with them always centered around their church, with references, by name, to the “sisters.” These conversations made my mother just as uncomfortable as you felt among Jewish people. There was nothing in common they could discuss. They came from two different worlds.

Back in those post-WWII years, rhings were very different from today. Jewish families were still led by survivors of Hitler’s death camps. It was difficult to find any commonality with Gentiles, and vice versa. We kids were told that we were to marry people of our own religions and nationalities. My Lutherin best friend, Lynn, told me her father did not want her playing with Jewish children. I became the exception to his rule, although Lynn continued to have other Jewish playmates. It was a time when people were put into what I see as “boxes” that defined them according to religion and nationality. To my generation, this was limiting, annoying and didn’t make sense. To me, it will always define New York. When I moved to California, I discovered a wonderful world in which people liked you for who you were, and no one asked me my religion. It was so different!

What I’m trying to say to you, Sharon, is that that discomfort you felt existed among all of us. Our parents’ generation did not want their kids marrying outside their ethnic and religious groups, so families never gave themselves a chance to get to know people from different backgrounds. My generation made choices that sometimes made Mama happy and sometimes got ourselves excommunicated from the family. But the point is that it was a complicated society of people struggling to support their families. We had amazing parents, all of us, who worked their hearts out so that we could have the memories that we cherish today.

Blessings,
Susan Downs (nee Singer)
Yale, Oklahoma