After the divorce my mother started going to churches and dragging us kids along. I secretly referred to it as the religion of the month club because she kept changing religions. Not that she was religious, she was looking for a husband. She wasn’t a drinker, so she was cruising churches instead of bars. Besides, she was done with bad boys like my father- this time she was looking for a family man, the kind of man you’d find at church.
We progressed in roughly this order- Methodist, Unitarian, Jewish, Protestant, Lutheran, and then Episcopalian. My favorite was the Unitarian church. It was really just some hippy chick’s suburban NJ “rec-room”, which was really just a gussied-up basement. We all sat on the floor in an “equality circle”, while my mom’s friend Sue sat on a stool in the middle of the circle, playing the acoustic guitar before and after the service. When she finished a song, everyone would clap politely and Sue would hang her head low, curly blonde hair partially obscuring her face, just like any other humble rock star. Sue was a great actress too, so good my mom still hadn’t caught on that she was sleeping with my dad.
Her specialty was ballads, and we would all sing along like a church hymn. Her favorite song was ‘Mr. Bojangles’. I really loved Sue a lot. She tried unsuccessfully to teach me to play guitar for a while, but once it was obvious that I had no talent, she bribed me to learn all the words to ‘American Pie’ instead. I got paid five dollars for that and I still know all the words.
When Sue was finished, everyone got a chance to say something, even the kids, so long as you held the talking-stick. I liked that part because some of the adults used it as a therapy session and I got to hear a lot of adult gossip. It seemed like everyone was either getting a divorce or having an affair, and that was a lot less boring than listening to one man droning on and on, like regular church.
Of all the different religions, the worst was when we almost became Jewish. A friend told her that Jewish men make the best husbands- that they are true family men and great providers. Soon she became so enthusiastic about Judaism that she forgot about the husband part and decided to convert.
She explained to me that Judaism wasn’t like other religions, where you could just plop yourself down in a pew one Sunday and proclaim yourself a member. She said you needed special permission to become Jewish, and that involved taking lots of classes and studying for a long time. She told me that if you weren’t born into a Jewish family, you needed to learn Jewish history and do a bunch of hard stuff, and even then, you still might not get in.
Then one evening some holocaust survivors came to speak to the students. Our babysitter was tucking us in when she got home, and so she came upstairs to say goodnight and tell me the story of what happened to the people in the concentration camps. I was ten but hadn’t yet read The Diary of Anne Frank in school.
As she told me the stories about what happened to the people in concentration camps, I got really overwhelmed and started crying, eventually begging her to stop. She continued though, despite my increasing distress, relaying first-hand accounts of what they had endured, of Germans breaking down people’s doors and taking them away in the middle of the night, and torture so gruesome it involved genital mutilation.
Unable to take it anymore, I sat upright in bed and said, “Can that happen to us? If we become Jewish, can they come get us in the middle of the night too?” She nodded gravely and said, “They could.” My already overactive imagination was spinning out of control, and I was certain the bad guys had followed her home from class and were creeping down our driveway as she spoke. I couldn’t understand why she would do this, why would she put us in harm’s way? “Could they kill us?” I asked, and again, she nodded “They could.”
I remember just bursting out sobbing and repeating over and over, “Please don’t make us Jewish, please don’t make us Jewish.” I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t keep us safe. What if there were spies in her class? What if they had already turned her in?
No matter how much I begged her not to make us Jewish, she wouldn’t give in, and no matter how many times I asked if they could do the same thing to us, I couldn’t get her to affirm that I was safe. She said that was part of the test, to prove we really wanted to be Jews, and Jews needed to always be careful because it could happen again.
The next day at school, I was certain the teachers and kids were able to see the difference in me. I was sure they could see that I’d changed overnight. I was worried that they might even be able to read my mind. The strange thing is, a few of my friends were Jewish, but for some reason I thought they were safe. I waited all day, but nothing happened. Soon after, my mother lost interest and moved on to a different church.