The Humbling

Old-timers often long for their adored days of yore, for simpler times when the family hatchback came with hooves and life's greatest threat was an early frost.   

Today--our heavenly present, the happy haze of nowadays--we, too, look back to the innocent age we tangoed through so effortlessly. I glance over my shoulder at my past and see problems only as pressing as a cowlick in my bangs, my mother serving veal stew twice in one week ("Eww, but it's so tomato-ey!"), or too few dollars in my pocket to purchase new red lip stain. And I see how self-righteous I was, how in my sheltered, steady, 110-stories-and-still-standing existence, I was able to shake my head at others and condemn them their ignorance. What luxury, squinting into surface cracks and wrinkling my nose at what I spied.

But a simple, sun-laden day in September changed that, when two tall buildings, four aircrafts, and thousands of lives came crashing down on the streets of New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Mothers and fathers and friends were lost, their lives crushed under 1.2 million tons of rubble, the dusty remains of once proud towers and fuselage. Devastated as well was my arrogance, the rush to judgment I had carried so regally. My high horse was knocked out from under me by the blast that day and it threw me headfirst into the gray cloud that rose from Ground Zero. I lost no one in the explosion, but my inner judge, juror, and executioner are all dead and gone.

I was thick with opinions in my youth, a borderline socialist with a designer backpack. Business majors branded fascists, fraternity boys in convertibles pariahs in my eyes, I perched a weighty conscience atop my shoulders and limped off campus and into my 30s. Later, I aligned myself against the Jewish few who disdain inter-dating. My love had sometimes seeped under the doors of churches, trickling to the pews complete with eligible gentiles, and I found myself faced with a faction bent on disapproval. My outrage real, I vowed never to date a Jew again, not to be swayed by a tangle of curls nor a proud Israeli jaw. My people would be neither lover nor comrade to my army of one. While I lived in Jewish skin, I tacked my allegiance to a nameless Other.

And then bad people lowered the boom heard 'round the world. Men ran into flaming buildings to drag their brothers to safety, strangers prayed side by side, countries wept and sent their young to war.

In times of distress--when lives are taken and nerves shaken--people seek comfort in things familiar, flock with birds of similar feather. The Jewish world is no different. With rampant violence both in the Middle East and here at home plate, a united Jewish voice has risen above the din of dissenting sects. We are seeing Jews come together on the front lines, at rallies, at funerals.

One imagines they're coming together for a little intra-religious whoopie, as well. A Holocaust-like phenomenon, Jews are again seeing their neighbors dying--in buildings and planes and pizza parlors in Israel--and reckon their legacy is beginning to diminish. The natural tendency is to try to supplement the loss. Nookie no longer just for nookie's sake, but to save a section of the world.

I can see why one might make an effort to consort with other Jews in times such as these. But I still cannot discriminate. My heart goes where it will--to Jew and non-Jew alike (despite my attempts at a kosher-boyfriend-boycott, I've since swooned for a Jew or two)--with neither religion nor race to guide it.

What the destruction has done for me, however, what the shattered glass and molten steel and the capable hands of volunteers have inspired, is tolerance. Tolerance and understanding. Tolerance, understanding, and forgiveness. And perhaps a soupçon of residual arrogance, considering my sense of superiority for my openmindedness.

I've acquired pathos for those who think my lover's neck necessarily should be adorned with the Star of David. They are simply afraid to lose their race, to have millions fall away the way millions have fallen before. And they want for us what has worked for them, a nice Jewish household with a nice Jewish roast in the oven. This is not, of course, what is right for everyone, but when we are seeing such images of destruction and vengeance on our televisions every day, it is easier to forgive those whose hearts are in the right place.

This Thanksgiving may we all--each one of us with our different faces and colors and beliefs--recognize the beauty in, and take care of, one another.

In the words of my sister, the yogi: Peace within, peace with others, peace with the universe.

In the words of my grandfather, the wise: Shalom (peace).

Jennifer Schulman is a freelance writer living in the New York area.