For two days I've read various op-eds and blogs RE: the title above. The most succinct response I've read to date is Don Singleton's one-word summation: Sickening.
One of my life-long goals has been to return to the land of my heritage.
As a child, I would sit at my grandfather's knee for hours, listening to stories told to him by his grandfather .... about two brothers who were driven from (what is now) Israel to Germany, and subsequently traveled to America in the mid-1700's.
From Pennsylvania, they migrated with a Moravian delegation to what would become Salem Colony in North Carolina ....
My grandfather always believed that the brothers hid their Jewish heritage and claimed the Moravian (or Luthuran) faith to avoid continuous persecution. It did not matter, he would say.
What mattered, he espoused, was that many years later, the last surviving brother disowned his children and grandchildren because they refused to honor the language (Yiddish) and traditions of their heritage. The family argued and split into two factions: one remained in the southern mountains and the other moved to the higher mountains -- one claiming their ethnic background as German; the other as English -- both denying their Jewish heritage.
(The surviving brother subsequently died a lonely man -- alienated from family and friends -- to have his land and wealth scattered among survivors ... his only legacy being his name on the road that still traverses his once-prosperous estate.)
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The young brothers were stone masons by trade (albeit womanizers by night) and earned their keep by laying the foundations and walls of buildings which still stand in historic Old Salem.
In the most socially acceptable of terms, my grandfather would explain how at least one female acquaintance became with-child, precipitating the brothers' expulsion (with two women) from Salem settlement -- highlighted by head-shavings and (for the brothers, at least) a ferried rail-ride across the (once) mighty Yadkin River.
The disgraced four-some traveled westward toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, likely stopping in settlements developing in (once the Great State of) Wilkes ....
My grandfather always insisted (for the sake of propriety, I'm sure) that the brothers and their trail-mates were properly married (in the old Boone region) long before they settled in the northwest section of Surry County to raise their families.
As evidence of these stories (sans my grandfather's embellishments), I have letters written by my grandfather's grandfather to his cousins and brothers .... in Yiddish ... pleading with them to honor and cherish the traditions of their heritage.
Possibly I or my children will one day be able to honor the traditions of our heritage. To deny anyone that right -- much less to denigrate that right -- bespeaks a disrespect more base, more despicable than sickening, however.
Godspeed, Israel. May you find peace and security in the Land and Traditions you honor.
Alaichem sholom ...
