Our Shocked Dinner Guest
Last night we hosted a lovely older Jewish couple from Chicago. At one point, the husband mentioned that he’s a lawyer, so Josh mentioned that his dad’s a law professor.
“Where’d you go to law school?” Josh asked our guest.
“Harvard Law.”
“Really? Which year did you graduate?”
“1969.”
“Really?? My dad graduated in 1969! Did you know him??”
Our guest, it turned out, didn’t recognize my father-in-law’s name. Even though our guest had been the editor of the yearbook, so he’d known a lot of people. And even though our guest and my FIL had been among the few Jews who’d managed to get into Harvard Law despite the anti-Jewish quota.
“There were 550 students in our class,” our guest explained apologetically, “so I didn’t know most people.”
And then the conversation moved on to other topics: to football, judicial reform, a previous trip to Israel in 1971. And then we circled back to the topic of Josh’s parents, his American Jewish father who’d married his German Catholic mother in 1966. And how his mother valued tradition and how, despite her Jewish husband’s objections, she’d insisted on raising their 3 children as Jews.
Our guest’s mouth hung ajar. “Oh… I actually did hear about your father. I heard about the Jewish guy who’d married a German woman after our first year of law school.”
And since the meal, I can’t get this story out of my mind.
How 54 years ago our guest had heard tales about the Jewish classmate who’d turned his back on Judaism and the Jewish people by marrying a German woman, just 20 years after the Shoah. And 54 years later, yesterday, he heard the end of the story. How that classmate had ended up with a son who is an Orthodox rabbi, living in Jerusalem.
This encounter reminded me how we never know. How we might think a story has a tragic ending. But in reality, the story’s far from over.
Our Shocked Dinner Guest
Last night we hosted a lovely older Jewish couple from Chicago. At one point, the husband mentioned that he’s a lawyer, so Josh mentioned that his dad’s a law professor.
“Where’d you go to law school?” Josh asked our guest.
“Harvard Law.”
“Really? Which year did you graduate?”
“1969.”
“Really?? My dad graduated in 1969! Did you know him??”
Our guest, it turned out, didn’t recognize my father-in-law’s name. Even though our guest had been the editor of the yearbook, so he’d known a lot of people. And even though our guest and my FIL had been among the few Jews who’d managed to get into Harvard Law despite the anti-Jewish quota.
“There were 550 students in our class,” our guest explained apologetically, “so I didn’t know most people.”
And then the conversation moved on to other topics: to football, judicial reform, a previous trip to Israel in 1971. And then we circled back to the topic of Josh’s parents, his American Jewish father who’d married his German Catholic mother in 1966. And how his mother valued tradition and how, despite her Jewish husband’s objections, she’d insisted on raising their 3 children as Jews.
Our guest’s mouth hung ajar. “Oh… I actually did hear about your father. I heard about the Jewish guy who’d married a German woman after our first year of law school.”
And since the meal, I can’t get this story out of my mind.
How 54 years ago our guest had heard tales about the Jewish classmate who’d turned his back on Judaism and the Jewish people by marrying a German woman, just 20 years after the Shoah. And 54 years later, yesterday, he heard the end of the story. How that classmate had ended up with a son who is an Orthodox rabbi, living in Jerusalem.
This encounter reminded me how we never know. How we might think a story has a tragic ending. But in reality, the story’s far from over.
