Thinking about the Fourth of July

It’s the Fourth of July! And because the Jewish day starts in the evening, we get to welcome in both Shabbat and the Fourth with fireworks.

This is going to be an odd Fourth. The polarization in the country in general, and in the Jewish community in particular, is as high as most of us can remember it ever being.

It must have been higher during the Civil War, but that is well outside living memory.

(Please indulge me here in a little rabbit-holing diversion to see when living memory of the Civil War ended, thanks to the irreplaceable Google. Apparently the last Civil War widow, Helen Viola Jackson, died in 2020. She was 101. When she was 17, she married James Bolin, a veteran of the Missouri Cavalry. He was 93 then; the marriage, during the Depression, was to make her eligible for his pension. She chose not to apply for it, though, kept the marriage secret, and never remarried. Life is strange.)

So. Where was I? Oh right…

This is an odd time. War in Israel, hatred in America, uncertainty all over. Those are prime conditions for antisemitism, and it is growing.

But it’s not all hate.

I know that anecdata means nothing, but here’s a tiny little vignette.

My husband and I were driving home from Chicago. (Yes, it’s easier to fly. Acknowledged.) We stopped in the Middle of Nowhere, Ohio, for lunch. We found a small old coffee shop. The people eating there looked just the way I would imagine them to look, when I am being small-minded and making assumptions about stereotypes. Most of them were large, comfortably dressed in outfits I wouldn’t be caught dead in. The owner sat at a table — we knew he was the owner from his conversation — talking loudly with his customers. It was both sweet and foreign.

When my husband went to pay, the owner noticed his hostage necklace and understood it immediately. He started telling us about how much he loves and admires Jews, not because of the coming rapture but because his family was from Sardinia and his father had worked at an Israeli embassy somewhere in Europe before coming to the States. He’s Greek Orthodox, he told us, and that too made him feel closer to Jews.

It was heartening, it was sincere, it was entirely out of the blue, and it seemed like a good way to begin the Fourth of July. Hope and love might be in short supply, but they’re still around, and you can not only stumble into it but add to it yourself.

And there are so many stories in this country! Maybe one way to bridge our divides is just to listen to them.

One other thing — last week, when I thanked the people who have helped make this paper what it is, I knew that I’d mess up and leave someone important out. I did. I managed to omit our tireless, brilliant columnist Rosanne Skopp, whose view from Weequahic, Parksville, West Orange, and Jerusalem is invaluable to us. So thank you, Rosanne! (And even more apologies to anyone else I’ve continued to omit.)

Happy July Fourth!

—JP

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