The Z Word and a Search for Personal Identity

by Norman Berdichevsky (Dec. 2006)

Oceans of ink have been consumed, spilt and wasted on the subject of Jewish identity. The traumatic events of the last few months have given me great anxiety yet the approach of the 59th anniversary of an independent Jewish state provides a fitting opportunity to take stock and add another few drops in the hope that at this stage of my life (age 63) I can put things in perspective for myself and readers interested in how the success and challenges involved in the creation and development of the Jewish state have affected individual lives in the Diaspora.

My childhood environment of the late 1940s and early 1950s was among the most densely populated Jewish neighborhoods of the largest Jewish city in the world. A look at the school photographs taken at my graduation from P.S. 90 and Junior High School 22 reveals more than 90 per cent and 75 per cent Jewish names respectively; the remainder with Italian, Irish, mixed East and Central European and Puerto-Rican names and also a few black faces. My high school environment was somewhat more cosmopolitan and slightly less Jewish – perhaps only 65 per cent, although its all male student body was drawn from all the five boroughs of New York City,

In retrospect, I can now see that many of the non-Jewish pupils at Stuyvesant High School came from homes with as ancient traditions, and exotic languages as the Hebrew I had acquired in preparation for my Bar-Mitzvah. These other non-Jewish pupils of Chinese, Armenian, and Greek origin as well as a few others with whom I became friends were in many respects typical American teen-age boys who shared the same passions for baseball, popular music and science fiction films with others of our age. I came to understand with heart and soul that through a long perilous history Jews were not alone in having created a rich and ancient culture albeit marked by melancholy. The ability to retain a sense of an historic past and a deep sense of solidarity with a “Zion” state was something I shared with others. Like them, this in no way detracted from the love and pride I felt in being an American.

‘madrichim’ (guides), a farm manager from Israel and the occasional helpful advice and companionship of a nearby Jewish farmer – one of the few remaining in New Jersey from the small number of German-Jewish refugees admitted into America who went into farming just before the outbreak of World War II. Charley was a real farmer with livestock and not just a “chicken farmer” like the other refugees admitted from Germany to America in the late 1930s. It was a wonderful introduction to a life imbued with a love of agriculture and nature.

“Ordet” (The Word) and Ditte-Menneskebarn (Ditte-Child of Humanity) based on the book by the great proletarian writer Martin Andersen NexøToday however, it lacks the dynamic attraction and fascination for Diaspora Jews that it once held even for many Christian theologians and clergymen who felt the stirring power of the language they believed God first used to speak to man. This feeling of reverence and power was beautifully expressed by the great German writer Hermann Hesse writing in his largely autobiographical novel Beneath the Wheel: