November 3rd to December 23rd was a pretty short enlistment. My time at home in Louisville would be even shorter. Soon I would be back in Madison, Wisconsin. Nevertheless, I was back in Louisville for my first Christmas as a Christian. My Jewish family had always celebrated the Christmas holiday. As my mother explained it, we celebrated the season, not the religious meaning.
As a matter of fact, I can only remember a few occasions when Chanukah was celebrated in our home. And I am pretty sure there was never a time when we lit candles all eight nights. We always had some sort of tree. My stepfather preferred live trees, while my mother was an early adopter of the silver reusable trees.
My orthodox father also focused all his attention on the Christmas holiday. That was the time of year when the competition between my divorced parents escalated. As the only child of their aborted union, I would amass huge piles of gifts from my father under the tree, often doubling the haul of my step-siblings. And on each Christmas Eve, when we were allowrd to open one gift, I was allowed to open two—one from my real father. As we took turns opening gifts the next morning, my turn came more often. I have always wondered just how much resentment that produced in my step-siblings. My mother seemed to lecture me all year around about how my status as the only progeny from her previous marriage was the reason I should accept the second class citizenship that I had in my new family.
One story encapsulates my childhood experience as the Wasserman in the Loeb family:
A couple of years after my mother remarried, we travelled from Louisville to Lexington to celebrate Passover with Grandmother and Grandfather Bloom. The Blooms were the maternal grandparents of my step-siblings. Their mother had passed away about four or five years before I joined their family. We had been to visit these grandparents on one or two previous occasions, but I was always the spare wheel.
On this particular Passover, there was discussion of how everyone was going to participate in the Pesach meal.
First, my older stepbrother and stepsister, then my younger stepsister were directed to their seats:
Tom and Leslie, you can sit here. Oh and Meredith dear, you can sit over here. Bob and Sue [my mother], you all will sit here with the rest of parents—Billy and Bobbie, Suzie and Lawrence. Now, let’s see, we can sit the two older Bloom boys here with Tommy and Leslie and the three Frentz children with the two younger Bloom boys. Okay, yes, that is all and we have just enough chairs. Good!
As I stood there, taller than all the other children, supremely obvious to all but the willfully blind, my mother said, And what about Jeff?
Grandfather Bloom replied irritably, without any apology for the omission, Oh yes, and Jeff too.
“And Jeff too!” Yep, that tells the story. At worst, I was the recipient of so much largesse from my father that I had to be careful about not offending my step-siblings. At best, I was included only when my mother insisted. No wonder I sought refuge in hallucinogens when I got to college! Actually, I remained happily oblivious to all of this on a conscious level. It is only as I look back on this 50 years later that I can began to understand what I was enduring on a subconscious level.
So, here I was back in Louisville for Christmas, as the only “Christian” in my home! Since none of my step-siblings were living at home, there was no point in my sticking around to disturb the sanctity of my mother and step-father as they were lavishing presents on each other under the silver aluminum tree. And since I was the “troubled” member of the family, whom no one was expecting to return home having flunked out of the Navy, albeit under “honorable conditions,” there were no presents for me anyway.
I was the only one of the kids who actually even tried to serve his country. My brother was on a medical school deferment and should have served four years in one of the branches as a doctor. When he suddenly and abruptly married at the end of medical school, he received a marriage exemption thus avoiding service altogether. I don’t blame him for taking advantage of deferments. I would have done the same if the opportunity presented itself. The war in Vietnam was getting more ugly every day. And with each passing day, it became obvious that service in Vietnam was not the litmus test for determining desire to serve one’s country.
And, after all, we were just kids. Who could blame us for wanting to get on with our young lives?
The characteristic bothered me the most in my father, mother, and stepfather was the absolute selfishness that they modeled for us. There was no talk of public service, charitable work or even charitable giving around our dinner table. My stepdad had been chairman of Louisville’s Jewish Hospital. The standard refrain was that the Jewish Hospital and Temple involvement were “for business purposes only,” to advance his career as a life insurance agent. I have to believe that he must have had some deeper motive, but maybe his experience as a tank commander in North Africa and later duty on General Patton’s staff was all he had to give. That would certainly be understandable.
But, not to have instilled a sense of duty to country or charity to others in us children—well, that is just inexcusable. It is one thing to survive the depression in your childhood and sacrifice your innocence in WWII. I can understand not wanting your children to experience either. But neither of my fathers nor my mother ever modeled or even mentioned anything other than selfishness. For me, it would be in examining the roots of my new faith in Jesus that I would discover the virtue of self-sacrifice on behalf of others.
Judaism has a long history of sacrifice for others, even in the face to the most horrible persecution. Yet, none of my three parents passed any of that on to me.
I don’t remember the details, but within a few days I was back in Madison. My first day back, I tried to find Chris the Hippie. [Dave had married Jean by this time and I believed him to be at home with her in Iowa.] I began to ask around for a Jesus Freak named Chris.
As I made my way down the snow-covered State Street, I ran into a young man who was bracing himself against the bitter cold passing out Christian tracts. As I stood there conversing with him both of us sniffling and shuddering from the cold, I told him I was already “born again.”
Now, I considered myself one of the very few “true” Christians. You may remember that Jesus Freaks considered all the established churches to be phonies. In meeting this “other” true Christian—it had to be the work of God. I was looking for Chris the Hippie and he (John-Remember the story of the guy whose father was Mafia?) had met another Jesus Freak named Chris just the other day. It had to be Chris the Hippie.
Next: Chris the Hippie Meets Chris the Hippie!
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