This is a different kind of post. I can’t bring myself to write about the garden today. Instead, I’m writing about my middle name.
On my father’s side, I am the great-great-grand-niece of Solomon Schechter, the architect of American Conservative Judaism. While that’s been a source of pride for my family for as long as I can remember, my little branch strayed pretty far from those roots. Four generations later, I still identify as culturally Jewish, but being honest, I’d have to describe myself as “not a very good Jew.”
I am not observant, except for a nodding acknowledgment of Chanukah, Passover, and the high holy days, and both my brother and I married “outside the tribe.” The distancing started two generations back. My grandmother on my father’s side kept Kosher. But my father tasted bacon at a Boy Scout camp and decided at the age of 9 that he would not be raising his future family that way. Through my childhood, we still went to his mother’s home to celebrate Passover with the more observant members of the family, but my brother and I were both thrown out of Hebrew school (we were a bit of a handful), and that severed my parent’s ties to the local congregation and eventually, synagogue attendance altogether.
My mother was also Jewish, but her family was more practical than observant. And with a neutral maiden name of Cutler, religion wasn’t a big part of her identity. My dad’s name was Israel Levy. Nothing neutral about that. Upon being hired at his first job in a bank, his boss told him, after being introduced, that he would be called “Lee.” And from that day forward, everyone except his mother called him Lee. But his last name was still Levy. As was mine and my brother’s. I eventually married and took my husband’s last name which, though Swedish, is easily and frequently mistaken for a Jewish name. My brother’s family (and a cousin’s) carries on the Levy name.
Which brings me to the point
My pragmatic mom, Mrs. Levy, insisted on giving her children “neutral” middle names, and when I asked her why, she explained that, “if it ever becomes dangerous to be a Jew again, you can just use your middle name as your last name and be safer.” She told me that more than once, and each time I thought it was the silliest thing I’d ever heard. Growing up in our suburban New Jersey bedroom community of liberal New York City, it seemed like a paranoid fantasy.
Until last Saturday in Charlottesville.
The sight of Nazi flags held proudly in a torchlit phalanx of marchers yelling “Jews will not replace us” was my mother’s nightmare fantasy brought to life. What seemed ridiculous now seems prescient. We cannot let this evil stand, nor we can let stand the full ethnic and racial implications of white supremacy. There is no gray area here, no “both sides are guilty” bullshit. It’s painful to admit that my mother was right after all. I’m just glad she’s not still alive to see it.