I was born in 1941. My father came from Lithuania and my mother was born in New York, but her parents came from Lithuania. My father was fortunate; he had two older sisters who had come before him, maybe 1910 or 1920. After him no one else came. Everyone else who was left in Europe was killed by the Nazis. But my father did have one younger brother who got involved in the Zionist ideal in Europe. He went to Palestine in the early thirties and he survived also. So it's this brother, my father and two sisters. All of the other brothers and sisters and children were killed. His mother was killed. This was happening while I was born--the killing was at the high point in 1942, '43, '44.

I grew up not only as a Jew but an Orthodox Jew, very religious, very observant in a community in Brooklyn. As I was growing up in the early 1950s we saw more and more people that had survived the holocaust with numbers on their arms that had been tattooed by the Nazis. They spoke Hungarian, they spoke Polish and they all spoke Yiddish, the East European Jewish language. So I grew up learning a little bit about the tragedy of the Jews in Europe, the holocaust, but not much because people didn't speak about it. I suppose that for the ones that survived it was too much of a nightmare to describe it. They were sure that no one would believe them, They also did not want to bring up those memories. The American Jews were afraid to ask. They also did not want to know what happened because they never would make peace with the fact that they singing and dancing and getting married and having children, celebrating birthdays while their aunts and uncles and cousins were being burned to death. They would never feel that they did enough to try to save them.

Also it was a period where there was still a sufficient amount of anti Semitism--in the 1940s and 50s. I remember when Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg were arrested as spies for Russia and executed. What has turned out from history is that they were minor members of the Communist party. The case against them was fabricated. It was seen in the Jewish community that the lack of compassion, the lack of justice, and the way the brother was pressured that if he didn't testify against his sister he would be put to death--we saw that as anti-Semitism. So we had a feeling that we Jews were alone in the world. The world will stand by while our enemies will kill us. Even the decent people will stand by. We heard many stories of the boat that came from Germany. They paid for passage but the US would not accept them: "We are at war, we will not accept refugees." They knew, if they sent them back they would die. It only proved to the Nazis that they could get away with what they were doing: They said, "You see they will not kill the Jews, but they will let us kill the Jews." It was true. I grew up with the sense that the world was against us.

At the same time, I also grew up with a new dream of the Jewish people. We don't always have to depend upon other people for our breadŠ.Young Jewish pioneers said we will never, ever be accepted in Europe. We will never be equal to the people in Russian, Poland, Hungary, and Germany. We need to have a land of our own. In that land we can be normal. We could be farmers; we could be policeman; we could be thieves; we could be judges; we could be card players; we could be doctors. No one will be judged because he is a Jew. He will be judged: "Are you good or are you bad?" It won't be, "I don't go to the Jew." These young pioneers had made the decision to leave the countries of Europe and follow an ancient dream of our people.

So this is where I'm coming from. Then one day we are coming out of a concert, walking to the parking lot with another family and children. We start talking and we introduce each other. I am wearing a kepah. The fellow says, I am Jewish too and my wife is Lebanese.

"Really?"

"We are Doris and Jim, a mixed couple."

I would like you to come speak at my synagogue in La Jolla." I invite them, to let my congregation see that a Jew and an Arab can get along."