Auntie Semitism

by Yash Seyedbagheri

When I was little, Mother told me to watch out for “Auntie Semitism.” Or so it sounded like. At the time, it sounded like one of those horrid old ladies. The type who yelled at you and didn’t want you playing baseball in their yard. I didn’t yet know that Auntie Semitism was the classmate who called me a dirty kike, the teacher who said Jews were Communists in bed with Uncle Joe Stalin. Christ-killers. I didn’t know that Auntie Semitism was the clerk at the fancy hotel on the coast who wouldn’t give Mother and me a room. Mother said the hotel was “restricted.” And all this only years after we’d taken down Hitler. That still rankles me, makes me wonder how humanity can never learn. Or if we are incapable of compassion and love and principle, as misanthropic as this sounds.

There were the people who smiled fake, starched smiles when our religion came out at parties. Mother’s boss at the ad agency who said she was a Jew, but one of the “good ones,” as though bad Jews were a commodity. Bad Jews for sale. All for $5.99. There were people who wouldn’t date my sister Rachel, because of the faith. There were friends and acquaintances who used “Jew” as a verb. Jew them down. That term resonated day in, day out, classmates using it, while trading baseball cards and other goods. They also thought to advise me to follow the practice, as if I had this innate ability to wheel and deal.

There were also the people who thought Judaism was fascinating and said they “admired you people.” You people. The infamous words that labeled us, distinguished us from the mass of humanity in the fifties. As if our ability to achieve was some innate genetic characteristic. If that were the case, Episcopalians would be natural born drinkers and captains of industry and Lutherans would be great blonde-haired, blue-eyed coffeemakers.

Day after day, I grew older, my voice deepened. I grew cynical and I learned about our family’s background. The people fleeing from the monster that was the Czar. Shtetls burning in Russia, 1881, peasants rampaging, Orthodox priests in dark garb blessing the bigots. Ancestors coming, learning a new language, striving to hold onto Yiddish at the same time and fight off pugilistic bigots who beat them up. Auntie Semitism became anti-Semitism. It kept preying on me, seemed more frightening, when I couldn’t pin it down. Characterize it as some old dowager or what-have-you. It seemed to be passed on from one generation to the next and I wondered how many generations it would contaminate. I imagined my ancestors meeting it head on when they arrived, imagined them becoming accustomed to it, and I didn’t want that. I just wanted peace. To live quietly, to mingle with the world, my religion irrelevant.

Day in, day out, I felt like we were just trying to survive, instead of being able to live. To take the world. Mother said we had to play our cards close to the vest. I wanted to go to Harvard, to write, to make connections with the world. Mother told me to be realistic, warned me about quotas. State colleges would suffice, she said. I broke down, frustrated by being labeled. Frustrated for being blamed for being a “Christ-killer,” when I never knew the man. Frustrated for being asked to answer for my ancestors, for Communists in the country, some of whom were Jews. I wept, Mother wept, Rachel wept, but they couldn’t shield me from the cruelty of it all.

When I turned eighteen, I finally became an Episcopalian. I wasn’t religious and a part of this seemed like an immense lie. But when you live with attacks, you can only withstand so much. You retreat into acts of sheer lunacy as a response. I hoped that old gnarly Auntie Semitism might stay at bay. I hoped the change might give me room to live, to try to write, to try to achieve, without looking for bigots on every corner. Plus being Episcopalian conveyed a certain prestige. It was the faith of power players, at least at that time. And I wanted every connection I could get in the world.

Mother wept, said I was taking the easy way out. I felt bad for her, but she didn’t know the truth of things. I couldn’t explain it all to her. She thought I was casting away my traditions. And yes, I might have gotten baptized, confirmed with bishops in vestments hovering beatifically. I might have become immersed in Elizabethan language, in creeds. I might have memorized the creeds, like a schoolboy memorizes Latin. But beneath the creeds and all that, I still held the weight of Auntie Semitism, the weight of my ancestors taking flight from a bearded czar. I still considered myself Jewish deep down. I was Jewish by birth, by traditions, by connections, Jewish in a place where the rector couldn’t find it. Where the world couldn’t. And where that old Auntie Semitism couldn’t find it, even as she preyed upon the world like a ruthless disease.

About the author

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His story, "Soon," was nominated for a Pushcart. A native of Idaho, Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

About the artwork

Photograph uploaded by jeanne to Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.