My experience with Anti-Semitism by Linda Koplovitz

I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia in the late 1950's & 1960's. We were Jewish but my family had always been friendly to everyone. I played with the neighborhood kids no matter who or what nationality or religion they were and one of my parents' closest friends were a couple who had 6 kids. We found out that they were Catholic. The mother looked Italian and the father looked Irish. Well we all gathered together while the parents talked, the kids played.
My sister, brother and I knew we were different only a few times a year. During Easter, we were not permitted to eat their candy because it was also Passover,

with Jewish dietary restrictions in play and during Christmas, they had a tree and we did not. However, I remember being invited over their house on Christmas to watch them open their presents and to share their hospitality in the way of delicious cookies.
My parents were very trusting people, maybe too trusting. My sister was permitted to go away to a 2-week Summer Camp one year. My parents were not told any details with the exception that she would be with friends from school. When she came back, she told me that she was Christian. At the camp, she was not permitted to play at all the camp activites or eat dinner until they all prayed to Jesus. My parents hushed it up and never mentioned it again. But I took it personally that someone could steal my sister's mind and make her believe that she was not Jewish.

I think if it were me and this had happened to my child today, there would have been a huge legal case to deal with. As a child myself, I learned all I could about what being Jewish really meant and I tried to re-educate my sister. But I was only a child myself and not able to cure brainwashing.
For me I never felt the sting of Anti-Semitism during my early years. Later when I was about 18 years old, standing on a corner, waiting for a bus, someone drove by and yelled at me, "Christ Killer!"
I realized then that people do know who you are. People talk and that person, who yelled at me, knew me through his acquaintences and that he and his acquaintences were saying bad things about me behind my back all the while smiling to my face.
It made me think that all those lovely Catholic children that I had played with when I was a child, really didn't like things about me. That was my first hurt and when I realized that people could hate you because of the difference in how you pray or who you pray to, it broke my heart.

That was my first shock. I was shocked because No. 1, I didn't know who yelled at me and No. 2, what does that mean? So I went back to the books to try to figure out why someone would call me a Christ Killer. I had to learn the story of Jesus in order to defend myself.

I wanted to fight this bad feeling that I had and pick up a sword like Joan of Arc and defend myself and my people. But in the 1970's that's a bit too dramatic. So instead, everyone I met who was not my religion got an education because the minute I became someone's friend, I got it all out. I'm Jewish, I believe in the One God. The same God that Jesus prayed to, I pray to. We do not pray to Jesus because if Jesus lived, he would have been a man, not a God and Jews feel that Jesus, if he were real, he would not have been any different than any other Jewish child of God and that no one child stands above any other. That was the short lesson.
After knowing me for awhile, one might get the lesson that, "All religions are a mythology and the Jewish People are united by the common mythology and the Study of the Torah. We do not even believe that there was anything called Jesus. It's just another fairy tale like Beauty and the Beast or another story like Hercules, the son of a human woman and Zeus."
But even though my friends got an education, my acquaintences still talked about me behind my back.
After my husband and I purchased our very first home in a sleepy little town in North New Jersey,

we were invited to an annual party of the Real Estate Agent, who sold us our house, to thank all his customers. A stranger walked over to me and told me that if I had lived in his neck of the woods, they would be burning a cross on my lawn.

Well, by then I was experienced, so I was no longer shocked by Anti-Semitism; I was empowered. So I said, "In my neck of the woods, we would have fed you to the lions!" and I walked away feeling pride that I could combat a nasty remark with a retaliation of an equally nasty remark. But the idea that my Real Estate Agent talked about us to his other customers always made me a little sick to my stomach when I thought about it.
I understand now why some people, less confrontational might enjoy living in a Ghetto of sorts. I now understand why the Jews of Israel might enjoy living with their own kind. Imagine a nation of all the same type of people, where your neighbor doesn't secretly hate you for being different. I can understand why Israel has always been so important to all Jews everywhere. It's a place that we can go to, a haven, if we are tired of fighting the outside world.
Once I had children, I was fearful for them. How could I protect them from Anti-Semitism. One day, my daughter came home from Kindergarten and said, "Mommy, we learned about the birth of God today." Well there it was. The Elephant walked into the room or should I say the 3 camels. My first battle over my child having to learn about Anti-Semitism was Christmas in a public school. That's not only Anti-Semitism, it's Anti-American. We have something in this country called Separation of Church and State. In 1985, public schools were not supposed to teach religion. I immediately called my Rabbi and asked him, "What can I do to stop this." He more or less told me that there was nothing I could do except ask to go to school to teach about Chanukah. So that's what I did and every year I would go to school with a Prayer Shawl, a Chanukah Menorah, Candles, Dreidels (Toy Tops) and Chunukah Gelt, (Chocolate Gold Coins). I compared Judah Maccabee to He-man Masters of the Universe and the bad Syrian King that took over the Jewish Temple as Skeletor. I told the story of Chanukah whereby Judah and his brothers fought the first battle in recorded history that defended religious freedoms. And maybe Christmas couldn't be celebrated today if it were not for the Jews who fought for those basic Freedoms.

Once my daughter told me that the little girl across the street told her not to tell

anyone that she was Jewish because they won't like her. Well I told my daughter to go back to that little girl and tell her that "Jesus was Jewish and everyone liked him."
To this day, just like during the time of Judah Maccabee, I still feel that Jews are fighting for basic Religious Respect and Freedoms.