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Reflections December 2014

Phase Three

Peace on Earth, Good Will to All

By Arnold Bornstein

A few months after entering the U.S. Navy in 1951, I recall a newly made acquaintance in my unit asking me, and knowing that I was Jewish, if I would go to a Catholic church with him to pray for his wife, who was quite ill at the time. We went, and he told me a few days later that she was doing fine. 

I was about eight years old and living in a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania called Shamokin. I was sitting in my school classroom when a classmate made an anti-Semitic remark to me.

At the time, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Later on, of course, I understood. My father had come to the United States from Russia and opened a shoe store in Shamokin, and his brother who came with him opened a general store there. Our families were among the relatively few Jews living in the town at the time. The year was 1938.

But there also was a balance to bias. A few months after entering the U.S. Navy in 1951, I recall a newly made acquaintance in my unit asking me, and knowing that I was Jewish, if I would go to a Catholic church with him to pray for his wife, who was quite ill at the time. We went, and he told me a few days later that she was doing fine.

The history of humanity on this planet is riddled with instances of prejudice and bigotry –  including man’s inhumanity to man. And it usually involves race, religion or nationality.

In my case, it didn’t really affect me – other than my feelings – fortunately being born and raised in one of the greatest democracies the world has ever known. What could have happened to me and countless others if we had been born in other parts of the world, rather than the United States?

I still recall standing in a chow line in the Navy during the Korean War, when I still had the habit of calling people “dude.” You know, like when somebody says, “Hey, man” or “Hey, buddy.” Suddenly, the sailor in front of me spun around, with his fists raised and ready to swing. I backed off and shouted, “What the hell’s wrong?”

He calmed down and then said, “Where I come from, dude is another word for n----er.” He came from South Carolina and the year was 1951.

Much later, when knowing that our ship was heading for Korea, I sensed even greater comradery among my shipmates. When relying on each other in a crisis, bigotry apparently is forgotten. My oldest brother served with an armored division (tanks) during World War II. He was somewhat observant of Jewish traditions. He told me that periodically when in barracks he would pray and lay tefillin (very small cases that include excerpts from the Old Testament and which are attached to narrow black straps that are wrapped around the arm and forehead while praying). He told me with a chuckle: “They used to tease me that I was a Russian spy.”

There were about 275 to 300 crew members on my ship, a small one called a destroyer, and we seemed to be somewhat of a cross-section of America at the time. Including myself, there were three Jews on our ship. I became good friends with a shipmate named Bert, who was from a small town not too far from New Orleans. He told me I was the first Jew he had ever met and gotten to know. He used to talk about his young stepbrother, a boxer named Willie Pastrano (real name: Wilfred Raleigh Pastrano), who later became boxing’s light-heavyweight world champion, 1963-1965.

As you know, today’s world is still riddled by man’s inhumanity to man. And we live in the Nuclear Age and the era of nuclear weapons. Whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs, the following words should have enormous meaning to everybody and our children:  “Peace on earth, good will to all!”

 

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