Raising her family in a newly-created suburban neighborhood on a Pasadena mesa during the 1950s, my mother always knew she was a square peg in a round hole. For a long time, we were the only Jewish family on the block, the street, and probably the whole damn mesa. But almost as bad was the fact that my parents were Democrats and made no secret of it. While driving to a neighborhood party (there were plenty of those in the 50s and 60s), my mother querulously remarked, "I wonder why we're invited. They don't like our politics, and I'm sure they don't like Jews." "They have to," my father replied, "or they'll lose their federal funding."
The linkage of Jewishness to commie proclivities was hardly new to the neighbors. While they may not have known the particulars of history, they'd probably heard the recognizably Jewish names of Rosa Luxemburg, Julius, and Ethel Rosenberg, and wasn't Karl Marx himself a Jew? Nobody explained how a cabal of Jews directed capitalism from behind the scenes on the one hand while working for the victory of communism on the other, but this diffuse antisemitism was rarely put under a spotlight and so never needed to leave the shadows of innuendo and prejudice.
One of our right-wing neighbors, an early member of the John Birch Society, tried to alert the authorities that my father, who occasionally attended scientific conferences (he was consulting polymer chemist) behind the Iron Curtain, was in all probability a Soviet informer but was frustrated in his patriotic duty by the fact that the CIA had already asked my father to debrief them about those same conferences and went with their blessing.
In the spring of 1966, the escalating catastrophe of the Vietnam War ruined or ended the lives of ever greater numbers of young American men, and since the Establishment (as we called it then) hadn't yet realized that you could fling your troops in harm's way with impunity if they were poor or colored or both, the draft was universal and imperiled the children of the middle class as well. (The rich always found a way to get around it; pace George Bush.) My brother, born in 1946, was required to register with the local draft board in 1964 when he turned 18. (My turn came in 1968.) There were escape hatches to being sent into this senseless slaughter, most notably the student deferment offered to those who were enrolled in higher education. In 1966, my brother was in his second year of attending Pasadena City College.
In May of that year, a neighbor ("a good Democrat,") informed my mother that the talk at a ladies' luncheon had turned to the draft and the danger it posed to their boys. Unprovoked, one woman piped up, "Well, Amy doesn't have to worry. David will never be drafted because he's a communist." Here, I let my mother pick up the tale:
The ladies pooh-poohed her, saying that they have known us a long time and all are impressed with Joe's secret confidential super security clearance, and they have always known that we are liberal Democrats and they are almost used to it. When she was questioned, this dumb dame said that she knew David was a communist because she had worked at the US employment office and when David had filled out his application, he had written on it that he was a communist.
Mother was aghast at the gossip. My parents had lived through the McCarthy era and knew that if the label stuck, David might find it impossible to get work, and it could have even threatened my father's security clearance. So I decided to do battle and stop it right there.
I realized that she was lying foolishly, for there is nothing on a federal application to show race, creed, color, church, etc. I telephoned the supervisor of the office in Pasadena and told him the story. He turned out to be a nice guy and was horrified. That kind of question was against the law anyway. Then he told me I could see the file, which was absolutely clean.
Now I had her. She lied about his having put his name to be "that thing," and so I went to work. I telephoned her best friend, who had been at the party, and told her what had happened and expressed sorrowfully that I was considering a libel suit and was, of course, going to talk with Joe and our lawyer. I was terribly sorry, but I was sick of being talked about and really decided to see it through this time. As I hoped, the woman I called got in touch with my antagonist and told her I was sore and had proof she had lied. Then, I did nothing for a week so that the rumor would spread of what she had done and how I had checked her.
It worked like I was a professional. I finally telephoned her and said I wanted to see her—that she had said something quite damaging about David and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I was very nice. When we got together, she was a shaking mass of apologies. Yes, she had said that about David, didn't know why, for they always liked us and she wouldn't do anything in the world to hurt us (like fun) and she was so sorry, so sorry. She also said that the rumor didn't come from anyone—that she had started it. She told me the story would stop there and she would call the people at the party. I was very nice and forgave her and said I was sorry too and this was a good lesson the whole neighborhood would learn for a long time to come.
But even though my mother had emerged victorious, it hurt her too, proving yet again (as if we needed it) that we could easily be targeted for our "difference."
You know, I had a feeling of relief, gratitude, pity and was also a little sick to my stomach. In so many ways this is such a magnificent country and these people want to tear it down and destroy us. This name-calling is a bad business and I am glad I followed it through, but it took a lot out of me. Nobody wants to start a fight.
I'm glad she's dead and doesn't have to witness this awful renewal of antisemitism and liberal vilification.
– Robert Philipson
Read about the professorial foray that prompted this autobiographical essay, The Evilest Queer Jew in America
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