This summer I was one of 20 teens who spent five weeks at the University of Wisconsin at Superior studying acid rain with a National Science Foundation Young Scholars program. With such a small group in such a small town. we soon became close friends and had a good deal of fun together. We learned about the science of acid rain, went on field trips, found the best and cheapest restaurants in Superior and ate in them frequently to escape the lousy cafeteria food. We were a happy, bonded group.
Represented among us were eight religions: Jewish, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Methodist, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness and Lutheran. It was amazing, given the variety of backgrounds, to see the ignorance of some of the smartest young scholars on the subject of other religions.
On the first day one girl mentioned that she had nine brothers and sisters. “Oh, are you Mormon?” asked another girl, who I knew was a Mormon herself. The first girl, shocked, replied, “No, I dress normal!” She thought Mormon was the same as Mennonite, and the only thing she knew about either religion was that Mennonites don’t, in her opinion, “dress normal.”
My friends, ever curious about Judaism, asked me about everything from our basic theology to food preferences. “How come, if Jesus was a Jew, Jews aren’t Christian?” my Catholic roommate asked me in all seriousness. Brought up in a small Wisconsin town, she had never met a Jew before, nor had she met people from most of the other “strange” religions (anything but Catholic or mainstream Protestant). Many of the other kids were the same way.
“Do you all still practice animal sacrifices?” a girl from a small town in Minnesota asked me once. I said no, laughed, and pointed out that this was the 20th century, but she had been absolutely serious. The only Jews she knew were the ones from the Bible.
Nobody was deliberately rude or anti-Semitic, but I got the feeling that I was representing the entire Jewish people through my actions. I realized that many of my friends would go back to their small towns thinking that all Jews liked Dairy Queen Blizzards and grilled cheese sandwiches. After all, that was true of all the Jews they knew (in most cases, me and the only other Jewish young scholar, period).
The most awful thing for me, however, was not the benign ignorance of my friends. Our biology professor had taken us on a field trip to the EPA field site where he worked, and he was telling us about the project he was working on. He said that they had to make sure the EPA got its money’s worth from the study–he “wouldn’t want them to get Jewed.”
I was astounded. The professor had a doctorate, various other degrees and seemed to be a very intelligent man. He apparently had no idea that he had just made an anti-Semitic remark. The other Jewish girl in the group and I debated whether or not to say something to him about it, and although we agreed we would, neither of us ever did. Personally, it made me feel uncomfortable. For a high-school student to tell a professor who taught her class that he was a bigot seemed out of place to me, even if he was one.
What scares me about that experience, in fact about my whole visit to Wisconsin, was that I never met a really vicious anti-Semite or a malignantly prejudiced person. Many of the people I met had been brought up to think that Jews (or Mormons or any other religion that’s not mainstream Christian) were different and that difference was not good.
Difference, in America, is supposed to be good. We are expected–at least, I always thought we were expected–to respect each other’s traditions. Respect requires some knowledge about people’s backgrounds. Singing Christmas carols as a kid in school did not make me Christian, but it taught me to appreciate beautiful music and someone else’s holiday. It’s not necessary or desirable for all ethnic groups in America to assimilate into one traditionless mass. Rather, we all need to learn about other cultures so that we can understand one another and not feel threatened by others.
In the little multicultural universe that I live in, it’s safe not to worry about explaining the story of Passover because if people don’t hear it from me, they’ll hear it some other way. Now I realize that’s not true everywhere.
Ignorance was the problem I faced this summer. By itself, ignorance is not always a problem, but it leads to misunderstandings, prejudice and hatred. Many of today’s problems involve hatred. If there weren’t so much ignorance about other people’s backgrounds, would people still hate each other as badly as they do now? Maybe so, but at least that hatred would be based on facts and not flawed beliefs.
I’m now back at school, and I plan to apply for the Diversity Committee. I’m going to get up and tell the whole school about my religion and the tradition I’m proud of. I see now how important it is to celebrate your heritage and to educate others about it. I can no longer take for granted that everyone knows about my religion, or that I know about theirs. People who a.e suspicious when they find out I’m Jewish usually don’t know much about Judaism. I would much prefer them to hate or distrust me because of something I’ve done, instead of them hating me on the basis of prejudice.
