The Boogeyman

Just heard about the gunman in Toulouse, France who pulled up to a Jewish day school on his motorcycle and started shooting. So far three small children and the Rabbi have died. This scares me the most, this persistent antisemitism that just won't end. Perhaps he didn't see the movie "Le Rafle" or "Sarah's Key," both depicting the roundup of Jews in the French Velodrome. Or maybe he did and it emboldened him. Who knows. Whenever I drop Ben off at hebrew school I think about this possibility. There's always a cop sitting in a car in the parking lot, reading the paper, sending out the pretense of safety. Truth be told, I often feel like turning to Ben and saying "maybe not today," and going for ice cream in town. I picture the entire cataclysm in my mind. Ben is the only survivor from his hebrew school class. We were the lucky ones, like that CEO from Cantor Fitzgerald who was with his daughter for the opening day of kindergarten. The sole survivor from his offices on floors 101 through 105.

Each year Rona and I attend the Jewish Film Festival at the West Orange JCC and sit through at least one hardcore Holocaust movie. I'm always in the head of the heroine who takes off the Star of David and walks down the street wracked with terror, her head held high. Or the mom in "Le Rafle," who moments before stepping onto the cattle car to Auschwitz, runs back to her son and implores him to escape, not to wait it out.

I remember in high school, in social studies class, being shown the documentary "Night in Fog," with it's stark, black and white footage of emaciated jews being liberated from the concentration camp. The year was 1973, and in those days, even Jewish teenagers weren't being exposed to these Nazi atrocities. When the bell rang, I couldn't move. The rest of the class jumped up, gathered their books and left. But I just sat there, going over and over in my head, how was it possible that this happened only thirty years ago. How could I not have heard more about this, as more than just a footnote in hebrew school class or from my own parents. For the rest of the day, I was in shock. But mostly what I felt was fear. I remember taking solace that since it was so recent, we Jews were most likely in a period of safety, a calm respite, no way could this happen to us so soon after, certainly not within a mere three decades.

But now all bets were off. In the last few years I find myself holding my breath, waiting for just this type of evil to come pell-mell onto a train with Ben, or another skyscraper, or maybe as a knock on my door. Crazy I know. And it doesn't seem to enter anyone else's consciousness, certainly not the confident jewish moms I see dropping off their children at the temple. Maybe it's just me, aging, a fraying of the neurons, as worry seems to creep in ever so easily. Like today, with this blustering wind bending the tops of the old oak trees surrounding my house and throughout town. Is it safe for Ben to walk home from school I wonder?