inherentical trauma

This is to read as a follow-up to last week’s article about October 7th.
It is a section from Rabbi Brian’s Highly Unorthodox Gospel, “2:3 Religion Stuff Is Triggery.”

Inherited Trauma is Real

New York City

1979     

I’m nine years old, and I’m fidgeting with a bendable, Micronauts bug-robot-man hybrid with translucent pop-out wings. I’m seated with Mom, Dad, and my sister.

We are in row G, Rabbi side of the sanctuary.

Seth Bernstein, known as the young rabbi, is running Rosh Hashanah Family Services.

I’ll be him one day, but I don’t know it.

As the rabbi clears his throat to begin a sermon, Dad presses a button on his Casio wristwatch.

A tiny beep indicates the stopwatch has started. Dad times the sermons and records the minutes, seconds, and a few words about the subject in the back of his prayer book.

I am not listening to the rabbi. I’m looking at the flashing lights outside. Reflecting in the stained glass windows that face West 83rd.

There are squad cars outside. Several, I figure, but I can’t be certain how many.

Rodeph Sholom, a giant, extravagant 1930s Romanesque synagogue building, is deliberately on a side street, off the park, so as to be less visible. Safer. Because antisemitism.

The Spanish/Portuguese synagogue about a mile south faces Central Park West. Later in life, I will tour its safe room, hidden below the congregation by a false floor panel.

In my young mind, I can see the white circles with the black-painted swastikas on the side of each patrol car.

No one is panicking. It is too late for us.

We know it. We know what will happen next.

We will line up, like we do in school, but with our families. The Nazis outside will take us away.

I stare at the flashing lights through the windows.

I wonder if the Nazis will let me keep my toy. I hope so.

I know I need to remember this moment for later in life.

To remember this feeling, this story. So I can tell it to my grandchildren, about the happy years I lived before the Nazis got us.

I don’t remember much else from the evening.

Years later, I realize it was probably an ambulance.

Generational trauma is real.

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Rabbi Brian’s Highly Unorthodox Gospel is available