If I could have one
superpower, it would be…
Let me call it God. As
my tradition has taught me, God is both male and female, as it is written: “
Let us create man and woman in our image.” God, for me, is amorphous, without
shape. God is a force. God, for me, is a concept, a concept of spirit in which
the ultimate order exists. In the name of this concept, our ancestors have
devised rules and laws by which to live our lives, so that we may live with one
another in peace and with justice. Though thousands of years old, most of these
rules are still valid, though I think from time to time they could be
overhauled, to fit the times. I do not believe that they were “written by God”
though I believe that some of what has been written, in numerous ways, has been
God-inspired.
Some of us, perhaps most of us, derive a certain comfort from God, though this, I think, is quite individual, very personal. I think it depends on just how much each of us is willing to surrender our spiritual selves to the Unknown, the Amorphous concept, which we call God.
God has many names. God
has many ‘Mansions.” God has many, many ways for our search for “Truth” But
all, I believe, lead ultimately to the need to live with one another in peace,
and with justice-as we see it.
My own Search, still
ongoing, began when I was eleven, in 1929. Up until then, I was raised in a
happy family, Jewish by birth but not in practice. We were Germans. My
grandparents, and their parents and grandparents before there were Jews. My
mother’s family lived in Rhineland, so I have always assumed that my original
ancestors may have come to the area with the Roman legions. Perhaps they were
slaves, Capture from the Middle East in wars and conquests. Or perhaps they
were Jewish Roman Citizens- if there were any such.
But Hitler, who took power in 1933, and
his henchmen hated Jews, and swore to rid the world of us. To them we were not
German. Never mind that my father and his brother served in the German army in
W.W.1. that he was a decorated veteran. It did us no good to stop our outward
religious manifestations and practices. It did us no good to assimilate- to
become more German than the Germans. We were made Hitler’s scapegoats.
My grandfather founded
a publishing company in Germany, in 1871. My father and uncle continued it. It
prospered, become nationally renowned. The Nazis stole our business, our
livelihood, along with all other assets, not just from us, but from all our
co-religionists. They took away our citizenships, all out rights, one by one,
and finally set out to take away our very lives. Six million of us were
murdered. Of these, one –and-a-half were little children.
All I ever knew, or
thought I knew, was that “Juden sind
unerwuenscht.” Jews are not wanted. Was this not the reason that during
Kristallnacht my father was arrested in the middle of the night and dragged
away to the concentration camp in Dachau? Was this not the reason for the
Kindertransport, which took me and 10,000 other children away to England, to
escape the unbelievable madness? For me, to be Jewish meant to be hunted,
tortured, even murdered.
Then came my Christian
benefactors in England. My conversion happened gradually and was never
completed. During five of the six years I dwelled within their midst, I
embraced their “Mansion” as a drowning child would embrace a lifeboat. I learned
a new verse from the King James Bible every day. I sang the hymns with gusto
and belief. I knelt at the foot of my bed each night of the Good Shepherd, and
declared that the lamb in his arms was I. I went to church, or to chapel, or to
the meetinghouse, every Sunday without fail. I moved from one family to
another, six within six years.
By the fifth year,
about to celebrate my 15th birthday, I began to question God’s
existence? What took so long for my prayer to be answered? Why, when my parents
finally managed to escape, did they land in America, and not in England? Why
did the war drag on and on, and why was the bombing becoming worse and worse?
Now and then, I skipped
going to church.
Then after six years, I
got to America, and my parents met again. My talk of “Christian” and “church”, etc., was ignored with embarrassed
smiles. I decided to keep it inside of me. And then I met and married my
husband. It’s true, I didn’t know who I was; but he knew who he was. “ We
didn’t come through all this hell to give up now….” And furthermore, he said,
“Our children must be brought up as Jews.”
WHY did God allow six
million souls, 1.5 children amongst them, to be so cruelly murdered? No one,
not even the rabbis, have an answer.
Not knowing who you are
has its advantages. It leaves you room to seek, to learn, to change. I became a
Jewish wife, a Jewish mother. I began to read, to study. We began to celebrate
Passover in our house, invited our parents to our Seders. One by one, our three
children were sent to Hebrew school, at the Temple we had joined. I continued
to study. The more I studied, the more I like what I was studying. It all began
to make sense to me. I no longer believed in a blind faith that seemed
impossible to me. I could come to my own conclusions and still be counted. I
could make up my own mind.
This, to me, did not
involve religion alone. When our third child entered the first grade, I began
going to college. There, a miracle happened: students and teachers alike
listened to what I had to say! It was heady! I found my voice. I began to
write. I began to feel good about myself. And I kept on wondering about God,
and to read, read, read.
If you ask me today,
what is the One Superpower to you? I would answer: It depends on which day you
ask me. When I look around me at the beauty (or even ugliness) of the world, I
have to ask myself who made all this in the first place? Who made that first
amoeba? Who made the earthworm? The dinosaur? The elephant, dog, cat, pelican,
sparrow? Who made me? But if you ask me, is there Someone, of Something “out
there” that knows you and cares about you? I have to shrug my arthritic
shoulders and answer, “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so.”
Well,
I’m only seventy-six years old. I still have time to find out, though who
knows-maybe I never shall…
Olga Levy Drucker