This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

It was a hot and humid day in late July 2018. I was on my hands and knees weed­ing the dri­ve­way to pre­pare my house in Sag Har­bor, NY, for an August renter. Rent­ing out the house was a major source of my income. 

My eighty-some­thing-year-old next-door neigh­bor, Gail, pulled up to the foot of my dri­ve­way in her Mer­cedes con­vert­ible and toot­ed her horn. The top down, she called out to me from the driver’s seat in her grav­el­ly New York accent: Hey Eric, I’m going to hear my friend give a talk about the Holo­caust. She’s nine­ty. She’s a sur­vivor. You wan­na go?” Clear­ly antic­i­pat­ing reluc­tance to accept such an invi­ta­tion, Gail has­tened to add, It’s not heavy; it’s for the kids.”

From my squat­ting posi­tion on the grav­el, I won­dered how any­thing about the Holo­caust could pos­si­bly be not heavy,’ and called out, When is it?” 

When? Now! That’s why I’m ask­ing you,” Gail answered, her voice ris­ing with the famil­iar impa­tience of hav­ing to explain things to peo­ple who were not think­ing as fast as her­self. Inhal­ing deeply, to project my voice from my end of the short dri­ve­way, filled my nos­trils with the over­pow­er­ing scent of the OFF! Deep Woods insect repel­lent that, in an attempt to avoid get­ting tick-borne Lyme dis­ease while weed­ing, I had doused my pants and sneak­ers with. 

Where is it?” I sheep­ish­ly inquired. 

Where?!” Gail repeat­ed exas­per­at­ed­ly before answer­ing, It’s at the syn­a­gogue, the good one.” 

I imag­ined show­ing up at Tem­ple Adas Israel smelling of per­spi­ra­tion and bug spray in an old T‑shirt and khakis, with grass stains at the knee, and stam­mered, I’d love to go, but I’m just too… in the mid­dle of all of this right now, and I’m all…” 

That’s OK, the next time there’s a Holo­caust, you’ll come!” Gail inter­ject­ed, sav­ing me from hav­ing to elab­o­rate, before she sped off.

As I con­tin­ued try­ing to uproot dan­de­lions embed­ded in the grav­el between the treads of wood that formed the walk­way from the park­ing area to the front door, I thought about how Gail, like the old­er Jew­ish women in my fam­i­ly, could spon­ta­neous­ly be both melo­dra­mat­ic and out­ra­geous­ly fun­ny. How she remind­ed me of my quick-wit­ted great-aunt Bet­ty, who had left me the prop­er­ty I was weed­ing, and of my inge­nious grand­moth­er, also named Bet­ty, who had told her sis­ter-in-law to do so. 

Anoth­er Holo­caust? Ludi­crous, I had thought. But only three months lat­er on Octo­ber 27th, 2018, the worst attack on Jews in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States would take place in Pitts­burgh. And now, after Octo­ber 7th, 2023, the dead­liest day for Jews since the Holo­caust, I revis­it this encounter with Gail through a new lens. For the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran and its prox­ies intend to per­pe­trate noth­ing less than anoth­er Holo­caust against the Jews, and now, even in what my immi­grant great-grand­par­ents called the gold­ene med­i­na of the Unit­ed States, anti­semitism runs ram­pant on the right and left of the polit­i­cal spec­trum and is becom­ing mainstream.

When Gail referred to the syn­a­gogue that her friend was speak­ing at as the good one,” I knew that she meant the local one that my great-aunt and great-uncle had belonged to in Sag Har­bor. There was noth­ing the mat­ter with the oth­er main Hamp­tons syn­a­gogue aside from it being fur­ther away, new­er, and less haimish. 

How­ev­er, Sag Harbor’s most archi­tec­tural­ly sig­nif­i­cant build­ing and a Nation­al His­toric Land­mark is the First Pres­by­ter­ian Church, ded­i­cat­ed in 1844. A pre­mier exam­ple of the Egypt­ian Revival move­ment of the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, this church is meant to evoke King Solomon’s tem­ple in ancient Israel, the destruc­tion of which, at the hands of the Baby­lo­ni­ans in 586 BCE, began the first Jew­ish dias­po­ra. At the time of the church’s con­struc­tion, the town was an afflu­ent cen­ter of the whal­ing indus­try. With­in ten years, whale oil began to be replaced with petro­le­um and the indus­try declined. Towards the end of the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Sag Har­bor found a new eco­nom­ic base when it turned to man­u­fac­tur­ing. A New Jer­sey watch com­pa­ny relo­cat­ed to Sag Har­bor and employed immi­grant labor includ­ing many Jew­ish engravers, from East­ern Europe and Rus­sia who came to Sag Har­bor from the Low­er East Side of Manhattan.

In 1898 these immi­grant fam­i­lies found­ed the old­est syn­a­gogue on Long Island — Tem­ple Mish­can Israel, mean­ing Taber­na­cle of Israel. The struc­ture resem­bles a white clap­board colo­nial New Eng­land church, with goth­ic stained-glass win­dows, albeit one with­out a steeple. In 1943 the con­gre­ga­tion changed its name to the cur­rent one — Adas Israel, mean­ing Com­mu­ni­ty of Israel.

So, in the mid nine­teenth cen­tu­ry we have the Pres­by­te­ri­ans hear­ken­ing back to their Old Tes­ta­ment foun­da­tions and build­ing a church that looks like an ancient Israelite tem­ple; at the end of the same cen­tu­ry the descen­dants of those Israelites, look­ing to not draw too much atten­tion to them­selves, con­struct a tem­ple that looks like a church. One hall­mark of a Jew­ish sense of humor is the abil­i­ty to find the com­ic in even the some­times-bit­ter irony of history.

My great-aunt Bet­ty grew up on Manhattan’s Low­er East Side and in Brook­lyn. She nev­er fin­ished high school because she start­ed work­ing ear­ly to help her immi­grant par­ents. In a depart­ment store ele­va­tor on her way up to the per­son­nel office to apply for a job, a man whis­pered to her, If you are Jew­ish, they won’t hire you.” She filled out the appli­ca­tion and left the line for reli­gion blank. The inter­view­er asked her what reli­gion she was, and she replied, Pres­by­ter­ian.” He told her to fill that in on the form. Not want­i­ng to put a lie down in her own hand­writ­ing, and by way of offer­ing an expla­na­tion for leav­ing the line blank in the first place, she coy­ly said, I’m a ter­ri­ble speller. Could you write it in for me?” 

When Jew­ish fac­to­ry work­ers came to Sag Har­bor in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry they were embraced by the town’s mul­ti­eth­nic work­ing class. When my great-uncle, an accoun­tant, and my great-aunt, a sec­re­tary, came to build a week­end home in the 1950s they were sim­i­lar­ly wel­comed. But in Southamp­ton and East Hamp­ton some land deeds were his­tor­i­cal­ly restrict­ed from being sold to Jews. When Jews tried to join any of the golf clubs in the area their mem­ber­ship was reject­ed. So, in 1963 a Jew­ish den­tist named Har­ry Din­er recruit­ed friends and investors and cre­at­ed the Noy­ac Land Cor­po­ra­tion to pur­chase land for a new golf club. Amongst them was my great-uncle, who served as the trea­sur­er and prin­ci­pal fundrais­er for what would become the Noy­ac Golf Club. Unlike the clubs that had reject­ed Har­ry Din­er, Noy­ac was open to any­one who want­ed to pay the fees; there was no spon­sor nec­es­sary, nor let­ters of sup­port need­ed. These were the mech­a­nisms which had kept Jews out of the oth­er golf clubs, like East Hampton’s Maid­stone, where after being told that he would not be able to join because he was Jew­ish, Grou­cho Marx is said to have quipped, “ My son is only half Jew­ish, can he at least play the front nine?” It did not admit its first Jew­ish mem­ber until the late 1970s.. As ever, when Jews were kept out of insti­tu­tions, like the hos­pi­tals which would not employ them, they raised mon­ey from the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and cre­at­ed their own and made them acces­si­ble to all.

As a peo­ple, we have long been aware of the need to be pre­pared for the vicis­si­tudes of life. Hav­ing sur­vived, but not yet recov­ered in num­ber, from the geno­cide per­pe­trat­ed against us by Nazi Ger­many, the one half of our pop­u­la­tion that lives in Israel is threat­ened by the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran. We are a peo­ple who make back­up plans. I’ve always known exact­ly where my pass­port is along with some cash I keep handy, just in case. That used to feel unnec­es­sary, some­thing I thought of as per­haps a neu­rot­ic symp­tom of the inter­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma we car­ry from 2,500 plus years of dias­po­ra, hav­ing to flee from coun­try to coun­try at the mer­cy of the mer­cu­r­ial major­i­ty, an epi­ge­net­ic inher­i­tance; but after liv­ing through polit­i­cal tur­moil that includ­ed white nation­al­ists march­ing with tiki torch­es and chant­i­ng Jews will not replace us,” an attempt­ed coup, and mobs of peo­ple demo­niz­ing Israel for a war start­ed by Hamas ter­ror­ists work­ing on behalf of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran, it seems per­haps… pru­dent? Is it any won­der that all of my Amer­i­can Jew­ish friends are more stressed out than they have ever been?

I know that we can­not avoid the mael­strom of his­to­ry, but I also know that as a resilient peo­ple, pri­or­i­tiz­ing fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty, we will sur­vive it with our intel­li­gence, inge­nu­ity, and our humor.

One of my Israeli Amer­i­can friends, who man­aged to reclaim his Por­tuguese cit­i­zen­ship by demon­strat­ing that his fam­i­ly was descend­ed from the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of Por­to (who were expelled in 1496), recent­ly told me he was talk­ing on the phone to a friend of his in Israel who was appre­hen­sive about the country’s future and thought that it would be good to have back­up plan. 

Aren’t you Sephardic? Can’t you try to reclaim a Span­ish or a Por­tuguese pass­port like I did?” he advised. Or was any­one in your fam­i­ly a Holo­caust sur­vivor from Ger­many or Poland?” 

A long silence ensued before she respond­ed, The only pass­port I can get… is the Houthi pass­port because my whole fam­i­ly came to Israel from Yemen!” They burst into laughter. 

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

Sup­port the work of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and become a mem­ber today.

Eric Ras­mussen is an actor, direc­tor, sto­ry­teller and devised the­ater mak­er. He has appeared in the US pre­miers of plays by Jean-Claude van Ital­lie, Hanoch Levin and Yoko Ono. His auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal work has been per­formed at Den­nis­ton Hill, The Wilde Project, Sec­ond Stage The­ater and the 92nd Street Y. His recent schol­ar­ship, Queer­itage: LGBTQ Fam­i­ly Lega­cy in Amer­i­can Dra­mat­ic Nar­ra­tives, was award­ed the Dean’s Prize for Out­stand­ing A.L.M. The­sis at Har­vard Exten­sion School. He lives in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts and is writ­ing a mem­oir about grow­ing up in an uncon­ven­tion­al Jew­ish fam­i­ly on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.