Not an ‘other’

The tragic events of this past weekend have given me a new perspective on a high school memory. Junior year, my friends and I were taking the PSAT. When my friend, Joel, got to the question about racial/ ethnic identity, he asked another friend, Jason, “What did you answer?” Jason replied, “White. What did you put?” Joel answered, “Other.” Jason, amused and confused, asked, “Why?!” and Joel answered, “Because I’m Jewish.” Jason, also Jewish, laughed, and later shared Joel’s answer with the rest of us to our amusement. The distinction seemed unnecessary and inconsistent with how we viewed one another.

Saturday’s events offered the most painful way in which Joel was right. To Robert Bowers, Jews were an “other,” an object of hate. The high school memory that had brought me and my friends amusement now has a poignancy that I never would have imagined.

I also will hold on to this memory with hope, however. We laughed at Joel’s answer because none of us thought of our Jewish friends as “others.” Their Jewish identity did not compromise their place in our relationship; it became a part of it. In the years since high school, we shared the milestones of life with one another and celebrated their rituals, whether they were Jewish, Catholic, or Greek Orthodox.

In the wake of Saturday’s tragedy, we need to embrace our Jewish friends and neighbors and assure them they are not an “other.” In fact, there is no “other.” I love my Jewish friends, and I weep today that anyone would see them as anything other than the wonderful husbands, fathers, professionals, and dear friends that they are. I will not be able to think of Joel’s PSAT answer now without feeling a little pain, but I want to maintain the reason we believed it was unnecessary.

PAUL S. EJZAK

Ross