black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, Jews were a distinct and rare minority—old men, and a few women, who sold chickens, clothing, or peanuts. Their house of prayer, however, was hardly distinct: a small synagogue, it stood recessed, tucked in between the storefronts that margined it like the edges of a book cover.
Inside the vestibule, six or seven old men stood, chanting in an unknown tongue. They wore yarmulkes on their heads, and prayer shawls fastened across their chests covered their stooped shoulders. The room was dark, and what little sun seeped in hardly penetrated the dimness. Dust motes swam like goldfish in thin ribbons of filtered light. To this day, I remember the dust; the dust of old stones, of old men. And the smell of old men.
The rabbi, his eyes enlarged by bifocals, shuffled over to me, his shoulders stooped, his eyes sharp. “Can I help you, young man?” His speech was guttural, thick; colored with Yiddishisms. There seemed to be—or was I only imagining it?—an aura of fear around him stirred, perhaps, by my entrance. Who was this big, beardless youth confronting him?
As tall black men learn to do, I made myself mentally smaller, and looked askance as I explained my reason for entering the synagogue.
“Yes, sir. I—umm—I’m—umm . . . l wanna learn about Judaism.”
“Vy iz dat?”
“Well, I’m interested in learning about the religion that really began Christianity.”
“Vell—Vy?”
“Umm . . . becuz I think I wanna become a Jew.”
“Dyou vat? Vat you mean? Vy dyou say dat?”
“Well—I’m interested in a pure religion. I’ve read that the Bible has been tampered with; there are different translations and stuff. I wanna study what God really said, you know . . .”
The rabbi stared at me. He was trying to formulate an answer, but the words stuck to his tongue. I looked into his eyes and saw incredulity dueling with quiet surprise. Is he serious? silly? he seemed to be asking. Then he turned and looked around, as if searching for something.
“Vait uh minute.”
“Zis vill help you, young man,” he said, handing me an envelope, and walking me to the door.
“Ven you are finished, come back, ya?”
“Thank you, sir!”
“By ze vay, dyou know, zair ah black Chews. Haf you efer heard von Sammy Davis chunior?”
I nodded assent.
“Veil, he is a black Chew, you know?”
He bade me farewell. I left the Market Street Synagogue high with expectation, racing home.
Once in my room, I tore apart the thick brown envelope and found a slim, rust-colored volume bound in leather. I opened it, but stopped short in dismay. What was this? There was not one English word within its covers! It was entirely in Hebrew. Tears leapt to my eyes. The search was sure to continue.
III
MY FIRST VISIT to a Catholic church was a visit into a place of contrasts, a place where the visages in stone radiated reverence, but faces of flesh reflected unmitigated hatred.
I remember sitting in Mass, listening to the strange intonations of the priests—Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi . . . miserere nobis—and noticing their turned heads, faces tight with spirals of hatred, aimed at me, a lanky black youth kneeling in the white midst.
“Do they know me?” I wondered. “Why are they angry at me?”
Confusion warred with amazement: how could the House of God so plainly be a house of hatred toward one who sought the divine presence within its walls? Wasn’t this the Church Universal, the Mother Church?
Although barely in my teens, I knew what I saw, and I acknowledged the feelings of the people around me. Matronly heads covered in firmly knotted scarves, these silent, solid, middle-aged Poles, Ukrainians, and Slavs (there were also a few Puerto Ricans) never said a thing, but their faces—their coldly darting eyes, and tight, wrinkled mouths—spoke to me louder than screams:
“Nigger! What are you doing in this church? Our church?”
Day by day, week by week, month by month, I began to ask myself that very question.
Where once the church had offered a quiet place for spiritual reflection on its catechismal mysteries, it now pulsated with resentment at my dark presence.
When I went to catechism I heard of one world; when I walked into church I saw another.
The straw of severance came on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I was on my way to catechism, and as I trudged my way to the rectory, my slowing gait seemed to reflect my inner reluctance. A weight hung on my mind like an anvil.
“King believed in nonviolence—and still they killed him!”
“They? Who they?”
“White folks—white folks couldn’t bear to hear him—to see him!”
My conversation with self went point-counter-point . . . By the time I got off the trolley near St. John’s, my legs were leaden. I walked at a snail’s pace.
Sitting down with Father to begin the lesson, he noticed my reticence.
“What’s wrong, young man? You seem distracted.”
“Father . . .”
“Yes, go on.”
“I heard on the news today that Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated . . .”
“I heard it too. Some of the Fathers and brothers are glad.”
“Glad?”
“Yes. They saw him as a troublemaker.”
“Really? Really, Father?”
“Some—not all. Especially not one of our Fathers.”
“Why ‘especially’ not one?”
“Well—how do I put it . . . Well—one of our Fathers is half-Negro.”
“Really, Father?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Do you think I could talk to him?”
“Why?”
“Well, Father—perhaps . . . maybe he can understand how I feel.”
“That may be, but, uh . . . you cannot talk with him.” “Why not, Father?”
“Well . . . it’s a secret. I can’t tell you which Father it is.”
A man, a priest, ashamed of his race? I had come to catechism that night seeking peace for the tempest that raged in my soul. Now, leaving St. John’s, I was more at sea than when I arrived.
All those months! A half-black priest! Ashamed of his race? Priests who were glad that King was killed? Where was I? What was I doing here? I wept bitter tears. Not for King—I felt he was wrong, a soft-hearted non-realist—but for my parents and all others who revered him. King was an educated preacher of nonviolence, yet to these priests he was just another nigger.
What was I doing in this place, a place that hailed his murder? If they thought that way about him, how did they really feel about me?
I cried for the loss my mother and her generation felt—the assassination of their dreams, the scuttling of their barely born hopes. I cried for the loss of a boy’s faith. I cried for a nation on the razor’s edge of chaos.
IV