The UnderDog No More

 THE UNDERDOG NO MORE

Mordechai Z. Hecht

BS”D

“Hail Hitler!”

That’s’ what he told me, as I walked him by on Metropolitan Ave. in Queens New York.

As I was sitting by my Shabbos table this past weekend I was prompted by my wife to tell our guests of my child hood, and what it was like growing up in a home with 14 brothers and sisters. So, I began to tell of when we were little. How we used to have two bunk beds in our room and four boys sleeping in the same, what we called the, blue room.

Oh, how we used to play ship with the bunk beds. Each bunk bed was a ship with two decks and the area between the two beds was the water. and how we had all sort of challenges that we had to play out. And like this we could play for hours. That was as long as we didn’t wake my parents, who were sleeping in the room across the hall.

If we did manage to wake up my parents we would hear of it no doubt, as we would hear: “Go downstairs to the basement you are making too much noise”. To which we ultimately responded in the affirmative.  Off we went to the basement, where we could go on to play "house". This was a very sophisticated game you see, we even made our very own pre Shabbos manufactured currency, which would be used in this game called "house", [this was before the TV show House]. One of us owned the car shop, selling one of the four bikes we had indoors. One of us owned the supermarket, where we would need to buy and sell house goods and one would own the restaurant where we would prepare delicacies like pickles and crackers and orange juice.

I laugh as I am reminded of this as my younger sister reminisces how silly she was for wasting this money on the restaurant when she could’ve just gone upstairs to the kitchen and eat whatever she wanted.

ONE MEMORY TO THE NEXT

Then I went on to tell how I remember getting my first bike. My father took us to Williamsburg under the bridge, where I got my first BMX tricycle; I drove that bike till I wore off its plastic wheels.

Then as I got older my father took me and two of my other brothers and bought us real bikes. Their used to be a store on Yellowstone Blvd. One got a grey stunt bike and one got a cool yellow sports bike and I got a red little bike. Of which I remember years later had carpet stapled onto its worn out seat. These bikes lasted like a decade until they were stolen from our garage. We used those bikes practically every day, for years. We bonded like best buddies with those bikes, we loved them. Every day after school we couldn’t wait to get on them and increase the mileage on those tires.

And that reminded me of another story, which I went on to tell. Once, when I was driving my bike with a cousin of mine from Australia, here in Queens, near the Tennis Stadium, where the US Open would play, that was until they built the new stadium in Flushing. Three kids, maybe young teens, approached us and threatened to steal our bikes and beat us up if we don’t give it to them…we were scared, although perturbed as to how much they would really hurt us if we didn’t gave them the bike…we gave in and got off the bikes. Upset as we were we had no choice…until a man came running seeing what was happening scared the hoodlums away and got us back our bikes. After which he told us, “you kids must learn Karate and never be afraid to defend yourself, they have no right to treat you like that”. We thanked this man profusely and rode quickly back home. It was nothing less than an eventful Sunday afternoon in the spring.

The Shabbos table went on. We moved on to the Cholent and dessert and everyone went on.

THE DAY MOVES ON

As the day progressed I made my way back to shul for Mincha and  the closing of Shabbos. On my way back to shul, I was reminded of a more recent episode in my life.

It was about year earlier, in the summer of 2010. I was walking down Metropolitan Ave. going back to shul, just like this Shabbos afternoon, when two teenagers about my height, 5,10” dressed with black pants and white shirt, slowly walked by me, and out of the blue ranted: “Hail Hitler”. To which I was aghast, shocked and taken back. I got a good look at them, particularly one of them who was a skin head. I chose at the time to ignore them, and I kept walking. At the same time I was thinking to myself "these kids are not Brooklynites, they are not like the African Americans who would fight with us all the time, back in my High School days in Crown heights. These kids wouldn’t pick a fight if I paid them." I let it be and moved on.

I was disgusted by what I had just experienced and quite frankly shocked  that a kid would even say that today. In broad day light, on a wonderful sunny summer day, in a wonderful city in Queens , NY.

The following week, on the same route at the similar time, strangely I saw them again. Only this time a block a head of me walking towards me, apparently my heart skipped a beat, “oh no” I thought to myself, “please not again”. I continued calmly at a regular pace walking my walk, and as they passed me once again the puny little skin head said it again, “H. H.”, to which I stopped turned towards him and said: “come here”, he responded and walked towards me, and I said, in calm but authoritative voice, “If you say it one more time, I will hurt you very badly. It won’t be now, and it won’t be in broad daylight. I won't do it for myself nor will I be alone. I will do if for all my brothers and sisters – you hear me. And when I will do it... I will do it in a way you will not remember it...or anything else for that matter. You hear me ”! He stared me in the eye and walked away.

A few weeks went by and again I saw him. At this time I realized he was working as a waitor in a certain restaurant on the block and at that time of day he was leaving his waitering job. He saw me again, and I don’t recall if he said something to me, but this time I had the upper hand, a part of me felt I’m glad I told him off, and gave him a peice of my mind and made it clear what would happen to him if he spoke up and out of place again. A part of me even wanted to teach him a lesson now, so he shouldn’t try to do this on someone else, less physically and mentally capable than I.

So, I turned to him for one last time and I said: “you know you should be very careful who you say “H. H.” to because you never know whom your Mom & Dad really are, and maybe your grandparents could’ve been Jews”…choosing to play a deep mind game with this sick puny skin head hoodlum punk... and we parted ways. Never to see each other again after that. Seriously. He must have lost his job as a waiter.

After saying that, it hit me like a bomb - what I was saying. We live in a such a cholent world. The rate of intermarriage is devastating. And last week alone I met an elderly couple whom the husband was a holocaust survivor living with a non Jewish German women, who were moving back to Germany, in their 80’s, so she can once again be reunited with her family. Never mind the other families that I know in our neighborhood where there are gentile German spouses. How these things happen is a matter of fate I guess. They are a reality in this world. And my point is, you never really know where you come from and whether or not if your mother or father or grandfather or grandmother more likely was a Jew. In fact it’s very likely. Considering how many Jews after the war hid their identity out of fear. And more so today as our heritage, our great Jewish heritage  is being watered down by intermarriage and loss of the integrity of the Jewish people. So before you go saying to someone “Heil Hitler”, find out where you come from first. Before you go spewing hatred and the like recognize that you too may just be a Jew or a descendant of one. And if you find out afterwards that you are not, then please be a good gentile and behave. Live and let live, be tolerant of others as we are of you. Learn to love all man for whom they are and at least respect them as G-d creatures – equally deserving of human decency and respect [please don’t make me and others want to hurt you].

And for us the underdog, in these kinds of situations, let be known from here on out, We are no longer the under dog! We shall not be, ever again, the underdog. We are who make ourselves to be. As my buddy the Jewish World War II vet always reminds me, as he sits on the Chabad house porch soaking up the sun, “when we were fighting in Germany I never saw a Jew, not a live one for that matter – Don’t rely on America or anyone else, teach yourself how to defend yourself and to stick up for yourself, now and always – because ultimately no one will do it for you.”

And my message is the same to the school bullies. And the rotten employers. And the nasty sanitation collector or the rude city bus driver. Behave!

Remember to always live with tolerance love and respect. And always remember tolerance is never an opposite of self defense, and vice versa – rather it is a balancer, that’s all [as a wise man once said, “we don’t take revenge, we get even” ].

That was my child hood and this is my adulthood. The experiences different the lessons the same.

May we merit the day when we can indeed be the young hearted people we all are in our hearts - getting along all peacefully, like brothers and sisters who love each other so much.