Hurt people hurt people. For the rest of his life, my grandfather did not want to talk about the fact that he was one of the three IRS agents whom served the tax papers to Richard Nixon via his attorneys. The “sensitive” label on the information expired in a year that I was born. That did not erase the pain for my grandfather, and he unfortunately knew how to hurt people. In his final days, he tacitly admitted that we are Jewish.
I don’t know if he came to truly accept Jesus as the Messiah (I’d like to think that he did. I’d like to believe my grandma, herself from hidden-Jewish families.).I remember the Christmas is that we were over there generally being secular, and religious only and as far as they needed to be. In fact, he told my aunt, “It’s tradition”— and I don’t know if she understood the significance of the words when he said that. I think that it took me quite a while to understand that he deliberately used the ambivalent words that Sholem Aleichem wrote for Teyve the Milkman.
In any moment that Nixon was discussed, he was not a Democrat whom did not like Republican Nixon. He was a hidden Jew whom did not appreciate the Antisemitism that continued to cause him to hide. Bill Graham conversations also did not help, even though Billy Graham apologized for letting Richard Nixon be a bad influence on him.
PS Some of what I would tell my grandfather if I could talk to him, as the last time that I talked to him was over the phone before he died (We were estranged, And I saw that somebody moved the stones from his grave when the picture was put up on fine grave. Unless you were Grandma or somebody else whom had the right to do that, I do not appreciate that you moved those stones. I emailed the caretaker of that cemetery precisely to ask her to put those stones there, and she did – and she took a picture to show me that she had put the stones there.):
“I know that you knew, Pop-Pop. I know exactly what you meant when you said, “If we had any Jewish blood, I don’t know about it.” When I see you again—and I hope that I do, including with Great-Granddad—I hope that I can tell you that I forgive you, and that I could have handled things much better if I had known where certain pain originated. I wish that you had been able to openly admit that we are Jewish. I wish that you had been able to accept Jesus as the Messiah like Great-Grandma did. I did not know that Great-Grandma was Jewish when I found out that Great-Granddad was, and I also did not know that both you and Grandma were from hidden-Jewish families. By the way, Dad gets DNA matches on both sides, which is common for Ashkenazi and Sefardi Jews. You are obviously not the first Jews to be distant cousins, and God had His ways of keeping us Jewish for certain—granted that Mom is mixed, although that is another discussion for another time. By the way, Dad and Mom are somehow related on the Gaydos side.
“I do not know, by the way, why God chose to keep only some of us Jewish in an ethnic sense. I truly dread for are relatives who would no longer be considered Jewish per the seventh chapter of First Chronicles. When Machir married the sister of Huppim and Shuppim, that was pretty much the cutoff for who could be considered Jewish. Even though I do not agree with everything that, for example, Great-Granddad and Great-Great-Grandma did, I appreciate that they went out of their way to make sure that their respective children would marry someone Jewish, even though they had to hide it. Granduncle Tony told me that Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma objected to him marrying someone Irish. Based on my family research, I think that at least [one of Granduncle Tony‘s children] married someone Jewish [I will not publish who here for privacy reasons, although I certainly would tell Pop-Pop]. So, Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma did not entirely need to worry—although I get their concerns, as James Joyce was certainly an Antisemite.
“As I said, I dread for other relatives. Some of us are not going to be so lucky to make that 1/16 cutoff (unless 1/32 is somehow the cutoff, I would have to go back and read, although I do not remember the Bible saying that the prostitute who was Yiftach’s mother or that Gideon’s mother was necessarily gentile (I forget exactly who might in fact make the Biblical rule to protect 1/32, though). Even the rabbis recognized the five-generation rule, by the way, and I did want to apologize for that quip about Jewish Apple Cake one time. Even though you rebuked me for making that quip, you also neglected to inform me that I was in fact being self hating. I wish that I had known that I was in fact, being self hating when I made that quip.
“By the way, to adapt ‘The Night Before Christmas” to emphasize ‘and’ was definitely not James Dobson‘s idea, no matter how much Mom wants to pretend that it was. I know what you were doing now that I understand that the most frequently-used word in the Shema is ‘and’. With or without James Dobson apparently suggesting that, you would have emphasized ‘and’, anyway; and I knew that even if you did adopt what Mom suggested, you adopted it precisely because of the Shema. I figured that you had the idea well before James Dobson even opened his mouth.
“I still do not know who suggested that you would have a viewing and be cremated, by the way. I wish that whoever did that had respected your original wishes to not have any calling hours. I get that cremation is a Reform thing, and I therefore unfortunately would not have had much to say about that, as Aunt Mary said that you either wanted to have no calling hours or be cremated. What I will say is that I know that even Great-Granduncle Jankie did not have a viewing—and I know that he was a kapo. By the way, I wish that you had told me not only that we are Jewish, but also that Great-Granddad came over here when he was a child. I also wish that you had told me everything else. I wish that I knew that, for example, Great-Granduncle Stanley and Great-Granduncle Jankie were both still alive when I turned five years old. I wish that in one of our final phone calls, you had not seemed too bitter about the fact that you were down at Fort Knox, especially because you got to work with Great-Granduncle Ed.
“I hope that you are up there with Great-Granduncle Ed and at least quite a few other people, by the way. My understanding, based on what Granduncle Tony told me, is that Granduncle Ed did acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.”
I would also obviously tell Pop-Pop a lot more that I can write here, partly because it would take so long. I at least hope that Pop-Pop would be proud that I did not vote for Donald Trump. I also hope that Pop-Pop would be proud that I did not vote for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, either. In other words and to sum up exactly what I am saying, I hope that part of the reason that Pop-Pop would understand that I was angry that he did not tell us that we are Jewish because I think our Jewishness very seriously, especially in light of my faith in Jesus; and that includes in regards to whom receives my vote in political elections.
In conclusion, I hope that Pop-Pop would understand that I take our Jewishness seriously partly because we Jews are not dehumanizable political issues. We are the very nation of all human beings through whom Jesus chose to come—and despite thar Granduncle Jim and Granduncle Tony were not exactly open about acknowledging that we are Jewish (as certainly as far as I know with Granduncle Tony because we had talked about the family history a few times), I know that they knew that Jesus came through the Jewish people.
As I previously mentioned, I would obviously tell Pop-Pop a lot.
PS When I called Granduncle Jim, that one time, he really did not want talk about the family history at all. From what I understood from what Granduncle Tony and others told me, I understand why that was a painful subject for Granduncle Jim.
