Comment

VDH Has ODS

4
Rochi61311/13/2011 5:16:58 am PST

I am not at all xenophobic, but I think I know what VDH meant. I grew up in way uptown Manhattan, Washington Heights. And everyday going to high school (Hunter College High School, then on 68th Street) and then College (City College of N.Y. in Harlem), I rode the Number 3 bus that went through Harlem an its way to Fifth Avenue and downtown Manhattan. My ‘bus friends,’ on those very long trips were mostly black people (mostly women) on their way to work (mostly as cleaners of other people’s houses). I was a shy, orthodox Jewish girl of 13 who grew up in the world of Torah, finding my way in the gentile world. What bonded us was Scripture, which these folks could quote with ease (as could I). The stories they told of their lives, pithy with meaning, were full of mention of God’s goodness and mercy and musical quotes from spirituals. They knew Israel was the Promised Land and that it belonged to the Jews. In 1967 they rejoiced along with me in Israel’s victory over its aggressive enemies. No doubt things have changed over the decades since then, but when Mr Obama began running in his first term, I felt the same thing: He didn’t grow up with a typical ‘authentic’ Christian Black experience in America. He didn’t know the Bible and he didn’t understand intuitively that today Israelis are the Israelites of old and that the Land belongs to them because the Lord said so. His own pastor had preached something else.