Transcript of an Interview with a Holocaust Survivor

SONIA AND MIKE - AUNT LOTTE - INTERVIEW 2015 06 16

Lotte Bloom - Her story of escaping Nazi Germany - Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ap92UIqpk

TRANSCRIPT

00:00

LOTTE BLOOM

And I left in 1940... in 1939.

00:05

MIKE

You left at '39. After that.

00:07

LOTTE BLOOM

After that.

00:08

MIKE

Okay.

00:10

LOTTE BLOOM

And Krystallnacht was actually in '38, because I left in '39 in May.

00:18

MIKE

Okay.

00:20

LOTTE BLOOM

And, um, we lived in this small town, where everybody knew each other.

00:28

MIKE

Sure.

00:29

LOTTE BLOOM

And...

00:30

MIKE

And that was always Talheim...

00:31

LOTTE BLOOM

... that morning my mother was at the living room window, and the...

00:40

MIKE

[aside] So this is recording now. Can you ask them, too? Okay, fine.

00:44

LOTTE BLOOM

And we had one policeman in town. And my mother was at the bedroom window and he called and said, "Rose, pack a small suitcase for your husband. We have to come..."

01:00

MIKE

[aside] Please, ask them to be quiet.

01:06

LOTTE BLOOM

[aside] You have to ask them...

01:08

MIKE

[aside] I will. Pause that.

01:10

LOTTE BLOOM

... a nice guy. He went to school with my mother, the policeman. And my mother said, "Why should I pack a suitcase?" He said, "Because we have to come and arrest your husband." And they, he, and a few from the S. A., you know, the Party, came and arrested almost all the Jewish men in our town and took them to Halbrun, which was the city nearest us.

01:50

MIKE

I'm going to ask this, out of ignorance.

01:51

LOTTE BLOOM

Ask. Ask, ask, ask.

01:52

MIKE

And, that's all that it is. But, on what grounds were they being arrested?

01:58

LOTTE BLOOM

They were arrested because a Jew killed... a Jewish man killed a German. In Paris.

02:10

MIKE

Okay. So, therefore...

02:11

LOTTE BLOOM

That was the reason that they arrested Jews all over the country, not just by us. And nobody knew anything, if they were going to send them to a concentration camp, or what was going on. And...

02:33

MIKE

But... but, but prior to this, was there already tension?

02:40

LOTTE BLOOM

Oh, yes. Oh yes, that started quite early. Because, when I went to high school, I got... I went by train, every morning, and in Germany, they had a separate car for school children, because people that went to work didn't want to be annoyed by the kids. And there were a few kids that got on. I was the only girl at the car. And they started. That by the time I got off the train, I didn't know my name anymore. I mean, with... it started really much earlier, but not all over the town, like, people that knew my mother and father for years, they still wanted to do business with my father, until he was not allowed to, to do business anymore. It wasn't... it wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. And in our town, people that knew us were, most of them, still pretty nice to us. It got very bad right after Kristallnacht for the simple reason that a lot of even the decent Germans were afraid.

04:16

MIKE

So, they either had to go along...

04:18

LOTTE BLOOM

Some. Anyhow, my father was arrested.

04:24

MIKE

Your father's name was?

04:26

LOTTE BLOOM

Ludwig Levy.

04:28

MIKE

Ludwig Levy.

04:30

LOTTE BLOOM

And we had no idea what was going to happen to him. And they arrested... must have been about 25 or 30 men, and, to this day, I don't know why. We did not know anything, we... was scared to death. And it was just my mother and I. And about seven o'clock, my father walked in the house. And he had no idea why they let him go, because they didn't let anybody else go. He was the only one that came home that night.

05:15

MIKE

Did he have any other type of status in the community, that made him...?

05:22

LOTTE BLOOM

No, he was just known as a very nice, decent human being.

05:27

SONIA

What was his business?

05:30

LOTTE BLOOM

We had... my father used to... we had the store in the house, but it was really not a store, more a storage for his merchandise. We didn't do much business in town. He called on a lot of vinters and farmers, his..., that..., make..., with materials, uh, for linens and bedding and, uh, down quilts, and all that kind of stuff. And we had a very nice business. That he built from scratch.

06:10

MIKE

But it sounds like, he was, he was let go that day, just by pure luck.

06:16

LOTTE BLOOM

We don't know why he was let go. He didn't know why he was let go. He said he thought the others were home, too. We didn't find out until the next day that nobody came home but my father. And then, there was a rumor going around. On the radio and whatever. That, that people were so upset that they were going to do damage to the Jews. And my bedroom... we had a house, and we had a house attached to our house, and my father bought it. He didn't want to be a landlord. And I slept, usually, in the other house, which was... my parents had a living room, bedroom, another bedroom that my grandmother had when she lived with us, kitchen, and then the other house. My bedroom was there.

07:26

MIKE

How old were you, at the time?

07:28

LOTTE BLOOM

1939? I was eight..., seventeen. And I said to my mother, "I'm not sleeping back there tonight. Can I sleep with the couch?" And my mother said, "Sure, why not?" And went to bed, maybe about ten o'clock. At our house was... it had inside... you walked up about four steps, and on top of the steps, we had a fixture that had a mirror and, like, an area to put umbrellas in. And about twelve o'clock at night, they were knocking at our door. Banging. "Open the door, you goddamn Jew!" You know it. And my mother and father were in their bedroom and this went on and I went down and I opened the door, which they would have broken down anyhow.

08:35

MIKE

Well, yeah.

08:37

LOTTE BLOOM

And as I opened the door, one of the guys, they all had, uh, masks... not masks, but their faces covered, with scarves or whatever. And there were about nine guys. And they shot that mirror. And my mother and father thought that they had shot me. And they opened the door and they started to beat up my father. And then they went into the kitchen, and they took out every dish that was there and destroyed it. Then they went into the bedroom and cut up all the bedding and... crystal... all over the place. Every... and then they said... and they smacked my father. And they said if he was still in the house next week they would come and kill us.

09:41

MIKE

They gave a whole week, though?

09:43

LOTTE BLOOM

That's what the guy.... Funny part was, the picture that I showed you, of the school, that teacher was one of the guys.

09:54

MIKE

Really! And you had said, he was an okay guy.

09:55

LOTTE BLOOM

He practically... He practically lived in our house. Because, the school... we were here, the school was over there, there was steps going up. Whatever he needed, "Lotte, go home and get it from your mother." You know, that kind. We, my mother and I, both recognized him by his voice. And, I went to high school in Halbron, and I passed every morning, on my way to school, a stand, a cab stand, but they were more like limousines, you know. And there was one cab driver that always used to say to me in the morning when he was there, "Good morning, Little Red Riding Hood!" And one day he stopped me and he said to me, "You don't know my name. I don't know your name. But I know you're Jewish." And he said, "Here is my card. Give it to your mother or father and tell them, if they ever need me, day or night, to call me." And I gave the card to my mother. And my mother said to me, yeah, almost, that he would, you know. And we did call him, that night, and he came, and he drove us to Stuttgart, to my uncle and aunt, when they were expecting the same thing to happen there that we just...

11:35

MIKE

Okay, I was just going to ask, was the climate any better in Stuttgart?

11:39

LOTTE BLOOM

And they had told us that night, if we would still be in the house next week they'd come and kill us. We didn't know what to do. Once we got to Stuttgart we couldn't stay there forever. We stayed there about five days and we went home. And the house... were a shambles, I mean, you can't imagine what it looked like. Just took lamps and threw them on the floor. Then they... ah... it... cut up carpets and... unreal. And some of our neighbors were very, very sympathetic. In fact, while that was going on that night, one person from right across the street from us yelled out to them, "Why don't you leave those people alone?" And they told him he should close his window or they would do the same thing to him.

12:44

MIKE

So this was not a... specifically a Jewish or non-Jewish area in which you lived? It was a pretty...

12:53

LOTTE BLOOM

We were about thirty-five, forty Jewish families.

12:59

MIKE

Out of...?

13:00

LOTTE BLOOM

And it... the town was about eight, nine hundred... maybe a little more, I don't remember. But not a big town. And it was mostly farmers and vineyards. It's a wine region. And a lot of people were... didn't look at you anymore, if you were at the street. Didn't talk to you. And others were very nice, still.

13:35

MIKE

Well, you have said before, you've told us the story of how, one day, and I guess you were younger at the time, of playing with your friends one day, and the very next day...

13:50

LOTTE BLOOM

They didn't know you.

13:52

MIKE

Right.

13:53

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah. That happened to quite a few. And we had a mayor in the town that was a big, big Nazi, and used any opportunity to really make life pretty miserable. And I went back to school and they started high school in Germany, at that time, I don't know what it is now, I forgot to ask... you paid, almost like college, you know, not as expensive, but it was not free. They took our money. They did not correct our papers. They didn't call on any Jewish kid. And so I left school at age seventeen. Because there was no sense in staying there. And which my parents were trying desperately to get out of Germany. But my cousin, who sent my papers, he just opened an office as a doctor and didn't have that kind of money because you had to be able to support the family here for... that... how long.

15:22

MIKE

That's right.

15:24

LOTTE BLOOM

And...

15:24

MIKE

These were your exit papers?

15:27

LOTTE BLOOM

And I went to Stuttgart to go to the, um, uh, American Consul to see how my papers were coming along. My uncle in Stuttgart went with me. And they said that things had changed and that they go by numbers and that they were only allowing, say, five, six thousand people from that whole area to immigrate. The Americans weren't so good, either, believe me. And so I...

16:05

MIKE

The Americans were making it difficult?

16:08

LOTTE BLOOM

Yes.

16:08

MIKE

Really! Wow.

16:09

LOTTE BLOOM

Very difficult. In the consul, some of these consul people were as much Nazis almost as... hmm. So, I said, "Then, can I have a number?" They gave me a number. And said, "Can I have a number for my parents?" "They have to come." So my mother and father went two days later. My number was five thousand something. Theirs was twenty-two thousand, which meant that there would be a three, four years difference. And then, first, they decided I shouldn't go, I should stay with them. Then my mother and father decided it might be easier for them to get out, you know, if I was already in America. My cousin wrote that. And so I left in May of 1939. And each letter that I got from home was worse than the one before. That, all kinds of things... with the exception, my mother kept writing, we had a next-door neighbor that had a little grocery store. And, the... her... the woman... it belonged to the husband's mother, and she got very ill, and the daughter-in-law was a lovely, lovely lady. And she ran the store. And my mother used to write, if it wasn't for Katy, that they would starve... And then the letters stopped. And my mother wrote, in the last letter, somebody from her side of the family was deported about two or three months before.

18:18

MIKE

Deported? To where?

18:20

LOTTE BLOOM

Poland.

18:21

MIKE

Poland.

18:22

LOTTE BLOOM

That's what they were told. That they were going, they were going to "resettle in Poland." And when, when the... How would you say? My mother wrote that she thinks they're going to have to visit "[indestinguishable name]." Which, you know, you had to be very careful what you said in the letter because they checked that... many times. And then I didn't hear anything at all, for... 'til 1942, I think.

19:07

MIKE

At that point, you were already settled, here?

19:11

LOTTE BLOOM

I was... I came here in '39.

19:13

MIKE

Right.

19:15

LOTTE BLOOM

And then I got notified later that my parents were sent to Riga. And that both died. And immediately after the war was over, I got a letter from a man that used to be, in public school, sitting directly in back of me. And obviously, he was not a Nazi, he was in the army. And he wrote to me, and he called me several times on the phone, and was very, very... Eric. And then, I... we were invited to Germany.

20:22

MIKE

When is this?

20:24

LOTTE BLOOM

That was...

20:26

DIANE

Sixties?

20:27

LOTTE BLOOM

... about nineteen-eighty...

20:28

DIANE

Sixties? Eighties?

20:31

LOTTE BLOOM

1984 or something. No, much later than that, Diane.

20:37

MIKE

By this same person? This Eric?

20:39

LOTTE BLOOM

No, from the town.

20:42

MIKE

Oh, that's...

20:42

LOTTE BLOOM

From the city.

20:44

MIKE

Well, hey, if we could just go back for a second, uh, this Eric, how did he find you?

20:51

LOTTE BLOOM

I don't know. He... oh... they knew where I was going, and they had, Germany had records, going back to the beginning of the world. And he called me quite a few times, and he said, did I want to come and visit? And I kept saying, no, I don't want to ever set foot in... And then my cousin Flora, who lived, by then, in Baltimore, she used to live in Brooklyn, and she said she was going to, where she came from. And that was where my father was born, in that town. And when she came back, she said, "Lotte, go. It's like, puts sort of a... an end to it.

21:46

MIKE

Closure.

21:47

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah. And they invited me, not Talheim, but Halbron, where I went to school. And we went. And they paid, my fare, Sid had to pay for his fare. And the hotel, of course, whether there was one or two people in the hotel didn't make any difference, they paid all expenses.

22:18

MIKE

Wow.

22:19

LOTTE BLOOM

And we were treated like royalty. We were 87 people, from all different parts of the world. There was a woman there, with her grandmother, from Israel. There was a woman there who had a sheep farm in Australia, with her husband. I mean, it was "United Nations." They did not know what to do for us. In every respect that you can think of. And, of course, nobody was a Nazi. It was...

23:10

MIKE

So, was it, as though that never happened?

23:14

LOTTE BLOOM

They did not talk about it. At all. Now, Eric used to say to me, be very careful, this guy was a Nazi, a big shot, and this and that, and, a few people. And then they took us on a cruise along the Rhine, uh uh, the Neckar. And, uh, some... it was so strange, so many strange thing... We were on that trip and when we came back to the hotel, one of the waiters said, "Are you Mrs. Bloom?" I said, "Yes." He says, "Mrs. So-and-So was looking for you and she said she would be back in the early afternoon. Make sure that you meet her." And I figured, she must be... God knew... and I said, "We'll probably be back about so-and-so." This woman had written me a note and gave it to the waiter, she can't wait to see me because she remembers me with my black pigtails.

24:38

MIKE

Black? Black pigtails?

24:40

LOTTE BLOOM

And I said to Sid, she must be crazy. And she had left two bottles of wine for us in the room.

24:52

MIKE

Well, I think you have to meet her then.

24:55

LOTTE BLOOM

And we did. And I said to her, you got me mixed up with somebody else. I said, I was never, I never had dark hair. I've had red hair, like I still do. She said, "I could've sworn... I don't know, then, who I got you mixed up with."

25:18

MIKE

Did you have to give the wine back?

25:19

LOTTE BLOOM

And the woman was, apparently, millionaires. They had... uh... wood... I don't know what you call it, like mills. That she had an apartment in Florida. She had a house in, uh, in the French Riviera someplace. I mean, I could tell from the beginning when the waiter said to us, "Oh, please," you know, "Mrs. So-and-So." And she could've sworn that I was, who. She said, "It doesn't make any difference, but I wanted to meet you anyway." So. Whatever. Every place we went, they did not know what to do. The Bürgermeister, which is the mayor, came and picked us up and took us to town, which is six kilometers, and, to a very nice place for lunch, and...

26:33

MIKE

Yeah, that was your first...

26:33

LOTTE BLOOM

... all of a sudden, girls, that were older than I, invited... One girl invited us to her house. She had, like, a villa. Eric's daughter, her... had a swimming pool in town. "I have a swimming pool" was, like, unheard of. And Eric drove us all over. Then we went to Heidelburg, and they... Sid said to me, "He's meshugenah, the way he drives!" It was on the Autobahn. There was no speed limit.

27:10

MIKE

Oh, the Autobahn's a complete... you just have at it.

27:13

LOTTE BLOOM

And, then, the funny part was, Eric kept saying to me... The woman that was so good to my parents, her name was Katy. And she had been, while we were in Germany... her daughter... had married an American soldier. And they were in... Georgia, I think... and Eric kept saying to me, "Lotte, she has silverware that belongs to you." I said, I was with my mother when we gave up all our silver... we had to give everything up... jewelry... anything. And, uh... we came back to the states, and Eric kept calling me, and calling me, did I get in touch with the daughter? He gave me the address. Finally, I got in touch with the daughter and I called her, and she said, "Mrs. Bloom, I'm so happy to hear from you. I mailed you the package with the silverware and it came back to me. I must've had the wrong address." And a week later, I get five spoons, five knives, and five forks with my initials on them.

28:50

MIKE

Which you still have.

28:52

LOTTE BLOOM

Which her grandmother had kept. And she said to me, "My grandma said, 'You can look at it, but it belongs to Lotte. She'll come and get it one day.'" And then Eric called again, and he said, "There's a man here. He's a high school... a retired high school teacher, and he is very interested in what went on after you left Germany, and how most of the Jewish people were able to," you know, "find their way around. Would you talk to him?" I said, "Yes. Why not?" And an hour later, Deter called me.

29:40

MIKE

Deter's last name?

29:42

LOTTE BLOOM

Gaa. "G." "A." "A." He is of Scotch descent. And he was this high school teacher in the school that I went to. When I went, it was an all-girls school. When he worked there as a teacher, he was... it was mixed. I mean, co-ed. And I... he said to me, "Can you help me with this?" I said, I must tell you, my German isn't that good anymore." He said, "That's not a problem. I'm a retired English school teacher." And we kept corresponding back and forth. And one day he called me up and he said, "Would you mind if I come and visit?" I said, "No, I'd love it." And we went to the airport to pick him up and the plane had come in early and he was already in a motel in Sheepshead Bay.

30:45

MIKE

A motel in Sheepshead Bay.

30:47

LOTTE BLOOM

There are a few.

30:48

MIKE

Are there?

30:48

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah.

30:49

MIKE

Huh!

30:51

LOTTE BLOOM

And he came every day that he was here, and he took notes of what I did, and this, and that, and the next thing. And he knew a lot more about what happened to my parents. And he was here about four days. Paid for it himself, nobody put... he was just very... and then he had the article in the local paper about me, and the thing... and he sent me that. And then he decided to come for my birthday, he and his wife.

31:33

MIKE

That's where we met him.

31:34

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah.

31:35

MIKE

At your ninetieth birthday.

31:35

LOTTE BLOOM

Very nice.

31:36

MIKE

Very.

31:38

LOTTE BLOOM

I'm still in contact with him. And, uh... And here I am!

31:46

MIKE

Yes, you are. With...

31:50

LOTTE BLOOM

My first job was taking care of a little boy, in Rockville Center, like a nanny. I needed a nanny, believe me. I was so innocent. And so... backward.

32:10

MIKE

How was your, uh, your grasp of English?

32:14

LOTTE BLOOM

I had English lessons, private lessons, because the school I went to, they had three years of English and three years of French. My luck was, the first three years we had French.

32:32

MIKE

Yeah, saw that.

32:33

LOTTE BLOOM

So I had private lessons in English, and my cousins, they were all married to Americans. And my cousin said right away to me, "Lotte, try as much to speak English as you can."

32:52

(?)

That was here, in the United States.

32:54

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah. I went to my cousin, they lived in Newark, at the time.

33:01

(?)

And that was the first place you went to when you came?

33:03

LOTTE BLOOM

Newark. My cousin was married... my cousin... two cousins, to doctors. And I stayed with my cousin Heddy, who, they had no children, and he had just come back from the war. He was stationed near... in Hawaii, as a doctor, and he said, "Don't let anyone say, 'It's beautiful there.' It is," he said, "but ten... ten months of sunshine is a lot."

33:38

MIKE

Yeah. It sounds awful!

33:42

LOTTE BLOOM

They were very nice. And then, I was looking for a job. And I don't remember anymore how, I think it was in a Jewish newspaper, that my cousin Heddy, the one that I was staying with, got. And they were looking for a young person to take care of a... I think he was four and a half, or five years old. And we went to New York, to the man's office. I never met his wife, I only met him. And my cousin, he saw that I could understand English, but not that great yet, and he said he had to talk it over to... with his wife. And about two days later, they called me. And, of all my experience, that was the scariest thing that I went through. It never dawned on me, until I got on the train, where is that man taking me? I didn't know. And, I was petrified. And, uh, they were very nice people. She came from Brooklyn, from very religious people. He came from Baltimore, went to synagogue for his wife's sake, every Saturday and every Friday night, and then went horseback riding. They manufactured men's, as well as some women's clothing in Baltimore. And his brother was married to a refugee girl from not far from where I came from, in Baltimore. And the boy that I took care of was adopted. They had no children. And, I didn't know he was adopted. And one evening, it's so funny, I gave him a bath, and he said to me, "Lotte, do you know, I wasn't born?" So I said to him, "What do you mean, you weren't born?" "I mean, I didn't come out from my mommy's stomach." And I was hysterical, laughing. And Mrs. Hershey came back, she said, "What's going on here?" And I told her. She said, "Lotte, I thought we told you that Arthur is adopted." I said, "No, you just told me he wasn't born." And then, I left there, because my mother was still living at that time, in Germany, and wanted me to move to Philadelphia, to her cousin. She would feel more at ease, if I would be with family.

37:07

(?)

What year was this? What year?

37:10

LOTTE BLOOM

Nine... just before they were deported, 1941, I think, '41 or '42. I think I have it in that book. But, anyhow, they were very much not nice to me.

37:29

SONIA

In Philadelphia.

37:29

LOTTE BLOOM

And I was very sorry that I... that I left that job. But, you know, somebody looked out for me. Anyway. I got a job with German Jews that were... Hitler overlooked them. They should not have deserved to live. Terrible, terrible people. They had a very nice business, uh, selling dresses, coats, suits, and I got a job there as a salesgirl. And they wanted me to tell cust-... it was in a German neighborhood, that I was, because I had an accent, and my English was not as good as my German, and I should tell them that I lived in Germany and my grandmother raised me. "Don't tell them you're Jewish." I said, "I won't do that." I said, "I lost my parents because we're Jewish and I'm not going to do that." And one day, must've been about August or so, a woman came in, a German Jewish woman, with her daughter, and I think I sold her a dress, the daughter a dress. And she said to me, "Where do you come from?" And I told her. They came from a totally different part of Germany.

39:13

MIKE

Were you speaking in English or German?

39:16

LOTTE BLOOM

Both. And, uh, she said to me, "What are you doing for the holidays?" I said, "I don't know yet." She says, "Yes, you know. You're coming to my house." And she invited me, and her daughter became my closest friend. She was married, she was a year older than I, and her parents and she and her husband, and they had a little girl by then, lived there, and her little girl is now my best friend.

39:54

MIKE

Who was that?

39:55

LOTTE BLOOM

Susan. She was at my party. And she married an extremely wealthy man. She sent me a few months ago five thousand dollars. And anyhow, her mother, my friend, her name was Lotte, too, died at age 42 of cancer. And her husband was not the nicest man. And, but, he kept in touch with me and Susan got in touch with me. She had three, they had three children: a boy... Susan, the oldest;  the boy; and the younger daughter. The younger daughter was about ten or eleven years old when her mother died. And they were like family. And, I sometimes wonder, who was looking out for me? Then I moved, then my friend Susan's parents moved to Pittsburgh, and I moved with them.

41:31

MIKE

I never knew how you got to Pittsburgh.

41:32

LOTTE BLOOM

That's when I met Sid.

41:34

MIKE

When was that?

41:37

LOTTE BLOOM

Nineteen... we got married... wait a minute, 1954.

41:43

MIKE

Fifty-four.

41:48

LOTTE BLOOM

That's my story!

41:50

MIKE

Well, that's part of it. That's for sure. A hell of a story, and... and...

41:57

LOTTE BLOOM

Mike, it wasn't easy. Believe me.

42:00

MIKE

No. No. And, I am... your attention to detail, your... your recollection for these details...

42:13

LOTTE BLOOM

Those things you can't forget. No. You know, it... it was like a whole new life, for me. And, in a strange country. And really, my cousins were very nice. They lived in Jersey, I was in Long Island. And my... Elaine's parents lived in Washington Heights and I used to see them. And her... her father, uh, Elaine's grandparents, were living here in the United... and my father's brothers. And they got out because Elaine's father, they lived directly on the French border, and they just moved, to France, and from there to America. And they were allowed, at that time, to take some of their money out with them, so they were pretty comfortable.

43:25

MIKE

That was lucky. I mean, but, but really...

43:27

LOTTE BLOOM

My father was part... part of six brothers that worked in the army together, all six of them.

43:39

MIKE

This was World War I.

43:40

LOTTE BLOOM

World War I. And I gave Deter the Iron Cross that my father had.

43:48

MIKE

Really! Wow.

43:49

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah. They gave it to him. And he wrote it up in the Ger-... German newspaper and he sent me a copy of it. I don't know what happened to it. And... I'm still here!

44:06

MIKE

Yeah, you are. You're here for a purpose. I mean...

44:11

LOTTE BLOOM

Mike, I want to tell you. You don't know what you can take care of, when you're forced to.

44:22

MIKE

It's true.

44:23

LOTTE BLOOM

When I came here, I came on the last trip that the American ship, that I was on, made to Germany.

44:35

MIKE

Do you remember the name of the ship? What ship was it?

44:39

LOTTE BLOOM

The, uh, Manhattan.

44:44

MIKE

Okay. There's some irony to that.

44:46

LOTTE BLOOM

Yeah. I was seasick, from day one. I wouldn't go on... on...

44:51

MIKE

Can we get you on the Staten Island Ferry, now?

44:54

LOTTE BLOOM

That, I can do.

44:55

MIKE

Okay. That's good. But, you know, you were put in circumstances, and you had no choice but to rise to them and... and then overcome.

45:08

LOTTE BLOOM

It was... I tell you, it was very, very difficult. Because, if I look at the kids today, sixteen, seventeen years old, they are... I was like a ten-year-old. I knew nothing, and lived such a sheltered life. I mean, you didn't go anyplace, unless it was with your parents. It was...

45:42

MIKE

It was a different world. You were probably no different than any other ten-year-old girl in Talheim.

45:51

LOTTE BLOOM

I really was. I felt, like, that the American girls that were fourteen, fifteen years old were much older than I, in many, many, many ways.

46:06

MIKE

Right. The American girls.

46:08

LOTTE BLOOM

Yes.

46:09

MIKE

But, girls your age from Talheim were probably very similar to you.

46:18

LOTTE BLOOM

I'm sure.

46:18

MIKE

Because you all had the same access to...

46:23

LOTTE BLOOM

Same background, more or less.

46:25

MIKE

Right. Exactly. It was just a completely different kind of an upbringing.

46:30

LOTTE BLOOM

Especially, we lived in this small town, where everybody knew everybody else.

46:39

MIKE

Kind of like living here.

46:40

LOTTE BLOOM

It's... more so. If my grandmother was, who lived with us, my mother's mother. Oh, according to her, we lived with her. And, she was... "clean" is not the word. "Crazy!" Nobody could clean her room, nobody could do anything for her. If she went down the steps, she dusted the bannister going down. When she came up the steps, she dusted it going up. And... and... it was... my mother didn't fit in, to our little town. She was... my grandmother became a widow quite young, and my mother went to work. She got a job, as a typist and a stenographer, which was almost unheard of in these days, and she was... a pretty bright lady. She should've pushed my father a little more, to leave Germany. But, unfortunately, his business was good, to the last day. And, we had people that you would not believe, that lived on the farm, and my father didn't go there anymore, and they were a little backward about certain things. On a Sunday morning, a woman and her sister came on a motorcycle with a sidecar. "Mom sent us."They were in their twenties, late twenties. "Mr. Levy hasn't come to see us and we still owe him some money." And my father said, "I can't see you anymore. I'm not allowed to do business with you. And besides, I got a letter from your brother that if I still insist on visiting his mother," it wouldn't be a good idea for him. And my father helped that guy to open a business. Never charged him a nickel. Took him two or three years to pay it back. I mean, he had... he was fortunate and misfortunate that his business was good, until it couldn't be run anymore. And then it was too late.

49:47

MIKE

Too late. Was there any consideration...? Obviously, your mother said, "Let's get out of here," but...

49:54

LOTTE BLOOM

The mother... the mother was a wonderful lady. And, you had to see... my father had had the heart attack. They came. They brought stuff from their farm that we couldn't even use, half of it, because they heard Mr. Levy was sick. He had a very good reputation. He was a very honest, honorable man.

50:26

MIKE

[aside] Stop picking.

50:32

LOTTE BLOOM

I gave you a headache.

50:36

MIKE

Not at all.

50:41

(?)

[aside] You have... ten minutes.

50:42

[end]

THE BLANKET

Why did Jesus reappear after his death, if that is indeed a true story?

It is not well known that Jesus had a brother who was only a year younger, and they looked so much alike they were often mistaken for identical twins. Jesus' brother Jenua did not believe his brother's stories about his intimate conversations with god, thinking him a little crazy, but he did believe in his brother's goodness, and he believed in love. Jenua loved Jesus as he loved himself.

This unknown brother of Jesus had a speech impediment, a disorder believed by most people to be a curse from god, though his family loved him and protected him from the shame of appearing in the village, where he would be shunned and spat on. Jenua did not venture out in public. He spent his days away from the rest of society, working quietly inside his family's home, where they had set up for him a loom. He had diligently applied himself to his work and had become quite an accomplished weaver.

Jenua felt that Jesus was truly special, and inspired, though not by a god, since Jenua was a non-believer. Like Jesus, Jenua believed that, over the course of modern history, the ideology and practice of religion had followed an intolerable decline, and was now corrupt beyond repair. Unlike Jesus, Jenua believed the solution was to abandon altogether the primitive ideas of religion and instead celebrate the newest ideas on reason, to explore the practical solutions afforded by the exercise of the mind. Jenua's mind led him to the belief that love was the answer to all of life's human dilemmas.

Jenua and Jesus spent many hours in cooperative debate, defending their individual points of view, though Jesus was the only one of the two who spent time discussing his ideas with others. Jenua always avoided speaking with anyone other than his family, who knew and loved him and understood him despite his problems with pronunciation. Jenua felt lucky it had been his fate to have become a weaver by trade, as he truly enjoyed the creative expression afforded his profession. He often wove abstract and multi-colored designs. It was his own non-verbal way of speaking out about his ideas, that the world was not as organized and predictable as those who believed in the current order of religious expression might have liked to think.

Jenua knew Jesus was in trouble for his teachings. On the night before Jesus was betrayed, Jenua had dared to travel from home to deliver to the Garden of Gethsemane a woven blanket of all the colors of the rainbow. Jesus was there praying, as he was very worried, and was glad to have his brother's ear to discuss the situation while the others slept. Jenua had also brought him news. Their youngest sister had just heard, from a reliable source, confirmation of the rumor—Jesus would definitely be arrested in the morning, just before sunrise. Their mother, Mary, had been frantic, insisting that Jenua go immediately to find Jesus and do whatever necessary to save the life of his brother. Jenua had brought with him the beautiful blanket.

Jesus was moved, touched that sensitive Jenua had found the courage to venture forth from the comfort of his family home to come and find him, out of concern for his mother's heart. Jesus took the blanket, which Jenua told him would protect him from the cold of the desert's night airs, and left the garden, armed with directions to find the desert retreat their sister's young son had prepared for him. Jenua kissed Jesus goodbye, and promised to stay awake to let the apostles know where he was when they awoke.

But when the apostles arose the next morning, Jenua did not speak, but could only listen. The stress of the task at hand had aggravated his anxiety and worsened his speech impairment to the point where it silenced him altogether. By the time the first man woke, Jenua was entirely speechless. The apostles, their fear for Jesus' safety mounting by the minute, did not even pay much attention to him, the man anxious and fearful before them. They did not examine him closely in the pre-dawn light. They were busy looking over their own shoulders and at the horizon, watching for advancing soldiers who might show up at any moment to arrest the lot of them. At any rate, no one noticed that it was Jenua, and not Jesus himself, who stood with them in the garden.

No one even knew Jesus had a brother, since he had always been kept hidden by the family because of the shame of his verbal disability. Jenua had not ever before made himself available to become known as the brother of this famous man, Jesus. He had, his whole life, preferred always to stay at home, finding peace and comfort in his loom.

This fateful morning, Jenua seemed a man moody and quiet, very much more so than Jesus himself might have been on any other morning, but all the apostles expected nothing different. Today they all expected Jesus to be glooming over his impending death at the hands of his political enemies.

Jenua did not smile. Jenua did not talk. Jenua did not eat, but simply stood there, among the apostles. He stood alone in the center of the circle of Jesus' friends, a stranger in the midst of those who admired and loved his brother and would do anything on earth for him. As each of the men woke and joined the circle, Jenua became aware of the uniting force of their love of Jesus. He acknowledged they shared a special pain, the depths of their despair for Jesus' safety. Jenua's belief in love as the ultimate solution for all of humanity was strengthened more than ever.

He felt compassion for these people who were helpless in their misery to change their desperate situation. He loved these people who loved his brother, and he wanted to do for them the one impossible thing they could not do for themselves, to save their beloved leader and friend from the fate of his looming death.

Jenua silently stood among them and listened to the disciples. They talked of the inevitability of the expected imminent murder; how, even if Jesus ran, he would not be able to hide, as the authorities were determined to seek him out and destroy him before the people following his ideology followed through on their threatened political revolt.

Jenua closed his eyes and appeared to be involved in deep prayer, but in fact, he was thinking of a plan to save his brother's life. For the moment, Jesus was safe. Jenua knew that the only way for Jesus to avoid death was to somehow convince the authorities that they had already accomplished the deed, that they had caught and killed him.

No one but Jenua and his sister's son knew where Jesus was, that he was hiding safely in the desert. No one but Jenua knew that it was not Jesus who stood here surrounded by his followers. At least until the light of day, they would all continue to believe that this man appearing before them was Jesus, that their brother in love was the centerpiece in this gathering of close companions. Brothers Jenua and Jesus looked so much alike that, unless they were speaking, the only way even their family could tell them apart was by the braids in the weaver's hair. But this morning, in his hurry to find his brother, Jenua had not yet tied up his hair, and it was flowing smoothly in the style Jesus always wore. In the darkness of the wee hours of the early day, no one could see clearly enough to be able to tell that Jenua was not his brother Jesus. As long as he did not speak, no one would know Jesus was missing.

Jenua determined to keep up the charade for as long as possible. As long as Jesus' persecutors continued to think they they knew where Jesus was, Jenua could buy him enough time to escape to the safety of the desert refuge.

Jenua knew the only way to save his brother was to allow all the people around him to continue to believe that it was Jesus they were speaking with, and not alert them to the fact that he was merely his mirrored twin. Since no one but his family even knew Jesus had a lookalike, his ruse, a simple plan, was not discovered.

Dawn's light had still not broken when the soldiers arrived to take him away. Jenua did not offer protest. He silently allowed himself to be arrested..., tried..., convicted..., tortured..., and, finally, executed—knowing that his brother would be saved, at least temporarily, from suffering that same terrible fate.

The thought that Jesus might survive gave Jenua the grit to release himself from his anxiety. He knew that he must concentrate—in order to appear to be his brother, in order for the plan to work. He accepted the course of events gracefully. Finding himself swept along the gruesome path, he found a serenity in its finality. He believed that his own death really did not matter in the end, but knew that he would not have been able to live with himself if his brother Jesus was murdered and he Jenua survived where he might have been able to save him.

Jenua did not want to have to continue to live in a world where a gentle and kind man, pure and innocent as his brother Jesus, could be murdered for his beliefs. Jenua himself had been persecuted his entire life due to his speech impediment, and dared not speak of his atheistic beliefs outside his family, for fear of a certain death, the punishment for apostasy. This world, if it could not contain much loved Jesus, would not be allowed to hold onto Jesus' brother after claiming the life of his sibling.

By the time Jenua came to be paraded through the streets during broad daylight, he had already been badly beaten while in custody. His face and body were swollen with bruises and his body streamed with bloody cuts. He was unrecognizable as a different person from his brother, indistinguishable from what Jesus would have looked like, had he been similarly scathed.

When the court magistrate, Pontius Pilate, asked, "Are you the Son of God?" he finally ventured a few words, through bloodied lips and broken teeth. The true meaning of his answer was literally "I am, whatever there is." This was in keeping with his own beliefs, and he knew it would also satisfy those in whose power he was being held, in their belief that he was in fact Jesus, his brother.

His last hope was that his brother would escape this same sort of death, and come to fully understand Jenua's credo of love. Love needs no god. Love is salvation. The greatest love a man can express is to lay down his life for his brother.

As Jenua hung on the cross, he felt great compassion for the others suffering as he was, the thieves and murderers crucified for their crimes. In great love, he attempted to comfort them. Realizing that belief in a greater good can afford relief from personal agonies, he told the prisoner dying by his side, "Yes, you will join me in my father's house this very day." He knew it would not hurt to say such a thing. Though he did not believe that they were going to a place called heaven, it would give the condemned man some degree of salve for his feelings as he approached a death he had earned by behaving as he did in the rigid world, a world intolerable of difference and unforgiving of trespass. Jenua knew enough of Barabbas' story to agree with the crowd who begged to free him, and he thought, of capital punishment, that it was just one more of the many awful ways in which people could and did mistreat one another, and just one more reason why he could not bear to live among such people.

Jenua knew that his own death was inevitable, and that death could occur at any moment or could happen a hundred years hence, and the manner of it would not matter, since it would be over, whenever it would be over; and it would not be over, neither sooner nor later, not a moment before it was his time to die. Suffering was part of life, a part which Jenua admitted to himself, accepted for himself, and chose for himself to simply ignore as irrelevant until he himself was personally affected. At that time, he would then choose to focus on the fact that his own personal suffering would absolutely and inevitably pass. He found solace in the thought that death would, eventually, finally calm his soul.

As he kept up the appearance of playing Jesus, right up to his death, Jenua's wry sense of humor led him to his final words on the cross, "Why, oh God, have you abandoned me?" and "Into your hands, I commend my spirit." He knew if his words did get back to Jesus, Jesus would believe that Jenua had finally experienced a conversion to Jesus's way of thinking. He hoped it would serve as a small comfort to Jesus in the loss of his brother.

When, on the cross, Jenua spoke, with his lisp, the listeners simply agreed that it was Jesus's split lip and extreme stress that had caused his strange demeanor and odd pronunciation.

Only Mary, at the foot of the cross, recognized her son for who he was, though she had no idea how he had inexplicably come to take his brother's place. She was struck speechless. She spoke not a single word, but cried, in pure agony, at her younger son's torturous death. No one looking at her doubted for a moment that it was a mother crying for her son on the cross. And no one knew she had two sons. All witnesses truly believed that it was Jesus who had died of crucifixion.

When things had quieted down after a few days, Mary sent her daughter's son to fetch Jesus from the desert. The family concocted a plan to retrieve Jenua's body. With the help of his nephew, Jesus was able to pierce his own palms with nails, rend his clothes, and smear blood over his face and body.

Then, while Jesus remained hidden, his nephew ran up and confronted the guards, telling them he had just been chased by the dead man, the one who was supposed to be in the tomb. They did not believe him, thinking him crazy, but they could not resist when he made them a sizable bet that the tomb would be empty. To collect their winnings, they rolled away the stone in front of the tomb and checked on the corpse, which was still in place. When they exited the tomb, richer for their efforts, Jesus suddenly appeared before them. He was walking straight toward them, dripping blood, silently smiling. As he raised his arms, reaching out to them, they saw he looked exactly like the corpse, which so frightened them that they ran away and always afterwards refused to speak about the incident.

The tomb now opened, Jesus and his nephew seized their chance to snatch the body, stealing away quickly just before two sobbing women arrived to pray for Jesus and made their discovery that he was nowhere to be found.

The family members never spoke of it again, even in private.

Jesus knew there was a price on his head, and realized his family could not stand the further grief that loss of their only other son would bring. After a few carefully arranged secret visits with his apostles, Jesus agreed to stay home and accept that his public life was over. All knew that such a miracle, though it had saved him from a certain death, did not spare both sons of Mary, and could not happen twice.

Jesus maintained his anonymity by assuming the position previously held by his brother, and no one outside the family was the wiser. He wore braids like Jenua's, in the fashion of the weavers, who needed to keep their hair out of the path of their yarns. Jesus took up his brother's loom, and wove rainbows into blankets.

Religious Practice of Separation of the Sexes

I don't agree that "separate can be equal." This we learned from the civil rights movement. The idea might be there, to make everything completely symmetrical. Yet, one of the entrances to the temple worship area has got to be closer to the parking lot, to give just one example of how the real world complicates even simple ideas. If you let the men walk a shorter distance from their cars, they are "privileged." If you allow women to walk the shorter distance, they are "the weaker sex."

I appreciate that Buddhist thought demands that distractions be kept to a minimum, and I see how clothing and body chemistry might affect that. However, other concepts also provide strong distraction, and are not considered or given any weight, much less equal weight.

In group counseling of addicted children and their families, the individuals sitting in the circle are instructed not to sit next to a family member, so they can focus on their own situation and their own recovery. They are not instructed to not sit next to a member of the circle who might distract them because of their gender, sexual orientation, clothing, or history of friendship or drug use, though all of those also might be considered relevant. The family ties are thought to be most distracting to an individual's journey to health and well-being.

As I sat in the Buddhist worship area, apart from the men, my anger at realizing that I am seen as a person whose most important attributes to consider are my body parts, which might be "distracting" to the majority of men, who are heterosexual, was not so easy to set aside, making my experience of the practice of this religion just another low point in my search for meaning in this existence we call life.

The separation by genitalia also totally ignores sexual attraction between those of the same sex. The practice is inherently discriminatory because it does not recognize those whose sexual orientation differs from the majority. This practice denies these persons' sexual feelings or negates the importance of those feelings. And you can't just put the gay men in with the women, as I myself would find the near presence of an attractive man to be a distraction, even if I knew the attraction was not mutual. There is no way to separate a group of people so that no one will be sitting next to someone they are sexually attracted to. Some people are attracted to everyone. For this reason alone, they should not separate people by sexual organs, so they won't discriminate against someone by ignoring their sexual preference. Feeling marginalized because of one's sexual orientation diminishes the worship experience before it begins. Knowing that the religion encourages heterosexual preference feels like a slap in the face to members who are not heterosexual. Knowing that the lesbian sitting next to me is expected to hide her attraction to me, in the name of "fitting in," made me, a heterosexual, feel sorry for her and angry at a religion who would deny her the identity she was born with. We were not on equal footing if, within the worship area, I was free from distraction and she was purposefully made to feel her attraction was not normal and was not accounted for. She was not free to sit with the men, who would not be distracting to her, because she had body parts that would be attractive to men (but only the heterosexual ones).

The Catholic Church houses men and women, the brothers and sisters, separately, which makes it convenient to deny women the opportunity for engaging "the old boy network" to find out how things really run, politically, within the church. It is no different in public schools. No matter how "equal" a school that has only black students may seem to be, when compared to the school that only admits whites, the experience of the students is diminished due to a lack of interaction between the students of different races.

The Buddhist religion does the same thing.

When the men and the women sit apart during meals, the conversations that occur, on each side, do not reach all ears. Okay, I know that, even during meals, one's thoughts are expected to remain lofty.

But the thought that these separations are "good" continues, outside of the worship and food areas. Men and women are encouraged by their religious leaders to always be "good," to always be "holy," even after they leave the weekly service, and it is likely that this would include, even if not spoken aloud, a continued encouragement to not mingle with the opposite sex, because it might "be distracting" or "lead to sin." In the Catholic church, at the end of mass, the parishioners are instructed to "go and sin no more" and to "avoid the near occasion of sin."

In my experience with the Buddhist temple, as we left, we were not instructed to "go ahead and mingle freely with the opposite sex," "go about your business as usual," or anything that hinted that the experience of separation of the sexes was meant to be temporary and limited only to the worship services.

"Separate" within the walls of a religious building means they are preaching that "separate" is equated with "good." Then, beyond those doors, the continuation of being a "good" person means continuing to avoid "temptation." This leads to women being excluded from the old boy network, the power structure, and information they would find helpful in many ways, but which is denied to them simply by way of physical separation from men during important conversations.

This is not fair.

I was instructed by the Buddhists that this realization, that "unfair" is part of life, is important, so that we can set it aside, along with all the other unpleasant thoughts we might have, and enjoy the freedom from feeling connected to worldly things and ideas, any of which may lead to pain.

That is like saying, if you recognize that your leg is broken and it hurts, simply reflect on the fact that life includes things like broken legs, and when you let go of your feeling that you think it is important for you, personally, to be free of things that hurt, you will feel joyful. This is not the same thing as saying, let's fix your broken leg and see if that makes you feel a little better, even though the rest of life might be unfair and other things might hurt your feelings.

Separating men and women in the religious environment is more like making sure everyone has a broken leg, so they know what pain is, when the religious leader talks about letting go of painful attachments and being joyful. Heterosexual men are pained on being kept apart from sexy women, homosexuals are pained on having their attractions ignored and in having to keep them hidden, women are pained on being excluded from the real world of power.

My guess is that the Buddhists feel that the joy of enlightenment is an end which is worth enduring the institutionalized pain.

Organized Religion: Check Your Genitals at the Door

I attended services at one particular religious institution a couple of times in the past. It concerned me greatly that there was still a specific practice of separating females from males, with each sex occupying one side of the worship hall. This continued after the service into the shared repast, when the men lined up to be served the meal first and then the women after. Food was available in normal portions, but only until it ran out, so if it ran out before you were served, you were out of luck. It did not matter that they assured me they always made sure to have an abundance of food, plenty for all and with leftovers to give to the poor. The idea was there, that if there ever was not enough food, the poor would starve, and then the women, and lastly the men.

This was the practice in my husband's childhood family. However many pork chops there were at hand that had been cooked for dinner, they were doled out, one at a time, first to those who were male, the oldest served before the youngest, and then to those who were female, oldest to youngest. Often, there were not enough pork chops to go around, but the meat they had was not divided evenly, as was the practice in my own family. Those people in his family who were at the bottom of the status ranking went without if there was not enough. My sisters-in-law report that they often did not get a serving of the evening's protein dish, and had to fill up on rice.

It still amazes me that in order for one to participate in a modern organized religion, one would have to do a check of one's genitals and act according to the traditions reserved for your particular set of body parts. From what I understand, this has nothing to do with gender identity, it is strictly "gentlemen parts belong on one side of the room, lady parts on the other."

If I remember correctly, I was instructed that when one is faced with such discrimination, it is a reminder that life is not fair and that instances of discrimination are not important in the larger scheme of things, where all such identifications with the body eventually disappear anyway. Recognizing this and accepting it helps one to let go of earthly expectations that do not lead to happiness anyway. Letting go of attachment to things that do not matter leads to an inner peace, which leads to joy.

Somehow this still does not seem to me a satisfactory answer. I would have thought that a wise leader of a new religion could have found a more innovative way to make the same point, maybe lining up people by height, or dividing the room according to net worth, rather than going along with the contemporary discriminatory practice of sexism. Choosing such a traditional method of discrimination and institutionalizing it in religious practices makes me doubt the veracity of the retelling of the religion's story. It shakes my faith, making me question whether any part of the story is at all meaningful. I feel as separated from all religions which discriminate on the basis of biology as I do from my own, which labels me as unqualified to become a leader because of the peculiar nature of my body, which is female.

I understand that, in all religions, the stories are metaphors for our life experiences and understanding our place in the universe. But in putting women in second place, as usual, it just seems like sexist man-made religions are made by men in power to keep men in power, using pretense of metaphor to maintain the status quo, rather than to provide real enlightenment on the meaning of life, which might bring true satisfaction.

This continuity in institutionalized sexism might have been practical when religions first came into being, useful as a method to assure peace and social order, rather than the disorder which might have resulted if there had been a sudden shaking up of societal expectations. However, seeing that sex discrimination is still in practice today is seeing an anachronism that simply feels painful.

Mary Did Not "Know Man"

The Christian Bible tells the story of the conception of Jesus by a woman who had not "known man."

This tells a larger story, the story of how a new definition of what it means "to be a man" came to be.

Here's the scenario: when Mary revealed that she was pregnant, she furiously insisted that she was not pregnant by a "man." She probably described her impregnation, "There was this guy who got me pregnant, but he was not a real man. Yes, he was a guy with a penis, but a "real" man would not force me before marriage and then abandon me and my child. That was no "man" who fathered this baby!" Being a good girl, she may not have had appropriate words to describe what she really thought he was.

Mary likely despaired for the baby's future, because the belief of the day was that the children of a bad man were definitely destined to also be bad.

Mary told her tale of woe, and it was her enlightened listener who guided her to see that the child's potential had nothing whatever to do with the despicable way in which he was conceived. No matter whether the father was a louse or not, the baby would grow up to be a good person. Despite the fact that its parentage was tainted, the child, untouched by sin of its own, could be raised in love. It could develop fully its unlimited potential to do good for mankind. Out of Mary's despair came instead the joy of hope for a wonderful future for her child.

This change in perception was a miraculous giant step in mankind's development of a consciousness of the self as independent of the family or society.

In the new way of thinking, every child is born with a potential for good that is unlimited by the history of his birth. The story of the successful glory of Jesus, despite his lack of a "man" for a father, cements this new belief.

The biblical account of Jesus' conception and eventual glory is a metaphor for the societal sea change. It reflects the new idea, that individual people, no matter their background, really do have control over their own destiny.

Religious Reform, and Hurry

Slavery has been abolished by law, with no exceptions made for members of any church, not even the Catholic Church, to hold slaves. The very thought is intolerable. People do not have the right to own other people. Each person is valuable as an individual in his own right and is master of his own fate.

People of every race are people. Men and women are people. In every country live people. No person is higher than another person. Each is a miracle of God's creation, loved equally by God.

Dare I say, each person was created by God to be considered, by every other person created by God, to be worthy of being loved by each and every human being?

Did God ask each of us to treat each other one of us as a neighbor, and to love this neighbor as much as we love ourselves?

The highest love of a person would be to wish for them the highest joy and to spend our lives working toward their achievement of that joy. What higher joy than to spend one's human life in union with God?

The task of a priest is the highest task on earth, to bring other people to the joy that comes from a closeness with God.

The head of the Catholic Church, the pope, has said there will NEVER be female priests in the Catholic Church. Women have two X chromosomes and men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. The pope has said that God has revealed that in order to receive the sacrament of the priesthood, there is something important about having one of each, both an X and a Y chromosome.

How is it possible that the Catholic Church believes that, among the job requirements for becoming a priest is included the physical manifestation of having a Y chromosome? Why has the Catholic Church institutionalized sexism?

Maybe it is all metaphor, on the microscopic level, represented by the X and the Y chromosomes.

Considering that, from what I understand of science, a Y chromosome is simply an X chromosome off from which a piece has been broken, so that it is really just an incomplete X chromosome, This essay will attempt to examine the evidence as to whether there might be any redeeming logic to salvage the papal argument for institutionalized sexism.

Eve, with two X chromosomes, represents woman. Adam, with one X and one Y chromosome, represents man.

God is represented by a single X chromosome, incomplete because God is lonely for a partner with whom to share the universe. God knew he was not perfect because he was lonely, so he created another had known to create an equal to himself, he would have created a creature with two X chromosomes, an Eve, rather than an Adam. Instead, he created an Adam, a human who was not a God and who shared with God a desire to not be alone throughout existence.

Adam was created by God to be God's mirror image. Eve was created by God out of Adam, at Adam's request, because Adam was lonely. Since Adam before the fall is a mirror image of God, God himself must have been lonely. He created man, to share the whole of existence with himself.

Since Adam represents God's idea of what a mirror image of God would be like, Adam's desire for company represents God's own loneliness. God's creation of Eve represents God's realization of what was missing in himself, someone to share existence with.

Eve represents the new perfection of God, who is no longer lonely, because Eve had a partner right from the very beginning of her existence. Her two X chromosomes represent God and his equal counterpart, existing happily together.

Eve has two X chromosomes, which represents the perfection of what it would be like if two Gods lived in equality of power and essence, no different from one another. The X chromosome represents the whole and perfect human of God's creation. This is Eve, but it is also what Adam and God inhabiting the universe together were like, while Adam was still living in Eden and in perfect obedience to God. At that point, Adam still had his two X chromosomes. Then God took a part of one of his X chromosomes in order to create Eve, leaving Adam with one X chromosome complete and one broken, his Y chromosome.

The Catholic Church has institutionalized sexism so that we don't forget that God made a mistake in creating a subservient person rather than another God to be equal to himself and to keep himself company in his existence. In a perfect existence, there would be two equal Gods to keep each other company. Only a man of broken chromosomes can represent this horrible reality, and bring humans to an understanding of God's brokenness.

The priesthood is a reminder that it takes a perfect God, represented by an X chromosome, and an imperfect and broken man, represented by the Y chromosome, to create a church, a bunch of fallible humans whose desire it is to be united with God. The Catholic Church allows only men to become priests because it feels that only a chromosomally incomplete person can truly understand the yearning for the wholeness that is only possible when man is reunited with God.


The Y chromosome, when seen as a broken fragment of an X chromosome, represents the broken man, a creature who was perfect and whole, but now is lesser since the God part was torn off. Adam was the image of God himself, complete, yet alone as one God. The X chromosome represents the perfection of God's creation, man complete, before the God part was torn off. The Y chromosome represents man after his fall and in his subsequent banishment, roaming the earth apart from God. The part of man that is now missing and represents the manifestation of his imperfection is represented by the part of the X chromosome that is missing from the Y chromosome, the God which is missing from man's life.

Woman, who is comprised only of mirrored X chromosomes, represents perfection, that of a God who coexists with an equal, another God like himself.

In the beginning, God was existing in the grand existence but was not content enough to maintain himself by himself, so he started creating.

God created Adam, in his own image, and unsurprisingly, saw that Adam was not happy because he was lonely, just as God was lonely, or at least unsatisfied with simply existing by himself. Adam's loneliness represents the error in God's creation and in God himself. The whole and perfect man, as God had thought to create him, was not a whole and perfect man after all, because God had neglected to consider man's feelings. Adam began to see that having someone like oneself to love and spend his life with was more important than having been created and given life in the first place. God himself had seen that merely existing was not enough, that even God is drawn to having a partner to share it all with.

Metaphorically, this unhappy Adam represents God himself, as Adam was supposed to be a mirror image of God. God was lonely, not happy in his own existence, and therefore started creation.

The problem is that God did not create another God, to be his own equal and partner. He created a lesser being, either because he did not have the power to create another of his equal, or else in his urge to share his universe he did not think equality between himself and the one he would share the universe with was an important consideration.

Therefore, when we think of priests, as men, representing the imperfect creation of a God trying to create a mirror image of himself, we are reminded that God himself is less than perfect, because he is alone, somehow existing but without anything else existing to share that existence with.

The institutionalized sexism of the Catholic Church is a constant reminder that God, in isolation, is not perfect. The unmarried priest represents that a person can only be complete when joined with God, not with another person. Thus, the Catholic Church demands that the human priest act out the metaphor, in the sacrifice of the fulfillment of his own life in which marriage is denied, as a demonstration of the idealization that the only perfect marriage possible is that between God and the creation God made in order to give himself a partner in existence.

Thus, also, is denied gay marriage, since the idea is that imperfect man, the Y chromosome, cannot substitute for God. In the wholeness of God's desire, he created something different than himself to co-exist with himself. God did not create another God, which would have been two X chromosomes. Adam, the broken Y chromosome, cannot become a whole X chromosome by adding another Y chromosome, but only by adding the part missing from the X chromosome that resulted in the Y chromosome in the first place.




This logic essay is still in construction.

Letter to Friends

My Dearest Friends, You, You, You, and You!

I have so many dear friends who I visit daily in my mind though we now live far apart.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I miss seeing you, enjoying our conversation, laughing, sharing stories, living together with you in my life, thinking of us two united as it is to think of a single one individual, indivisible person.

I feel our constant connection, no matter how long we have been apart, no matter how many miles separate us.

We do more than share this planet, we share the inner space within us we call home.

To know that you last sent me a letter by mail and I have not yet returned the favor, to give you the same joy your letter gave me, is a torment. Your precious gift was a tremendous fulfilling of my longing for concrete evidence of good in this world, and I am grateful.

I have stationery, I have pens, I have postage, I have time. What I do not have are excuses for my neglect. If I spent half as much time actually writing to you and putting the letter into the mail as I do thinking about you and our friendship, you would be showered with letters, your mailbox overflowing with evidence of my love.

Love,

Your Friend, Forever and Ever,

Susanna