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Decade in Northrup:
A Natural Jewishness Emerges
- Abstract
WHEN I first began to think and write about Northrup, ten years ago, an older friend was amused at some of my observations. “Don’t worry so much about Jewish survival,” he said. “We survived the bad times, we’ll survive the good.” I didn’t know that he was in a position to be so certain. He lived in the city. He had never been, in suburbia, to a Sisterhood bingo party or fought the good fight for culture at a Hadassah Board meeting. He was a stubborn and idealistic Yiddishist, convinced that, at his best, a Jew was a superior being, not comparable to anything, not even to a gentleman. My friend’s Jewish chauvinism was boundless. “Foolish children,” he took pleasure in shocking a roomful of people who were arguing the merits of Stevenson and Eisenhower, “zey zeinen beyde goyim-what difference can it make?”
I hadn’t seen my friend all winter, but a warm summer Sunday enticed him out to the country. First she scolded us for living so far from “everything,” unaware that his reminders of what we were missing only confirmed our appreciation of what we had. Life in Northrup, though inelegant, is relaxed and comfortable. The status seekers move away, but we came for roots. It would hurt us Ito leave the forty pines we planted, the rock walls we rebuild each spring, the willow trees that are just taking hold. We may never again work as hard as we have here and we ‘have found a private status of our own in the brook we dug, the loam we carried, the flourishing arbor we planted where only poison ivy and brambles grew before. Scenery, however, had only a passing interest for our city company. Very soon my friend asked, “How is the temple getting along?”
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