more of a monolith, Philly was much more culturally significant. Every race or culture that has moved to America eventually assimilated into the melting pot but what Philly had and the Washington area lacked was the unique and obvious contributions of all the different ethnic groups that made the city what America was supposed to be all about. In Philly, each ethnic group indelibly left its mark on the entire area. In Washington, it almost seemed like everyone strove to hide their background and without ethnicity and the different cultures blending together while keeping their intrinsic uniqueness Washington was in some ways very bland. While there are those who decry taking pride in our different cultural backgrounds and who believe that we are all just plain Americans, and not Black Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Chinese Americans, etc. by striving to erase what makes us all unique and special makes the melting pot of America very bland. A city of neighborhoods, which Philly was, and Washington never will be, is what made Philly special, and the contributions of each ethnic group were evident in everything the city had to offer. Assimilation never meant forgetting who you were and denying your heritage, your culture, your customs, or your beliefs. One can be a proud American and still practice and live your ethnicity. It is not short sighted nor is it prejudiced in any way. What made America different from every other country is all the many, many different peoples who came here from around the world, whether fleeing persecution or for a better life economically who brought part of their culture into America and made it part of America, not by hiding or sublimating it, or denying it. America became richer as a country because it was able to blend so many different cultures, religions, customs and traditions into a whole that was made indelibly richer by the sum of its parts. When a city or area lacks identity, as the metropolitan Washington area did, a sense of belonging and family and community just isn’t there.
The one thing I did miss when I moved to Washington was being part of a community. The Washington area had no sense of community other than rooting for the Redskins. Nothing else brought people together. Unlike a Philly or Baltimore there were no Jewish neighborhoods and the Washington area Jewish community was quite apathetic. The weekly Jewish newspapers in Baltimore and Philadelphia averaged seventy five or more pages every Friday and sometimes much more where the Washington Jewish newspaper was a paltry six or seven pages. I could never understand how it could be a community newspaper when it did not post announcements for births, engagements, weddings, and bar mitzvahs as well as obituaries. In Philadelphia, and in Baltimore these weekly announcements were important to the readers and they informed the community about what was going on. If your son or daughter was engaged you want it listed along with a photo and if a loved one passed away you always wanted to have the notice in the local Jewish newspaper. The Washington Jewish newspaper was more like a newsletter where the others were full fledged newspapers filled with announcements, the latest news affecting the Jewish community, and special articles written about Israel, as well as ads for Jewish singles wanting to meet other Jewish singles to date. Washington had none of that and not having this led to the sense that no Jewish community existed in the metropolitan Washington area.
While Philly did have an active Jewish community and while Philly was city of neighborhoods with sections where Blacks, Jews, Italians, and Irish lived one negative Philly had, as I assume most large cities had, was that is was a very racist town, with both black and white racism. When callers would call the city’s top rated sports talk show and criticize a black athlete on the basketball or football team the phone lines would be lit up with black callers accusing the white callers of racism. Any criticism whatsoever of a black athlete would cause this to happen. Likewise, you could tell there were many white callers who harbored deep prejudices against African Americans. One of the best examples of the racial divide in Philly were the elections for mayor. It seemed that whenever a black candidate ran against a white candidate black voters voted 90% to 10% for the black candidate and white voters voted 80% to 20% for the white candidate. I remember many years later watching the academy award winning picture “Crash” and thought it accurately depicted the racial environment I was familiar with in Philadelphia. Although the movie took place in Los Angeles it definitely reminded me of Philadelphia. Confrontations, like the ones depicted in “Crash” seemed likely to happen in Philly at any time and it seemed that racial tension was always in the air. When I was in elementary school almost all of my friends were Black. I used to walk home from school every day with another little boy named Willy. Willy used to stutter quite severely but I learned he never stuttered before I met him. One day when Willy’s parents were not at home his little sister was trying to cook some food for herself and her brother and in a disaster caught on fire and burned to death as her brother watched in horror. Willy was a gentle soul and I never once asked him about what happened. All his fellow classmates were aware of what happened but I never knew how Willie was dealing with his pain and the tragedy he witnessed. There have been many times over these many, many years when suddenly he would come into my thoughts and I would wonder how he was doing, how he was able to deal with his pain. I wondered what Willy was doing today and hoped that whatever he was doing and where ever he was that he was happy and found some comfort and peace in his life.
When I arrived in Washington in June of 1978 I didn’t know anyone and called the local Jewish Community Relations Council to find out about singles groups I could join where I could meet women to date and make new friends. I joined a B’nai Birth singles group and was fortunate to make a number of friends, some of whom I have to this very day, more than thirty years later. It was exciting to meet new people and when I became president of the group I met many different women that I dated. I was dining at exciting new restaurants, visiting the different monuments and memorials, attending events at the Kennedy Center, and meeting exciting new people all the time. I was twenty eight and having the time of my life. My parents lived in Philly and were nearing retirement age, my dad was sixty four and my mom was sixty when I moved. Because my dad had lost his business and had no pension he still worked as a pharmacist for other people and would do so for several more years. In the late seventies pharmacists made a fraction of what they earn now. Today there are few independent pharmacies and most cities have the national or regional chain operations. A pharmacist today earns close to a six figure income and has a nice pension and medical benefits, three things my dad never had. My mom would be retiring about five years later after being a high school counselor for several years. My folks would visit my sisters who had moved to Israel in 1972, and especially did so after 1978 when they became grandparents for the first time. My folks also traveled around the world at times with another couple who were their best friends. My mom had a childhood friend since she was twelve years old who was like a sister to her and when that friend married her husband became like a brother to my dad.
I would travel back home to see my folks for Passover and join them at their home, the home where I grew up, every year. In 1980 my parents decided to sell their home. My dad was sixty six, my mom sixty two, and with my two sisters living six thousand miles away and my living in the Washington area, it made no sense to maintain a home with four bedrooms, especially when my mom had to go down a flight of steps to the cellar to do the laundry. The home was showing its age and it was time to leave. I remember when I went to see my folks after they told me they sold our house. I remember walking into my old room and standing there closing my eyes as my mind danced thru a ton of different memories. This was the only home I had ever known, the home I had come back to every day from elementary and high school, the home I would come back to every Christmas break and every summer when I was in college and graduate school, the home I lived in when my grandparents were alive and after they passed away, the home where my sisters and I entertained our friends, a good number of whom always seemed to enjoy chatting with our parents when they visited, a home that enveloped me in its embrace of family and belonging. When I was ready to return to Washington I remember hugging my parents as I said goodbye to them, knowing that although I would see them again, as tears flowed from my eyes I said goodbye to the only true home I had ever known that was now about to become a part of my past. While I had not lived there for seven years it was always the home I came back to. It was my home. When my folks moved into an apartment in Philly and I would visit them I always felt that their apartment was their home, not mine. The only home I had ever known was now just a memory.
After my parents became grandparents for the first time they began to visit my sisters more often. Over the next eight
