Chapter 9 A Preexisting Idea #2
The Winslows were relieved to hear that Esther was willing to wait for her tattoo, their reverence for Jane Eyre notwithstanding.
“Right you are, Esther—Jane would be the first to understand!” Thomas Winslow told her.
The ladies of the town had put a bug in Constance Winslow’s ear about Jews and tattoos.
It was just like those ladies to hide their thoughts in what sounded like an innocent question.
“Is it true that Jews can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery if they’re tattooed?
” one of the ladies of the town asked Constance.
Of course Constance didn’t know, and she was afraid to ask Esther.
Having been denied a Jewish childhood, Esther will want a Jewish burial, Constance was thinking.
Esther didn’t get to begin her life with other Jews; surely she’ll want to end her life with her people, Thomas thought.
As the Rosenthals knew, the Winslows were always worrying about Esther; the Rosenthals were always reassuring them. “There is no prohibition—Esther can be buried in a Jewish cemetery even if she is tattooed with the entire text of Jane Eyre,” Daniel Rosenthal said to the Winslows.
“There’s a taboo about tattoos in Orthodox communities, but even they don’t have a problem with burying someone who’s tattooed—the burial thing is a myth,” Naomi told the Winslows.
As the Winslows would learn, there were many myths about the Jews.
The townspeople of Pennacook had heard the myths; they remembered the strange-sounding ones.
By World War II, the Jewish community in Portsmouth had grown.
The name of the congregation would one day be shortened to Temple Israel.
Long before then, Esther had stopped going to any synagogue—as had the Rosenthals, who were as nonobservant as Esther.
A younger faculty couple now accompanied the academy’s Jewish students to the Portsmouth synagogue.
The public library in Pennacook (because of Constance Winslow) and the Pennacook Academy library (because of the Rosenthals and the Druckers) had books on the Jewish Diaspora and the emergence of modern Zionism in Central and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century.
It was because of the Druckers and the Rosenthals that Esther had heard of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine—formed in reaction to the rising anti-Semitism in Europe and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire.
It would be because of Bluma and Isaac Drucker that Esther was quoting Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in German and in English, at a preternaturally young age.
At a time when many Jews were getting out of Europe, the Winslows were frightened that Esther was going there. “Esther has a history of going against the grain, Thomas,” Daniel Rosenthal reminded him.
“Remember Wellesley, Tommy,” Constance said.
“Right you are, Connie,” Thomas told her. Wellesley College was Constance’s alma mater; Faith, Hope, and Prudence would be Wellesley girls, like their mother.
Thomas Winslow was a Boston University boy—BU had been his backup when he didn’t get into Harvard, and he had loved it.
The Winslows’ earlier au pair girls—their first three orphans, as the townspeople of Pennacook called them—were BU girls, both as undergrads and in graduate programs. But Esther was such an exceptional student, Constance encouraged her to try Wellesley.
Constance couldn’t be faulted for dramatizing when she wrote her alma mater, recommending Esther Nacht.
Constance quoted Naomi, who’d merely repeated (in an exclamatory way) what Esther nonchalantly told everyone she met about herself.
(The part about her being “a Viennese-born Jew who grew up in an orphanage in Maine, her mother murdered by anti-Semites in Portland!”)
Not only did Esther get into Wellesley; she captured the attention of the Wellesley Students’ Aid Society.
“Deservedly so, Connie—way to go, Esther!” Thomas told them.
Furthermore, there were Jewish girls at Wellesley—not only from Boston and New York.
For occasional long weekends, or the shorter of the college’s vacations, Esther brought some of her new Jewish friends to Pennacook to meet the Winslows.
Thomas and Constance adored these smart girls, not least for how they gave Honor their utmost attention.
For years after Esther’s one year at Wellesley, the Winslows would remember the names of these Jewish girls.
Esther had seemed so happy at Wellesley.
Faith Winslow was a first-year student at Wellesley College when Esther started there.
“No one ever had so much fun her freshman year,” Faith would later say of Esther.
Esther had already decided what her major would be—zoology and physiology.
Esther was also dedicated to improving her German.
And a course of study called Biblical History, Literature and Interpretation attracted her.
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that one, Connie,” Thomas Winslow said.
“You don’t know everything, Tommy,” Constance told him.
For what would be her second year of college, Esther transferred to Boston University. She cited Wellesley College’s motto as inspiring her: Non Ministrari sed Ministrare—Not to Be Ministered unto, but to Minister.
“I’m having too much fun—I’m not going to school to have a good time,” was the way Esther put it. She’d decided she was going to be a nurse.
After this utilitarian-sounding (and disappointing) news, the Winslows were over their heads as they tried to follow the complicated path of Esther’s extensive training to become a nurse.
She ultimately earned a BS from Boston University and got further training in the nursing school at the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
What the Winslows would understand of all this was that Esther had a bachelor’s degree in nursing—“a BSN, or the equivalent thereof,” was the way Esther put it.
What the Winslows would struggle to comprehend was what Esther had done all this for.
It seemed Esther needed a BSN from an accredited program—or the equivalent thereof—to qualify for the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.
“She’s going into the army, Tommy!” Constance exclaimed.
“Attagirl, Esther!” Thomas Winslow cried.
Pity the Druckers; they had to explain the Jewish Diaspora to the Winslows—the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their resettlement in other parts of the world.
Pity the Winslows; the exile of the Jews wasn’t foremost in Thomas and Constance Winslow’s consciousness.
Isaac Drucker skipped over several centuries, choosing to begin with the increasing migration and resettlement in the Middle Ages, dividing the Jews into two geographical groups—the Ashkenazi Jews of Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Sephardic Jews of Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and the Middle East.
“Both the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim suffered many of the same expulsions and persecutions and massacres,” Bluma Drucker wanted the Winslows to know.
“And Isaac left out the pre-Roman Diaspora. The Jews were always being defeated or overthrown—then we were sold into slavery,” Bluma continued with the Winslows, while Isaac skipped over the First Jewish-Roman war, ending in the siege of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple.
Isaac ignored all the Byzantine, Islamic, and Crusader business.
Notwithstanding the atrocities Isaac left out, the Winslows were getting the picture.
Bluma understood why her husband hurried over the history.
The Winslows were worried about Esther. Isaac Drucker was a purposeful teacher.
Isaac was leading the Winslows to the Zionist “negation of the Diaspora,” because Isaac knew and understood why Esther was seriously intent on going there.
Esther was of an age and disposition to make up for lost time.
She wanted to be the best Jew she could be—to Esther’s thinking, this meant the most committed to being Jewish.
The differing waves of Zionism meant that Zionism was ever-changing—or so the Druckers wanted the Winslows to know.
“Bluma and I are old, Tommy,” Isaac told Thomas Winslow.
“Esther is young, and she’s naturally rebellious.
Of course Esther would dedicate herself to a fundamental premise of Zionism—what Bluma might say is the most radical and didactic presumption of Zionism,” Isaac added. (Indeed, Bluma said this.)
It alarmed the Winslows that Esther wanted to be part of the Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Esther believed the Jews would never be free from discrimination and persecution in exile—not in Europe, not in the United States.
“Look what happened to Esther in Maine! Did Esther’s mother find tolerance and assimilation in Portland? ” Isaac asked the Winslows.
“Esther doesn’t want to be persecuted or assimilated, Connie,” was the way Bluma put it to Constance.
It further alarmed the Winslows that Daniel and Naomi Rosenthal were much more wary of Zionism than the Druckers.
The ancestry of most American Jews went back to the Ashkenazi Jews, the ones who began immigrating to the U.S.
in the nineteenth century. As Daniel and Naomi told the Winslows, American Jews were the most assimilated; there were lots of mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews.
“Many American Jews don’t see themselves as in exile, Tommy—Naomi and I don’t see ourselves as part of the Jewish Diaspora, not anymore,” Daniel Rosenthal told Thomas Winslow.
“Esther definitely sees herself as making aliyah—she believes that immigrating to the Land of Israel is the only solution for her,” Naomi told the Winslows, who (of course) were clueless about making aliyah.