What Is Your Story?
There is a saying that I often use, “It is what it is, and that is all that it is. The rest is your story.” It came to my mind after I read an article in The Jerusalem Report titled, “A Whole New Jew”, written by Tibor Krausz, a writer from Budapest, Hungary. It is a story about Csanád Szegedi, who was a far-right politician, who trivialized the Holocaust and blamed the Jews for the wrongs of the world before finding out that he was one himself.
Szegedi, who is 34, is a former Member of the European Parliament for Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party, where he became a member at age 26.
Szegedi was an anti-Semite, until he discovered he was a Jew by descent, in 2012. Now, he studies with a Rabbi about Jews and Judaism every Friday.
The transformation occurred after one of his opponents discovered his grandmother’s birth certificate. She was born a Jew and was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. She survived, but decided to keep quiet about her ancestry. She always wore shirts with long sleeves to hide her Auschwitz tattoo. His mother knew about it, but decided not to tell her children.
When his old “friends” discovered his new identity, they considered him a traitor and he lost his political career. To follow his new discovery, his non-Jewish wife is now converting into Judaism and they are planning to immigrate to Israel with their two children.
Perhaps it is a fantastic story. But I have my personal experience with a non-Jewish friend. When she had some personal problems, she expressed her frustration by claiming that the world is ruled by Jews, who control Hollywood and Wall Street. In those moments, she sounded like a typical anti-Semite. Some time ago, she invited Elfa and I over for dinner to meet her new boy friend, who, according to her, is “like all Jewish men; a caring and good person.” I learned recently that they got married.
Perhaps those are very interesting, but isolated events. But for me, these stories indicate the traits we all have. Our beliefs and actions are based on the information of our past, whether we received it from others, or learned it in past experiences. This often defines who we think we are in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Often this relates to our religious and political beliefs. A change of information can sway us and our story can change, and so can we.
P.S. When I was thinking about which images to use for this essay, I remembered another story. After the Berlin Wall came down on November 9th 1989, the German authorities considered what to do with the viscous German Shepherd and Doberman Pinscher dogs who were trained to attack people who tried to scale the Wall. They could be easily eliminated. Instead, they were retrained to be companion dogs for older people and children. Can people be trained and/or changed as well? I have no idea, but I have four images of children with dogs to share with you.
Do Not Keep Me As A Secret!
Smile And Please SHARE It With A Friend!
Cheers,
