Sunday journal: Student exchange

Growing up, I felt doomed to marry a nice Jewish boy and live in the suburbs. I was raised in Great Neck, N.Y., an affluent community on the north shore of Long Island, in the 1950s and early '60s.

The population of Great Neck seemed 100 percent Jewish to me, and my parents liked it that way. Having lived through the Holocaust era and experienced numerous instances of anti-Semitism, they felt most comfortable living among their own. All of my parents' friends were Jewish, everyone in my neighborhood was Jewish, almost all my classmates were Jewish (the public schools were even closed for all the major Jewish holidays), and my social life centered around Temple Emanuel, one of the three Reform Jewish synagogues in Great Neck.

Non-Jews, whom my parents referred to as the goyim, were viewed with suspicion and some disdain. To me, they were the Others, the mysterious people who lived out there.

In my religious school classes, we were taught the Hebrew language and about Jewish prayers, rituals and holidays. A major emphasis also was placed on Jewish history, particularly how Jews have been victims of violence and discrimination. We learned that Jews throughout history had been confined to ghettos, banned from living among the general population as if they were contaminated. I developed a strong sense of ethnic identity and pride. But I also developed a tremendous curiosity about life on the outside. I felt trapped in Great Neck, in the place that my parents affectionately called the gilded ghetto.

I thought I had finally escaped when I went to college. But, alas, the school had a student body that seemed to be more than half Jewish, and my two assigned freshman roommates were upper-middle-class Jewish girls who grew up in suburbs very similar to my hometown.

When I was accepted to graduate school at Arizona State University in Tempe, I was sure that I would finally enter the world of the goyim. To my dismay, I discovered that in my class of nine entering students in the clinical psychology program, four were Jewish and three, including myself, were from the New York City area.

Of course, I observed the proliferation of pickup trucks with gun racks, ate Mexican food for the first time, wore American Indian silver-and-turquoise jewelry and heard more Spanish spoken in the community than I had ever heard in my life. But I was still an observer, not a participant. Not until I rented a garage apartment in the nearby town of Mesa and left the college town of Tempe did I finally get my wish.

Founded by Mormons in 1878, Mesa was one of the largest population centers for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints outside of Utah. Mesa boasted of having one of only five Mormon Temples in the United States. Located on a 20-acre tract, the Arizona Mormon Temple was designed to resemble the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, although it is twice the size. It dominated the town both architecturally and culturally.

The Mormon religion was a source of endless fascination to me. I made numerous trips to the Visitors Center at the temple to learn about its religious beliefs and practices. The most American of faiths, the Mormon religion teaches that Christ appeared in the New World and revealed his message to Joseph Smith in Elmira, N.Y., on golden plates that Smith translated with the assistance of special spectacles.

I befriended my neighbor, who described herself as a "Jack Mormon," someone raised in the church but who no longer practices the religion. She told me about the special underwear or garments worn by the faithful, the avoidance of caffeine and alcohol and the belief that virtuous behavior is rewarded by material success, which has allowed the Mormon church to fit so well into the American capitalistic system. Ordinary worship occurs in the neighborhood Mormon church. It is in the temple that major life cycle events are celebrated, such as baptisms and marriage sealings, in which a couple are joined for eternity.

Only the most devout of Mormons are permitted to enter the temple; one must have a letter, called a recommend, from one's bishop that attests that the applicant is in good standing. A gentile (non-Mormon) like me would ordinarily never be allowed to enter the temple. But, in the late 1970s the Mesa Temple needed extensive renovations. During this process, the temple was opened to the general public for tours.

I was one of the first people in line. I still recall as if it were yesterday the elaborate dressing room for brides preparing for their sealing ceremony and the huge bronze fonts in the shape of oxen used for baptism of church members and as proxies for their ancestors. The only disappointment was the Celestial Room. Intended for meditation and inspiration, this room is supposed to give the devout Mormon a sense of what heaven is like. To me, it just looked like a large, tastefully furnished living room.

While I lived in Mesa, I not only felt as if I were living in the world of the goyim, I felt as if I were living in another country. As would be expected, Mesa's economy centered on the Mormon Church and the church-affiliated Deseret Industries and social services network. A person of the Mormon faith in Mesa could execute all of his or her social and economic transactions within the boundaries of the town without ever interacting with someone of a different religion.

If there was a Jewish population in Mesa, I saw no signs of it. So, I was very surprised while bicycling home from the ASU campus one afternoon to see a sign outside of a small, nondescript bakery advertising Jewish egg bread. Curious and suddenly homesick, I stopped in and, without thinking, asked for a loaf of challah.

Of course, the clerk had no idea what I was talking about. I explained that I had used the Yiddish word for egg bread. In response to her inquiries I told her that Yiddish was a language used by Jewish people from Eastern Europe and confirmed that I was Jewish.

Very excited, she asked me to wait and went into a back room. A few minutes later she re-emerged with three other employees. The four of them proceeded to stare at me intently. Then, the oldest of the group told me that they had never seen a Jewish person before.

Another employee shyly asked me if I would be willing to to show them my horns. Shocked, I explained that I didn't have any horns but felt compelled by their disbelief to flatten what was then an extensive Afro to prove it. I felt as if I had been transported back in time to the 19th century, when it was widely believed that Jews were the spawn of the devil.

They took turns gravely inspecting my hair. Each one seemed surprised and somewhat disappointed that there was nothing unusual to be found. Afterward, they thanked me warmly, told me they hoped I enjoyed the bread, asked me to come in again soon and wished me a nice day.

I paid for my bread and left. I wasn't surprised to find that the bread didn't look or taste much like the rich, braided loaves I remembered from Benkert's bakery in Great Neck. But I was surprised to find that although I was startled by my encounter in the bakery, I wasn't angry. No hostility had been directed toward me, only ignorance and curiosity. I realized that, in their own way, those bakery employees were trying to escape from their ghetto, just as I was trying to escape from mine.

-- Lynda Gurvitz is a psychologist who lives in Clearwater.

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