The Catholic Jew
Based on a true story, this tale ties together European history from the 19th century and today. For teens.
“Mail for you, Granny,” said a familiar young voice.
Kathleen O’Malley looked up from her crossword puzzle book. She set down the magnifying glass she used to read the small print and spun her wheelchair around to face her visitor. “Patrick! I didn’t know you got a summer job!”
The young man stood by the mail cart holding some mail. Looking at everything except his grandmother, he shuffled his feet but remained silent.
“Your grandson was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.”
Mrs. O’Malley stared at Mrs. Rosenberg, assistant director of the nursing home, who was standing in the doorway watching. “Sentenced?!” Mrs. O’Malley’s hand pressed against her mouth for a moment. “As in judge? Court?”
“Right,” said Ms. Rosenberg. “Patrick agreed to work here full time until school starts. After he completes his community service we’ll pay him minimum wage. Hopefully he will learn to stop fighting and stay out of trouble during that time.”
“Patrick.” Mrs. O’Malley’s voice dropped and she shook her head slowly. “You were warned before. What did you do this time?”
The teen stared at the floor, shifting his feet as though he wanted to run away.
“He punched a boy in the face twice, breaking his nose and eyeglasses and knocking out a tooth. There were witnesses plus a security camera video. The attack appears to have been unprovoked. His wages will cover the cost of new eyeglasses and start to pay for the emergency room and dental bills. He will have to come up with the rest another way.”
Mrs. O’Malley sighed. “Bring your lunch to the residents’ dining hall and eat lunch with me,” she said. “We will talk then.” She took the mail from Patrick’s hand and shook her head sadly.
“Come,” said Mrs. Rosenberg to Patrick. “You have the rest of this floor and four more floors to cover before lunch. Our residents expect their mail in the morning. In the afternoon you will have another task.”
Mrs. O’Malley held her mail in both hands but stared out the window. Patrick had been getting into a lot of trouble since his father had moved out. But this sounded serious. She suspected the fight was with Eran Itzhaki, who had joined his class last autumn. The two had gotten into it before. This time it sounded as though her grandson had done serious damage. He had caused his victim substantial pain, not to mention expense that his mother would be asked to pay. And now he had a police record.
An hour later, Mrs. Rosenberg brought a very sullen young man to the dining room and watched while he sat down at his grandmother’s table. “Enjoy the meal,” she said to Mrs. O’Malley as she rolled her eyes and left.
Mrs. O’Malley dipped her spoon into the tomato soup and stirred, watching a twist of steam rise and dissipate into the air. She looked at Patrick, who was tapping his tuna sandwich on the plate. “Let’s eat first and then talk,” she said, carrying a spoonful of soup to her mouth. He nodded, and slowly took a bite out of his sandwich.
Patrick nibbled but hardly ate. So as soon as she had finished, Mrs. O’Malley pushed her dishes aside. “Okay,” she said. “Why are you getting into fights? Was this the Itzhaki boy again? What did he do to you?”
“I hate him.” The words burst forth from Patrick. “I just hate him. He’s a Jew and an Israeli. It’s okay to hate them.” Then he looked around. “Granny, I don’t know why you live here, in a Jewish nursing home. Wasn’t there room anywhere else?”
“The news is full of lies, both about Israel and the Jews,” she continued as though she hadn’t heard his question. “There are about 2 billion Muslims in the world, about 2.4 billion Christians, and only about 15 million—million, not billion—Jews. Their voice is simply blotted out by the huge number of people who lie for religious or political purposes. Like every other group, there are good Jews and bad ones. But most of what you hear about them on the news is not true.”
Patrick shook his head. “Now you are lying. You must be lying!” His voice rose.
“Shh.” His grandmother gestured with her hand. “Keep your voice down.”
“I know you’re just mouthing propaganda!” Patrick’s voice was lower, but still shrill. “I’ve heard the truth. My feeds are full of stories about what they are doing in Gaza. Lots of videos, too.”
Mrs. O’Malley tipped her head and stared at him. His dark brown eyes, so like her own, stared back, but his hair was Irish red, like his father’s, as was his tall, thin build.
“Patrick, this is a subject I know a tremendous amount about. I may be Catholic, but I am also Jewish. And your mother is Jewish, and that makes you Jewish. But even if we weren’t Jewish, you should know it’s not okay to hate all Jews and Israelis. Hate individuals, if they are bad people. And it’s probably okay to hate whole groups that have evil goals, like Hamas. Its charter says their goal is to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. But hating a whole race or nationality, characteristics people don’t choose? Never, ever good.”
Patrick leaned forward. “How can you be Jewish? You’re Catholic. You were born in Ireland, and I remember meeting Great-Grandda Flannagan when I was little. You have cousins who are priests. How can you say you’re Jewish?”
“Judaism is passed by the mother. My great-grandmother was born in Poland. She was Jewish, so her daughter, my grandmother, was too. Her daughter, my mother was; so I am, and so is your mother Jewish. That makes you Jewish, too. We have been Catholic by religion, but my great-grandmother, Rachel, never became Catholic.
“This is how it happened.
“The Flannagans raised horses for generations. Beautiful, fine racehorses and riding horses, they were. The finest in Europe, folks said. People came from all over Britain and Europe to buy their horses.
It was around 1868, 1870. My great-grandfather Flannagan was 16 years old when a wealthy Jewish couple from Poland came to buy a horse. They had two daughters, five and three. They wanted a gentle mare that the wife could ride, and that the little girls could learn to ride on. They chose a young filly and asked that it be trained to be a good children’s horse, and then brought to them in their village near Lodz, in Poland. Fall and winter passed, and in the spring Great-Grandda took the horse to them. He was 17 by then, a young man with a man’s responsibilities. He traveled by steamship to England, across England by train, another ship to Europe, and more trains to the village outside Lodz.
“When the train stopped at the village, though, Great-Grandda saw nothing but smoking ruins. There had been a pogrom, a massacre, the night before. It was just before Easter, and not every year, but sometimes around Easter the peasants punished the Jews for killing Jesus by killing them. When I heard what happened on October 7 in Israel, it sounded a lot like what had happened about 150 years earlier in Poland.
“Great-grandda loved telling the story, but this part always brought tears to his eyes. He said he walked the horse—Molly was her name—through what remained of the village. She was skittish. Horses don’t like to be around death, and death was all around.
“The village was deserted except for a small group of bearded men with clothes that looked outlandish to his Irish eyes. They were searching for bodies. When they found one, they put it gently on the wagon. He said they moved each body with respect, setting them down carefully, not tossing them.
“Great-Grandda didn’t know what to do. He had his valise in one hand and Molly’s lead in the other. Following the instructions the purchasers had given them, he stood in front of what had once been a large house, but was now just charred wooden beams. Behind was the ruin of a barn, but at the side, by a water trough for animals, was a big shrub. And from under the shrub he heard a faint sound, like the mew of a little kitten.
“He set down his valise, tied Molly to what was left of a beam, and crouched down to rescue the cat. But what he found was a little girl. A little girl with brown curly hair and dark brown eyes swollen from crying.
“When she saw him, she tried to crawl backwards, away from him. He could see the fear in her eyes. So he backed away—not too far, he could still see her—sat on his haunches, and thought. Then he dug through his valise and pulled out a packet of dried apple slices. He took one for himself and handed one to her. After a moment she reached out and took it. She took a tiny bite, then gobbled it up. One slice at a time, he gave her what he had. By the time she had eaten several, she began to trust him.
“The men with the wagon saw him and came over. He couldn’t understand them, but he showed them the paper with the purchaser’s name and address. Through sign language they made him understand that he was at the right home, and that the little girl was their daughter. The rest of the family had been killed.
“They drew him a map to the next village. He understood that the survivors had gone there, so he put the little girl up on Molly’s back, took up his valise, and started off.
“Not many Jews lived in the next village. There was a big Catholic church, though. The priest had studied in Ireland and spoke English. He helped Great-Grandda look for relatives or someone to take the little girl, but no one was able to help. The Jews were overwhelmed with survivors of the pogrom and could not take an orphan. No one seemed to know much about the family. The man was the head of a factory. They had only lived in the village for a year or so.
“The priest offered to baptize the girl and put her in the Catholic orphanage, but Great-Grandda said that after seeing the damage done to Jews by Christians, he couldn’t bear that idea. Instead, he took the little girl home to Ireland.
“By the time they arrived back at the Flannagan farm, the little girl had learned some English and Great-Grandda had learned a little of the girl’s language. His parents raised her, but they never had her baptized. Great-Grandda wouldn’t let them. He said her family were killed because they were Jews, and he had brought her to Ireland when the priest wanted to baptize her and put her in the Catholic orphanage.
“Although he was about 15 years older than her, Great-Grandda married the little girl, Rachel, when she grew up. She became a great horsewoman and helped train the horses. She told her daughter her history. Her daughter, my granny, told my mother. But my mother did not tell me. She died when I was only about 30. Instead, she left me a letter explaining our family history. She said that when the world learned about the Holocaust and the way the Nazis murdered so many Jews, she was 18 years old. She decided no one would ever know she had Jewish blood. But I had had many questions: why did I have brown eyes and curly brown hair, and why I was short and stocky, when all the cousins were blue-eyed, blond, tall and thin. When she knew she would not recover from her illness, she decided I had a right to know the truth.
“I love our church, our prayers, and God, but I started learning about Jews and Judaism. I never wanted to leave the Catholic faith. It’s my way of connecting with God. I believe God loves everyone who loves Him, even if we have different ways of showing our love, so long as we and our religion keep His basic laws of behavior. So although I am Catholic, I know in my heart I am also Jewish. That’s why I live here, in a Jewish nursing home where I am living as close to a Jewish life as I, a Catholic, can.
Mrs. O’Malley took a drink of tea. “So explain to me now, in detail, why you do not like this boy from Israel. Tell me exactly why you do not like Jews and Israelis.”
Patrick sat silently, frozen in place.
“Because of what you hear in the news?” she prodded.
He nodded. “I’ve heard so many bad things.”
“Since when do you hate on the basis of gossip?”
“But…” he started, then fell silent.
“What has this boy done to you? What have you seen him do to others? Does he bully anyone? Does he steal? Cheat? Start fights?”
Patrick wrinkled his forehead, then slowly shook his head. “No, I guess he’s okay, just kind of like a nerd. He doesn’t smile. His English is hard to understand. He gets stupid words mixed up. I was behind him in the cafeteria line once when he asked for soap instead of soup.”
“How long has he been in the USA?” His grandmother raised her eyebrows, challenging him.
Patrick squirmed. “I think he came around Halloween, so not quite a year. He’s living with his aunt and uncle. I think his parents died.”
“Died, or were killed on October 7?”
Patrick bit his lip. Finally he said, “Just died? I don’t know. I heard Israel was to blame for the trouble, and all those people killed on October 7 deserved to die.”
“Didn’t you have to write a paper for or against capital punishment last year? And didn’t you write that it was wrong for the government to kill people, even if they were violent criminals?” She paused. Patrick shifted in his seat. “And how can babies deserve to die?”
“Do you really believe when the Jews say all that terrible stuff happened?” Patrick shook his head in disbelief.
“Yes, videos came out too quickly to be staged.” Mrs. O’Malley looked down, crinkled up her napkin, then smoothed it out. She sighed, then looked back at her grandson. “It is hard to believe in true evil, but what happened in Israel on October 7 was pure evil. I believed it immediately because it was jut like what happened to my great-grandmother Rachel’s family, and things that happened during the Holocaust in the 1940’s.”
She sighed again and rearranged her dishes. Patrick was silent, twisting his hands in his lap. She reached over and touched his arm. “Paddy,” she said gently, using his childhood nickname, “You’re just a boy. You made a mistake. Use your time here to learn. Chat with the people living here. Ask their stories. Borrow some books from our little library and read. If you learn and grow from this time, it will have served a good purpose.”
Patrick looked at the large clock on the wall. “I have to find Mrs. Rosenberg and get back to work,” he said. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
He pushed his chair back, stood, looked into his granny’s eyes, and bit his lip. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“For sure,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.” She pushed her wheelchair back from the table, spun it around, and rolled slowly back to her room.
For Parents, Teachers, and Others
I was speechless when Mrs. M.B. told me, around 1989, why she, a practicing Catholic, lived in the Jewish nursing home where I worked. I have tried many times to work her amazing story into one that young people today might read, without success. Then I thought about the senseless hatred that destroyed Jerusalem so many centuries ago, and the hatred that started this war that Israel is presently fighting. I knew I had the connection.
Our Haggadah, the book we read aloud every year at the Passover seder, says, “In every generation, people rise up to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, saves us from their hands.”
This story is pretty graphic. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to call it a children’s story. But today’s American kids are used to much more gore than I ever was. They revel in stories about vampires and zombies, wear masks that appear to be dripping blood, and watch horror movies and violent shows at incredibly young ages. With this background, I think most of them can handle the very unpleasant truths I tell here.
These are truths that I believe they need to hear while they are still young and impressionable. By the time they are in their late teens, they are very likely to have been exposed to a huge amount of anti-religious, progressive information, like the nonsense that some people are innately oppressors and others are innately oppressed. By then, they may not be able to understand another side.
The Xerox Corp. Movies from the Early 1960’s
When I was in high school, the Xerox Corp. distributed movies made from German Nazi propaganda and news films of the Holocaust. My school showed them over four days, after hours in the gym. We needed parental permission to watch them. By halfway through the first one, almost everyone—teachers and students—had left the hall. I insisted on watching every moment of every one.
At the age of 3 or 4 I had learned that there had been camps for Jews where terrible things happened. I had known people with numbers on their arms. When I was in 4th grade my best friend’s mother had died of breast cancer that had been implanted as one of Dr. Mengele’s infamous “experiments.”
We have today a national Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and most if not all states have state museums. But unfortunately, a great many young adults have no idea what the Holocaust was. The elderly woman in this story’s family history began almost 100 years before the Nazis.
Jewish Survival
We Jews survive because we are one people, an eternal people. That means that no matter what happens to us as individuals, the Jewish people will continue. On Holocaust Remembrance Day in the spring, we remember the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. On Tisha B’Av, the day that I am publishing this, we as a people mourn for all those people lost in pogroms, terror attacks, riots, and other examples of senseless hatred.
We Israelis go about our business in spite of rockets, suicide drones, alarms at 1:43 in the morning forcing people to jump from their beds and rush with their children to their safe places. We play with our children and grandchildren, pray, say psalms, fix home-cooked Sabbath feasts so our soldiers have one meal when they are not eating battle rations. We collect money to pay for the food and for the ceramic vests our soldiers need; we do laundry for perfect strangers. Many people who never fasted on Tisha B’Av say they will be fasting this year because for the first time they understand destruction.
Sources
Here are three sources for more information on pogroms.
Information about October 7: www.october7.org
Why so many Jews fled Europe starting in the 1880’s: www.whytheyleft.org
US Holocaust Memorial Museum: www.ushmm.org
Wow Hanna, this was a very special story, indeed!