Jews: From Prejudice to Partnership

I will be forever grateful for the habits and values I was taught by my parents and the small rather isolated German Lutheran community in which I was raised. From my parents, peers and elders I learned faith, honor, love of country, the importance of work and thrift and the need to care for others. Unfortunately that same community planted within me some seeds which were poisonous and hurtful.

Among those evil convictions is the scourge of prejudice. I grew up with seriously erroneous stereotypes and prejudices. I recall that when an adult from another branch of the Lutheran Church joined our particular branch of the Lutheran Church we described the process as “adult conversion”. I was not even allowed to compete in softball against the neighboring Catholic parochial school lest I become contaminated by their heresies. I could nor possibly imagine that a black person would ever be smart enough to be a lawyer. Persons whose sexual orientation was anything other than straight were evil misfits to be identified only by sexist slurs and to be avoided at all costs.

Jews were, of course, completely outside the pale and I was fed all the usual stereotypes. I had never met a Jew. I do remember being told that a Jewish merchant had opened a store in the near-by county seat and I mused, “I wonder what a Jew looks like? Would he just naturally charge me more for his goods because I was non-Jewish?”

It took me entirely too long to change. That change was facilitated by (among other things) some wonderful encounters with Jewish persons. I recall that when my wife Jane and I were living in Hong Kong she was diagnosed with a possible cerebral aneurysm. We were ordered back to the States immediately. Because of my involvement with The Hong Kong International School word of our distress reached the American community. I had been home from the hospital only a matter of hours before the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, “Mr. Kieschnick, my name is Jacob Rothstein. I don’t know if you remember me. We met a few weeks ago. But I have heard of your wife’s medical situation. She needs the best neurosurgeon in the world. He is at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. I will introduce you and he will see your wife the moment she arrives at the hospital. And”, he added, "should you need help with paying for those airline tickets or for your wife’s medical care, just let me know. I will be pleased to assist.”

Later I conducted a Clergy Effectiveness Seminar for the Chaplains of the US Air Force. It was not surprising that the Protestants and also the Catholic chaplains asked me to join them for noonday prayer. What I appreciated especially though was when the lone Rabbi there invited me to join him in his prayer rituals, at the end of which he presented me with a gift copy of his personal prayer book, a book which I treasure to this day.

Personal contacts kept coming. When I served The Lutheran Schools of Metropolitan New York there was almost always a law suit or a threat of one for one our 51 schools. I always knew exactly whom to contact, namely, probably the best school law attorney in the state, Howard Capell. He always had time. And for me and many of my colleagues, a great deal of it was pro bono. “I care about your mission and your service to those urban kids” was all the explanation he chose to give. He is still one of my closest personal friends.

In all my dealings with the state or federal education offices I found personal and professional support from the Orthodox and the Reformed and from Agudath Israel.

Then it got even closer. One of our sons married a Jewish woman whom we love dearly. Next month a granddaughter will marry her Jerusalem born fiancé in a ritual presided over by her Christian pastor and his Jewish rabbi.

It is not just the Chinese who have taught me “Within the four sea all are brothers and sisters.”