Eddy Laughter - Quakish

 

 

I grew up going to a Quaker school, and I was one of the only three actually Quaker kids there. My dad was Quaker, so is Quaker still. I thought that made me an expert, whenever it came up in class, I was like, inner light, “I know all about that. I just gotcha.” I was in fourth grade, by the way. I was going to Quaker meeting for worship every Sunday, because my dad wanted me to. But I would just sit downstairs and doodle while our parents were in worship. That was just what would happen on Sundays. 

 

My mom is Jewish. My connection to that side of my family is even foggier and more distant. I would just visit my family for the holidays, and get really confused about how I knew everybody and then I would come back and then go to school the next day. Weirdly, a lot of kids at my Quaker meeting were also this combination of Quaker and Jewish, and we like to call ourselves Quakish. [audience laughter] That was the extent of our analysis of that. [audience laughter] 

 

If I'm being totally honest, all I wanted to do when I was little was pretend to be a dragon with my friends. So, religion is not pretending to be a dragon, so it was thus not high on my list of priorities then. But as I got older, it eventually was no longer cool to pretend to be a dragon and it wasn't cool to really talk about religion either. I got into middle school and everything got more awkward and I got less friends. I got really distant from religion. I stopped going to Quaker meeting on Sunday, because no one was really making me-- And so, I talked about it less. My Quakers and facts weren't fun or cool things to tell people. [audience laughter] 

 

But I could never really get out of going to the Jewish holidays. They happened so infrequently that I had to be there and I didn't see my cousins very often. So, it was important that I went. But I got that it was important for my mom. I didn't get how it was important to me. I never really saw myself there. It felt weird and complicated, and I just felt so awkward all the time that I didn't understand what it had to do with me specifically. 

 

In seventh grade, my school took a field trip to a Holocaust exhibit in a Jewish cultural center in Manhattan. I had learned about the Holocaust. We were learning about it in history class and we were learning about World War II in Germany in the 30s and 40s. It was something that happened in the past, so this was a field trip. It was just a time to not be in class. So, we were in seventh grade, and we enter the museum in a sort of rambunctious fashion, because it's seventh grade and that's just what happens. And the museum goes in chronological order through timelines. So, we're in the beginning part. 

 

Me and my two friends are just walking around, making fun of propaganda. And then, the museum takes a hold on us, as it is designed to do and my friends go elsewhere, and I am by myself. And the floor of the museum is carpeted, so it eats away at footsteps, so you can't really hear anyone else around you. I'm by myself, and I'm walking, and I turn to my left and I see this long hallway. At the end of the hallway is this wall that looks like it's made out of a bunch of small tiles. I get closer and realize that they're not tiles, but they're actually very, very small portraits of photographs of people who entered and died in Auschwitz. 

 

There are so many of them, they go all the way down this hallway, they turn the corner, and there are these pillars in the museum, just architecturally, and they wrap around. I'm overcome with this wave of this urge to make eye contact with each and every one of the pictures. I feel like I need to give them the space that I owe them, and take my time and try to give all of my attention to them. I physically cannot do that but I'm trying my hardest in this sort of frantic fashion of making eye contact with everyone. And the pictures start to feel different, all of a sudden, they feel like a mirror and I see parts of my own face there. I see my nose and my eyes, something about my bone structure in my hair. It's overwhelming and it's terrifying. 

 

My mom would talk about feeling like she looked really Jewish in certain places when there weren't a lot of other Jewish people around. I never knew what that meant, and then all of a sudden, it makes sense. It clicks in a crushing way. I was someone who was very familiar with the concept of loneliness. I felt really isolated at school and middle school. And I was really-- 

 

When I would walk down a hallway, it felt like I was lonely to the point where it felt corrosive in my body. But this loneliness that I feel in this museum is not like anything I had experienced before. It's like, the museum had singled out me and, like, left me somewhere stranded and I was, like, almost in free fall. It was so much that when I eventually left the exhibit, all I wanted to do was find someone to talk about this with. And so, I'm going up to people in my class and trying to relay the information that this museum is apparently about me, specifically. 

 

My classmates don't really seem to get how shocking this feels. I feel like I'm crushed and everyone just takes it like “Mm. Yeah, Eddy.” This is the reaction I get from my non-Jewish classmates and also from my Jewish classmates, someone just gives me a yikes face, which doesn't help at all. We eventually leave the museum and find our way to a playground, because that's where field trips always lead. People are running around and playing tag. I can't get myself to do that. I'm sitting on this bench, and this feeling that I've found in the museum is like sticky. It feels like I can't leave the museum. 

 

I'm sitting there with my friend talking to me about TV shows that I don't want to talk about, watching everybody else play tag. I feel so angry that they're able to play tag and I can't, because that was all I would have wanted to do in a normal school day. But I'm sitting there, and with this feeling that I found this whole new piece of who I am in that museum and I have to hold onto it and somehow fit it into my perception of who I thought I was, which is so hard. It was like my someone-- It was like suddenly my whole face meant something different than what I thought it did. Like, how do you deal with that when you're 13 and all you do is think about the way your face looks in comparison to other people? 

 

I've just sat with that piece for a really long time. I felt it grow into myself, or maybe I've grown into it and I found other people to talk to this about. And with my half Jewish friends, we talk about how we exist in this limbo space of maybe we're not necessarily practicing, but is still very much in our lives. Everybody who I talk to has their own definition of what it means to them. Somewhere along this journey, I realized that I really like going to all the family gatherings. I get upset when I miss them. I was sick for Rosh Hashanah one year, and I was just like, “How am I going to have a sweet new year?” [audience laughter] I was distraught. But there's a lot of comfort and connection in those gatherings. 

 

Sometimes it feels like Judaism is a part of my body in that very physical way that I got in that museum. And at the same time, I have recently after taking a very long break from it, I've recently become a member of my Quaker meeting. I'm finding that Quakerism is its own piece that's separate from Judaism in my life. But they can both be there together and they can both exist and they don't negate each other, they're just both there. I don't just have that afternoon in a playground to figure it out. I can sit with them for however long I need and I can ponder my spirituality, what being Quakish means, and the fact that I have a heritage. Thank you.