Michelle Ephraim - To Thine Own Self Be True

 

Hi, everyone. So, I had not had contact with Andy Diamond or his family for over 25 years, which was fine, because he broke up with me and broke my heart, and I never wanted to see those people again. I did, however, see his mother very recently.

So, this was the boyfriend of my college years, someone I was madly in love with. I thought I was going to marry him. 25 years, no contact, and suddenly, out of the blue, I see his mother. This happened very, very recently. 

 

I saw her, because she was one of the elderly people at a group for elderly people at a temple here in Boston. I was there, because I was the Shakespeare professor, ostensibly to speak about Shakespeare and the Jews to this group of elderly people. [audience chuckle] Imagine my surprise when I saw Judy Diamond. [audience chuckle]

 

She approached me, she said, “Hi, Michelle, it’s me, Judy Diamond.” And I freaked out, but I tried to stay calm. It was very, very difficult. She let me know that Andy was doing extremely well. [audience chuckle] He was married to a French woman whose name was, was Eugenie or something Frenchy French. They had two French children in Paris.

And also, he was a professor at the Sorbonne. [clears throat] 

 

At that moment, I reminded myself, I am the Shakespeare professor. I am here invited to speak to the elderly people at Temple Israel of Boston. [audience chuckle] I am an expert trained to speak about Shakespeare. But quite honestly, I was shaken. I was shaken for a number of reasons. One, because I had a very bad flashback, which was me talking about Shakespeare to Andy Diamond and his family many, many years before, when I thought I was going to get married to Andy Diamond. Here’s the thing. I didn’t grow up in a family that read books. We used books as props. We had bookshelves where we had a few books that were used to prop up tchotchkes that we got on vacation, but pretty much we didn’t read. When I met Andy, he convinced me that reading great literature by dead white men was the key to a better life. I believed him, because they had a house on Cape Cod [audience chuckle] and they were wealthy and they were happy, unlike my own family.

So, I thought, yes. 

 

So, I studied literature, and I did everything that he said very, very well. And here was the memory that I was sitting at dinner with them, and one of the Andy Diamond family members said to me, “Michelle, what do you think of Alan Bates, who is a Shakespearean actor?” But I didn’t know that. What I knew at that time or what I thought I knew, was that he was Norman Bates [audience chuckle] from the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Psycho. [audience laughter] And I said, “Well, I didn’t realize he had done anything since Psycho.” [audience laughter] There was silence at the table and then horrible laughter. I was incredibly embarrassed. 

 

Anyway, this memory came back to me as I was standing in front of the elderly people who’d so desperately wanted to be enriched by Shakespeare. What happened was I went off script. I had a lecture in front of me, and I couldn’t read it. Instead, I started talking about other things, like Shakespeare’s daughters and Jessica and The Merchant of Venice and Hermia in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Desdemona in Othello, all of whom are rebellious and have their own ambition and break rules and do their own thing. And the fact is, most of their lives end really badly. For any of you who have read any of these plays, Desdemona gets strangled. There’s a lot of bad stuff that happens. But I clung onto these daughters. 

 

I couldn’t see Judy Diamond out there, because quite honestly, she looked like everyone else. She had gray hair and she was old. There were walkers and there were a lot of them. There were so many of them out there, I couldn’t see her. But as I was talking and talking, I felt like she was listening to me. I felt like I was being so personal, I said-- When I was talking about Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, I said, “She is a girl who just wanted to be different from her family, and she wanted to grow up. She was a striver. She made a fool of herself, but she wanted to better. She worked and she worked and she did it. She broke away from everything and she made her own path.” 

 

I felt like I was sending a message to Judy Diamond somewhere out there in that sea of gray hair, even though I couldn’t see her. And then, I realized, my God, the only reason why I’m studying Shakespeare is because of goddamn Andy Diamond and his family. [audience chuckle] That’s why I’m standing here right now. That’s why I have a job at a university and tenure and a pretty damn happy life. And my feelings shifted in the middle of that talk. I felt suddenly grateful for Andy Diamond and his family, no longer hostile about them at all. 

 

I wrapped up my talk completely, just saying, “Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone here at the Temple Israel Enrichment Program for Lifelong Learning. Thank you so much.” But it was really a personal message to Judy Diamond, [audience laughter] and I really hope she told her son that I look good, because I was wearing my skinny pants. [audience laughter] And thank God I used the good conditioner that day. And truly, at the end of the day, I just wanted her to tell him that. But when I said thank you, it was very specifically to the Diamond family. Thank you. [chuckles]