When I was 12 Years old, back in 1936, my family moved from a small acreage on the western edge of Sioux City, Iowa to an in-town residence on the north side.  Our old acreage had a large barn filled with animals, all of whom I missed.  But the new house sat at the side of a vacant lot smaller than a regular football field but large enough to accommodate us in any game we wished to play.  Of my three older brothers, one was still in high school and he and his friends often met in the field to play football.  We considered touch football effeminate and played only tackle, despite the fact that the ground uncultivated for years was rock hard.  Since I lived there, and was hard to get rid of, they allowed me to play with them.

One afternoon, a group of teenagers ambled by and seeing us play asked if they could join us.  In the Midwest in those days such a request had only one answer and in very little time we lined up, us against the newcomers.  Since I was the youngest, the smallest, and needless to say the least skilled, I always played the position no one else wanted, in this case, linesman.   As hosts, we gave the ball to our opponents and allowed them to start.   They began with a run directed against what they presumed to be our weakest side, meaning directly at me.  The charge was led by the fullback as blocker, followed closely by the ball carrier. Since I realized the blocker could easily push me aside once he got up to me I fell to the ground and let him pass.  When the ball carrier arrived I rolled over and grabbed his legs causing him to fall to the ground with a very loud bang and knocking all the air out of his lungs. (Today this tackle is considered illegal.) Both teams clustered around him watching him trying to breathe. Finally he was able to draw a breath and his first words were “dirty Jew.”  My brother grabbed me, pinning my arms to my side, while our opponents helped the ball carrier to his feet.                                                                                                                            “Why did you just grab me?” I asked my brother.                                                                                                                          “I was afraid you would kick him, and we’d have a gang war on our hands.”                                                “At Smith school (the elementary school I had gone to on the west side) we didn’t kick people when they were down.”  A somewhat pompous statement but quite true.  We ten and eleven year olds had a lot of fights; we never called them boxing matches because none of us knew how to box but we had a strict code of ethics on how to fight.  One on one only, no kicking, spitting, scratching, biting, or low blows, and since we were all rather small and light weight we could not cause serious damage.  A bloody nose was easily repairable and we did not consider it serious. 

This code of conduct acted as a shield to injury and made fighting no more perilous than playing football.  I was not particularly aggressive but never refused a fight (We were all eleven or twelve year old moral giants in those days).  My dear aunt who raised me tried to keep me in the confines of Jewish Orthodox behavior, but she did not lecture me.  She told me to try to avoid conflict, never that I must.   She patched up my bloody noses just as she patched up the scrapes and scratches on my knees and elbows from bicycle accidents.  To her they were often indistinguishable but her response was always the same:  be more careful.   She was supportive, which is all I wanted.  

After much discussion and repeated assurances from the ball carrier that he was okay we resumed the game.  They tried another run, to my disappointment to the other side, but did not get very far.  They then tried a forward pass which fell incomplete, after which by mutual consent the game ended and we all went home.

My brother and I did not talk about what had happened.  Other events, such as home work and attendance at Hebrew School intervened.  For my part I felt rather snug about what had happened.  I had knocked the air out of a bigot’s lungs and reduced him to an inchoate state where all he could do was mutter meaningless insults while lying on his back.  I would have been happy to brag about it to the family but I refrained.   With three older brothers overly generous with advice on how to live my life I had developed a strong sense of privacy and wished to avoid a series of lectures not particularly new but all repetitive and exasperating. 

This was the first time in my twelve year old life that I had been called a dirty Jew.  It didn’t particularly bother me. I knew I was Jewish, I had a Jewish name, I looked Jewish, all my relatives were Jewish.   The ball carrier called me that because he didn’t know what else to say or do.  If he tried to get up and hit me I might hit him back, and it was by far the easiest thing to say when lying on one’s back surrounded by teammates. I thought I had handled the situation correctly and was happy.

In the 1930s, the years of the great depression, anti-Semitism and racial slurring were far more pervasive than today.   Spics, dagoes, honkies, krauts, and kikes were terms widely used.  At universities Jews were not invited to join fraternities and country clubs were very selective.  As for me, in those days I could not care less.  I had no desire ever to join a fraternity nor play golf at a starchy, sissified golf club.  As everyone knew football was the essence of life and I was happy doing what I was doing.  In later years I bought a small house in Chevy Chase, Maryland whose original deed said the property could not be transferred to Jews, Greeks, Persians, or other Semites.  My original reaction was to sneer at the ignorance of the drafter, who did not know the meaning of Semite, believing it is better to sneer at a bigot than to reason with him, for a sneer he can grasp. Reason is beyond him.  I also finally realized that the formal, nonviolent anti-Semitism of the pre-WWII years could be injurious, depending upon circumstance, but circumstance has always been good to me.  Was I just lucky?

In my 90 years of good life I have known both success and failure, and I can say with conviction that my failures are all attributable to combinations of my poor judgment, sloth, and arrogance.   There may have been anti-Semites around who were delighted to see me fail, but their actions had nothing to do with the results.  There were never any conspirators.  If I won, it was because I was well prepared.  If I lost, it was because I was ill prepared.

Anti-Semitism, many people tell us, is rising in the universities because of the Arab - Israeli conflict.  The Middle East institutes, blocs, and chairs, often funded by Arab  oil countries,  contribute  to it and the paranoia is spreading.  On the other hand, our ever busy pollsters tell us that the American public overwhelmingly supported Israel in their latest conflict in Gaza.  One can of course be anti-Semitic and support Israel against their fellow Semites, the Palestinians; the obverse is also true.  All of which reminds me of what my father often said when presented with dire news:  Really? And are there snakes in Africa?  

Sol Schindler is a retired Foreign Service Officer