Being Jewish in Hawaii

Last Spring my husband was away for a week. He often travels for business and I usually take advantage of the opportunity to binge watch shows and movies that he does not prefer. The dog and I retire to the living room after dinner, snuggle into our respective corners and slip into a romantic comedy or a series that is too heartwarming for his sensibilities. 

This time my show of choice was A Small Light, a National Geographic production that tells the story of Miep Gies, Otto Frank’s secretary, who helped the Frank family when they were in hiding. I think my husband would have liked the show, but I did not wait for his return.  I was mesmerized by this beautiful version of a familiar  narrative told in a very new way. I am a big fan of Liev Schrieber who plays the role of Otto Frank. 

This is the only dramatization of Anne Frank’s story I have seen since the play that my classmates and I produced and performed in Miss Jaskowski’s reading class when I was in the fourth grade at Charles G. Emery School in Buena Park, California– Bellehurst neighborhood to be exact. Miss Jaskowski  was a great teacher, even if she often told me to be quiet and not ask so many questions. I must have been a handful.

For reading, she assigned the book Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl and then directed us to transform it into a play. We wrote a script and performed it. I was the narrator. In my best Gloria Gershun Bat Mitzvah speech voice, I stood at the podium and introduced the story that felt personal to me. Julie Cadish played Anne Frank. That’s about all I remember of the cast. I also remember making the set out of huge pieces of cardboard and creating three separate rooms. 

What I distinctly remember is that it was one of the most profoundly impactful educational experiences I have ever had. The diary of Anne Frank spoke to me. Like countless other Jewish girls who read her diary, I absorbed her words and her experiences as if they had happened to me. 

In retrospect, my love for Miss Jaskowski was not just because I felt seen and heard in her class (perhaps a bit more than she preferred), but because she was an amazing teacher using strategies that were highly innovative for her time. 

I was one of a few Jewish kids that attended this elementary school in Northern Orange County in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. However, I was oblivious to any anti-semitism that might have characterized the area in that time. Emery School and the streets of Bellehurst were safe places to learn and play. Some of us were Mormon, many were Protestants, and there were also a few Catholics. We moved in and out of each others’ houses and lives, unaware of differences. Even so…when we read The Diary of Anne Frank, I felt deeply validated as a Jewish person in the diaspora and proud of myself in ways that are hard to explain. Miss Jaskowski gave that gift to me. 

I grew up with Knott’s Berry Farm in my backyard and had no knowledge of the John Birch Society until much later in my life. My parents joined Los Coyotes Country Club when they moved to Bellehurst, before I was born. I had no idea that we were the first Jews ever allowed to become members. Living in a neighborhood marked by remarkable tolerance, I remained blissfully naive about any lingering antisemitism. With a visceral awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust, from my naive and childish perspective, I fervently believed that such atrocities could never happen again, as long as we kept their memory alive. Was Miss Jaskowski aware of it? Did she experience any backlash for this choice? To this day, I have no idea.

By the time my husband returned home at the end of the week, I had finished the series and was filled with emotion. I greeted him at the door with a kiss and the mandate that we have to go to Amsterdam so that I can finally visit the Anne Frank House Museum. He readily agreed. I checked our calendars the next day and purchased the plane tickets a few days later. We have canceled so many trips in the last few years that we made a commitment to ourselves to stop second guessing our plans and forge ahead. Forge ahead we did. 

On September 27, 2023 we landed in London. After a few days there, a few more in Paris, several days in Burgundy visiting an old friend, we boarded a Thalys train for Amsterdam Centraal Station where we spent five glorious days exploring and appreciating the Netherlands. 

On Monday, October 9, at 9:30 AM, we entered the Anne Frank House Museum. I was so afraid that we would miss it that I made sure we left the hotel extra early and had plenty of time to walk and/or get lost and still arrive on time. How sad I would be if we screwed up this part of the trip. 

Our visit to The Anne Frank House Museum took on a stronger significance than anticipated. 

On our first day in Amsterdam, October 7, 2023, we woke up to the devastating news of the Hamas attack in Israel. The combination of horrific reports and vacation plans was unsettling as we visited the museums and canals and markets. In between tours and stroopwafels, I checked my phone more obsessively than usual. I watched for news and connected with Jewish friends around the world. Oddly, I didn’t feel so far from home or outside of my community.  It was comforting to be in a place known for tolerance and peace as brutal conflict and hostility raged around us through phone and CNN, the only English speaking station broadcast on the television in our hotel.

As soon as we started the self guided tour I was verklempt (overcome with emotion). In that moment the past became the present and the present became the past. I had carried her story and my experiences with her story inside of me since I was eight years old. Those thoughts and feelings were activated all at once and welled up inside of me, threatening to spill over as soon as I walked in the door.

The visit to the museum was only an hour, but it felt like a lifetime journey of memories, hers and mine. As I walked through the Secret Annex, the book  and fourth grade play and TV mini series all became concrete. I carefully read each and every quote and identification post throughout the space and my tears and fears softly subsided. 

Somehow, with the dim lighting, in the hush of the other visitors, I held my intent to stay fully present and invited it all inside to join me. I managed a state of reverence in this place of her story, The Anne Frank House, that transformed me in Miss Jaskowski’s fourth grade class and once again, now, decades later.