By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — As a boy, I loved hearing the story about the early childhood of my father, Martin B. Harrison, who was born on the 4th of July, 1910. To paraphrase the great Irish-American lyricist George M. Cohan, dad was a “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Until dad reached the age of 5, his parents — M. Joseph and Florence Harrison — had him persuaded that the nation held all those parades and shot off all those fireworks in celebration of his birthday. When he got to kindergarten, however, he learned the truth. The celebration was for the birth of the American nation, and not specifically for little Marty.
And yet, there was an underlying truth to the idea that the fireworks and parades were indeed for little Marty Harrison and all the other boys and girls who were lucky enough to be born on American soil and to thereby become the automatic inheritors of a wonderful set of national ideals which, though not always lived up to, fired the imagination and conscience of the world.
According to 18th Century American ideals, though not its practice–witness Black slavery, genocidal discrimination against Native Americans, and later anti-immigration policies– all men were created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This ideal rang like a clarion bell through the rest of the world, where kings were thought to rule their subjects by “divine right;” where people were divided from birth into separate castes; and where economic systems made some people masters and other people serfs.
In the 19th Century, our nation moved toward realizing some of those ideals. During the course of a bloody Civil War, slavery was abolished. Under the administration of President U.S. Grant, Native Americans who had been chased from their lands were granted semi-autonomy on reservations. In the 20th century, women as well as men were authorized to vote in elections, but, on the other hand, the once welcoming ports of this nation — which like New York welcomed the tired, the hungry, and the poor — began to be shut down to most immigrants. Quotas replaced the storied lamp that was lifted by the golden door.
Today, some people prefer to focus on America’s failings, particularly toward their own religious, racial, or ethnic groups. And, sure, there were times when the United States swerved away from its ideals vis. a vis. our Jewish community. It turned away the refugees aboard the St. Louis, who were seeking to escape Hitler and European Nazism. In declined to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, arguing fatuously that saving lives of hapless Jews somehow would detract from America’s overall goal to defeat the Nazis.
However, these and other missteps borne out of ignorance or antisemitism or some combination of both diminish but do not negate the greatness of American ideals nor the overall beneficial experience that Jews have had in America. Here, since colonial times, our fellow Jews have been permitted to work in the professions they chose, to seek and win public office, to worship in our own styles, and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
The Founding Fathers wrote into the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that Congress should enact no law regarding the establishment of a religion, notwithstanding that the American population was overwhelmingly Christian. Our first President, George Washington, pledged to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that America should be a nation that accorded “to bigotry no sanction.” Other U.S. Presidents helped our Jewish people to experience a number of important firsts: Theodore Roosevelt appointed Oscar S. Straus as Secretary of Commerce; Woodrow Wilson appointed Louis Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court; Richard Nixon named Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State.
Our fellow American citizens also recognized and elected Jews to high public office, and continue to do so today. Today, nine members of the 100-member U.S. Senate are Jews — one of whom is the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, and another of whom–Dianne Feinstein–represents our own state of California. In the 435-member House of Representatives, meanwhile, 22 members are Jews, including one representing a portion of the City of San Diego, Sara Jacobs. While all the Jews in the Senate and 20 in the House of Representatives are Democrats, two House members are Republicans, Lee Zeldin of New York (who now is considered a leading candidate for the governorship of that state) and David Kustoff of Tennessee.
The political arena is just one sphere in which members of the Jewish community have enjoyed the support of our fellow Americans. Jews in science and technology have won the accolades of their fellow citizens, as for example in San Diego, where Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi co-founded Qualcomm; where polio vaccine discover Jonas Salk established an Institute for Biological Studies, and where Walter Monk, known as the “Einstein of the Ocean” did his pioneering work at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography.
Sports fans over the years have heaped great acclaim on Jewish athletes, among them baseball players Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, swimmers Mark Spitz and Lenny Krayzelburg; skater Sarah Hughes; boxers Barney Ross and Max Baer; and gymnast Aly Raisman.
I cite the aforementioned names not to brag, but rather to thank members of the American public, who, living up to the country’s ideals, allow people to flourish based on their merit. They do not crush people’s aspirations based on their social standing nor their political affiliations.
When those fireworks go off tonight; I will think of my grandparents M. Joseph and Florence, father Marty and mother Alice; my wife Nancy; my daughter Sandi and son David, and my grandchildren Shor, Sky, Brian and Sara. I know that the fireworks are for all five of those generations, as well as for their predecessors and future successors as indeed, they are for me. As the great Jewish composer and lyricist, Irving Berlin, wrote during World War I with appropriate fervor: “God Bless America!”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com