by Zev Chafets
“How did you feel about it? I mean, a nice Jewish boy killing someone?” I asked.
“Look, he was a criminal and I was doing my job. All the incidents I was involved in were the same way. It’s what I get paid to do, apprehend perpetrators. I never felt bad about it. An I’ll tell you something, I think I gave Jewish cops a better name after those incidents. I really do.”
There aren’t many Jewish policemen in Detroit—Marty knew of only seven or eight—a fact to which he attributed his lowly patrolman’s rank. “The reason I don’t get promoted is that there isn’t any affirmative action for Jews. The blacks and the other minorities have it, and the other white guys help each other up. But there’s no one to help the Jewish cops.”
“How about the Jewish community?” I asked, and he snorted.
“The Jewish community are about the last ones who care about us. When I was walking a beat downtown I kept the streets clean. I did a lot of ass kicking down there. The merchants appreciated it, and a lot of them were Jewish. When the department transferred me they even got up a petition. But in the Jewish community at large, they couldn’t have cared less. You’d think they’d want to help a Jewish cop, but Jews in Detroit aren’t supposed to be cops. We don’t exist. That’s just the way it is.”
Marty Gaynor is married to a Methodist woman from a small town in Ohio. “Before I got married I dated a few Jewish girls, but none of them were really looking to marry a cop. They were intrigued for a date or two, but they were looking for a lawyer or a doctor.” As a city employee Gaynor is required to live in Detroit, where there is no Jewish neighborhood; but even if it were permitted, he couldn’t afford to buy a home in a Jewish suburb on a cop’s pay.
When he was stationed downtown, Marty used to drop in on Rabbi Gamze from time to time, sometimes serving as an unpaid guest worshiper. Once, on Rosh Hashanah, he was assigned to guard the Downtown Synagogue and he wore a yarmulke under his helmet as a sign of Jewish solidarity. But since his transfer he no longer goes to a synagogue. He doesn’t feel comfortable or welcome among the federated Jews of the suburbs, and he has a cop’s unease around civilians in social situations.
Occasionally Gaynor fantasizes about changing his life. “Sometimes I want to do what nice Jewish boys are supposed to do, quit and make some money. Get a place out in Southfield or West Bloomfield, join a temple, the whole shot. But then I go out with the guys on a picnic, or hit some bars downtown for a drink or two, and I think, what the hell, I’d miss the life too much, miss the job. And so I stay.”
It was getting late. I closed my notebook and we walked together out to the parking lot. When I got to my car, Marty put a restraining hand on my arm. “Listen, I want you to know that it’s a thrill for me to be in a book about Jews. Really. That time I told you about, when I was on guard duty in front of the shul—that meant a lot to me. Know what I mean?”
I did know. Marty Gaynor, who wants to be known as Goldfine, lives in a self-imposed exile from the Jewish community, but not from his own Jewish heart. He was born with a cop’s temperament, too restless and perhaps too violent for the middle-class world. But for one memorable day in his life, dressed in police blues, with a yarmulke under his crash helmet, he had been the defender of his people.
The day after I met with Dovid and Marty Gaynor, I flew to Columbus, Ohio, to see my favorite Jewish Buddhist, Harvey Wasserman. Back in the 1960s, Harvey was one of America’s most prominent radical intellectuals and activists. Today, at forty, he is still fighting the establishment, but his life has taken some surprising twists. For one thing, he is now the president of the Wasserman Uniform & Shoe Company. For another, he has discovered that he has Jewish karma.
On the verge of middle age, Harvey Wasserman has retained the Peter Pan boyishness of his undergraduate days, when he was a campus rebel at the University of Michigan. He still has long hair combed over his collar, still wears granny glasses perched on his Doonesbury nose, still comes to the office in jeans and running shoes. His biography reads like a short history of the New Left. Back in the sixties, he was an early member of SDS. Later he helped found the Liberation News Service, became a Buddhist in India, stormed the Pentagon, and was one of the leaders of the Clamshell Antinuclear Alliance. Somewhere along the way he found time to write eight books, including Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States, which was published when he was in his early twenties.
In 1969 Harvey became a founder of Montague Farm, a rural commune in Massachusetts. He lived there long after the others left, stubbornly clinging to his radical life-style like one of the Japanese soldiers said to be roaming the jungles of Southeast Asia unaware that World War II has ended. But by 1983, even Harvey had to admit that the sixties were over, and he left the commune. Uncertain about what to do next, he came home to Columbus for a visit. And, ensconced in his boyhood bedroom, he began to see his hometown—and his family—in a new way.
“I realized that my folks were getting old, that the business was starting to be too much for them,” he said. “I started to get some good old Jewish son–type guilt. It was really kind of weird.”
Harvey’s father, Sig Wasserman, saw an opportunity. A warm man with a formidable potbelly and a Dorchester honk, he is the kind of father girlfriends think is adorable. He is also one of Harvey’s greatest admirers—he expects him to be President of the United States someday—and he could never understand why his son was living on a farm. Now, with Harvey back home, Sig made his move—he asked him to come into the office once or twice a week to help out.
Harvey, who has the aging hippie’s fascination with business and efficiency, dropped by the Wasserman Uniform & Shoe Company. He saw a medium-sized firm that needed some modern management, and he decided to stay for a few months and whip things into shape. Four years later, he was still there.
Gentle irony is Harvey’s style, and he was aware of the incongruity of his current occupation. Some of his best customers are police departments and sheriff’s offices; he has become a supplier to the enemy.
“When I decided to stay, I got in touch with Abbie Hoffman,” Harvey told me with a wry grin. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m out here selling police equipment and it feels kinda weird, you know?’ But Abbie just said, ‘That’s cool, I like cops these days.’ It made me feel a little better, but sometimes it’s still a weird thing. And I’ve got my limits. We carry police holsters, and I gave in to my father on Mace, but I won’t sell billy clubs.”
A lot of former radicals have gone Wall Street, but Harvey Wasserman is different. He hasn’t sold out as much as branched out. As we were leaving his office for a tour of the city, I noticed a wall map behind his desk—blue pins marking Wasserman Uniform & Shoe sales outlets, green pins the nuclear power plants he is fighting.
Harvey Wasserman’s tour of Columbus reflected his ambivalence toward the city—half radical iconoclasm, half merchant pride in a booming hometown. “Columbus is the third largest data processing center in the world, after Washington, D.C., and Moscow,” he told me. (Americans always quantify civic achievement; a few weeks later in Shreveport, Louisiana, a man boasted to me that his city has America’s largest VFW post.) Harvey’s pride aroused my long-dormant Michigan patriotism. “Well, Detroit’s number one in the country in homicides again. They’ve even got a murder meter on the Lodge Freeway now,” I said. “No shit?” said Harvey, impressed. “Go Blue!” he exclaimed, and we both laughed at the University of Michigan cheer.
As we cruised around, Harvey pointed out the local landmarks. They included a street where a lawyer driving a new Mercedes had recently fallen twenty feet through a hole in the pavement; the state capital building (“The only one in America without a dome”); a statue of former governor James Rhodes (“The Butcher of Kent State,” Harvey reminded me); and a gray fortresslike building where Harvey beat his draft physical.
Surprisingly, the tour ended at the Columbus Jewish Community Center. “I love this place,” he told me. “I spend at least two hours a day here. It�
��s fantastic.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve become a Jew in your old age,” I said, and Harvey laughed. “This place is my kind of Judaism. Wait’ll you see it.”
For the next half hour Harvey showed me around the health club of the Jewish Center. We visited the swimming pool where he does laps, the handball and basketball courts, the weight room and exercise lounge, the sauna and whirlpool. This is Harvey Wasserman’s synagogue, and not just his. Jews in Columbus—and throughout the country—are obsessed with their bodies. The old image of the pasty-faced, round-shouldered scholar is being replaced by a new breed of lean-bodied Jewish businessmen, lawyers, and doctors. Health is the new halacha in America; cigarettes have replaced pork as the forbidden substance of choice.
In the hall outside the health club Harvey paused in front of some photographs—the Columbus Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. It is not exactly Cooperstown—most of its members were high school sports stars or played on the varsities of small colleges. Harvey himself was what he calls a “Jewish Jock,” meaning that he lettered in tennis in high school. This form of self-mockery is still common among American Jewish men—in Detroit someone described himself as a “Jewish six feet,” which, he explained, meant five foot ten. Self-image has yet to catch up to reality.
Despite their fitness craze, American Jews have produced few sports stars in recent years. In the old days there were great Jewish boxers, football players, major league baseball players, and hoopsters. Harvey and I grew up on Sandy Koufax, the last of the macho American Jewish sports heroes. Kids today have been reduced to Rod Carew (his wife is Jewish), Jim Palmer (he’s not, but his stepfather is), boxer Hank Rossman (only half; he has an Italian mother), and a few swimmers and tennis players.
“I hear the Browns’ quarterback, Bernie Kosar, might be Jewish,” Harvey said, staring balefully at the Hall of Famers.
“What makes you think so?”
“The name. It could be a Jewish name,” he said.
“Kosar? I’ve never heard that one before.”
“No,” he said, a bit sheepishly, “Bernie.”
“What the hell do you care if Bernie Kosar is a Jew? You’re supposed to be a Buddhist.”
Harvey shrugged. “What can I tell you? I’ve got Jewish sports karma.”
“Jewish sports karma?”
“Don’t laugh,” said Harvey. “You can’t escape your karma. My parents are very tribal people. But for me, being a Jew was never all that important. I guess that’s changing a little now. I mean, let’s face it, Hitler drew the bottom line. If you think you can get out of it, you can’t. And I’ll admit something that’s a little weird—I feel more comfortable around Jews. I know that’s strange, considering the life I’ve led, but it’s the truth. I feel more comfortable. I was amazed to discover that I wanted to have children with a Jewish woman. It’s completely inconsistent, but that’s how I feel. You can fight your parental karma for so long, but you’ll never escape it.”
Since Harvey was single, I assumed he was speaking hypothetically. But I was wrong. “Listen, I want you to come with me tonight to meet someone. It’ll be a surprise. She’s a woman I’ve been seeing named Susan. That’s all I want to say about it right now. But you’re gonna be blown away.”
That night we drove a few blocks through suburban Columbus to Susan’s house. Harvey, who is usually annoyingly calm, was nervous, and I was affected by his jitters. “What’s the secrecy all about?” I asked, thinking that perhaps we were about to attend some bizarre witchcraft ritual. Harvey was noncommittal. “You’ll see when we get there,” he said, twisting the steering wheel of the Wasserman Uniformobile in his hands.
Susan met us at the door. She was a strikingly beautiful woman with large dark eyes, high cheekbones, a sensuous face—and a very large stomach. Harvey patted her belly with paternal affection. “Actually it’s twins,” he said, beaming.
The three of us sat in the kitchen. Susan fixed pasta, and Harvey, who had brought his own health food, made a salad. “Are you a vegetarian too?” I asked her, and she made a face.
“Susan’s kosher,” Harvey said, shaking his head. “Not only that, she has a nine-year-old daughter from her first marriage who goes to an Orthodox school. How’s that for being Jewish?”
“I’m not really Orthodox,” Susan protested. She is a lawyer, and she has a scrupulous regard for fact. “I do keep kosher though, and I try to observe Shabbes. It’s the way I was raised.”
Susan was born and grew up in Cleveland, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. While Harvey was playing tennis and chasing girls at B’nai B’rith conventions in high school, she lived in the dark, melancholy world of the survivors’ community; when he was storming the Pentagon, she was at Case Western Reserve University, studying law and plotting her escape.
“You ought to interview Susan for your book,” Harvey said. He turned to Susan. “Ze’ev’s writing a book on American Jews.” “In that case, I can’t help you,” she said. “I’m not an American Jew.”
“What are you, then?” I asked.
“The daughter of survivors. That’s something completely different. My parents were ‘greeners’—you know, greenhorns. They lived with other greeners. We had nothing to do with American Jews,” she said.
To Susan, American Jews are, first and foremost, Americans—products of an optimistic, prosperous, and tolerant society. As a girl she felt uncomfortable around them; her family was poor, pessimistic, and wracked with pain from the Holocaust.
“When I was in high school I did great with the Catholic boys,” she said. “I liked them better than the immigrant Jewish kids I knew. You know how queer guys like that are.” I recalled what a sociologist once told me—in America, Orthodox Jews marry Catholics, Reform Jews marry Protestants.
Susan wasn’t about to marry any kind of gentile (“My father would have committed suicide”); instead she married, and later divorced, a Jewish doctor from a working-class family. Now she was with Harvey, who considers himself a Buddhist and whom she considers an American Jew.
At nine o’clock we turned on the TV to catch a talk by the Lubavitcher rebbe, which was being broadcast live by satellite from Brooklyn. The rebbe sat on a platform surrounded by black-garbed disciples. He spoke in Yiddish with an English translation that Harvey and I needed but Susan didn’t. Harvey was visibly taken with the white-bearded Chasidic mystic, and from time to time he murmured an approving “Far out.”
After the broadcast, Harvey peppered us with questions about the Chasidim, which Susan answered with an indulgent fondness. He may have written eight books about America, but he knew very little about the modern history of the Jews. “Sometimes when I watch something like that I feel like a real goy,” he admitted cheerfully.
“If you were a goy, you wouldn’t be here,” said Susan. She turned to me. “You’re an Israeli, so I suppose you’ll understand this. I wanted another child but I didn’t necessarily want to get married again. Neither did Harvey. We haven’t decided what to do about that. But I had one absolute condition. The father had to be a Jew. Harvey’s great, I love him. But even more important, I could trace his family all the way back to his great-grandparents, and all of them were Jews.”
“Why is that so important?” I asked.
Susan’s dark eyes flashed, and the softness left her face. “I could never have a child with a gentile, or even someone with gentile blood. You see, somewhere in his genetic history there could be someone who put my family into the gas chamber.”
Susan and Harvey were still on my mind when I flew back to Detroit the next day, picked up a car at Metro Airport, and headed east for Grosse Pointe, a WASP suburb with a national reputation for bigotry. I had never been there before; when I was growing up, Grosse Pointe was a kind of forbidden city, enemy territory. In those days, Jews weren’t allowed to live in. Today it is still beyond the pale of settlement, and the tiny handful of Jews who live there are making a statement. I was on my way to see one of them, a young lawyer named Jod
y Kommel, who lives in Grosse Pointe with her Catholic husband and their small son, Scott.
It was Jody’s mother, Eve Kommel, who set up the meeting. Eve is a handsome, athletic woman in her fifties who came to America as a refugee from Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. She has achieved minor celebrity in Detroit as the commodore of the Great Lakes Yacht Club, probably the only Jewish yacht club in America. It was founded in the 1950s, when Jews weren’t welcome in the city’s mainline yachting associations. Now the club faces an unanticipated problem—it has been so successful it is now flooded with Christian applicants.
This situation has split Great Lakes into two factions—those who favor a quota to retain the Jewish nature of the club, and those who oppose it as a form of reverse bigotry. Commodore Kommel favors open membership, and in the course of explaining why, she mentioned, without evident disapproval or dismay, that all three of her children were married to non-Jews and that one, Jody, lived in Grosse Pointe. “Why don’t you go out and talk to her about what it’s like?” she had suggested, and I readily agreed.
I arrived at Jody’s prepared to dislike her. Especially after Susan, the idea of a woman with a refugee mother living out in WASPland and trying to pass offended my Jewish nationalism. My first impression of Jody Kommel did nothing to change my attitude. She was tall, athletic, and blue-eyed, with long red hair and freckles. She greeted me in the direct, friendly manner of the captain of the girls’ field hockey team and steered me to a seat in her tastefully tweedy living room.
As she sat down across from me I was amazed to see she had a large Star of David dangling from her neck on a gold chain. She caught me staring, fingered the charm, and smiled.
“When we first moved out here, I was afraid that people wouldn’t know I was Jewish, and they’d make anti-Semitic remarks,” she said. “I wanted to preempt that, let them know who I was—I guess warn them, in a way. My husband was very much against it. His attitude was, it’s better to know if someone’s a bigot, then we can avoid them. But I don’t think that’s fair. So I wear it.”