A Heavy Moment at Dunkin Donuts

It’s not often that national news affects us personally… if we’re lucky.  Usually we hear of the good, the bad, and even the unthinkable, and if it’s particularly interesting, we may even take a moment to ponder it.  But then we change the station, turn off the radio, and go back to our day.  Of course, there are those moments, those perspective-shattering experiences that alter our fundamental perceptions of the world and our fellow humans and leave us reeling for weeks, months, even years.  For the more fortunate among us, those are few and far between, destined to become only a memory, an “I remember exactly what I was doing when I learned that (insert tragedy here)”.

Generally speaking, though, there’s not much in between.  Perhaps that’s why I find it so disconcerting when I do feel rattled by something that happened in the news.  Maybe that’s why I was taken aback when I found myself in tears as I listened to the details of the shooting at the Holocaust Museum yesterday.  It was certainly not the first hate-based, anti-Semitic crime that has happened recently, and from what I’ve heard and read, the guards did a great job at managing the situation as best as possible.  People die or are killed every day, and I hear the news, but the baby is fussing or I’m reading something or cleaning something, and I don’t think twice about it.  Yet somehow the news of the death of the security guard, Stephen Johns, really upset me.  Did he choose to work at the Holocaust Museum for a reason?  Did he and his family realize what a gift he was giving to so many, Jews and non-Jews alike, by donning that uniform and putting himself in harm’s way each day so that the memory of so many men, women, and children can be honored?  Or was it just another day at work to him?  Probably both, but hopefully a bit of the former.

Anyway, I wiped the tears off my cheeks, and went into Dunkin’ Donuts for a morning coffee.  The TV in the corner was playing CNN, which was also broadcasting the story of the shooting.  A Jewish woman and her son were in front of me – he was wearing a kippah, and she ordered a coffee.  I thought about them, and the decision he made, the family made, so many Jews make, to out themselves as Jews every day.  I thought about my daughter, and our family, and I wondered what the world will be like when she is an adult, when she has choices to make about her community, her employment, her partner, and her family.  I felt a little scared for her, and then I felt mad for feeling that way.

In addition to the coffee, I ordered a breakfast sandwich – an egg and cheese on an English muffin.  As I went to the end of the counter to pick it up, I saw the employee who was making my breakfast take some bacon off the sandwich and throw it in the garbage.

Before I continue you with this story, you need a little background.  Josh and I keep kosher… sort of.  Our kind of kosher wouldn’t count for anyone who really cares, but it works for us.  We don’t eat pork or shellfish or any of the other big no-no’s, and we don’t mix milk and meat in the same dish or on the same plate at the same time.  We don’t have two sets of dishes, though, and we will, however, have a dairy and a meat item in the same meal, but we finish eating one before we eat the other.  Finally, if we are in someone’s home, and they have prepared a dish that is decidedly unkosher, even according to our standards, we will politely decline if at all possible, but we work incredibly hard not to make a big deal out of it, or hurt anyone’s feelings.  Josh and I decided a long time ago that we weren’t going to be religious about this (ha!), and that our relationships are more important than keeping kosher.  Having said that, we are incredibly lucky to have family and friends who are respectful of our quirky dietary preferences, so it’s usually not a problem.

Anyway, back to Dunkin Donuts.  So there I am, watching bacon being stripped off my sandwich.  Now, had I been at a friend’s house, I wouldn’t have thought twice about eating it.  Like I said, we try not to get religious about it.  But somehow, there in that moment, with the boy in the kippah standing in front of me, and the reporters on CNN talking about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t eat that sandwich that had had bacon on it.  I had to ask her to make me a new sandwich.  She was visibly annoyed, and I was flinching internally, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I guess in that moment I just needed to, well, be a Jew.  I know, I’m always a Jew, but one of the challenges of being a moderately-observant progressive Jew is that I often feel caught between my American culture and my Jewish culture.  And, like so many other members of minority cultures, I responded to a threat (perceived or real, theoretical or concrete) by turning inward, by putting a bit more space between myself and the woman standing across the counter from me, by focusing on my Jewish identity, a part of me that wouldn’t normally come up at Dunkin Donuts.  Or maybe it was a micro-protest, a small, almost insignificant way of standing up for myself and for other Jews, in the face of the violence and hatred that had occurred twenty-four hours ago and five states away.  Whatever it was, I sure as hell wasn’t going to eat that bacon-tainted sandwich, and I’m ok with that.