Jewish Life Digital Edition February 2013 | Page 16

PURIM 5773

JEWS
DON’T
BOW

LITTLE DID I KNOW THAT THE SOURCE
OF MY CHUTZPAH REACHED BACK
THOUSANDS OF YEARS, TO MORDECHAI

I

F YOU’D MET ME GROWING UP IN EL PASO, TEXAS,
you wouldn’t have been able to tell I
was Jewish. When I was six and my
brother was 10, his gymnastics coach
asked my parents if they would
consider sending my brother to begin
training to be an Olympic gymnast. My
parents were in the middle of a divorce,
and my brother’s future as an Olympic
gymnast got buried under the mess of my
parents’ lives. But I, unaware of this
greater drama, did what all little brothers
did. I followed my brother and joined
gymnastics as well.
One day at gymnastics class, the instructor asked me to bow down for a gymnastics
routine. I refused. “Aaron, is something
wrong?”
I wouldn’t budge.
“Please bow down like all the other boys
and girls.”
Again I remained adamant in silence.
The gym coach had hit upon the only thing
I knew from reform temple that as a Jew I
was not allowed to do.

14 JEWISH LIFE

ISSUE 59

I REMEMBERED
BEING TOLD, AS I SAT
IN MY PURIM
COSTUME EATING MY
FIRST HAMENTASHEN,
THAT MORDECHAI WAS
A JEW AND HE DIDN’T
BOW DOWN TO
HAMAN. JEWS DON’T
BOW DOWN.
Struggling inside, I finally spoke up, “Jews
don’t bow down!”
I’d only started going to the reform
Sunday school a year earlier, but I remembered being told, as I sat in my Purim
costume eating my first hamentashen, that
Mordechai was a Jew and he didn’t bow
down to Haman. Jews don’t bow down.
I wouldn’t budge. Finally, my brother

came over and explained to me that I
wasn’t bowing to anybody, and that it was
okay this time to bow.
At the end of fifth grade, I was one of
the most popular kids in school. My
friends and I listened to the music none of
the other kids had yet heard of, and wore
clothes before anybody had ever seen
them, until one day all my good friends
turned on me. I showed up at school and
none of them would look at me. No one
ever explained why. By the end of sixth
grade, some of these same friends who had
fallen in with very violent people had even
threatened to kill me. Later, I would
understand that G-d was pouring down his
mercy on me and trying to rip me away
from these superficial and troubled people,
teaching me to look deeper into life.

GOING TO CHURCH AT ST ANDREWS
I told my parents that if they didn’t send
me to private school I was going to drop
out for fear of my life. My parents agreed
and sent me to St Andrew’s Episcopalian

PHOTOGRAPHS: BIGSTOCKPHOTO

BY AZRIEL HIRSCH