I'm a Jewish Therapist. Here's What Happened When a Patient Used an Anti-Semitic Slur.
Forty minutes into my initial consultation with a frail 42-year-old woman wanting psychotherapy to help her cope with being assaulted five months earlier, she looked up from the Kleenex mashed in her left fist and said, “The kike nurse at the hospital that night was very nice.”
My heart spasmed. I thought to myself, Would I be able to wholeheartedly continue treating someone who spewed this venom?
As someone whose grandparents and aunts were gassed at Auschwitz, I grew up with zero tolerance for hate comments.
I remember when my neighbor Rita DiMartino sat in our sparkling white and gold kitchen in Little Neck, Queens and told my mother, “Bernice, I hope you don’t consider this an insult but most Jews are cheap.” My 11-year-old self longed to throw Rita head first down the stone stairs outside our house.
At 14, my mother had stolen a potato from under the Nazis’ noses to save a fellow prisoner, ill with typhus. In her kitchen a lifetime later she stood up to her full 4’11” and told Rita in Polish-accented English, “How would you like it if I said most Italians love the bottle?”
In a lather of righteous fury I stood by mom’s chair, ragged fingernails digging into my balled fists. Rita apologized, then took another piece of mom’s extra-crispy, chocolate-chip-infused mandel bread. Her chewing and the ticking of the clock were the only sounds until Rita laughed uncomfortably, “I don’t think Sherry forgives me.”
Hurt my mother; you are dead to me. I smiled tightly but said nothing.
While this was a rare instance of being confronted by prejudice during my childhood, growing up with an intimate knowledge of what hatred and a thirst for power could drive human beings to inflict on others led to spells of anger and fear. In my dreams Nazis wearing heavy black boots thundered toward me.
Still when my extended family, some with Auschwitz numbers tattooed onto their arms occasionally let racist comments drop from their lips during Passover Seders and Sunday barbecues, I felt nausea. Shouldn’t one group suffering persecution grant benevolence to another?
Of course my relatives had flaws, but none would ever knowingly harm another being. They were victims of hate-mongering, not perpetrators. Decades later I am still unraveling this cognitive dissonance: Good people sometimes say bad things. My mother and Rita were never bosom buddies but spent time in one another’s kitchens for 30 more years.
Intuitively I have always known that travel is one of the best ways to combat a narrow worldview. I was fortunate to have a few seminal experiences offering exposure to people who utterly mystified (and okay, sometimes repulsed) me.
While at a remote rainforest lodge in Costa Rica, I fell into an hours-long conversation with the lodge’s owner. I knew Frank was German-born but it wasn’t until 45 minutes into a delightful back and forth about music, nature, and books that I discovered not only had Frank’s father been a Nazi, but Frank spent his twenties and thirties as a lawyer defending Nazis. He told me, “One day I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t stand the person I saw staring at me. I ran away—literally—into the jungle.” He was eager to hear about my parents, whom I said would likely feel betrayed to see me with him. I added, “Realizing that you are not a monster but someone who grew to realize following your father’s footsteps was unworkable is a gift.”
Another time, for a journalism assignment, I spent a week in the northern lands of Ghana researching "witches camps." These were isolated, primitive settlements where older women, often widows, would flee after being accused by neighbors of being witches. The accused’s demonic powers are ascertained by a chieftain slaughtering a guinea fowl and seeing which way the animal flops as it dies. A forward flop means the woman is a witch. Hearing about the desperate conditions in the areas around the camps gave me a better understanding of this human rights indignity. Poverty was rampant in these areas, literacy rates were around 10%, and there were few medical facilities. We are what we are taught, and if all we are taught are old wives tales—such as if a witch catches your soul, you are dead—that is our truth and we will cling to it with vigor.
In the wake of Trump’s election I suffered a brief resurgence of my black booted Nazi nightmares. For the first time in decades, the world felt unsafe. I retreated to the safety of my Facebook wall, where left-leaning friends bitterly derided any “deplorables” who’d voted for the new occupant of the Oval Office. Then I visited Detroit for a wedding. I stopped at a salon to get my hair done. When the sweet, chatty hairstylist admitted she had voted for Trump, I felt a touch of nausea. But we talked through her reasoning—a hope it would lead to Roe vs. Wade being overturned. She’d watched five of her friends in high school become pregnant and have abortions. “They were so sad afterward," she said. "I got pregnant young too and had my child.” I felt her pain. She listened to my point of view: “Do you think it’s fair for a bunch of primarily white men to decide what women do with their bodies?” She didn’t. She sprayed my coif and we hugged goodbye. We didn’t agree on everything, but we agreed on enough to bond.
That hairstylist flashed into my mind when my new patient mentioned the “kike" nurse at the hospital.
My journey toward becoming a therapist has involved delving into my own unconscious biases—as everyone has pockets of prejudice. I’ve become fairly comfortable working with people who hold a view or two I detest. But this woman hit too close to home—I was once again in the kitchen in Little Neck listening to Rita DeMartino tell my mother “most Jews are cheap.”
This time I didn’t stay silent. I told the woman, “You know, I’m Jewish and my family were holocaust survivors. You may not be aware that the word ‘kike’ is an ethnic slur, an insult.”
“Oh Sherry, I’m so sorry," she said. "I’m embarrassed to admit I just heard my folks say it when I was a kid so it seemed natural. I respect you so much. You must think I’m awful.”
I became a therapist from a need to explore the complexities and contradictions in human beings—a need to believe few people are evil incarnate. So, I told her, “No. Thank you for explaining your reasoning and understanding why I was upset.” I smiled. “Now we can move on and help you heal.”
She smiled back, relieved. And we began to work together.
Like what you just read? You’ll love our magazine! Go here to subscribe. Don’t miss a thing by downloading Apple News here and following Prevention. Oh, and we’re on Instagram too.
You Might Also Like
