‘Say it loud’

In Mel Brooks’ and Carl Reiner’s original “2000-Year-Old Man,” the reporter — that’s Carl — asks the 2000-year-old man — played by Mel — if he ever had a formal job.

“Well,” he replied, “I was a manufacturer…. I used to make the Star of David. As soon as religion came in, I was one of the first in that.”

“Yes, and how did you make them?” the reporter asked. “I employed six men, see?” the 2000-year-old man answered. “One for each point, and they used to run together. And at great speeds, they would fuse.

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“We would only make two a day because of the many accidents.”

At our seder this year, our youngest grandson, who is almost 15 now, said that he would like to wear a Magen David.

My heart soared. We bought him a Magen David and added the beautiful gold rope chain that my mother wore and had been handed down to me. I wore it with my Magen David attached, and now it’s being worn by the fourth generation of the Mandel family.

Thinking about our grandson wearing the star during these times concerned me, because even though the media focuses on antisemitism at universities, it is prevalent in middle schools and high schools across the country as well. We made those concerns known, but our kids assured us that the schools where they live are being very vigilant, and proactive, when it comes to any form of discrimination.

Growing up as an observant Jew, I was one of three or four kids who wore a kippah in the Midwood section of Flatbush, in Brooklyn, in the ’50s; wearing a Magen David around my neck would have been infinitely less visible. The neighborhood was predominantly Italian and Irish, and most of the kids my age were my friends, but that wasn’t always the case with their older siblings.

“Morta Christo,” they would scream at me — translated as you killed Christ. (My friends told me what their older siblings were saying.)

I had no idea what that really meant, but the way they said it scared me. A few years later, when I heard that phrase, I’d say that I wasn’t even around back then, and because they were of Italian descent, it was their forefathers who killed Christ. “Jews didn’t crucify people,” I said. “If they found you guilty of a crime, they stoned you to death.”

The streets of Brooklyn in the 1950s were quite different than the suburbs of New Jersey 70-plus years later.

I must have been 11 or 12 years old when I took a bicycle ride down Ocean Avenue and ended up in a strange neighborhood. Three kids, also on bikes, came out of nowhere and chased me, and we ended up in a schoolyard, where they cornered me. Each of them had a canvas bag hanging over the handlebars of his Schwinn bicycle, with the words Journal-American printed on it.

My parents read three papers a day; my dad read the Post and the Mirror and my mom read the Herald Tribune. As far as I can remember, William Randolph Hearst’s Journal-American wasn’t read in Jewish homes — don’t ask me why.

I decided to ride through them and get away before they beat the crap out of me, but they jammed their tires into my front wheel and that was it. I was going to get hurt.

I felt tears on my face and heard one kid say; “Hey, he’s crying. What’re you crying for? We’re not gonna hurt you. We were just trying to scare you.”

They did.

One of the others asked what church I went to. I was silent. “He’s Jewish,” the third kid said, “Hey, kid, are you Jewish?” I nodded yes. I was terrified.

“Hey, it’s all right,” they said. “Here, have a newspaper. Do you want a newspaper?”

The only word I spoke was “no.” They apologized, turned their bikes around, and rode out of the yard.

What would I have done with the Journal-American? No one I knew read it.

I didn’t have to think very hard about why I felt trepidation when I was out of my element. It was the stories of the Nazis, and the pogroms all over Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine that I heard from my parents and many of their friends.

It was the memories of all the generations of Jews who were beaten, raped, robbed, and burned at the stake for practicing that heretical religion, Judaism, that flooded my mind when I was surrounded by those boys.

It’s an interesting insanity to believe in a religion that gets you beaten and even killed by the very people who say that they believe in God and the Ten Commandments God handed down. I wondered where they learned all this hatred when their religion preaches love, until I remembered the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical “South Pacific.”

Antisemitism got me right between the eyes when I was in my early 30s.

The envelope, with the New York Athletic Club name and logo in the upper left-hand corner, was addressed to Leonard J. Mondale, at my address. The NYAC was holding its annual trap-shooting competition at Travers Island, and as a member of the Amateur Trapshooting Association, I was invited.

I laughed when I saw how my name was misspelled.

I had never been allowed to compete at any NYAC event. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed inside the doors. It was a restricted club, but I decided to go.

I told Fred Remington, a shooting buddy of mine and a New Jersey State assemblyman, that I was going to Travers Island. He looked at me and said: “How the hell did you get invited?”

“They misspelled my last name, but I’m going anyway,” I told him.

He asked what time I was going to check in; he wanted to be there to see the look on their faces when I told them my real name.

I arrived at Travers Island, walked over to the sign-in table, and saw Fred standing there.

“Name, please,” the man at the desk asked.

“Lenny Mandel,” I replied.

“We don’t have anyone with that name registered,” he said.

“Ah, yes,” I said, “that’s because you misspelled my name on the invitation. Here it is.”

“There must be some mistake,” he said.

“I don’t think that there is a mistake,” I replied. “The membership numbers match. You just misspelled my name.” I leaned over the table with the Magen David around my neck dangling in his face.

Fred Remington, who was standing there grinning, jumped in: “His invitation is legit. Let him shoot.”

They did, although there were mistakes made in scoring and I asked that the tournament director be called over. Needless to say, I didn’t fare very well — the distractions were far too, well, distracting — but the point was made and that’s all I cared about. You can bet that I wasn’t invited the following year. The name Mandel accompanied by my Star of David sealed my fate.

Even with things the way they are now, we’re certain that our grandson will wear his Magen David, and the Mandel name, with his head held high.

To make a semantic change to a song made famous by James Brown:

“Say it loud, I’m a Jew and I’m proud.”

Cantor/Rabbi Lenny Mandel, who left the wilds of Manhattan almost 50 years ago and lives in West Orange, has been the chazan at Congregation B’nai Israel in Emerson for the past quarter century.