Thank God for Women, But… (Part 6)

Click on following links for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

In college, I dated a Jewish girl who was a member of a Jewish sorority.

Now at the time, 70% of the students at the University of Illinois were from the Chicago area and there was a sizable percentage of them who were Jewish.

But you have to remember, this was forty-five years ago,  and America was much different back then. Plus, I was a farm boy from a rural town with a population of 1,100 people and my high school only had an enrollment of two hundred and twenty students.

There was one Jewish family in the community. And the only reason that I knew that they were Jewish was that my parents and others, whenever they talked about this family,  prefaced their remarks by saying,  “Well, of course, you know that they’re Jewish…”

So, as you can see, dating a Jewish girl was a big deal for me.

For instance, ordering food was always an interesting undertaking. If we went to Nate’s Hot Dogs, Poor Boy’s Polish Sausage and Ribs, Illini Pizza or the Pancake House, there was a huge problem called pork.

Sometimes, she overlooked the fact that sausage, hot dogs, ribs, ham and bacon were essentially pork products; and at other times,  she didn’t. And looking back now, I’d guess whether or not she ate pork had more to do with her guilty feelings during the various Jewish feast seasons than for any other reason.

Once, I picked her up for a date at her home in Chicago and being a girl, she was not quite ready when I rang the doorbell. Her father answered the door. He stared at me for a few seconds and finally said, “Carol will be ready shortly.”

Then, he quickly pivoted around and left me there, standing all alone in the entry foyer. To say, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy would be a gross understatement. The minutes seemed like hours. She eventually arrived and made excuses for her parents.

Jokingly, she and her friends referred to me as her “goy friend.” (Goy being short for goyim which is a Yiddish word for gentile.)

I admit that I dated her because she was cute and fun. It had nothing to do with her or my religious values at the time.

But sadly, most of us Christians, read the Bible in much the same manner that I dated this Jewish girl; in that, we are naive about Judaism and the bondage the Law has on people.

Especially women!

(Continued in Part 7)