A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [199]
Theo had grown up around Jews, and then he discovered that he was one. The only problem with this new idea that so struck Theo was that it was really not true. He wasn't a Jew—not by Jewish law, since his mother was not Jewish, and not by culture, since he knew nothing about Judaism. He was a generally well-adjusted man. But he became the reverse of his father, who had worked so hard at being a non-Jew—Theo tried hard to be a Jew, even though no one in the Jewish community thought of him as one. He tried to learn, but the Orthodox would not have him. The liberals were more accepting, but he didn't like liberal Judaism. It lacked that exotic other-world kind of feel. “It's all or nothing,” Theo would say.
Theo went his own way, insisting that he “felt Jewish” regardless oi what anyone said. “People say I am not Jewish, but I think I am.” On Jewish holidays he stubbornly went to the Esnoga. His father did not discuss Jewish issues except to object to his son's preference for German cars. Theo loved expensive cars and drove around in a Mercedes, always interrupting conversations to point out cars he admired. He would stop in midsentence and say, “Oh, nice Bent-ley.” When his father asked how he could drive a German car, Theo would point at the three-pronged hood insignia on his Mercedes and say, “That's the star the Germans have made ray generation wear,” and laugh.
Theo became a social worker of tremendous energy and talent, a man with an instinct for working with people and a genuine sense of dedication. In 1970 he started working at Wallenberg, a homeless shelter in his old neighborhood. He roamed the streets looking for people in trouble to take to the shelter, and he especially sought Jews.
He kept a pile of yarmulkes and Hebrew books in a corner of his office and tried to teach people of Jewish background and offer them Hanukkah and other Jewish holidays. If they died, he would say kaddish for them.
“Look at this,” he said, springing from behind his cluttered desk in his cramped Wallenberg office. “Hanukkah—I can do this part,” and he picked up a prayer book, opened it, and began reciting Hebrew and dovining, bending and nodding and swaying. It was exactly what his friend Barry Biedermann called “not dovining in a natural way.” Still, it was impressive that he could read Hebrew that well. He moved his finger along the page and occasionally stumbled over a word, but it was generally good reading.
“Naw,” he said with a big smile. “I memorized that passage from transliterated Dutch. I can't read Hebrew.”
“Theo,” said Barry, “is a perfect example of why, if you have a mixed marriage, you should make clear to the children that they are not Jewish. It's just confusion.”
WALLENBERG WAS LOCATED near the tight ancient waterways on the east side of Amsterdam's center city—a picturesque area so cramped that the stairways in houses had to be as steep as in a ship cabin.
The Dutch don't like the word homeless or the word shelter. Probably none of the people living on the streets of Amsterdam lacked an alternative, because the government guaranteed all citizens an income and, if necessary, a home. The Wallenberg shelter was a government program consisting of two houses and a series of additional apartments, which in total gave private rooms to six hundred people who did not fit into society. There were no dangerous barracks with rows of beds. Seasoned drifters preferred Wallenberg because of the private rooms, whereas in the other Amsterdam homes you might be assigned a roommate. The state subsidized the home by charging residents $420 monthly from the social pensions paid them by the state. This still left them with spending money and enough extra for the annual May vacation at off-season rates in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, a package-tour spot popular with the Dutch.
On his rounds Theo