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Chapter 19 SaintAnthony’sInterventionandOtherAccounts of Growing up Jewish in Mexico Diana Anhalt 239 It was a ¤ne funeral. The deceased, a rich man with many children, had lived most of his adult life in Mexico, given generously to Israel, and was buried on a Sunday, so the event was well attended. Karina, his niece once-removed and my former student, was among the mourners . She greeted me warmly. “How are you?” I asked. She sighed. “I’m so desperate I’m lighting candles to San Antonio.” Never having heard the expression before I asked for details. “Look,” she said, “San Antonio, Saint Anthony in English, is the saint of lost objects: lost glasses, lost keys, lost dogs, you know. He ¤nds things. But his specialty is ¤nding husbands. My Catholic friends told me to collect coins from thirteen married men and visit San Antonio’s Church on June 13, his feast day. Once there, I had to place the coins on his altar, light a candle, pray, and do the same thing when I got home. It’s supposed to work better if you tie San Antonio’s image upside down, probably in the belief that discomfort speeds delivery.” We laughed. “But I couldn’t, I couldn’t bring a saint into my mother’s house so I just keep lighting candles—and praying.” You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. diana anhalt 240 People were milling around the grave, their voices hushed. The service was about to begin. We veered away from the crowd. “But Karina, you’re Jewish,” I said. “Yes, I told my friends but they assured me San Antonio will be¶attered by the attention, from a Jew no less, so this is a sure thing!” She gave me a good-bye hug. “Now just promise you won’t tell my mother.” A few months later Karina’s mother called. “Karina left for the States a few days ago or she would have called you personally. She’s getting married in May to a very nice rabbinical student from New York. Remember my uncle’s funeral in July? Well, she met him there.” this story goes to prove three things: Saint Anthony is no antiSemite , even if he is a saint; miracles in Mexico are as plentiful as potholes ; and to be Jewish in this country is to believe in them. Here is another miracle I believe in. A Jewish child, one of many, was rounded up and sent to Auschwitz during the war. She had only her mother’s photograph to remind her of home. Fearing the Gestapo might take it away she folded it in four, back side out, and placed it in her mouth under her tongue. The child left home, literally, with her “mother in her mouth.” The photo survived the war. She survived the concentration camp. Like her, I also left home involuntarily, but under far more propitious circumstances, bearing my language in my mouth and the taste of snow and my grandmother’s borscht on my palate. Unlike the Polish child, I was not forced to leave home because I was Jewish. I was forced to leave because my parents were Reds. They ¶ed the Bronxandtheghostsoftheirradicalpastsduringtheso-calledMcCarthy era. At the time, from the late forties and throughout the ¤fties, membership in suspect organizations, your signature on a controversial petition, or your refusal to swear you had never belonged to the Communist Party could result in the loss of a job, a subpoena, or both. I was eight years old when we became part of that long line of political dissidents, fortune seekers, draft dodgers, and tax evaders who, You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. saint anthony’s intervention 241 for centuries, have entered Mexico seeking sanctuary. In the beginning I didn’t think much about growing up Jewish in Latin America. I was too busy indulging my other minority identities. I was a “gringa” and a “Commie’s daughter.” I had no time to be a Jew and, though I never denied it, I chose not to be, at least not at the beginning . At the beginning I preferred to be...

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