The Professor's Favorite Hobby

I was finishing up my classwork to earn a masters degree in counseling in the summer of 1997. I was taking one of those courses whose name has no meaning: Social Foundations of Education. At West Chester University it was part of the curriculum to take a 3 credit course in education.

It was the usual boring stuff, an over-priced textbook, lectures deadly dull, people staring out of the window, glancing at their watches, back at the professor again, etc. Then the professor began to speak about something different. I can't remember the reason he changed his subject. However, he started telling the class about his favorite hobby: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He said he had this really neat and fascinating collection of odd objects left over from the glory years of WWII and the Holocaust; he had a small library of books devoted to these subjects. I mean this sincerely when I say that at first I thought I was somehow getting mixed up and I wasn't hearing this right. I actually wished I was having trouble with my hearing. But I was hearing ever word.

My blood froze and my heart started beating really hard. Tears began to roll down my face. Something, SOMETHING, had to be done. Then I turned and looked to my right. A dark-haired woman, one of the students, had her hands up to her face and was sobbing her heart out. In one hand she held a silver star of David that was hung suspended on a chain.

Before I relate what happened next I must make it plain that when in any class I am a really "good girl." I adore all teachers and in a classroom I give total respect. But this wasn't just any classroom. I felt that all of my race, my family, and all the ones who died before were counting on me to do SOMETHING. So in the middle of this travesty of "education" I stood up while the professor was talking, walked across the classroom to the sobbing woman, knelt by her chair, put my arms around her and we cried together. Actually sobbed together.

The professor gave us our break and the woman and I kept sobbing. This lunkhead professor came over to us, his arms dangling uselessly by his sides. He was clueless! He had no idea, no knowledge of the Jewish people and what we have suffered. The sobbing woman held up her star of David and said that part of her family was killed in the Holocaust. So had some of my relatives.

This poor lady excused herself and I stood up straight and confronted this "teacher." I'll say one thing for him; he was honest in his befuddlement. He wanted to know what was wrong.

I sighed. "Listen. You may be a professor with tenure and all that stuff but you know nothing. How you got into this 'hobby' of yours I can't imagine and please don't tell me that the Nazis were 'neat' because I don't want to hear it again. You need some education, about Judaism, I mean."

He asked me what he should do. Could I recommend a book on Judaism for him to read?

I said: "Read Max Dimont's Jews, Gods, and History. That should help." I was emotionally exhausted after this and I can't remember what happened, only that I stayed for the rest of the lecture, then went home and cried.

That autumn the professor and I ran into each other. He looked at me, embarrassed. He knew what was coming.

"Did you read the book?" I asked, knowing full well that it had not been read.

"No," he said.

"Then at least will you promise not to talk about that little hobby of yours in class?"

He promised.