Oct. 17, 1969
Nursing Student Ponders Her Conflict of Loyalties
Was I more of an American or more of a Jew?
Deep-felt and perplexing, this conflict of loyalties is the painful question coming back with the countless thousands of young American Jews who have been flocking into the student and chalutz programs of one kind or another in Israel.
Typically, and typically expressed by her, is 21-year-old Heidi Lerner, a shiny-faced and serious-minded Larkspur girl recently returned with an Israeli tan to her studies here after a six-week stint as a volunteer at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center at En Kerem on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Said Heidi: “I loved Israel. I loved the people. I loved my work. But deep inside me, questions were constantly being raised about loyalties. I went expecting affinity, but really I didn’t fit in. They’re different people.”
Like most young students militating for a better world these days, Heidi is politically concerned, activist minded, and counts herself as one of the new “Women’s Liberated” generation, though she hasn’t yet officially joined “The Movement.” And her experience in Israel impressed most upon her the fact that “I am an American, and I have things to do here.”
“Just because we are Jews doesn’t make us alike in all respects,” she said. “The United States is my country every bit as much as Israel is the country of the Sabras.”
Now in her fourth year at U.C. School of Nursing … for a time, she worked in neurosurgery and plastic surgery at the Hadassah Hospital where she was exposed to many critically wounded Israeli boys helicopter-flown back from the front lines, she requested and was transferred to maternity, “a happy place.”
“Everybody talks about Lamaze here,” she explained, “but in three months on maternity at U.C., I never saw a real natural childbirth. In Israel, it’s simply taken for granted, and even when an American girl with a hypotonic uterus in labor for 24 hours begged for some anesthesia, she wasn’t given it,” she said. “It’s a cultural difference,” she added, “but partly also, that they just don’t have enough anesthesiologists and doctors to go around. Midwives, who are nurses with seven months maternity training, deliver the babies.”
Oct, 22, 1999
Marin lawsuit cites anti-Semitism in probation office
A lawsuit filed against the County of Marin claims the probation department is rife with racial hostility and anti-Semitism.
The complaint alleges that the Department of Probation, Chief Probation Officer Ronald Baylo and the Marin County Board of Supervisors has effectively conspired to tolerate harassment in that department for years.
Those entities “create and allow to exist a hostile, intimidating, abusive and offensive work environment,” alleges the suit, filed by Lonnie Morris, a 14-year veteran probation officer, and Wilfred Broom, who no longer works for the County of Marin.
The two men, who are African American, contend they were denied promotions and subjected to the overt animosity of other officers and superiors. They also say their colleagues who are Jewish — particularly Jewish women — have endured a similar hounding.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 10 in Marin County Superior Court, seeks $1 million for each plaintiff.
According to the suit, Morris “was subjected to frequent racial slurs and racial epithets, including liberal and frequent use of offensive, racist and sexist words towards African Americans, Jews, women, Asians and Mexicans,” beginning in 1995 and continuing “up to and including the present.”
Baylo has repeatedly declined to investigate the complaints, the suit alleges. Baylo’s office referred calls to the Marin County Counsel’s office.
County Counsel Charles McKee said the case has no merit. “The department is as racially diverse as it can be, and has been certified by the affirmative action officer as having met the appropriate criteria.”
But the plaintiffs paint a grimmer picture. For example, the lawsuit claims a “jokebook” assembled by a co-worker was put on the desk of Morris and others, including two Jewish women in the department. The book includes such “jokes” as: “How do Jews celebrate Christmas? They install parking meters on the roof,” and “What’s black and white and red all over? A KKK housewarming party.”
“My superiors knew about it and took no action,” Morris told the Jewish Bulletin. “I said, ‘Fine.’ I called papers representing every ethnicity that was targeted in these ‘jokes.’ I think they have a right to know.”
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