Updated March 15
At the Oscars this Sunday, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical movie “The Fabelmans” is up for seven awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, which Spielberg wrote with Tony Kushner.
In the film, protagonist Sammy Fabelman is bullied at the fictional Grand View High School in Northern California. His classmates rough him up after P.E. They hang a bagel labeled “Jew Hole” in his locker and mock him as “Bagelman.” And they call him the k-word and a “Christ-killing son of a bitch.”
These scenes are based on Spielberg’s own experiences at Saratoga High School, where he spent his senior year in 1964-65. About that period, he told The New York Times in 1993, “I got smacked and kicked to the ground during P.E., in the locker room, in the showers. Pennies were thrown at me in the study hall in a very quiet room of 100 students. People coughed the word ‘Jew’ in their hand as they passed me in the hallway. We couldn’t stop it.”
J. asked readers who grew up in Northern California in the 1960s to share their own stories of antisemitic bullying in school. Here is a selection of them.
Steven Wolan, 76, Los Altos High School, Class of 1964
My family moved my freshman year of high school from the [heavily Jewish] North Shore of Chicago to Los Altos Hills, which was a big move in and of itself. I was trying to fit in, so I decided I’d go out for the basketball team.
One day during practice someone asked me if they could borrow a dime. I said I didn’t have a dime. I was in my gym shorts. And they said, “You Jew!” I was naive, and I said, “Yeah, I’m Jewish, are you?” And he looked at me like I was crazy. The way he said it, I understood [later] that he meant it offensively. I didn’t understand it was derogatory [then] because I had always grown up around Jewish people. There was a lack of knowledge of Jewish people [in Northern California] in the 1960s. I don’t think most of those people had much contact with Jewish people
About a year later, I was in a civics or [an] American history class and someone who was sort of a friend of mine made an antisemitic remark to me, where he called me a kike or something that was quite offensive. He was sitting at one of those desks that had the table in front, and I took his desk and flipped it over on top of him and caused a great commotion in class.
I was sent to the vice principal’s office — I had never been there before — and the vice principal said to me, “What’s going on here? What do you think you were doing?” I told him I was Jewish and this person just called me a kike and that wasn’t right. He said to me, “You’re right, that’s not right, but there are other ways to handle things than to do what you did.”
These were two minor incidents, but my coming from an area [in Chicago] where being called a Jew was basically identification rather than something with a negative connotation, they really stood out. “The Fabelmans” certainly brought home feelings that I had during high school. Not all of them had to do with antisemitism, but [also] being a short Jewish kid trying to fit in.
Norman Weiss, 75, Abraham Lincoln High School (San Francisco), Class of 1966
I was a member of the golf team as a junior at Lincoln High School. I played at Lincoln Golf Course in San Francisco by myself, and the rest of the team played at the beautiful private course at the Olympic Club. The Olympic Club did not allow Jews. No coach, teacher, administrator or student found that a student being discriminated against was a problem. They seemed very content that the Olympic Club let our team practice there.
I left school after sixth period because seventh period was for athletes who had to practice. I would usually leave school around 1:30 for the golf course in the Richmond District, play my favorite three holes with many do-over shots and get back to work at my parent’s fish and poultry market on Noriega Street in the Sunset District between 3:30 and 4 p.m. I will forever remember the shame of having to drag my clubs on the bus to play golf with myself because I was a Jew.
The Olympic Club much later allowed Jews, African Americans and women into their club. To this day, I’ve never been to the club as a member or a guest because I remember when they discriminated against me when I was on the golf team. It always left a bad taste in my mouth.
As a senior, I invited the sister of one of my golf team members to the prom. Katie consented to go with me. When her father, who was a member of the Olympic Club, found out that I couldn’t go to the club because I was Jewish, Katie called me up and said she could not go to the prom with me. This is what really made me feel like a Jew. My parents, Holocaust survivors, told me that this should make me stronger and that Katie was the loser. I will never forget this insult.
Rita Jacobs, 70, Greenbrae Elementary School (Marin County, now closed)
My classmates and I would line up outside the classroom at the beginning of the school day and after recess and wait for our teacher to let us in.
I remember kids coming up to me, girls particularly, coming up to me in line and kicking me in the shins and calling me [the n-word] or “dirty Jew.” We all wore these saddleback-type shoes with heavy leather soles, and they would be kicking me in the bare shins and it hurt like hell. I tried to kick back, because I wanted them to back off. It made me feel terrible. I hated school.
There were a lot of Catholic kids at school, and I was friends with a lot of the Catholic kids. At various times I was called a “Christ killer.” My impression is that there has been a lot of denial over the years, with a lot of non-Jews and non-minorities saying this stuff didn’t happen.
Tom Levy, 69, Clarendon Elementary School (San Francisco)
This may sound odd, but I grew up with two Jewish parents so thoroughly assimilated they didn’t acknowledge we were Jews. I only learned I was a Jew when on our way home after school, a boy who lived down the street from me told me I had killed Christ and picked a fight with me.
Other neighbor kids walking with us watched as I took a beating. Up till then I had no idea my family was Jewish. There was nothing religious or Jewish in our house. I was 11, and a sixth grader at Clarendon Elementary. I felt ashamed I knew nothing about our ancestry or about how to be a Jew.
I wrestled for years with the feeling that I was a “nothing” unless I somehow came to terms with my Jewish heritage. Only as an adult did I gradually find the courage to educate myself and find a path into Judaism. I am now affiliated with a Jewish Renewal congregation in Oakland and my son was Bar Mitzvahed there.
Ironically, my tormentor, a Catholic, went on to a career as a San Francisco police officer. I’m curious about what Catholic priests were preaching in the 1950s and 1960s. What shifted in the later ‘60s and ‘70s? Was my tormentor hearing antisemitic stuff at home, church or both?