A Hidden Sign
IN 1974 MY wife Ria and I were expecting our first child. We told our family and friends, furnished a nursery, thought up baby names, and discussed whether we should have our child baptized. Both Ria and I were baptized and grew up in Catholic families, she as a farmer’s daughter in the polders near The Hague, me at the foot of Mount Saint Peter near Maastricht. We both have pleasant memories of an agreeable and carefree youth. Ria is one of ten children and had trained as a kindergarten teacher with the nuns in The Hague. I spent my youth exploring the caves of Mount Saint Peter with friends, attending grammar school near Vrijthof Square in Maastricht, and swimming across the River Maas every day in the summer.
Life in a largely Protestant environment tended to reinforce the Catholic identity of Ria’s family, but Maastricht was different. Everything in Maastricht was Catholic. It was part of life.
Every Sunday after mass, Saint Luke’s Brass Band marched through the streets, followed by a procession that included the priest under a baldachin, a collection of altar boys, members of the church council, and other prominent citizens. Many people kept statues of Mother Mary in the window or had her image inset into the facades of their homes. Everyone was familiar with Saint Servatius’s Well on the outskirts of Maastricht, said to have miraculously appeared in the fourth century when Saint Servatius arrived on foot from Asia. There were also persistent rumors about golden statues of the apostles that were hidden in the neighborhood. If a chaplain was spotted on his way to visit the sick carrying a little box in his hand with a consecrated host inside, cyclists would dismount, kneel on the street, and cross themselves. When the neighborhood founded the Saint Peter’s Handball Club, no one questioned the addition of the words “Roman Catholic” to the name. The parish priest agreed and blessed our ball. He blessed not only balls, but also people, houses, even cars. Once a year, citizens assembled their vehicles on the square in front of the church, and the parish priest dipped a copper-handled brush into a gilded basin of holy water, swung it wildly, and, in Latin, blessed the cars with holy water to protect them from accidents. Everything was so steeped in Catholicism that even the non-Catholics were a little Catholic.
Since Catholicism was such a strong part of my family’s identity—not just my immediate family but also my grandmother and grandfather, uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews—Ria and I decided to have our child, the first child of the next generation, baptized. In the meantime, we ran through the names of family members in the hope of finding one that we might use. When it came to my father, John, Ria inquired about his middle initial, S.
“It’s for Samuel,” I said.
“Nice name. It sounds Jewish,” she responded. But we didn’t give it much thought. We had Christian friends who had given their children Jewish names—Judith, Sarah, Job—simply because they liked the names.
But seven years after our first child, Myra Barbara, was born, something happened that made us reconsider the origin of my father’s middle name. I was celebrating my thirty-fifth birthday with my parents and my friends, and at a certain point the conversation turned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of my friends, who was a member of the Netherlands Palestine Committee and had visited the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in exile, dominated the conversation, condemning Israeli politics, talking about criminal Jewish activities, and equating Zionism with racism. My father, who usually liked to participate in conversations with my friends, listened in silence until his nose started to bleed. Suddenly, he grabbed a handkerchief, left the group, and went upstairs to lie down in bed. He didn’t return until my friends had left.
The next day Ria and I chatted about the party. “Annoying, your father’s nosebleed,” Ria remarked. “I noticed it started when they were talking about Zionism and racism. Do you think the conversation might have had something to do with it? His middle name is Samuel. Perhaps your father has a Jewish background.”
“It’s possible,” I said, “but not likely. He was always the one who insisted we go to church. Everyone in the family is Catholic, and his first name is John, not Samuel. Anyway, I’ve had trouble with spontaneous nosebleeds myself. And on top of that, I think he would have told me.”
Nevertheless, we explored the possibility further. My father’s parents were long dead, and as far as we could tell they didn’t have particularly Jewish first names. His mother’s maiden name was Philips.
“Aren’t the owners of the Philips factories Protestant?” I said. “My father has a sister, Rosie, in Sweden, but I know almost nothing about her. I remember she visited us at home when I was a child, but beyond that we weren’t in touch with her.”
My parents had taught me that it was important to be attuned to the people and circumstances around you and to play an active part in your environment. That’s the way I was raised. But in spite of my natural curiosity, the idea of exploring my identity further—and with it my family’s past—simply didn’t occur to me. I didn’t feel that I was missing anything.