Finding, Faith, Finding Safe, Finding Potatoes: Trading Religion for Amazing Grace

By Marsha Susan Tracy

Finding Faith, Finding Safe, Finding Potatoes is the story of a Jewish girl who struggles as a child to fit in with her peers and, as a woman, to find love, purpose, and a sense of belonging. In her early twenties, Marsha finds acceptance when she becomes a Christian during a trip to Idaho. Her subsequent journey leads her to an African American church where the “saints” nurture her as a prodigal daughter returning home, a group posing as Christians who turn out to be a front for the Unification Church founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and a mega church that becomes notorious in the late eighties for a practice called “Spiritual Connections,” a form of “worship” where members dance with partners to whom they are not married. In each of these organizations, powerful autocratic leaders use mind control to pressure members to disconnect from their families, nonconforming friends, and their individuality.

Though Marsha senses an incongruity within each community, she cannot identify what is bothering her, and blames herself for not being spiritual enough. Even when problems too obvious to ignore come into focus, she is conflicted between her church and her faith.When Marsha learns to surrender her unhealthy relationship with church, she finds freedom and the courage to accept herself as a one-of-a-kind authentic believer in a God who offers amazing grace and unconditional acceptance.

Faith, Safe, Potatoes is a story that will encourage individuals who have been wounded by a religion that promised love, hope, and joy but instead held them captive to endless rules, unrealistic expectations, and disappointment. This story will appeal to individuals who are seeking a strong, loving relationship. It will also appeal to dog lovers, people who struggle with infertility, eating disorders, or feelings of inferiority.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marsha Susan Tracy
• Release date: Jun 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310114557

Marsha Susan Tracy

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, where I was expected to marry a good Jewish boy. Instead, I moved to Boise, Idaho and married a good Gentile man. Now, after living more than two decades in Idaho, I consider myself an honorary “spud.” My husband and I love to travel, particularly in the back roads of rural Idaho. We are parents to four grown children and have four grandchildren, and are happily active in our church as deacons. I also love to garden, and am a dedicated dog enthusiast and canine behaviorist.

Book preview

Home of the Gentiles

At the age of seven, I stopped the rambling mouths of my outspoken family during Passover dinner.

"Any ma’am. Bharuch atah Adonai, Elohaynu, melekh ha-olam. I believe that my people, the Jewish

people, will see the coming of the Messiah, and though he tarry, yet will I believe," Grandpa Nat prayed.

What was Grandpa talking about?

Why was my normally noisy family so quiet with their eyes closed?

I was confused.

But Grandpa, I blurted we’re not Jewish."

Grandpa dropped his strong and well-defined jaw as his blue eyes glazed over with incredulous shock.

Great Aunt Sally gasped.

My mother put her hand on my back as if to sooth me.

Slicing into the sudden, paralyzed stillness of the room, Grandma Ida spoke. Mashua, honey, she said calmly as if she were kissing a boo boo, of course we are.

Then, like a wave building in momentum, tongues were loosed, and the room filled with chatter as people passed food and ate almost frantically, as if eating Jewish food somehow validated our heritage.

Only then did I become aware that as a Rosenthal, I belonged to a proud group of people called Jewish.

***

My ancestors were good, religious Jews, a proud and stalwart people, mostly poor farmers who left Russia in search of a safe place to practice their religion and raise their families. My maternal great grandparents, my first relatives to set foot in America, took their exodus during the budding years of the 20th century. In their new Promised Land, they lived amongst other Jewish families, always near a synagogue, forming ghettos in the now very posh lower East Side in Brooklyn.

Think of Fiddler on the roof and you’ll understand exactly the flavor of our relatives, my mom told me.

My relatives remained immersed in Old World Jewish tradition. My maternal great-grandfather was a Hebrew scholar. I was expected to marry a good Jewish boy, and yes, a doctor would be nice. Yet, in spite of their strong Jewish heritage, the religious beliefs of those in my parents’ generation broke down when long-held traditions and sacred ritual melded into intellectual pursuit. My family became cultural Jews.

As non-religious Jews, Sabbath, or Shabbat--meaning to cease, to end, or to rest--did not begin on Friday night at sunset as it did for religious Jews, but on Sunday morning with the sumptuously stuffed New York Times spread across the kitchen table while Beethoven’s Fifth played on the record player in the living room. We did not eat kosher feasts prepared before the Sabbath each week, or leave our cars at home and walk to the synagogue. We ate fresh-from-the-factory bagels full of leaven and smothered in cream cheese and thin, almost raw slices of smoked salmon called lox.

To me, Jewish also meant wonderful family dinners, always hectic with activity and conversation and adults mellowed by good wine sipped throughout the evening. I remember pre-dinner smells like kugle, a noodle pudding rich with eggs and onions, raisin-carrot pudding, and turkey or roasted chicken stuffed with pungent sage and apple dressing. The smells would waft upstairs, stimulating my stomach juices while I played Crazy Eights with Cousin Judy.

With the seniority afforded us as the first and second-born grandchildren and the only girls, Cousin Judy and I were able to intimidate our younger brothers into performing for the adults who gathered in the living room. All the adults laughed and clapped as we sang and danced, but nobody seemed to enjoy those corny shows as much as Grandma Ida whose face glowed with pride as she lived vicariously through the budding talents of her grandchildren.

***

I shared my childhood with seven families on the Jewish side of 162nd Street in Queens. Across the street stood a row of dark, brick dwellings. I don’t remember seeing dads from these houses walk home from the subway at dinner time, or moms return from the grocery with arms around brown paper bags. I don’t remember children roller skating around the block or catching fireflies on muggy, summer nights. This was a mystery to me.

Who lives there? I asked one day when my next door neighbor, Barry, accidentally hit the ball into a yard across the street during a neighborhood street-ball game.

Gentiles, Barry said. people who eat pigs’ knuckles.

I loved pig’s knuckles.

So, what’s the big deal? I said, feeling annoyed, because I had seen Barry retrieve balls from backyards on our side of the block. why doesn’t somebody just knock on the door?

Five faces stared at me as if they had seen a ghost.

That’s when I knew that an unrealized ethic separated us (Jews) from them (Gentiles). That’s also when, compelled by some burgeoning ethic of my own, I determined to be the first kid on the block to cross the forbidden line.

***

A quiet baby who didn’t smile for six months, I watched my world with wide, worried eyes. Mom blamed my two-month premature breech birth for my withdrawn behavior. I lacked necessary developmental time in the tranquility of her womb. Then, after the birth, when I critically needed my mother’s warmth and her reassuring touch, she was too exhausted to even hold me.

They cleaned you up and whisked you off to the nursery, Mom told me. the next day they let me hold you. When I finally saw you, you looked like a plucked chicken.

Because I was painfully shy as a little girl, particularly after the birth of my brother Neil when I was three, Mom threw a big outdoor party to encourage me to come out of my shell. Instead, I clammed up when a little neighbor girl I didn’t know greeted me with a pretty box in her hand. Already overwhelmed by the balloons and the sound makers and the children laughing, I ran into our apartment where, from the living room window, I watched my own party. This began a pattern in my life: left out when I wanted to be included.

I spent a lot of time alone in the Woods during my elementary-school years on 162nd Street. A natural playground that thrived upon two acres of undeveloped property at the end our block, the Woods, ignited my imagination. Trees like the Monkey Tree, so named because of the elaborate web of branches that formed natural ladders, transformed this New York urban habitat into the Amazon rainforest. Crows magically transformed into eagles, red headed woodpeckers into vultures, and blue jays into parrots. Six-inch garden snakes became giant Anacondas.

The Woods protected me from having to interact with other children.

Not only did I avoid other kids, but they avoided me. Girls shied away from me because I handled worms and snakes and climbed trees like a boy. Boys teased me. One time three boys from my class taunted me as I walked home from school. When I tried to run away from them, they caught me from behind and pushed me to the ground. Embarrassed, I never told my mom.

Teachers expressed concern for me with comments on my report cards like, Marsha doesn’t join in with the other children, or Marsha seeks a great deal of individual attention from me.

You’ll have friends someday, Mom said each time I came home unhappy.

But I did have friends.

As it is for many lonely children, books and animals became my closest friends. Animals, from butterflies to snakes to birds and the neighborhood cat seemed to understand me. I taught my parakeet to ride on the back of my hamster and a pet salamander to back up. For a while my best friend was a featherless English sparrow fledging I found in the Woods.

In the quiet, tree-canopied area of the Woods, ferns and scallions grew abundantly in the fertile ground around decaying tree trunks and rocks that were large enough to straddle like a horse. Here, I captured a yellow-shafted flicker, several squawking blue jay fledglings, and three or four English sparrows that had fallen from their nests. I identified each one from a picture in my Guide to the Most Familiar American Birds, a book I still own. These delicate creatures usually ended up in a grass-lined box in my bedroom.

I first saw Teensy, the fledging that made the biggest impact upon my life, in the street next to the Woods the spring I was eight. Teensy must have fallen from a nest lodged in one of the expansive maple trees overhanging the street. While riding my bicycle, I spotted robins, sparrows, and a blue jay gathered in a circle looking down at something. Something dead? But when they flew away I didn’t see something dead.I saw a tiny bit of a baby bird, her featherless body enveloped in flabby folds of pink skin. I scooped her into my hands and took her home where I gently placed her into her own makeshift nest box as I had the other baby birds.

Teensy lived in her nest box while I was at school. After school she perched on my head. With Teensy sitting upon her head nest, I went about my afternoon activities, which included walks around the neighborhood to show off my soon-to-be-feathered friend. Neighborhood kids flocked to me. Can I pet the bird? they asked. Gently, I admonished as a mother to a child. she’s delicate.

How I loved that bird. We talked to each other for hours. I stroked her, sang to her, and sometimes simply watched her sleep. Maybe I was lonely before, but I wasn’t lonely now. Teensy filled my life with purpose. I didn’t even mind her relieving herself on my head, a fact that amazes me today. Another fact that amazes me is how I nurtured that creature until she could fly. In the evenings I put her outside into a sapling maple tree where she flew from branch to branch and then perched as she sang music that expressed simple delight and contentment.

Usually I watched Teensy during her evening exercise but, one night, thinking she was safe for a few minutes, I ran into the house to get something. As Mom watched my bird from the kitchen window, she noticed Blackie, the neighbor’s sleek black cat who was also one of my beloved animal friends, approaching the tree. Before Mom could run outside to shoo the cat away, Blackie struck. She tore my bird’s head off with one swipe of her feline paw and Teensy laid dead, a mutilated mess.

Mom broke the news to me before I ran back outside. I sobbed with a pain that stopped my breath. The sudden reality of a living creature, now perished, gripped my young heart with anger, grief, and confusion. With almost equal heartache, I could not fathom that Blackie was the murderer. In one night I experienced the loss of two friends: one to death and the other to betrayal.

As the intense grief diminished, I learned to forgive Blackie for doing, as my mom reminded me, what cats do. But I never forgot the happiness Teensy gave me.

***

I found great solace with my neighbor, Kenny, a soft-spoken, overweight boy whom the neighborhood kids teased. Both misfits in our own way ---he was a girlish boy and I was a tomboy--- Kenny and I connected emotionally through creative play. We wrote stories together or we sat on the swings in his backyard and simply pondered life. Most often we played Animals in the cool solitude of the playroom that took up almost his entire basement. Here, our fertile imaginations enabled us to slip effortlessly into an alternate reality where we played harmoniously for hours.

A burst of cool air greeted me as I walked downstairs past raw, concrete walls of the unfinished portion of the basement into Kenny’s Toyland. The finished portion of the basement with knotty-pine walls, red and white checkered linoleum flooring, built-in bookcases, a green Ping-Pong table, an old brown couch, and a kitchen table with sawed-off legs created a cozy hideaway.

I would sit on the floor and stretch my legs out under the sawed-off kitchen table while Kenny went to the corner where he kept his toy boxes neatly stacked. Anticipation built as I watched him spill out the contents of the toy boxes. An assortment of plastic dinosaurs, horses, cows, sheep, a farmhouse, silo, fences, trees, and bushes bounced onto the table.

We didn’t often talk to one another during the game, except through the plastic characters, but this particular day I had a concern. The main characters from yesterday’s unfinished game had not fallen out with the other pieces.

Where’s Beauty and Michael? I asked

Beauty was a large plastic black horse with a silver-painted mane that we deemed queen of our animal kingdom. Michael was her son.

Kenny retrieved the plastic horses from another toy box, along with a castle made of stenciled tin and a red rubber roof, and then stood the horses upon the table among their subjects. Now, with all our characters ready, we could set the stage.

My favorites were a red, plastic barn, little plastic fences, cows, sheep, and horses many times smaller than Beauty and Michael. I placed each animal safely into a designated corral with others of its kind. Our meticulous setup— everything in its place within boundaries— gave me a sense of great satisfaction.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, Kenny assembled the castle and handed Michael across the table to me. As usual, I was Michael; Kenny was Beauty.

Today, we will gather the little ones for battle, Beauty said as she gave a sprightly leap. The sun had only recently risen above the land, accenting the vibrant reds, oranges, yellows, and burgundies of early autumn. Beauty loved this time of year when the air, refreshingly nippy after a stifling hot summer, invigorated and inspired her.

It is time.

But Mother, Michael replied, Are our subjects ready?

Do not worry, my son. They have hearts of courage. They are ready.

With that proclamation, the two giant horses walked to the barnyard where the animals, also invigorated by the cool morning air, pranced like young ones.

Bah, Bah, said Jolly, the lead sheep. The queen! The queen!

All the animals stood at attention as Beauty approached. They respected this leader who had rescued them from the evil human Lakiah.

Lakiah has returned, Beauty said. we will make a plan.

And thus, our spontaneous game of make-believe continued.

In this quiet basement playroom, a place devoid of judgment or criticism, two lonely kids out of sync with the social rhythm of the neighborhood, became friends.

Forty years later, Kenny and I reconnected. He told me then, There was … a wildness to you that smelled of freedom to me. You went along with me, which was such a great luxury to this disempowered child who so often had to go along with others' wishes and wants. I had the sense you joined my world.

I had.

The make-believe world Kenny and I created helped me come out of my emotional shell into a more confident place among my peers.

***

The spring after Teensy died, I caught a parakeet that was loose in the neighborhood.

I lay on the living-room couch reading a book when my neighbors Nancy, Barry, and Isaac showed up at my front door.

There’s a bird. Barry spoke through the screen, It’ll fly away if nobody catches him. Come on Marsha, we need your help.

Why hadn’t they asked me before?

I dropped the book and followed them out to Kenny’s house next to the Woods. My heart pounded as I saw a small green parakeet perched upon the gas meter attached to Kenny’s house. Suddenly I wanted that bird in a desperate way.

Step back, I said. you’ll scare him.

They stepped back. Though nobody said it, we all knew that we’d never catch the bird if it flew into the Woods.

Hey boy, I won’t hurt you, I said with my right arm outstretched and hand cupped upward. you are a pretty boy. I bet you’re tired, huh?

Solid black, marble-like round eyes watched me as the bird’s little chest moved with quick, labored breaths. Please don’t fly away. I continued to talk to the bird until his feathers fluffed. Then I reached my hand out and, miraculously, the bird allowed me to cup him between my trembling hands.

Marsha did it! Marsha did it! The kids yelled.

At the sudden sound, the bird struggled. His pointed beak pierced my skin but I held my fingers tightly together. The bird was mine now and the kids knew it.

I named my new friend, Greenboy.

***

For the next several months, my success catching Greenboy rewarded me with a newly found respect among the neighborhood kids. I liked the feeling, but with this social promotion came a new challenge, an unexpected responsibility.

In the neighborhood we built forts and clubhouses with cardboard boxes from a neighbor’s discarded refrigerator or stove. With every club, and there were plenty, some kid on the block was the designated outcast.

Anybody but Nina can come in, or, If anyone sees Leslie, shut the door.

The neighbor kids were always having some kind of a war on the block. I don’t remember any physical fights, just social politics, little cliques forming, kids recruiting other kids to side with them against someone else for stupid reasons.

One summer day while on my way to Kenny’s house, I walked by Leslie and Nina sitting on the curb in front of Leslie’s house making mud pies from the dirt wetted by water drizzling down the street from somebody’s lawn.

What are you doing? I asked.

Making mud pies.

Why?

We’re having a war against Kenny, Nina said. Whose side are you on?

I had never been faced with a choice between social acceptance and personal conviction. Neither had I been invited to join anyone’s team, and I didn’t want to jeopardize my newfound status. But I didn’t want to join their war against my friend.

I’m not on anybody’s side, I said.

Not long after that, I saw a message scribbled on a piece of torn notebook paper taped to the latest clubhouse. Marsha, STAY OUT!

***

When I turned ten later that summer, a shaping consciousness of justice accompanied the double digits. Building upon the moral boundary established when I chose loyalty to an unpopular friend over group acceptance, an even riskier matter-of-conscience challenged me later that fall.

I still hadn’t made good my personal resolution to go into a Gentile home. So, when the chance came on a quiet autumn afternoon when the kids were probably in their houses doing homework, I took it. In a moment of realization, bravery flickered over me like a sputtering match. Now, I thought, as I ventured forth with ten-year-old determination, but without a plan, across the street to the closest Gentile home.

I walked up the stairs grasping the handrail, and lifted a heavy knocker that landed with a thud as loud