Rumford is a small town in western Maine, USA, surrounded by mountains and built around a mill that eats vast pine logs and spits out paper. On humid days, or when a storm is coming in, the smoke from the mill settles in the valley and the whole town takes on the yellow smell of boiled eggs.
It’s a working-class town, and when I was growing up in it, there were five churches within a quarter of a mile of my house, catering for Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists and Evangelical Christians.
There was no synagogue. We were the only Jews in town.
When my great-grandparents settled in Rumford and built their scrap metal business, there were as many as 30 Jewish families in town. There used to be a synagogue when my father was growing up. I’ve seen a photograph of Dad and three other Jewish boys in front of the Temple Israel, situated directly across from the Episcopal church. But the year before I was born, the synagogue closed.
We were the only ones left: my grandparents, my parents, my brother and me. We were six Cohens in a town full of MacDougalls and Arsenaults and Irishes and DiConzos and Gallants.
My mother was a Rumford native, too. She grew up Catholic, and the Rumford I knew was mostly a Catholic town, peopled by the descendants of Irish and French and Italian immigrants who came to work the mill.
According to family lore, when Mom started dating my dad, her father said, “You’re not going out with that Jewish boy, are you? Why can’t you find a Catholic?”
“Oh, Daddy,” she replied. “I’m not going to marry him.” But she did, and she converted to Judaism.
Most of my relatives are Catholic. Through my mother’s family, I’m related to almost every Catholic native of the town in some way. My Catholic cousins went to Sunday school at St Athanasius-St John church a block away from our house, whereas my brother and I went to Hebrew school on a Thursday night at the Congregation Beth Abraham, which was in Auburn, forty-five minutes’ drive away. On Christmas, we went to our Catholic grandparents’ house for turkey and presents; on Chanukah, our Jewish grandmother gave us latkes and gifts. Matzah ball soup and roast lamb on Passover; chocolate eggs at Easter. I was taught the blessing over the Shabbat candles, but I learned the Hail Mary by osmosis.
I can trace some of my approach as a novelist to the experience of growing up Jewish in a 99.9 per cent Christian town, where I was nevertheless related to many people. There’s a creative tension between being an insider and an outsider at once, to belonging and not belonging. I write about people who look the same as everyone else, but who are different deep inside.
My novel Together is about a couple who are an important part of the community where they live — an obstetrician, and a boat builder in a coastal town in Maine — and yet they harbour a secret that sets them apart from everyone they know.
My brother and I don’t remember encountering much antisemitism when we were growing up, but we agree that’s probably because our difference was nearly invisible to the people around us. We certainly witnessed plenty of racism, sexism and homophobia. But in these pre-Internet days, people in Rumford had probably never met any Jews except for us.
One time my teenage Baptist boyfriend, who was lovely in every other way, told me, “You’re going to hell.” But he probably would’ve said that if I were Catholic, too. (We broke up.)
My brother and I didn’t encounter real antisemitism until we moved into the bigger, wider world. In that way, our small-town community protected us.
We were a little jealous that our cousins got to go to Sunday school near their house instead of having to drive a 99 minute round trip to learn Hebrew. But we usually got pizza on the way home, so we figured it was a good trade-off.
And besides, we were proud to be the only Jews in town.
Together, by Julie Cohen is published this week by Orion.
