I grew up in Athens, a small town in Marathon County in central Wisconsin in the 1930s. With my father, mother, brothers and sister, we were the only Jewish family in town.
For me, it was a magical time and place. Mostly, we were the same as our friends, but there were some who never let us forget that we were different.
As the children of the only Jewish family in a community of Catholics, Lutherans and Presbyterians, my sister and brothers could have considered joining their friends and assimilating some other faith. They didn’t.
Assimilation never came close to happening, although for a time as young kids we begged for pennies to contribute to attendance at Bible study in the Presbyterian church. On early Sunday mornings our friends were there. My mother tolerated that only for a while before she put an end to it.
She insisted we keep a kosher home, which meant two set of dishes — one for meat and a second set for dairy foods. We ate kosher meat imported from Swift and Company brought by train from Chicago.
On Friday night, my mother upheld the faith and lit Sabbath candles and said the prayers for evev Shabbos. We never put up a Christmas tree.
For years in Athens, around the middle of December, a friend of my dad’s, brought a freshly cut fir tree and placed the tree outside our front door. My dad didn’t feel it was right to ask the man not to do it. Eventually, someone advised the friend that Jews didn’t celebrate Christmas and he stopped bringing us a tree.
At school, we sang Christmas carols, but we didn’t exchange gifts. My father operated a general merchandise store, and the gift of Semon store mixing bowls to customers at Christmas became a regular observance, for customers were strictly business. My dad also gave Christmas gifts to his employees.
We never regarded Chanukah, celebrated in December, as a kind of Christmas substitute. Exchange of gifts was simply for other people’s holiday.
Passover, however, was taken seriously. Dad made a special trip (200 miles) to buy matzah, matzah meal, kichel andmacaroons, and other rare, for us, items such as gefilte fish, kosher salami, corned beef, pickled beef tongue, herring filets and lox.
On the first night of Passover, my mother brought the traditional Maxwell House Coffee Company hagaddahand read the Passover story. She assumed the role of both rabbi and religious school teacher.
A book named “Bible Tales”was our first textbook. Ithad a bright orange cover illustrated with a picture of a bearded Moses carrying the Ten Commandments down from the mountain in his muscular arms. My sister, years later, searched for and found the same book to read to her children.
The biblical stories made heroes of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and Solomon. They stirred our imaginations, instilling us with Jewish pride. There was never a question about who we were.
It would wrong to say that when a handsome classmate asked my sister to the school’s senior prom, my mother decided it was time to move out of Athens. The invitation merely added another reason to move to Milwaukee’s Jewish community.
In May 1940, my oldest brother graduated from high school, one of 23 in his class. Both my brothers had Athens girlfriends — and there it was, my sister had an invitation to the prom.
All of which made my parents do what virtually every small town Jewish family did when their children grew to be 17 or 18, that is move to the city; Milwaukee, Chicago or Minneapolis — someplace where they had relatives, Jewish neighborhoods, Jewish fraternal organizations and synagogues.
My mother wanted to live where her sons and daughter had the opportunity to meet and marry Jewish mates. We said goodbye to Athens and moved in the middle of summer.
Retired Waukesha County Technical College teacher Ed Semon now lives with his wife Jeanine on Bolton Lake. His memoir “Athens, WI: The Place Where Time Stood Still” was published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
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