Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Sharing Stories of Catholic Childhood in France
Is this your um, um, what your identity was, in, in--what, you've been three different people, at least with three different names, two different religions...
Yeah.
...has that uh, at any different point bother you if you'd think about it on your own...
No
...wonder what was...
No, no, in fact uh, recently when, when I got ill and ended up at Providence Hospital, and the priest walked--walks in, you know they come, they come to visit, very--he introduced him as Father so-and-so, he said, "I'm the priest here." Very nice gen...elderly gentleman and he shook my hand and I said, "And I'm, I'm a nice Jewish girl." I told him and he started to laugh and we started to talk. And every time he walked by my door he kept looking in, you know, and he said, "Oh, you're smiling," he said, "You can't be too sick." And I said, "I'm smiling through my tears." And then later on they wheeled me out and into the hallway and he stopped and sat on the bed and he talked with us and uh, so I started to tell him, you know, he says, "Oh, we learned," he says, "we learned a lot about your, your religion and what, you know, everything what went on and all that." So I told him, I said just a little bit, I said, you know, I said, "I know about your religion too." I said, "I grew up a Catholic, you know." And he sat and we talked...
That must have surprised him.
...you know, yeah he sat and listened to me, you know. So, you know, we're not religious now. I'm religious inside but we don't, we don't--we're very reformed. Both my daughters married non-Jewish men, you know. But the older one uh, belongs to a shul and her husband--whatever she wants to do is fine, you know, he converted, he became Jewish.
They live here.
Yeah. The older one lives in Troy and my younger one lives with us now, with her husband.
Husband: ???
They, you know, having little hard time now so they with us, we kind of help them.
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