Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Religion
So what, what uh, from what uh, what's your sense of uh, from, I guess, from a religious point of view why you survived?
Um, I really think I survived because of the uh, because of my ancestors.
Hm.
Not because of my, I mean, in childhood I would have said my dad helped us to survive because without his shenanigans and whatever the hell he did...
Yeah.
We would not have survived on the one hand. But then on the other hand, I realized later, my dad is a very weak man. He could not process and conceptualize what happened to him.
Hm.
He, he just fell apart. And uh, he spent his life, like, trying to be uh, something that he really wasn't. I think, I, I, I think he lost touch to some degree with reality, in a certain way. So I thought well, he couldn't have really been the cause of my survival, ultimately, because he was too weak of a man. My father grew up as an orphan. His mother died when he was very young, and his father was killed in World War I. He grew up next to his grandparents in a little shtetl called Tarnowa in a house next door to them by himself.
Wow.
I don't know what happened to his twin, but she, he doesn't say that. He was never close to her, I don't think he was ever close to anybody. But, anyway he um, he just, he, he, he, I think he was a mess going in...
Mm-hm.
To the camp.
I see.
And came out...
Worse.
Worse.
Got it, uh-huh.
And there was no saving him from then on. But I remember thinking uh, that there were, that, that, that I was give uh, I don't know, like I, I, I survived uh, somehow, in my mind, it was always be, because of God somehow because, maybe because my grandparents or my great grandparents. I was always trying to put that together, I knew that I was supposed to survive and I did not understand why or how exactly. But it was some kind of, it wasn't just serendipity in my head...
Mm-hm.
It was like something.
You say you, you said you knew you were supposed to survive?
Yeah. I'll tell you a bizarre thing.
Okay.
When I, I, I was into drugs off and on at some point in my early young life. And this was uh, you know, secrets, but who cares. Uh, I went on an LSD trip, which is mental. And most, I remember most of it as being very edifying and beautiful, very uh, I had a lot of uh, self-awareness and thoughts. That was the first time that I remember thinking that my mother meant a lot more to me than I understood. Cause I always that it was my dad that saved us, but I think she was the stable one. But anyway, while I was on that acid trip uh, my then husband Rusty Schreiber, also was doing LSD, I turned on the radio, I know this sounds bizarre, [laughs] and maybe it was around Rosh Hashanah time, I don't know, but Kol Nidre came on. And when Kol Nidre is somebody was playing it on the radio. And this is uh, you know, it, it sounds like it's a farfetched thing, but I remember it happening. And I remember during that acid trip with Kol Nidre playing on the radio, somehow, being able to date myself back to that camp and realizing that I was a little girl in that camp. And I was a little girl who suffered a lot and uh, that I had a hard time making myself happy. That, that's the part I'm, now I don't remember exactly uh, what the connection was, but I remember it, using that acid trip, you know, my uh, then husband Rusty, he was into colors and this and that. And I'm, even on acid, I'm thinking Theresienstadt and what my mother meant to me, ??? on the radio.
Yeah, yeah.
So I was always very, sort of religion centered. I, I, I, I was aware from an early age that it was part of what was either going to help save me or not.
Mm-hm.
And I believe it did, and I believe my reading did.
Mm-hm.
I went into therapy, but that screwed things up worse, so.
Mm-hm, mm-hm. Okay, wow.
And I feel that I loved God.
Uh-huh.
I've always felt that way, I don't know why.
Can you explain that?
Uh, you know what, I do not know how it came into my thought processes other than the fact that I know my dad, besides all his craziness, was a big intellectual. And he always talked about Torah and books and, and uh, Tzaddikim and people, you know, I, I have that in my background. Now, he turned out not to be religious himself really, but he grew up in a yeshiva studying. And parts of my life were always religious. And he would move us into goyish neighborhoods, total gentiles, but force me to take a bus to the yeshiva for an hour and a half every day.
Hm.
Um, so I developed an awareness, maybe it was through him, I'm not sure. But I developed like, it was like a consciousness of, of God. It was something that I felt was my uh, lifeline, like a raft. Even when, and I went through long periods of not being not religious, but I never ever in my life went to sleep without saying shema, always did that. I was always aware that I had some kind of grace from the shema and I didn't know how to integrate that into my thinking, but I, I just knew. And, and uh, I did feel, and in some way, continued to feel all of my life, but even as that freaked out, fearful kid that I was, I felt that I was different, and I felt that I was special.
Hm.
And I, I'm not, I'm not sure how that came to me, but it was an awareness.
Mm-hm, mm-hm.
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