I still remember the first Jewish person I ever met. His name was Ira. We were both in the same class at school in Chicago. We both were between 6 and 7 years old. Ira is one of my better memories of people I knew and called friends in Chicago. All I knew about Jews at the time I'd heard in red-faced angry ravings about them from an uncle in-law (married to my dad's sister). Ira was kind, thoughtful, caring, sharing and forgiving beyond his young age,... total opposite of the things my uncle raved on and on about Jews.
As I got older I questioned where his intense hatred of Jews came from since there were very few Jews around where he/we lived In Kentucky. He was born, raised and worked close to home, hadn't served in the Military, nor ever been further than a couple hundred miles from home until we moved to Chicago and he and his family followed us there soon after. Seven decades later and I still haven't been able to make any sense of his hatred of Jews with so little (if any) personal association with any that far back.
