Facing antisemitism from my childhood: The cost of a penny

When I was twelve and desperately wanted to fit in, I went along with my friends’ penny throwing gag at a suburban shopping mall. 

“Bet you can’t resist, Jew.”

Clank, clank, clank. The pennies smacked the tile floor beside my feet, reverberating their cold metallic cries.

“Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!”–chanted my friends. Their voices bounced off the tile floor as each of my pals looked on with excited curiosity. 

“Is he really gonna do it?” Giddy eyes were on me.

Looking back on that day, I wish I could say I stared at the pennies and thought about my family and wondered what they would do. Instead, all I thought about was pleasing my pals.

I bent down, literally and figuratively to stoop beneath the people I called my good friends.

“It’s true, it’s true! Jews can’t help themselves.”

I nodded, smiled, and played the part. I gave a knock-out performance as The Jew. At that moment, I didn’t think twice about it, or the fact that I was experiencing anti-Semitism from people I considered my friends.

If they were strangers, I may not have picked up those pennies- but how could I let down my friends?

My conscience came apart for a moment. Like so many teens back then, and today, I had no idea how to respond to the anti-Semitism I experienced from my own peers.

I answered my troubled mind: it’s fine, James. It’s just a fun gag. And anyway, pennies are money– and if I didn’t pick them up the pennies would have gone to waste. 

I didn’t understand that I was the punchline. 

My friends and I moved on with our day. It’s been 20 years and I can’t even remember the names or faces of my “good friends” from that time.

Now, reflecting on this, I wish I could go back and stop myself. I wrestle with the reality that those friends all must have left the mall that day thinking to themselves, Jews are really into money. They’ll pick up pennies from the floor. 

I can’t undo the damage, but for the last two decades of my life I’ve driven myself to ensure the next generation of Jewish children is better off through my work as Director of Communications to Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles and through my time lobbying in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. 

But the work feels different now that I am the proud father of a Jewish fifteen-month old boy. I pray that he will never experience my pain.

I don’t simply lobby for bills anymore; I make it my mission as a father to cultivate my son’s self-worth and pride as a Jew– so if anyone ever dares throw a penny at his feet, he will know what to do. 

I was someone’s punchline, but that ends with me. The cost of anti-Semitism is incalculable. It was never, ever worth the pennies.

James Finney-Conlon is a professional writer and government relations expert based in Los Angeles, CA. James writes on anti-Semitism, shining a light on its impacts to children and adults. Finney-Conlon has been published in Times of Israel, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Aish, and The Irish Examiner.