A surprising friendship, and the face of prejudice

Last night in the #democraticdebate the closing question asked each candidate to name a surprising friendship that had an impact on them.  I thought about what I would answer (assuming I could even speak under such pressure!).  I quickly went to my growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.  It was a wonderfully diverse group I had as friends – Syrian, Greek, Italian, Scandinavian, Russian...  We lived in each other’s kitchens, I turned down food then I would kill for now!  One of my closest friends was Ronnie Khoury, whom I’ve known since kindergarten.  His mother Josephine was an intense, smoker’s voice woman born in Beirut.  During my childhood there would be periodically one of the Arab-Israeli wars.  I would go over to their house, and there would be Mrs. Khoury glued to the TV.  She would mutter “Oh those dirty Jew bastards” in despair of her homeland, then quickly spin around and say “But not you Herzog.”  That’s when I learned that prejudice can go away when you have a face, but there are too many faces.