There never was a Jew I could hate on a personal level. Trying to empathize with the old folks in the hometown of my mother, Pura Roxas Leveriza in Alaminos, Laguna where community singing of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ was a yearly ritual every Good Friday, meant adapting a tradition of disdain and loathing for the betrayers. ‘Hudyo’ in Pilipino was not only a literal translation of Jew but served as a slur meaning usurer or bloodsucker. Such venom failed to worm inside my hide principally because I never lost sight that my beloved Blessed Mary and my favorite writers, Saints John, Mark, Luke, and Matthew belonged to the race.
I really liked Mr. Isaac, a Jewish businessman from Naga City, ten hours drive south to the Bicol peninsula from Manila. I met him many times in my father’s office at the PNB (Philippine National Bank) where my father, Atty. Raul D. Leveriza Sr., was a Vice President for the Loans Adjustments Department. Mr. Isaac owned a mill where he manufactured plywood panels from wood raw materials and exported the finished products abroad. He was such a nice gentleman, warm and kind, very folksy with humorous vignettes to tell and it was hard not to like him much more target as a figure to hate for being a Jew.
My father helped Mr. Isaac with his capital and operational cash flow thru bridge loans from the bank and restructured the repayment terms whenever the irregular supply of logs from the mountains of Bicol upset his production schedule and export delivery. As was the culture in quasi government institutions like PNB, Mr. Isaac thought he had to bribe my father with a percentage of the loan proceeds in order to get approval. My father politely refused him and told Mr. Isaac he considered it his patriotic duty to help struggling businessmen build industries in the economically strapped provinces. My father told Mr. Isaac not to worry because he earned enough from his salary at the bank, his private law practice on the side, and from the farms which he inherited from my grandfather
My father was highly educated, an achiever, and was proud of his lineage. He came in number nine in the list of top ten topnotchers for the Philippine bar exams three years after his schoolmate at the state university, Ferdinand Marcos, topped it on the way to ignominy or glory in Philippine history. They ended up locking horns many years later due to the tendency of the Marcos couple to treat PNB like a personal treasure trove to divert funds to their many public works projects which budget funding sometimes got stalled. My father tended to be true to his calling as a lawyer and wanted all disbursements from the bank to have legal basis according to its charter.
There was a time when a bank client whom my Dad helped made the mistake of seeking out our residence in Bel-Air to deliver a briefcase full of cash to ensure continued favored treatment when applying for loans. It happened the stock of rice from my father’s farm in Laguna which was transported to Manila to be sold in the local market had to be stored temporarily in our guest room on the first floor because the warehouse in Paranaque, 15 miles away was cut off by flood. My father grew red in the face when he opened the attaché case and found the wads of currency. He quietly led the surprised guest to the room where the rice was stored and opened the door to reveal wall to wall sacks of rice piled from floor to ceiling. In a calm measured tone he addressed the wide eyed merchant, “Why do you give me this; is it because you think I’m poor? Look at the rice I keep in my home for my personal consumption!”
My father developed a close friendship with Mr. Isaac because they both loved food. Every time Mr. Isaac came down to Manila to follow up his affairs the two of them would continue their gastronomic quest by trying out a new restaurant. My father was a great cook having learned the ropes from his mother, Inday Deveza Leveriza, who authored a cookbook and run the first cooking school in San Pablo City, Laguna, where my Dad grew up. As a token of that bonding with Mr. Isaac and to cement the family friendship, my father accepted one kind of gift that Mr. Isaac carried all the way on the plane from Bicol. Mr. Isaac’s periodical visits came with a basket full of rare giant crabs with gigantic claws that cooked to a luscious red when steamed. Now who can hate a Jew after such a sumptuous repast?
Below is the image at: www.panix.com/~clay/cookbook/bin/thai.cgi
My stint in Manhattan, New York City was made most memorable by an immersion as an employee of Isram, Israel American Tours. My boss in the Orient department was Morris Schuster who together with his wife Raya managed the division where they were both substantial stockholders in the subsidiary outfit. I can’t describe the goodness of the Schuster couple in accurate prose so let me just enumerate the unbelievable kindness and accommodation they accorded to me. They visited my small apartment and said hello to my family. The next day in the office they said I needed a living room set more than the two armchairs that I tried to make do. They bequeathed their existing set to me and arranged for me to transport it from their home with the explanation that it was time to order a new one.
They increased my pay to $600 a week which during that time in 1987 covered a lot of necessary expenditures like rent and utilities so that Mona, my wife, can subsist on part time employment and not have to work full time and leave the toddlers with a babysitter or at a preschool for extended periods. They lived on Staten Island in a more upscale district far from the landfill where I resided within smelling distance and to save me the cost and time of the three stage commute by bus, ferry, and train to midtown Manhattan, they offered to pick me up and drop me off in their car as long as I did the driving and the parking in the garage after they got off in front of our office building.
Try as I might to work up some form of hatred to align myself with the anachronistic sentiments of my Mom’s relatives back home who warbled the entire Passion in monotone during Holy Week, it just wouldn’t get off the ground in the face of my close encounter with the finest stuff of humanity in Mr. Isaac and the Schusters. And all this talk about conspiracy which blames a shadowy group called Illuminati in cahoots with a cabal of industrialists called the Bilderbeg Club, and the pentagram in the logo of the Masons in whose temples’ secret chambers they plot their evil designs; there is so much preponderance of loose talk but not one iota of concrete evidence.
They cooked the swine flu in their secret labs and let it loose on humanity to decimate the population. They are bent on provoking a nuclear war by pressing North Korea and Iran to fall off the brink and thus draw Russia into the conflagration for the same purpose to cut down the burgeoning population which is trying the earth’s resources. They instigated the financial crisis to weaken America so that a one world government could be ushered in as the crutch for survival. They want to make the dollar a basket case so that they can float their own Amero currency and control the whole world’s economy under a solitary structure.
I have yet to meet this modern age monsters yet. The last one I had the pleasure and honor of having as a friend although I’ve not chatted with him personally was a character who passes himself off as Sir Evelyn Rothschild. He accepted my invitation to add him as a friend on Facebook. Should I have added him as a fiend for all the dastardly plots attributed to him, his group, and his family in history? He looks like a nice gentleman like Mr. Isaac and Mr. Morris Schuster. In this regard, let me close this telling with a prayer to the Abba Krishna to enlighten them with love.
O Most Holy Almighty God the Father in heaven, the Abba Krishna
I love you
Please bless Sir Evelyn Rothschild and his family, and all those alleged to be members of the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Club, and all the Masons with love and enlightenment
Please bless the world to be peaceful, prosperous and a bright and happy place for all races especially for my granddaughter, Sophie Lina, to grow up into and live in
O Most Holy Almighty God the Father in heaven, the Abba Krishna
I love you
Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Abba Krishna
