My Dad & The Town That Never Saw A Jew
(Only 350 Miles from where a School Board banned a book about the Holocaust this year)
The little town of Whitewell, Tennessee never saw a Jew.
A Grade 8 class there, stunned to learn of the Holocaust, set up a world-wide campaign to collect
6,000,000 paperclips to understand.
( Dutch people wore paperclips on their lapels as a sign of resistance).
The class and the school grew in tolerance, love and connection.
My Dad was part of a Jewish Motorcycle Group – ‘Yids On Wheels’, or YOWIE’s, as they called them-
selves – that created a motorcycle ride to Whitwell.
As the motorcycles drove towards the town, more and more older Jewish motorcyclists joined the ride.
My Dad and his group raised $60,000 to donate to that school in Whitwell for future programming to
teach love, to teach kindness, to teach tolerance.
My father described the scene:
A long line of Jewish men in their sixties and seventies on motorcycles.
The road into town lined with all the non-Jewish residents clapping, cheering them on.
The strong Jewish men in their 60’s and 70’s, with tears streaming down their faces, riding into the wind, and into town.
The main school auditorium set up for the reception.
Down one side of the reception room were long tables filled with Kosher Corned Beef imported from somewhere, for the
Jewish riders.
Down the other side of the auditorium were tables lined with Pork ‘n Beans, for the townsfolk.
The entire town showed up.
A town where there had never been a Jewish person, came together to receive a long line of Jewish men, on motorcycles,
from across North America –
– coming to present them with a cheque for $60,000, to be used for more teaching and discovery and connections to all
humanity.
Proud to be the son of the Dad who was part of that lineup.
Proud that Whitwell grew in its development, standing to receive such a group.
Rabbi Mark Biller