"I Can Tell You're Jewish Because You Have Red, Frizzy Hair"

It left 10-year-old me feeling like a chuck loin at the butcher.

When I was in the fifth grade, my classmate, Mary Ellen DeLuca, said to me, “I can tell you’re Jewish because you have red, frizzy hair.”

On one level her words were innocuous, merely an observation. But they stripped me bare — left me feeling like a chuck loin at the butcher.

Cut to the present 57 years later.

In my Louise Hay mirror work today I said, “Jewish is beautiful. Frizzy hair is beautiful. Robert, you are beautiful.” And I’ll be saying it intermittently all day.

Most of my spiritual work has been focused on I am not my mind, my thoughts, my emotions, my body. I don’t know where mirror work fits in. But never underestimate Louise Hay.

I met her when she appeared at a Unity Church in San Francisco in the mid-90’s. After the service, she circulated the room. As with everyone else, Louise took my hand and brought it to her chest above her breasts. I don’t remember what we talked about but she held me against her heart the whole time. Thirty years later, I remember the loving feel of her presence just as I still remember that painful day in the fifth grade. “Jewish is beautiful. Frizzy hair is beautiful. Robert, you are beautiful.”