THE PARADE
The boardwalk which the Center faces had been used for some time by bicyclists, though a local (unenforced) ordinance prohibits wheeled traffic. More recently, roller skating enthusiasts have joined the stream of bicyclists, making the boardwalk as heavily trafficked and dangerous as a major street. Several collisions have occurred; old people have been struck down and injured. All of them were growing frightened and angry, but no one had succeeded in seeing to it that the law against wheeled traffic was enforced. Old and young competed fiercely for space, dramatically enacting their opposing concerns in regular shouting matches:
"This isn't an old people's home, you know!"
"I worked hard all my life. I'm a citizen. I got to have a place to put down my foot also."
Thus the stage was set for the precipitating event that lead to a crisis. A bicyclist struck Anna Gerber, aged 86, as she left the Center one Sunday morning. The youth who hit her was reported to have said in defense of himself, "I didn't see her." His statement outraged the old people, for Anna evidently had been directly in front of him. Clearly, it seemed a case of "death by invisibility." When Anna died as a result of her injuries, the Center members organized a protest march. The event was carefully staged and described in advance to the media, which appeared to cover it. An empty, unmarked "coffin" made from a paper carton painted black was in the middle of the procession. Members carried placards reading "S.O.S. = Save Our Seniors," "Let Our People Stay," and "Life Not Death in Venice." Two blind men led the procession, and people with walkers and canes placed themselves prominently alongside the coffin. The members dressed in particularly bright, nice clothing, "so as not to look poor or pathetic," said one member.
Roller skaters, bicycle riders, and the concessionaires who rented skates and bikes all heckled the elders, who spoke up sharply to be sure that the television cameras and microphones caught the moral outrage they articulated: "See this sign, 'Let Our People Stay'? That goes back to the Bible, you know. We were driven out from Europe already. We don't want to be driven out from here." The group proceeded several hundred yards down the boardwalk, to the small orthodox synagogue that recently had been acquired by a group of young people. The elders did not regularly visit the synagogue because most were not observant and many objected to .the orthodox practice of separating women and men during prayer, regarding it as "too old_fashioned, the kind of thing we got away from when we left the Old Country." Now everyone crowded into the little shul. Men and women were seated together, Jew and non_Jew, young and old, members and media people, as many of those who had joined the parade as could 6t inside. It was a splendid moment of communitas, a profound and moving celebration of unity, as the prayers were said to "bind up the name of Anna with the ancestors."
The ceremonies did not end there, however. The members returned to the Center for an afternoon of dancing to celebrate the birthday of Frances Stein, aged 100, a woman of singular strength, a symbol of successful longevity, always in good spirits, clear_headed, unencumbered by cane, hearing aid, or illness. The continuity of life was acknowledged as vividly as the presence of death had been earlier in the day. "It's a good way to finish such a day," people agreed, clearly aware of the symbolic propriety of juxtaposing a funeral and a birthday to assert their continuing vitality and power despite injury and loss. The ceremony had been an enactment of their historical vision and their rejection of the assigned position of helpless victim. It was a profoundly reflexive occasion, the kind that, as the opening epigraph by Dilthey notes, gives human experience its "second life." (p. 269-70)