The final memory I have of the month I spent in Miss Barker's English class at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963 was that of being surprised when one of the high school sophomore women in the class (whose seat was on the side of me in class that the seat of the guy who seemed unusually focused on the "Jew money lender" in Ivanhoe was not on), named Deborah, put her arm around me at the end of the class session, near the end of the semester.
Since I had never exchanged words with her before, during, or after the English class, she wasn't in any of my other classes at Broad Ripple during that semester and I had never ever bumped into her either in the school halls, in the cafeteria during my lunch period, on the way to and from school, or in my neighborhood, I didn't understand on what Deborah's apparent interest in getting to know me was based on, at that time?
Although I didn't feel Deborah was as beautiful as was someone like Ginny, the clarinetist in my band class, I didn't consider Deborah to be a physically unattractive classmate. But since I couldn't recall hearing Deborah say anything in Miss Barker's English class that made me feel that she was as intellectually interesting as the women students who had been my classmates when I had lived in New York City, I felt there really was not any actual basis for me to respond to Deborah's apparent interest in getting to know me better, by attempting to flirt with her, asking for her phone number or asking her if she wanted to go out a date with me. In addition, because I was much more into my newspaper delivery boy job and earning my own money for the first time in January 1963 than into immediately seeking someone to date in Indianapolis outside of school at that time, I was pretty emotionally closed in January 1963 to seeking to get to know Deborah better outside of school.
During the second semester of my sophomore year and the two semesters of my junior year at Broad Ripple, I never bumped into Deborah again inside the high school; since she was not in any of my classes, was not in the high school band and wasn't on the staff of the Riparian school newspaper, for which I wrote an article and briefly did some copy editing during my junior year at Broad Ripple.
But I did bump into Deborah one afternoon outside of school, at the Jewish Community Center pool/gymnasium on Indianapolis's north side during the summer of 1963. And although we said "hello" to each other and exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, by that time she also seemed to realize there was no basis for us getting to know each other and not longer seemed interested in having me ask for her phone number or ask her for a date.
In retrospect, I now have the feeling that the main reason Deborah had seemed interested in getting to know me in January 1963 was that like her, I was of Jewish religious background and that I had a recognizable Jewish last name; although, when I lived in Indianapolis, explaining Deborah's initial interest in me, in that way, wasn't part of my consciousness.
Like most people of Jewish religious background who grew up in the United States after World War II in the 1950's and early 1960's, Deborah likely was just socialized, by her teens, to look for teenage friends of the opposite sex who were also of Jewish religious background (like I had also been socialized to do, prior to entering Broad Ripple High School). The basis for socializing people of Jewish religious background in the USA to avoid developing love relationships with people who weren't of Jewish background may have been the general assumption among their parents that developing such relationships would eventually lead to an increase of marriages between white people of Jewish religious background and white people of Protestant or Catholic religious background in the USA (whom they assumed were still generally anti-Semitic in the ways they viewed people of Jewish background). And that once people of Jewish religious background in the USA began inter-marrying white "Gentiles" in the USA in large numbers, the number of people who identified themselves as "Jewish" in the USA would begin to decline in a major way; and this would make Jews even more of a religious minority group in the 21st-century USA than they were in the mid-20th century and, thus, more vulnerable to being targeted by anti-Semitism in the USA.
Also, the parents of teenagers of Jewish religious background in the 1950's and 1960's also seemed to generally assume, in perhaps an ethnic chauvinist way, that because of their common historical, religious and cultural backgrounds, it was more likely that people of Jewish religious background who formed love relationships with other people of Jewish religious background would find happiness in their love relationships than would people of Jewish religious background who formed love relationships with white Protestants or white Catholics in the USA.
If you were a white teenager of Jewish religious background who had been socialized in this way and grew up in New York City, locating classmates of the opposite sex who also were of Jewish religious background didn't present much of a problem. Because over 2 million people of Jewish religious background lived in New York City in the early 1960's and, in some public schools, over 50 percent of your teenage classmates in many classes might be of Jewish religious background in the early 1960's.
Less than 10,000 people of Jewish religious background, however, lived in Indianapolis in the early 1960's. So the percentage of the population that wasn't either Protestant or Catholic was so small that there were few kosher butchers and few bakeries that sold bagels; and not many classmates in a public high school like Broad Ripple were of Jewish background.
So if, like Deborah likely was, you were a teenager who had been socialized by your parents to primarily look for teenage friends of the opposite sex who were also of Jewish religious background, living in Indianapolis and attending Broad Ripple might present you with a problem in locating classmates of the opposite sex who were of Jewish religious background. In addition, in the early 1960's local country clubs or beach clubs in Indianapolis, like the Riviera club, apparently still didn't then allow people of Jewish religious background to become members; and this possibly increased the degree to which parents of teenagers of Jewish background like Deborah (who apparently grew up in "Naptown") encouraged their teenage children to just socialize with other teenagers of Jewish religious background in Indiana.
Hence, as I've indicated, in retrospect, the primary basis why, unexpectedly, someone like Deborah initially seemed interested in getting to know me in January 1963 was probably only because I was likely one of the few high school guys in any of her classes at that time who had a last name that was identifiable as "Jewish."
