LACONIA — When Marsha Ostroff, a local attorney and past president at Temple B'Nai Israel in Laconia, was a first-grader in Richmond, Va., a student punched her for being a "Christ-killer." In seventh grade, a girl in her science lab group said it was "too bad Hitler didn't kill all the Jews."
Members of Temple B’Nai Israel, now in their 60s and 70s, also recall not being invited to birthday parties because of their faith; a fourth-grade classmate who didn’t like the word “rabbit” because it sounded too much like “rabbi"; a college freshman who was surprised to learn her Jewish roommate didn’t have horns under her hair; a fire that burned down a local business being referred to as “Jewish lightning.”
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