The Day Leonard Nimoy Almost Killed a Man

By Roger Elwood  

As a 5 year old Leonard Nimoy lived in Boston in a tenement neighborhood. He became embarrassed when his parents spoke Russian in public. "It was excruciating beyond words," he says.

On a different occasion he remembered the words his mother said to him. A car had splashed dirt and water all over them and the people in the car had not apologized but laughed. It had been a brand-new dress. "Only a dress," his mother had said back home. "Please, don't let that make you hate. It is not worth hate. Nothing is."

 In school Leonard was taunted by his class mates. One day his books were stolen and the family had very little money to buy new books. And again these would have been stolen. He found out that it was the boy who had seemed to be one of the few who liked him. A struggle began and Leonard kept the upper hand. "He's going to kill him," someone shouted.

Sandy Nimoy Had said about anti-Semitism: "It's there. You can't avoid it. You've got to live with it or let it destroy you."

"It is one thing I value most in life: My privacy," Leonard says. "Our privacy is all-important."

"Consideration is terribly important to me," Leonard admits. "People who are inconsiderate, in the sense that they impose on a person's privacy against his wishes, or take advantage of a person's time and energies for selfish purposes, well, these people are irritating. But I have learned to tolerate them for they will always be present as long as human nature is the way it is."