On being Jewish

   As a child, I remember going to my Grandpa Morris and Grandma Jean's house for Jewish holidays, and giggling when my grandfather would recite the Hebrew prayers in his singing style, which I suppose was the way it was supposed to have been done. Although my cousins and I just thought that it sounded kind of 'funny', I believe that I was also embarrassed by it, and of being Jewish as well.
   In high school and college, I recall how I would sometimes cringe when attendance was called in class, self-conscious of how Jewish my name sounded. When I look back at it now, I was probably more ashamed of myself than my name, but I am both surprised and saddened that I should have felt that way about it, especially because a name is not something that a child or young man has any choice over.
   I was never taught to believe that I had very much choice, anyway.
   Although many of my friends were Jewish when I was a kid, as I got older, I felt increasingly 'different' from others, ethnically speaking. I know that many people would say that being Jewish is a religious rather than ethnic issue, but I felt ethnic in a way that made me uncomfortable and ashamed. It's not that I believed that being 'ethnic' was bad; it was just that my brand of ethnicity that appeared so.
   It seems that the value that I was never taught that I embodied (or should I say poor judgments that I did learn) has permeated through my beliefs about myself, others, the world we live in, and of course, my sense of Jewishness. It's interesting that I happen to call home a city where multiculturalism is so highly celebrated and valued, at least in name, as it's only in the past few years that I have come to treat my own ethnicity in the same esteem.
   Perhaps being Jewish has become more important because I no longer live in the most Jewish city outside of Israel (New York), or maybe it's just a normal aspect of aging (my Grandpa Morris, mentioned in the first sentence of this post, gave up his socialist ideas for religion as an older man). Maybe it's just that it's been really difficult accepting myself, and I'm beginning to make some inroads in that direction.