Hide your Jewish star, my homeroom teacher whispered to me on the first day of 9th grade. What?!? Dont let them see! she reached for the silver star. Im Jewish too!, she whispered, in an accept thick with the shtetl. It is not safe! Two feelings swam through me. 1. Chill, this is LA. They play the Hanukkah Song on the radio, and half the school is MIA during the High Holydays. 2. OMG, what a life she must have had to make her afraid, even now, even years after moving to America. But that was the beginning of a journey for me - a journey where I became That Kind of Jew (hi Rachel Kann :) ) Id wear a chai (in gold) or a magen david (in silver) depending on my eye makeup. I had a Israel Defense Forces T-shirt (olive) and a Coca-Cola in Hebrew T-shirt (red) ... And even now, one of the things im looking forward to when I step off that plane at LAX in (OMFG) less than a week, is rocking the emmmms instead of uhs and talking with my hands a lot and telling people, I am an Israeli. In other words, EMMM.... Im looking forward to being an Israeli abroad. Maybe the UK is different - and the attacks throughout Europe certainly speak to that... but still, it scares and saddens me that Israelis are afraid (or ashamed) to stand up and be counted. Moshe has left the ghetto, ladies and gentlemen. We dont need to be afraid. #AmYisraelChai
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 16:05:40 +0000
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