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The Talk

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Clarissa

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I followed a reader’s advice and gave Klara a talk about the history of the Jewish people. She’s a happy child, so it had no effect on her but it did have an effect on me. Forty years passed since I received the same talk. There’s no USSR any more, I’m on a different continent, the world has changed. But kids with Jewish ancestry still have to be warned about anti-Semitism and encouraged to “pass”.

Klara asked why I was doing the opposite of passing having decked myself out in Jewish symbolics. And like my father four decades previously, I said that this is my burden to bear and she’ll decide if she wants to pick it up in adulthood.

5 responses to “The Talk”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Does it make sense to encourage a Jewish child in the USA to pass as not Jewish? I think that errs on the side of telling your kid the world is a much worse place than it is.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I saw a Palestinian flag a block from her school. I can’t in good conscience let her out decked in Jewish symbolics.

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        That makes sense and I would do the same.

        I suppose if you don’t have a Jewish last name, don’t look Jewish, are not a religious believer, the only way to not pass is to deck yourself out in Jewish symbolism.

        I was thinking of passing in a more traditional sense, like keeping your ancestry secret, not to mention changing your last name, etc.

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Hard not to pass as Jewish when one’s middle name and last name are both Jewish (though with the last name being pretty obscure, so not everyone would get the Jewish connection without searching through Yad Vashem’s Holocaust victims database). I’m talking about myself here, FWIW. Interestingly enough, though, some or even many Israeli right-wingers consider people such as myself to be insufficiently Jewish because I only have one Jewish (paternal) grandfather (and three gentile grandparents, of course). Meanwhile, the person with a Jewish maternal grandmother is considered automatically Jewish even if they don’t have a Jewish name, don’t look Jewish, don’t identify as Jewish, and don’t even have either of their parents identify as Jewish either. Just how exactly is that anywhere near remotely fair in the 21st century?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      My grandfather had to prove he was Jewish when he was emigrating to Israel. “My name is Shmuel Blekhman!” he said at the consulate. “Look at my nose. Look at my passport. Would anybody willingly acknowledge himself as a Jew in the USSR if he didn’t have to?” His mother was very Jewish but born in 1897, so records were hard to find.

      I’m Jewish on my father’s side only and so “don’t really count.”

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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