Growing up
Jewish in a wealthy suburb of Detroit in a family that valued education,
individuality, and a liberal lifestyle really wasn’t all that hard. I mean, considering the struggles and plights
of any number of other kids growing up in the Detroit area in the 1990’s, I had
it easy. I had two loving and devoted
parents who moved to Birmingham, Michigan for its exemplary school system and
sacrificed the majority of their combined salaries to put myself and both of my
sisters through school without taking out student loans. I lived in a very modest three-bedroom house
on the “poorer” side (if you consider $130,000 per house on one sixth of an
acre poor) of town. Both of my parents
held advanced postgraduate degrees from prestigious universities and held
steady jobs that allowed our family to live comfortably. (Note that we lived a very modest
middle-class family life in the shadows of one of the wealthiest cities in the
state and nation. I thank God for that
every day.)
Still, even amongst all of the
privilege we grew up with (and our parents pointedly reminded us about on a
daily basis), I remember the challenge that came with growing up Jewish is a
Christian community without any other Jewish friends. At a very young age, I realized that I felt
like a jealous outcast around Christmas time as I watched my friends put up
trees in their homes and always heard winter break referred to as “Christmas
Break.” I felt left out of this “magical”
feeling of the warmth of Christmas that all my friends shared with me, blissfully
unaware that I hadn’t the first clue how to imagine this feeling. I was young, but I knew that somehow, in a
world where I had always found a place to belong, I didn’t.
Luckily, I had a supportive family
who shared my feelings and stood with me to make sense of my first experiences
with purposeful and accidental cultural exclusion. We belted out our Channukah songs with
pride. We took advantage of the eight
day festival and cooked family meals every night. Every evening, the anticipation after dinner
built up towards lighting the menorah and playing driedel, not opening
presents. We brought my Channukah
experience to my school by sharing our traditions and customs with my classmates
and teachers, many of whom had never experienced (much less pronounced)
Channukah before.
Through all of these actions, I
learned to be proud of my differences amongst my peers. Sure, there were difficult times when I would
come home from school crying about feeling left out, when I would change the
television channel, frustrated with the “Christmas” commercials, or when I
would cover my ears and scream in the grocery store because I was so incredibly
sick of listening to Christmas music.
(Only later did I find out that you didn’t have to be Jewish to dislike
Christmas carols!) During these times,
my mom (mostly, sometimes my dad) would make a point to hear me out, appreciate
my frustration, relate to me with her own current feelings or those of hers
when she was growing up, and find ways to point out that although yes, our
family was different, we still had the pride to not only be different, but
coexist with our Christian majority community.
You see, it was never about only taking pride in our own religion: my
parents’ message was always about proudly standing up for our differences while
tolerating, accepting, and helping to celebrate (to the extend we could without
throwing a fit) Christmas festivities.
Pride wasn’t the major lesson: it was tolerance.
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