I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Jews have never, ever, ever wished to be separate, unless they were forced to be.
I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.
I was one of two Jewish kids in my school. We were probably one of two Jewish families in our town.
The whole upbringing was interesting because we grew up Orthodox Jews all the way until we were teenagers.
I first came to Jewish-Catholic relations in 1963, while studying for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
In the modern era, Jewish sovereignty over the land of our ancestors is a relatively short phenomenon. From the time of the successful Maccabean revolt to the Roman annexation in 63 BC constitutes about 100 years of Jewish rule. Combined with Israel's independence in 1948, this is about 160 years of effective sovereignty.
We are a mixed marriage, so our kids were raised with a little less Judaism than I was raised with.
I was raised Jewish and bar mitzvahed.
When I was little, I went to a Jewish community day school for most of elementary school.
I didn't know I was Jewish until I encountered anti-Semitism at the age of 10, when my best friend told me I couldn't come to their house because I was a Jew.