I was one of two Jewish kids in my school. We were probably one of two Jewish families in our town.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was little, I went to a Jewish community day school for most of elementary school.
I'm Jewish. Went to a Jewish school.
I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.
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.
My second novel began after my family moved from New York City to North Carolina, and I watched my son walk into kindergarten at a school in which he was the only Jewish child out of 600 students - and this in the middle of the Bible Belt.
The town I grew up in was at least fifty percent Jewish, so every weekend in the 7th grade, we went to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.
I cried to my mother that I wanted to go to Hebrew school; I wanted Jewish friends. But when my mother took me, the kids there all knew each other, and somehow I was even more of an outcast.
I'm a good girl, and I have a very good Jewish family who brought me up very well.
Both of my parents were first-generation Americans, the children of Jews who left Eastern Europe around the turn of the century.
My dad was Jewish. My mom is not. So I was not raised anything.