Nine times out of ten, people consider a nice little Jewish boy the kid who grows up and sits behind a desk preparing your taxes. I've certainly broken that stereotype in many ways.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The funny thing is that I write and I act a lot about being Jewish, but I don't really think about it as a regular person.
I really don't even think of myself as being Jewish except when I'm in Germany.
As an adult, I've always found the stereotype that Jews are liberal a curious one; my parents' circle was predominantly conservative, not just on Israel but on most political issues. Most of all, they were intensely (and this is a word I remember repeating in my own angry adolescent dialogues with myself) tribal.
I remember as a kid being asked if I was Jewish or Irish. I said, like the glib little 15-year-old I was, 'You can be both.' Feeling very pleased with myself. Before they smacked me.
I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.
I grew up in the classic American-Jewish suburbia, which has a whole different sense of what it means to be Jewish than anywhere else in the world.
I think the thing that I most appreciate now is that stereotypes involving Jewish identity activate fears of persecution that exist in the present day.
I'm the little half-black, half-Jewish girl who was odd and awkward. I try to be myself.
I represent an emerging group of leaders within the Jewish community who are conservatives; not just fiscal conservatives, but social conservatives as well.
My children have no prejudices at all. My own brother-in-law is Jewish!