At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetents, so I felt alienated from the Jewish part of my past.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews.
Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.
I find it very hard to write about Jewish history.
I'm Jewish. Went to a Jewish school.
I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on.
I was one of two Jewish kids in my school. We were probably one of two Jewish families in our town.
History provides an antidote to cynicism about the past.
I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.
Jewish history has been in my cultural DNA since I was a child growing up in post-war London. In the midst of that dark, gray, lamenting monochromatic world of the '50s, I had a sense that both Jewish and English history were full of color and light and animation.
I did go to cheder and was a bar mitzvah. We were members of an Orthodox synagogue, although we were not religious. My grandfather was Polish. He came to Ireland in the '30s.