I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
All the Jewish tradition I had came from my grandmother, who grew up in Palestine and eloped with my grandfather and went to New York. She lived very close to us until she died when I was around 20. She sang a lot of songs, led the Passover seders. It was a very rich part of my life, and my grandmother was a big part of my life.
I just went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah. No crazy weird Jewish cult.
I have very distinct memories about growing up as part of what was then a very small Jewish community in Buffalo Grove, IL.
My dad was Jewish. My mom is not. So I was not raised anything.
I noticed that people were craving a way of reinterpreting tradition and of being Jewish without joining a synagogue.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash.
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.
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 was raised Jewish and bar mitzvahed.
I'm Jewish and my wife isn't so right now we're literally decorating a Christmas tree with Jewish stars draped around it.