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It all started in second grade. I was seven years old.

I loved my second grade teacher. (Actually, she was a third grade teacher; I placed high in English so they bumped me up.) She was a kind woman with a pretty smile. I liked the way she explained math problems.

She gave us excellent stories to read, sent us on treasure hunts and used any excuse to give us stickers.

I was a huge fan of her. 

Every month, we had a new theme for our name tags on our desks. Pumpkins for October. Turkeys for November. It was great.

And then December 1st came along and I found, ‘Suzanne,’ written on a Christmas tree.

I called her over.

“I’m Jewish,” I told her, pointing to my desk. “I don’t want a Christmas tree name tag.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised I’d brought it up. “I thought it could be a Chanukah bush for you.”

Cue blank stare on my part.

“Mommy,” I asked at home, “what’s a Chanukah bush?”

“It’s what dumb people call Christmas trees when they’re talking to Jews,” she said without missing a beat. “They want to push their celebration on people because they feel sad for us.”

What?

“Why do they feel sad for us?” Being Jewish was awesome. It was one of my favorite things about myself.

“Because they don’t understand what it’s like to be Jewish, so they think it’s not enough. They want to share their own traditions, but we don’t need them.” 

My mother is a queen of candid opinions.

“Christians think everyone’s better off with Christmas, so they think we’d enjoy a Chanukah bush. They don’t understand they’re insulting us and they go crazy if you disagree. It’s not worth the fuss.”

It still didn’t feel right. I wanted to make a fuss.

Taken from a charitable view, it was just a piece of paper taped to my desk. 

Then again, Christians borrowed the Christmas tree from pagans in the name of absorbing them. The tree itself is an icon of assimilation.

I was miserable at the thought that my wonderful teacher was forcing a Chanukah bush on me.

I wanted to be a good Jew and reject it.

“Can’t I have a snowman?” I asked her the next day.

“We’re just going to keep the trees,” she said, “and next month you can get a different one.”

I stared at it all day, troubled by the fact she didn’t care I was Jewish, that I wasn’t comfortable being lumped into the Christmas celebration.

It was just a name tag, but it was more. I already knew I was different. I loved being different.

But that December, I learned that harmony amongst all American ethnic groups worked only so long as everyone agreed that the Christian tradition was the one we were going to follow.

I felt erased.

My teacher expected me to deal with a symbolic representation of my minority status on my desk for a month, where I could be reminded daily that my culture was not important enough to matter to anyone else.

It didn’t last a month.

The third morning, I grabbed the side of my name tag and ripped it, thinking dark thoughts.

I pretended it was an accident (which fooled zero people), threw it in the garbage, and went without a name tag until January 1st.

I adapted over the years. I learned how to be a proud Jew in America.

Life had always been this way, it seemed.

Until I stood on Israeli soil, I never comprehended the disconnect I carried inside my soul over not living on my people’s land, surrounded and supported by my own culture on all sides.

I hadn’t known what I was missing.

Then again, a part of me had known since I was in second grade that something wasn’t right.

Though I was an American in a foreign land, I did not feel like a foreigner.

All my life, I’d been gatecrashing the majority culture with my peculiar Jewishness.

For the first time, I felt like I truly belonged to a people and a nation.

Nine years later, I’ve finally started the paperwork to live permanently in my homeland. 

I know how lucky I’ve been to be born a United States citizen. Why would I want to trade an easier life for a wildly different culture, an area riddled with terrorism, where a dozen political parties are represented in the Knesset and double that number fight to be heard without parliamentarian representation? Israel is a water-starved country that might be called unaccommodating at best.

In the midst of all this strife is a harmony so different from the kind my teacher tried to maintain. 

Just as the ancient rabbis bickered and clashed over their Torah commentary, Jews are taught to question and examine and disagree. We have it down to an art. We are problem solvers. 

We didn’t take an easy route across history; we are survivors against enormous odds.

Jews throughout the ages maintained their culture by standing up for it. 

I am not interested in an easy life when Israel is waiting across the ocean for people to stand up for it, to help it grow and to safeguard its future.

Call it a biological imperative to adhere to my tribe.

Thanks to my family and friends and rabbis, I know where I’m meant to be and I know my culture is worth protecting.

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