Robert Mnookin - The Jewish American Paradox: The Chosen People and Modern Choices

WHEN I WAS thirty-six I was forced to confront my own ambivalence about being Jewish.

Recently tenured as a professor at Berkeley Law School, I was spending a sabbatical semester in Oxford, England, with my family. My wife, Dale, and I had enrolled our two daughtersJennifer, then eleven, and Allison, eightin English schools.

Over dinner one night at the start of the school year, Jennifer told us about her new class, Religious Education, taught by Miss Kay, the formidable headmistress at Oxford High School for Girls.

Miss Kay asked, Who here is Anglican? Jennifer reported. Almost everyone raised her hand. Then Miss Kay asked, Do we have any Presbyterians? A few more kids raised their hands. Catholics? A couple of kids raised their hands. Miss Kay had even asked about Mormons, as Jennifer recalled, but there were none. Then she asked, Is there anyone here not of the Christian faith?

I asked Jennifer what happened next.

Well, I raised my hand. And Miss Kay gave me a funny look and asked, And what are you, my dear? I told her, Im Jewish. Miss Kay paused for a second and said, Oh, how interesting. Then she asked whether my parents would object if, as part of this course, we read parts of the New Testament as well as the Old Testament. I told her you would not object.

Dale and I told Jennifer that she had responded quite appropriately. How did all of this make you feel? I asked.

She looked at us and asked, When are we actually going to become Jewish?

Dale and I were a little stunned. I responded, slightly defensively, Your mother and I have always thought of ourselves as Jewish. We are not really religious, but we are Jewish. Left unsaid, but implicit, was the idea I had grown up with: being Jewish was not something you needed to become; you just were, whether you liked it or not. By birth Dale and I were Jews. Therefore, so was Jennifer. Descent alone was enough.

One thesis of this book is that for my grandchildren this will no longer be true.

JENNIFER WAS NOT SATISFIED when I told her that Dale and I had always thought of ourselves as Jewish. She shot back, You know what I mean!

Im not sure I do, I responded.

I want to have a bat mitzvah, she said.

Dale and I looked at each other, baffled. Where had this idea come from? Not from us. Neither Dale nor I had ever been bar or bat mitzvahed. We had grown up in the Midwest in the 1950s in highly assimilated families. Our parents and grandparents were longtime members of Reform Jewish congregations, which at the time did not even celebrate bar or bat mitzvahs. No Hebrew school for us. Instead, like our Protestant friends, we had been sent to Sunday school at our temple until tenth grade, when we were confirmed. Twice a year our parents took us to services on the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We received presents for both Hanukah and Christmas, the latter celebrated as a secular holiday with gifts under a Christmas tree.