I grew up in a strange household religiously. My parents divorced because they couldn’t decide if I would be raised Jewish or Catholic. One would think this is a decision that would have been reached before having a baby (especially when you’ve been married a decade before the baby comes into the picture), but alas, religion opened a hole in their marriage that my parents found impossible to bridge. My father was Jewish, my mother Catholic, and despite living full-time with my mother, I decided I would be Jewish. My mother told me Jews were “people of the Book,” and I liked books. My favorite food, then and now, was also matzo ball soup, and once my mother told me that recipe was also Jewish, well, I was sold. And so, at the wise age of 7, I declared I was Jewish, and almost 25 years later, I still am.
