My
parents had passed on to me the feeling that we were authentic
Americans. The only time that I felt an outsider was when
I applied to Harvard and went to this old WASP-wealth
enclave in Pasadena for an interview. Here I was, this radical
kid, very obviously Jewish. . . We were just two other worlds.
On the one hand, I had my fantasies of having blond hair
and blue eyes, of being six feet tall and being able to
throw a football with a perfect spiral. I was very pulled
to this Disneyland American model. But on the other hand
I wasn't, and part of my rebellion, my self-affirmation,
was to be very powerfully Jewish.
I grew up believing in both the American dream and the Jewish
renewal dream. I never knew of anything but an open world
of possibility, both as an American and as a Jew. By my
time, overcoming was no longer an issue. This country was
already open for us to make it and be successful.
The message I incorporated was that Judaism has an incredible
contribution to make to America. Our role is to improve
this world. If our Jewishness is only internal, we will
have no impact on the rest of the world. If we give up our
Jewishness, we become part of the majority, complacent.
We are playing with that tension all the time.
