To Be a Jew or Not to Be
TO BE A JEW OR NOT TO BE BY DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS It is not all in the nose. “Your father is a Jew! A Jew, I say! Just look at his nose!” screeched my born-again stepmother, from above her craggy Mongolian beak when I returned to Kansas for a brief visit - I instinctively rubbed my own smallish and cute nose at her proclamation. My father had been rather quiet about race and religion throughout my childhood. After my stepmother’s astounding revelation – she made me sit down on the couch to hear it – he laughed and confessed that he was indeed of Hebrew descent. He claimed Jeremiah as his distant ancestor, and said he was sure the true Messiah would come when the Temple was rebuilt. “Just remember this, if you get into trouble,” he said to me in a conspiratorial tone, “you have a right to become a citizen of Israel.” And then this laconic epilogue: “Remember the seed that fell on rocky ground.” I had not the slightest idea of what he was talking about at the time – since then...