I've Always Known I'm Jewish, but How Am I Jewish?

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Notes

¹A shtetl was a village inhabited entirely by Jews. It was a close-knit, culturally and religiously homogeneous community surrounded by non-Jews who were intensely anti-Semitic.

²The American Heritage Dictionary defines a pogrom as “an organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially one conducted against Jews.”

³Armies that were active in the region between 1914 and 1920 included the Imperial Russian Army, the German Army, the Polish Army, the Ukrainian Army, the Communist Red Army, various counterrevolutionary White Armies, and the Cossack Army. There were also deserters and demobilized soldiers from the various armies who were making their way home as well as bands of brigands taking advantage of the breakdown of authority (Channon & Hudson, 1995; Polish–Soviet War, 2009; Polish–Ukrainian War, 2009; Prior, Wilson, & Keegan, 1999; Russian Civil War, 2009; Ukrainian People's Republic, 2009).

⁴It wasn't until the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s that the Catholic Church decreed that Jews were no longer to be held personally responsible for the Crucifixion.

⁵“Evil eye is a look that is believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck on the person at whom it is directed. The term also refers to the power, superstitiously attributed to certain persons, of inflicting injury or bad luck by such a look” (“Evil Eye,” 2009).

⁶The Jewish culture described in this section is, more specifically, Eastern European Jewish culture, which is one among many Jewish cultures worldwide.

⁷Rereading this, it occurs to me for the first time that my mother married the engineer her father had wanted to become. Interesting.

⁸The death of a family friend in a loft fire, along with 25 other victims, was something I couldn't reconcile with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God.

⁹My son's participation also ended. He later encountered neopaganism and became a Wiccan high priest. But that's another story.

¹⁰More information about Be Present Inc. can be found at www.bepresent.org