Judith Serin
Telling People You’re Jewish
A boy at school asks if you are Jewish. You sense this is not a neutral question. You tell your mother about it. “You never have to answer that;” she responds, “you don’t have to tell anyone you’re Jewish, if you don’t want to.”
When you’re thirteen, a boy who’s mad at you tells you that your sister doesn’t look Jewish but you do. He lives in the village your family goes to for summer vacation. You return after many years away and see he now runs his father’s general store. You feel awkward every time you go in. You say hello but never remind him that you used to play together.
In college a friend is an assistant to a famous artist. She attends an event and the menu is Jewish food. The rich ladies make comments: “Oh the Jews, the merchants of the world.” Your friend’s name is not recognizably Jewish (nor is yours), and she doesn’t say anything.
After you move to the West Coast, you do tell people you’re Jewish when they talk about Jews in front of you. An elderly woman insists all Jews are rich and includes the Rockefeller in their number. “I’m not rich,” you tell her, frightened but trying to sound calm. Another time you don’t answer. You’re in your twenties, in a bad mood; a young man comes up to you in the street and announces, “Jesus loves you.” “Well, I don’t love him,” you snap. “Are you Jewish?” he yells after you.
Judith Serin’s collection of poetry, Hiding in the World, was published by Diane di Prima’s Eidolon Editions, and her Days Without (Sky): A Poem Tarot, seventy-eight short prose poems in the form of a tarot deck with illustration and book art design by Nikki Thompson, was published by Deconstructed Artichoke Press.