I never wanted to be Jewish. Let me backtrack: I never understood why I was Jewish, or what Judaism was for that matter. But I can recall Passover seders like the back of my hand. They were always held at my grandparent's house at the top. I have fond memories of that home–sweet and bitter like the items on the seder plate. I recall broken swings and dirty pools. I was never allowed to sit at the main table, for I was too young and too small and too jumpy and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t allowed to eat from the fine china because my family knew I was going to break it with my sticky fingers. I drank the grape juice like it was fine and pretended to be drunk. I recall lots of monotonous readings and lots, lots of singing. I recall crisp five dollars bills hidden under matzah. I was always the wicked child and I resented my cousin for many years. He was the wise one but he dropped out of college and became a fisherman. My grandmother made the matzah ball soup and got drunk off of peach schnapps. There was an understanding of why we were doing all of this but I was too young and naive to listen to my grandfather’s words.

My mother was raised in a Jewish household and these seders were a way of clinging to her roots. We don’t practice Judaism and the last time we went to Passover I was too hungover to remember. I thought Bat mitzvahs were about free sweatshirts and socks and Hebrew school was for the kids who called me ugly in elementary school. I refused to say I was Jewish because I was ashamed. I told my parents I was atheist when in reality I was too scared to admit that I had been brought up as Jewish but had no idea what it really was.

I’m now a two-minute walk from one of the biggest Yiddish book centers in the country. I am in college and it is only now that I am beginning to embrace my roots. My grandfather is full Ashkenazi Jew and I have many questions to ask him. I want to understand the bitterness and exile and oppression and tradition and I am not scared anymore.