Happy New Year

this is a shofar, people
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

PeaceBang would like to wish all her Jewish friends and family Shana Tovah, Happy New Year.

To all the people who have assumed she was Jewish because she has a Jewish last name and a Jew"ish" (nominally Jewish) father, and who had no idea that she was raised Unitarian and has hardly ever stepped foot in a synagogue except for Erik Mallon's bar mitzvah in 1977 and who are totally confused to find out that she is now a Christian...

PeaceBang would like to thank you for the compliment.

Jewish identity is a complicated thing. Plenty of the world, if they wanted to round up all the Jews and do away with us once and for all (god forbid), would certainly include me in that number. I know anti-Semitism firsthand and have not forgotten it. Many Jews, however, would exclude me from claiming the identity for the sake of my shiksa mother and my baptism in 1999. Who can blame them? Especially in the latter case!! (Someone once asked me if I was a Jew for Jesus. I had to honestly reply, "Well... yes, but not one of those Jews for Jesus!")

Am I a Jew? As my friend Rabbi Klein once said, "If you're a Jew, that's between you and G-d."

And so I will leave it in God's hands.