Jewish life is gangsta life.

Okay, the title is in absolute no relation to the story. Well, maybe except for the Jewish part. The…Jewishocity, if you will.

Growing up in Ottawa with an Irish family I looked like a troll. Not even in the metaphorical sense. Not in the way where, “troll” is code for something. I mean that I literally looked like something that should have lived under a bridge. Because you see, I am Irish, Italian…but I don’t look the part of the Irishman at all. It’s all Italian all the time. And when you’re a kid and you don’t see your physical features reflected in those around you, you feel like an alien.

The Italian side of the family was long gone and me and my giant nose were left all by our lonesome.

However, around the age of seven I made a remarkable discovery. It wasn’t treasure, it wasn’t a new singing sensation…it was the Jews. People who looked almost identical to myself. People who led with their nose and body hair.

And so naturally…as a seven year old, you think, “Well…this is what I am. A Jew.” This however, didn’t bode well when it came time to discuss the holidays in the first grade.

On a snowy December day, my first grade teacher Mme. Myrick (Merryk? Myricke? I can’t remember. I was seven.) pulls out two holiday themed calendars. One of Santa Claus for those that celebrate Christmas and one of the birth of Jesus for those that celebrate Chanukah. Well, being one of the chosen people I had to make the right choice. I selected the appropriate calendar which I had deemed apropos to my people.

I go to select my calendar. But really it was so much more than a calendar. It was a calling card, a sign, a lifestyle. It was everything I needed it to be and more. Those lame-os and their Santa Claus calendar! The guy doesn’t even exist! Now, Jesus, well, Jesus, now he’s a guy I can get on board with! Turns water to wine and the wine he hasn’t converted from water, he walks on. Now that’s plausible!

So I select my calendar. It’s then that Mme. M (I don’t want to try and spell her name anymore. I shouldn’t have to. I’m Jewish. Haven’t my people been through enough?) looks at me strangely.

“Liam, are you Jewish?”

“Uh…yeah.” (Tsh, duh.)

“You celebrate Chanukah?”

“Of course.” (The fact that I really celebrate Christmas is completely irrelevant.)

“I tell you what,” she said. “Go home tonight and ask your mom if you celebrate Christmas or Chanukah.”

“Done and done.” I figure…I got this.

That night, I’m home from school and my mom walks through the door from work. I greet her in the excitable fashion most seven year olds do when their parents walk through the door. But you can imagine the added gusto that was added to my greeting as a result of my new found way of life. My mother makes her way into the kitchen. Throwing her things on the kitchen table, filing through mail, unwinding from the day. It’s as she does this that I ask her, “Mommy, am I Jewish?” “…No,” she replies. And just like that, my new found sense of identity, gone. As though it never even existed. The promises of porkless life and dradle spinning gone. What am I to do now with this Mediterranean complexion and bushy arms?

And so…it was the next day that I returned to school, broken-hearted and jaded to my first grade teacher. And she then asked me the inevitable.

“So, are you Jewish?

And after a long pause I simply replied, “Yes. Yes I am.”

And for the rest of December I was the fake Jew in the corner counting down the days to Chanukah.

I guess what I’m trying to say is — if there’s a moral to this story — it’s this.

Happy Kwanzaa everybody. Let’s make this the best year ever.

Liam

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