XX MEWS

"I have a good friend who's a rabbi
in Michigan, and there's a big problem
in his congregation that has to do with
people in mixed marriages wanting to
send their children to Hebrew school
on Sunday.
"Many members don't want to have
those children in classes if they also
receive Christian instruction because
they feel their presence will confuse the
other children. He feels that these half-
Jewish children will be lost to Judaism
if they don't get religious instruction."
Jacoby recently returned to her
hometown, where she still has family
and friends, to do a reading. She's
already working on her next book, a his-
tory of anti-religious dissent in America.
"A lot of the people at the bookstore
[in Okemos] knew my family both
socially and in business, and they've
known my father was Jewish because
my mother told people about my writ-
ing," says Jacoby, who soon will be
back in Michigan for a program
planned by Hadassah. "Many who are
my parents' age expressed a lot of sor-
row that my father had thought their
attitude
toward him
would have
been any dif-
ferent [had
they known]."
Even before
uncovering
the truth
about her
family, Jacoby
says she was
always inter-
ested in Jews
"Half-Jew" is a work
despite living
of personal memory
in an area
and social history
where there
that excavatesour
f ic
were few Jews. generations of lies
She believes
and secrets in an
part of this
accomplished but deeply
comes from
insecure New York
her father's
German Jewish family.
interests and
concerns, such as watching clips from
the Eichmann trial night after night as
he was concealing his origins.
"I have a suspicion that people who
suddenly discover their origins and
return to the faith of their ancestors are
looking for a more easily defined place
in the world, and I think that the
implications of concealment and mixed
marriages are taken too lightly by
Americans," she says. "It all does
change people's ideas of who they are,
and it has to be dealt with very
thoughtfully because of the impact it's
going to have on [the next generation
of] children."

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