It’s Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Chanukah

The Failed American Melting Pot Experiment

Since elementary school, we were taught that America was one big melting pot. All one big happy family, with lots of parts, melting into one unit to create the American ideal.

It sounded so nice until law school when my classmate Mark, a white kid from Marietta, Ohio, asked me with a straight face why Jews had to be different.

“Why can’t you just be like everyone else?”

The not so funny thing is Mark meant it innocently. He genuinely wanted to know why people like me — Jews — couldn’t just be, think and act like the Marks of the world. The majority.

With a puzzled look holding back some frustration, and an uncharacteristic pause, I responded, “and who are we supposed to be like. Who gets to choose what we melt into?”

It’s the same nagging question today. Who’s thing.. who’s ideal.. are we all supposed to become?

Is a Native American supposed to engage the way our hustling bustling society operates and not live off the land anymore? Are Muslim women supposed to throw away their hijabs to fit in and melt away? Are Jews expected to go to work Saturdays and switch their day of rest to Sunday? Or put up Christmas trees to be…