Somewhere between the Chopped Liver and the Bagel, I'm a Jew

I'm sure for most jewish people their identity was formed at conception.  Well I only got half of that part, my father's part which for most jewish traditions doesn't make me jewish.  The way it works in Judiasm is you always know who the mother is, so if she's jewish her children are too.

So what was I to do...?  My last name shouts jewishness so much so that I have found it an asset at times.  I got jobs, girlfriends and overall heighten social status from my last name.  But then again, what's in a name.  Where I really found my jewish identity was in the delicatessens of LA, NYC and Washington DC.

Food defines so much about a culture and a people.  It can be an emissary.  It can be entertainment.  And it can be sustanence and comfort.  For me deli was the world of jewish people---their customs, their rituals and their very jewishness.

Every time I have gone for deli and ordered something, I feel a tug back to my great grand parents who came from Russia and Austria and who didn't speak English. They spoke Yiddish, they lived on the Lower East Side and they worked hard, really hard.

So now  I sometimes order the chopped liver on a bagel (against doctor's orders) and remember how my great grand mother made it all herself.

Somewhere between that bagel and the chopped liver, I feel my ancestral genetic code.  And I'm jewish too.