My Origin Story
I’m not Jewish, not even a little bit. If you asked me any questions about Judaism, I couldn’t tell you, but still, everyone thinks I’m Jewish. It all started in high school, in 11th grade. I had just moved from California to the South and it was a rough time. I was called every horrible name in the book because I talked different and got the tar beat out of me multiple times.
Well, I slowly befriended some of the guys on the football team and my closest friend was the center, we’ll call him Greg. Now, Greg is a super chill guy compared to everyone around him, but he’s still very, very prejudiced and very open about all his opinions. One day I’m driving Greg and a few other football players home from school, and he makes a comment about synagogues.
Without even thinking, I mention that I’ve been to one…and this is where it all started. This prompted one of the other guys to joke that I was a Jew, and trying to be chill (since these were the only friends I had) I went, “Haha, yep, I’m Jewish.” And then that’s when it all went downhill. Greg told everyone on the football team how his new friend from California was a Jew, and they all believed it since most of them thought there were only Jews in California anyways.
The football players spread that to the rest of the school. At this point, I still thought it was a joke and everyone was just jokingly calling me Jewish, so I just kept going with it. Then I became known as “The Jewish kid” and started to actually become popular, since everyone wanted to be friends with the different kid. Plus there was the fact that my dad had money, a lot compared to the poor area where I went to school, so I could afford to buy nice things and people tend to be attracted towards that.
So being Jewish almost became my identity, it became who I was. Eventually, whenever someone would ask my religion, I just automatically told them I was Jewish. Fast forward to the end of high school, and the councilors are walking people through scholarship stuff. My counselor calls me into his office and hands me a slip for a $5,000 Jewish American scholarship.
Now as soon as I read “Jewish American scholarship,” I was going to walk out and throw it out, but he made me sit down and fill it out with him, and then took it from me to submit it. I felt horrible for even doing it, but somewhat relieved when I heard that they only gave it to people who were also ethnically Jewish, so I knew I wouldn’t get it.
Nope, I got it. I received a letter in the mail saying I was chosen as the winner of this $5,000 scholarship. I got accepted to Dartmouth due to the fact I worked my butt off in high school and was the valedictorian, though my competition wasn’t plentiful to say the least. But I never thought I would have been able to afford it, and this scholarship was huge in helping me towards that.
I considered spilling everything then, declining the scholarship, telling everyone at school, telling almost every single form I’ve filled out, saying I’m not actually Jewish. I decided to tell my dad and ask him for advice as he’s always been a guy you can talk to about anything whatsoever. So I tell him everything. I tell him about the joke, then the lie, and now the scholarship.
As soon as I told my father, he looked me in the eyes with the most serious, disappointed face…and then burst into tears laughing. The way he reacted, it must’ve been the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life. He told me he had gotten a letter in the mail asking if I was ethnically Jewish for a scholarship I had entered, and being the person he is, he just saw the chance for college money and went “yep, Jewish” and that was apparently all they need.
So my dad convinced me to keep the money and go to my dream college, and I did. The lie snowballed. As soon as I arrived at university, I was met with some people from the group that gave me this scholarship, some Jewish American organization funded by wealthy Israelis, and they told me/enlisted me into all these Jewish clubs and got me set up in a synagogue.
Finally, they told me they’d set me up with the whole “birthright” thing, where they fly American Jews out to Israel. I was so shocked. I was at my dream school, plus I was being hit with all of this, it was too much. I thought about coming clean a lot of times. But I felt like all the people around me would suddenly feel betrayed and leave me.
I became good friends with a lot of people in these Jewish clubs. I bonded with my teachers a lot better since they believed I was Jewish, I met the most beautiful Jewish girl. I actually met her through her mother when she came up to me in a café and asked if I was Jewish since I was with the local Rabbi. I said yes, and she told me that I’d love her daughter. We went on a date and instantly hit it off.
I also got a free trip to Israel. All the while, I was dealing with severe depression since I felt horrible every second of every day, in addition to the already enormous amounts of stress university puts on you. I came so close, so many times, to just throwing myself off a bridge or a tall building, but I could never bring myself to do it. It kept growing.
I managed to get all the way through 11 years of college to get my doctorate, got a job at a history museum back on the west coast, married that Jewish girl, had a Jewish wedding with her entire family, and we’ve had three little Jewish babies. The museum put me in charge of organizing and creating a huge Holocaust/Jewish American history exhibit even though that’s not my specific field in the slightest.
In a few months, when the current curator retires at the age of 96, I will hopefully be taking his place. He’s been training me for the job, I’ve worked there the longest, and I’ve made sure that I’m darn good at my job. My life has turned out great, but deep down it will always haunt me that my entire life is built on a lie. My kids’ lives, my life, my wife’s life, all came from a joke in a car 20 years ago.
I was never going to tell a soul about this, but today my oldest son told me that he doesn’t think he believes in God, and I told him I agreed. It was the first time in 20 years that I told the truth about my religion, and didn’t lie. My son wants to tell his mom that he doesn’t want to continue being Jewish, and I might use this as my way of getting out as well.