Notes of a Half-Jewish Daughter

By Jessica Pavia

I am in love with Venice. With the laundry hanging outside windows, the surprise squares that open up after crammed alleyways, the roar of boats and sting of salt on your hair, your eyes, your tongue. I am in love with Venice in a way that feels chemical, as if even the smallest strips of my DNA have the city embedded within them, have been programmed to understand it as home.

We’re making a day trip to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, a building of white stone that borders the shore, almost kissing the waves. My brothers trudge through the cobblestone streets, working overtime to delay our arrival. Mom lags behind with them but I can’t seem to wait. My father and I are leading the pack, darting across bridges without turning our heads, leaving the rest of our clan in the dust. When my mother calls my phone for directions, I give half-hearted answers, annoyed by them needing my help. I allow myself to become defiant in the face of a conclusion that I have made: Hudson and Zach, my brothers, are dreading the museum, which means they are dreading me and my interests.

My father and I arrive at the green courtyard punctuated with sculptures. My mother calls again and asks which part of the building we are in. I tell her the ticket line. And yet, they still cannot find us. I stop answering the calls, too busy making myself appear interesting to the handsome college student working behind the counter before disappearing into the art.

Walking through the gallery with my father, I can’t wrap my head around someone having so much art in their collection. I thank Peggy profusely, astonished by the way she saved so many of these pieces from war, from destruction. Even Hudson, who likes to pretend he doesn’t get art, is transfixed by a set of three-dimensional shadow-boxed pieces hanging by the stairs. Zach watches as the slightest wind causes an Alexander Calder mobile to shimmy. And then I stumble upon The Break of Day by Paul Delvaux. I know nothing about the artist, don’t even check the bio next to the artwork, but am immediately struck by the women growing out of trees, or the trees becoming women. A representation either of duality or transformation, depending on who is looking.

When we finish with the exhibits, my father and I walk outside to the water. A few minutes pass as we watch the boats come and go before my mother and brothers join. All together again, we find mutual peace and enjoyment in watching the waves dance on the surface.

~~~

I’m not coming to Venice as an empty vessel, at least not entirely. I know simply that Venice is on the water, that the city is bound to slip under the waves in a near future, that all this artwork and history and beauty will be lost to climate change, to the sea. But I also know that my name is from here, in one way or another.

My sophomore year at Skidmore College, I was in an introductory Shakespeare class when the name Jessica came up during our discussion of The Merchant of Venice. My professor explained that it was the first time such a name had appeared in writing. That, ostensibly, Shakespeare created the name Jessica. He did so because he wanted to write a Jewish character that was Jewish enough but would not offend his Protestant audiences. After my professor’s spiel, he looked to me and asked if my parents knew that when they named me Jessica. I said most likely not, but that it fits: I’m half-Jewish and Italian. An Italian Jew named Jessica. Shakespeare couldn’t have dreamed such a thing.

Skidmore was also the place I first began to question if I even was Jewish enough. And what it meant to be an “ishy” Jew. I grew up in a small, suburban town in upstate New York. A town comprising five churches, with at least three on the main street, and not a single temple or synagogue. I grew up not needing to know the difference between a temple and synagogue, if there even is one. There, in Victor, I was Jewish enough because I was merely Jewish. Because I celebrated something different than Christmas (or, in my case, in addition to) and because sometimes our Passover Seders interfered with the Easter egg hunt.

I thought of myself as being so Jewish, and thus so unique and cool and different from everyone else in a way I desperately craved. Yeah, I was Jewish. Yeah, you can come to me as the Holocaust informant during that one movie we watched in eighth grade and then never discussed again. I wanted their hesitance, their curiosity: staring at me like a zoo exhibit, almost afraid to touch me. It made me feel important, as if I held the truth behind an ancient mystery.

But then I went to Skidmore, populated by Westchester and New York City folks. Folks who had their bar and bat mitzvahs, and who could remember which one was for the boy and which for the girl. People who actually fasted on Yom Kippur and expected our teachers to not schedule tests for that day. Students who went home for Passover Seder instead of just skipping it this year. Peers who had heard of a sukkah and built one in their backyards every year. Friends who took their Birthright trips to Israel and then went again the following summer. Friends whose families have Shabbat wine and dinner, do the whole nine yards every Friday night.

Suddenly, I was barely Jewish. Even calling myself that felt like a lie. And when I did, I’d fear the follow-up questions, all I didn’t know made public. I was the epitome of my name. And it was a feeling I never expected.

My mother’s experience with Judaism has been fraught with familial drama, to say the least. Her father was Jewish by blood but an atheist, her mother born into a very Orthodox family in the city. They ate kosher as far as I know, but it wasn’t anything my mother followed outside of the home. She only went to Hebrew school after her grandfather died and her mother was left with the ever-present Jewish guilt for not following his Orthodox ways, so she decided Mom would attend Hebrew school and have a bat mitzvah.

But Mom hated studying Hebrew. She also hated her bat mitzvah, during which, when reading her memorized Torah passages aloud, she changed all male pronouns in reference to God to “she” or “her,” as protest. When she was done, the rabbi pointed this out to the crowd. He called her a trailblazer, said she could be the first woman president.

Mom also forced my grandmother to find a vegetarian caterer. To this day, my grandmother complains about it. But what Mom remembers most is how all the other parties she went to had cloth napkins and DJs. Hers was in a dark room, the guests all crammed around one long folding table.

In the photo I’ve seen of her from that day, my mother stands in front of a copper menorah wearing a white blouse unbuttoned by three and cinched at the waist by a belt. A maroon dress is fitted underneath, the skirt billowing out. A flower brooch on her left shoulder and the Mary Jane shoes on her feet are the same color. There’s some sort of brown leather bracelet on her wrist, and it seems to have Hebrew characters on it but I cannot make out which. She is slightly slouched, her weight clearly focused and carried on her right hip.

She seems displaced, unrecognizable. But then: the hair. Dark, curly, frizzy, bold.

And I know it is her.

Mom never wanted us to go through all the Holocaust films, all the lectures, all the studying that she did, if we were only going to hate it. So her and my father, who was raised Roman Catholic, decided to celebrate both religions in their own ways, leave it up to us kids to decide where we leaned once we got old enough. All to say, I grew up wanting to attend church just as badly, if not more, than I did temple. At the time I would ask friends to take me with them, would sleep over Saturday to Sunday just for the chance to go.

There was at least one other half-Jew, half-Christian in school, and definitely one full Jew. His name was Rony, and he was adopted into a Jewish family. He was also in the popular group at school—a big name on the football team. I didn’t know he was Jewish until I heard kids talking in the school hallway about his bar mitzvah. And even though we never talked, even though he probably didn’t know I existed, it felt like an ultimate betrayal to not have been invited to one of the only other Jewish kids’ parties. And knowing I would never have one myself, I felt robbed of something important, cultural, archival.

Later, I drive Zach to a bar mitzvah when he’s thirteen. We drive out farther into the farmland that surrounds our town than I think we both expected, and pull into a house glittering with blue and silver. Star of David balloons are hung everywhere and we can see glowing orbs dancing through a window. Zach grabs his card and present, races to the door. I stay, watch the bodies move, beams of pure energy celebrating life and growth. I think about all those Jews in one room, a reality that seemed so distant, so unachievable. But perhaps it was closer than I realized. This newfound awareness leaves me both excited and angry, grateful for community but frustrated it still wasn’t mine.

~

When I come home from Skidmore during my first year, for winter break, I act like a child. I throw baseless judgments at my mother, accuse her of wanting to be Catholic like my Dad. I ask why we aren’t decorating for Hanukkah and when she responds that it’s not the most important Jewish holiday, it only angers me more. Even if it’s not, and even if capitalism wins out when we try to make it our Jewish version of Christmas, it’s the only Jewish holiday most people know in Victor, one of the only Jewish holidays we, as a family, celebrate in full, and I want to make it a big deal.

Mom has always loved Catholic holidays. She loves decorating for Easter—the pastels, the eggs, the bunnies—and she is gathering quite a collection of Christmas pieces. Our basement storage is primarily ornaments at this point, each family vacation finalized by acquiring at least one location-themed bulb.

I make it a point to compare how we celebrate to how the Jews at college do. I will have a lot of wants: I want to make latkes from scratch; I want us all to have our own menorahs; I want us to sit down and actually play a game of dreidel. I want, I want, I want. My mother will ask me what’s wrong with the way we do things; my brother will say that how we celebrate our Judaism is enough. But I will still want more.

When I accuse her of not wanting to be Jewish, I want to hurt her. I know decorating for Christmas is merely aesthetic for her, it’s creative and fun. She says no Jewish holiday calls for such extravagance (I do not know enough to prove or deny this) and she now gets to fill a void she felt during childhood. Sure, she grew up in a Jewish-heavy area—Westchester County, to be specific—but she felt the pull of Christmas, the enchantment of glittering ornaments, bright ribbons, in everyone seeming to believe in the magic of a season even as they outgrow its tricks. She will never deny her Judaism, never shy away from it, but like Peggy Guggenheim—a silent Ashkenazi Jew—she also won’t make a big deal of it.

Because even in a community that mirrors your home life, commercials and stores continue to feed only one reality. There are no Times Square menorahs to watch light up as celebrities sing in perfectly white mittens and scarves. No hallmark Passover movies to watch every year—besides the Rugrats one. When spring rolls around, stores erupt in pastels, not matzo squares.

My mother perhaps got Passover off at school, maybe even Yom Kippur, but that doesn’t mean the feeling of being an outsider wasn’t there, doesn’t mean there still weren’t kids questioning her traditions. I’ve always thought that if only the town I grew up in was more diverse, it would have been easier to explore my Judaism. I could walk to temple by myself, even if my family didn’t want to join, because it was there, accessible. But would that have changed anything? Or would there just have been more Jews to isolate, to ignore?

In the end, I don’t think the blame matters, or that someone even needs to be blamed, for why I’m not more Jewish. I’m trying to understand where my mother’s coming from. Remember that going to Hebrew school was never a choice she actively made, but more a means to an end. Remember that bringing us to Grandma’s for the holidays was a toxic, tolling experience for her, and that’s why we don’t celebrate Passover anymore. Remember that my Jewish experience is not defined by hers or anyone else’s. It’s a choice I get to make.

~

Out of the blue, a few weeks before the attack in Pittsburgh, Zach starts wearing a Star of David pendant around his neck. He saved up money for it, sold some of his Pop! collection. The golden star was shipped to our mall’s jewelry store. I went with Mom to pick it up. A woman in black stood behind the counter and handed me the small plastic bag to hold.

Zach wears this pendant around his neck every day—pulling the chain outside his shirt when it found its way inside. He’s asking for acknowledgement, asking for people to see him as Jewish. Even if those same people call him “little Jewish boy” whenever they see the star outside his shirt. “Almost every kid in this school wears a cross,” he says, “but no one says anything to them.” When Zach walks by, they say, “I can smell pennies.”

I ask him why the necklace, why now. He seems to get bigger every time I visit. He’s wide and strong from lacrosse, but he still has the same face: the chubby cheeks that used to sag below his chin, the light birthmark under his left eye, his skin that is so smooth and baby soft.

But now his eyebrows bend inward, contorting his face into angles. For the first time I see sharpness in his look. Zach is thinking. Then, he speaks: “I’d rather be prepared for the worst.” I’m not entirely sure what he means. Maybe that we all thought this part was over; the silence around Judaism in our town built a false sense of safety. Apathy is a lot easier to handle, to live with, than murderous violence and passionate hatred. Maybe Zach knew that all along. I search his eyes for an answer and there, swimming around the darks of his pupils, I find wisdom and resilience and courage.

~~~

Back in Venice, I’m not thinking about how this city intertwines with my Jewish identity. I’m not thinking about the slums and ghettos Jews were sectioned off into in many of Italy’s cities. In fact, I am still learning now, years later, how complicated this genetic connection is, how the two sides of myself war with one another, but are also more similar to each other than they are different.

In Venice, I’m trying to move on from the panic attack I had in Florence, where we went to an art museum in the morning, and then spent the rest of the visit walking around in the suffocating heat, trying to find one store Zach swore he saw when we first arrived. But now it feels like we’re walking in circles, around and around this foreign city, knocking bodies with strangers, my mouth becoming dry, my head pulsing.

When we finally walk into a store, I fall into a chair and break into tears.

My dad looks at me confused, as do my brothers. My mom’s asking what’s wrong but I can’t answer her. My entire body is shaking and I think I’m going to pass out at any second. Everyone in the store is staring at me. A clerk hands my dad a glass of water; it goes through his hands, then Zach’s, then Mom’s before reaching me. I gulp it down but still can’t stop sobbing. My mom takes me across the street where we sit on exposed stone. She stays with me as the boys walk around, pretending we’re not together. She hands me water from her purse, rubs my back as I come back down.

The next day, I make the decision to stay at our hotel and not go back to Florence with my family. While they head to the car, I put on my swimsuit and grab Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I spend the day sitting by the pool, resting my elbows on my knees to read as the water laps at my feet. I stare softly at the rolling hills and eat lunch outside. I think of my family in Florence, think of all the fun they’re having without me, worry for a moment of the stories they will carry back. And yet, I know this is the right decision for me.

I carry this ideology into the floating city, make a promise to lean into my own needs, even when my family doesn’t understand them. In Venice, there’s something for all of us to enjoy: the sweet shops my brothers dig into, the water my mother is mesmerized by, the art for my father. In Venice, we eat the most magnificent dinner of our lives under hanging lights, in a small courtyard. In Venice, the night sky encases the world. I watch buskers, jump onto water taxis; I revel in the sea breeze on my skin, find my place in our group again; I get lost in the Guggenheim museum, looking at artwork I have never seen before. I decide that The Break of Day is about both transformation and duality, of growing into the paradoxes. In Venice, I feel like myself, but bolder, better, clean.

I still don’t have a solid relationship with my Judaism. To be honest, I probably never will. But I’m leaning into the nebulous space, allowing it to exist. Listening to my needs as they come and trying them on for size—just like in Florence. Just like now, when Zach no longer wears his Star of David, so I take it and wear it with my St. Francis pendant, bought that very trip, to honor my father’s mother.

This is what I know right now: I know I’m not interested in the restrictive eating inherent in many Jewish holidays, but I want to learn their purpose, their origin. I’d like to engage more with Jewish artists, absorb more Jewish content. Let myself feel left out. I know that in a time when domestic terrorists storm the Capitol building in “Camp Auschwitz” shirts, waving swastika flags, I want only to explore my Jewish identity more, to boldly claim my space within this personhood, this community. To not shy away into hiding, but embrace all that I can.

I’d rather be prepared for the worst.

I know that one day, when I have my own family, I would like to make weekly Shabbat dinners a tradition, but a tradition of my own—to balance the way I was brought up with everything I’m learning now, a duality. I know that maybe, one day, I’ll follow in my great-aunt’s footsteps and have a bat mitzvah when I’m seventy. Because I can. Because there is no timeline I need to follow. Because it’s never too late to boldly face the unknown, to crack your chest and arms open to an ancient wind blowing soft yet firm off the sea, and step strong, one foot in front of the other, as an impossible reality unfolds in front of you.


About the author:

Jessica L. Pavia is an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College in their writing program. Her work has appeared in Breadcrumbs Mag, The Sheepshead Review, Barzakh Magazine, and is forthcoming in Honey Guide Magazine. She is a nonfiction writer from Rochester, NY.