I recently read a fantastic book of essays, The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt. Each essay was a story, and most stories a conflict I could relate to on some level. Being Jewish and choosing religion, being Jewish and not choosing religion. Wanting Christmas, hating Christmas. Loving your community, and abandoning your community.
But one thing irked me: almost all of the writers in this collection had at some point in time (if not currently) lived in New York City. If it wasn’t New York, than it was LA. Sometimes both. Very few of the writers were from anywhere else — no Chicago, no Seattle, no Montreal and certainly no Winnipeg.
So for me, it begs the question: where are the voices of the non-New York Jews? For too long we have let our stories be told through the mythical Lower East Side, or more recently the Upper West Side. I love New York. It is my most favourite place to visit. But the experience of Jews there is not mine.
This has me thinking: how much of our experience as Jews is connected to place? What kind of Jew would I be if I had not grown up in Winnipeg? What kind of Jew will my children become because I am raising them in Thornhill? And most importantly, as a writer, why is my story any more or less valid because it does not include a siginificant stay in the Big Apple?
I want to know: Can you be a Jew with a good story and live, say, in Idaho?
