Half Breed

When it comes to my identity, I often remember a story from when I was in college. I went to go have dinner with my grandparents, of blessed memory, and my great aunt. We were eating all this traditional Sephardic food that I love and adore, laughing and talking.

At one point, totally randomly, as if to condemn me, my great aunt blurted, “You’re not Sephardic!”

I was in shock. Although my father is from Ashkenazi descent, I didn’t know that much about the culture – I didn’t even eat kugel until I went to college. “But mom’s Sephardic. I’m Sephardic.”

“If you were Sephardic, you would be able to eat an olive like your grandfather does!”

I watched carefully as my beloved Papu picked up an olive, put it in his mouth, ate the flesh, pulled out the pit and put it on his plate. As I never back down from a challenge, I picked up one of the olives from the tiny little glass jar that Nony kept them in. I put it in my mouth, moved it around perfectly, and was able to put my pit on my plate, clean as a whistle.

My great aunt looked down at it, and then at me, and said loudly, “That still doesn’t make you Sephardic!”

It’s the story of my life when it comes to my identity. No one will let me live in peace and let me call myself Sephardic. Sometimes it’s because my father is Ashkenazi, and culture is supposed to run through the patrilineal line (although my father’s family had as much Jewish culture as a communion wafer). Other times it’s because I have hung out with Ashkenazim so much that I am lumped in with them – Sephardis have a lot of pride, and if they feel you don’t hang exclusively with them, I’m not Sephardic. There’s also the fact that I married an Ashkenazi Jew – so aren’t I supposed to start making gefilte fish by now?

Other times it’s because I don’t LOOK Sephardic -- after all, aren’t all Sephardics dark? (And just for the record, they’re not – both my grandparents were rather light, and both of their families hailed from Turkey.) That’s not an issue for me alone – I have plenty of Jewish friends of all different cultures who get the phrase, “You don’t LOOK Jewish.” Just try it with my friend Inbar. She and her 180 goats will attack you -- long story. But it’s just as offensive when it comes to my identity.

As a kid, it wasn’t cool to be the Sephardic Jew. In fact, as a teenager, as a Jew it was only cool if you had a family member who survived the Holocaust, and although there were Sephardic Jews who did survive, there weren’t that many who were persecuted, as they were often in countries that weren’t invaded. I didn’t know what gefilte fish was, and I was just that strange kid who liked her vegetables, as that’s what good Sephardi boys and girls like to eat. As I moved on to college, people loved to challenge my identity. One girl loved picking on me for it. She immediately shut up when a wonderful rabbi explained that I was Sephardic, as that was the prominent culture in my parents’ home.

There are still people who just love to question who I am. My friends accept me and appreciate me (and the Sephardic foods I make), but not everyone does, a lot of it stemming because I look like my father. Hell, even my own mother looks down on me, thinking that I have gone astray, as I am not involved very much in Sephardic temple life and sometimes say the word “Oy.” Obviously, Sephardic Jews don’t say, “Oy.”

I have had to come to terms that I am a half-breed, never really having a place in either community. It’s probably one of the reasons why I drifted towards Long Beach – a place where no one really cared what you were -- as long as you were Jewish, it was totally cool. It doesn’t matter where your family is from, as long as we are together. Together, we share cultures, great food and stories of our ancestors, no matter where they once called home.

Perhaps its because we find ourselves looking towards something that’s better. We realize that when we meet G-d, whenever that time is, G-d will not care what the hell we were, whether we were Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi (and you know I love you guys!) or converts. What G-d wants is that we live good lives that we share with others. G-d cares whether we decided to let love be our guiding light or if we chose to be petty and turn on others if we feel like we don’t like their identity or can’t accept them for who they are.

This will be something that I will be taking into my Sephardic Cooking Class that I will be teaching at our local JCC next month. And with that, I will be reposting a recipe that I posted at the beginning of this blog, but my friend Paul needs again. It’s Spinach Macaron, the delicious casserole dish that blends both Ashkenazi and Sephardi cultures so perfectly.

SPINACH MACARON

1 large onion

½ cup (one stick) of butter or margarine

1 pound elbow macaroni

1 box frozen spinach

Small container of sour cream

4 eggs, beaten

1 cup parmesan cheese, plus extra

Salt and pepper to taste

Sauté onion in the stick of butter or margarine until onions are translucent. Boil macaroni until al dente. Defrost spinach according to package directions and drain, making sure to squeeze out all the water. Let all of them cool.

Combine macaroni, onions, sour cream, eggs and parmesan cheese, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Fold all the ingredients together as not to destroy the macaroni.

Spray the casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray. Put the macaroni mixture in. Put extra parmesan cheese on top. Bake for one hour until it gets golden on top and the bottom gets crusty. Serve with salad.

Quick Tip: Due to all the butter in the dish, I like to use healthier alternatives, like whole wheat macaroni and light sour cream in lieu of regular. However, in the case of the sour cream, light doesn’t have as much flavor as the regular, so make sure that you season your mixture well with salt and pepper.

And if you made it this far in the post, here's a video... just because of the title alone. Cher is awesome, and helping us tall girls of the world not feel like... well, half breeds!