I Dream About an Italian Guy Who Hid His Roots

A friend who disagrees with me on Israel/Palestine sent me an email the other day inviting me to Rosh Hashanah services. Her headline was cute: "tribal rites." Then her signoff was, "Come in, the water's fine." I like her though we''ve never talked politics. Not long ago I was over at her house and there was klezmer. Beautiful klezmer, and good Jewish food, a semi-mixed crowd. She's tribal and makes no apology. The night after her invitation I had a dream. I was at Jim's house (a pseudonym). I knew him a long time ago, I don't think of him often. He's Italian and has always been odd about his Italianness. He thought it a bad thing for people to see his ethnicity in him when he was trying to succeed in New York. He grew up working class. He would be weird if you brought Italian culture up–just wanted to be the generic hipster. And in the dream I was at Jim's house and seeing what an amazing family he had. His parents went back generations as suppliers of high-end produce, like prosciutto or truffles. It's not clear now, but there was this air of splendor and achievement and nobility about his family, with ancient roots, and I'd never known it of course because he hid that away. I took the dream as a sign that I need to embrace my own tradition more. I'm anti-tribal, but I came from a tribe, and I need to honor it more. It's not like I'm going to wrap the tefillin or begin any kind of program. I've read Israel Shahak! Also I'm genuinely alienated from the body of Jewry by its idolatry of the golden Zionist tank. But at the same time I feel that some of this Who-are-the-Jews-anyway demystification talk, the Gilad Atzmon and Shlomo Sand stuff, and Shahak, too, which I'm sure is all true, that the Jews arose in western Asia or wherever, and the Palestinians are the original Jews, and the religion was tyrannical for centuries–at some level my response to that is, So what. People form their mythologies. They could have formed them 50 years ago or 100 or 200, it could be Leviticus or it could be Kafka, they're still animating mythologies, and they don't stand up to factchecking, and they're part of who we are. That's what the dream's about, not forgetting that stuff even as I go after religious nationalism, trying to give it an honored place in my life.