This blog focuses on my personal history. The saga begin with my grandparents, first generation traditionally minded Jewish immigrants to New York from Eastern Europe. It continues with my parents, born in New York just before (my father) and during (my mother) the Great Depression, their childhoods shaped by the Holocaust and post-war America. The conflicts between generations, over identity, religion, and world view. And then, at age 10, experiencing the great geographic shift, when my parents left the Lower East Side for the Bay Area, Palo Alto to be exact, which, unbeknownst to them, was about to become the epicenter of one of the great social upheavals of the Century. I was a product of all these divergent forces, forces that shaped my outlook and personality, shaping my sense of being both an insider and outsider to American and Jewish life.

The stories that follow, stories at once both profound and absurd, aim to shed light on these forces.