When people get to age thirty or so they usually have a lot of regrets in life. I definitely have a few myself but not things like blacking out or wishing I called a guy back after judging him based on the first date. Weirdly enough I would say my only true regrets were in elementary school. I grew up in Atlanta Georgia after my dad got a great job offer with Delta Airlines Headquarters. It’s definitely super random, but it paid good money and my mom was pregnant with twins so we kind of depended on the income. Something you don’t realize until you’re in school though, is what sets you apart from everyone else. My parents were both from Long Island, highschool sweethearts. To state the obvious, they’re Jewish. I’m Jewish. And in kindergarten, I was enrolled in an elementary school with a 2% non Christian faith statistic.

The first day of school was basics. Everyone went around the room saying their name, favorite color, and favorite holiday. When my turn came around though I’ll never forget the look of confusion on everyone’s faces.

“Hi my name is Hillary! My favorite color is purple, and my favorite holiday is Passover.” And Yup that’s when I got a whole lot of stares in my direction. Even the teacher gawked at me. The same question was coming out of every five year old’s face:

“What’s Passover???”

I answered it for everyone because I actually knew a lot about the Jewish background. No one really said anything after the explanation though. It was either because they didn’t care or maybe because they were five and had the attention span of a goldfish. Anyways things weren’t bad for me in elementary school. My town was super nice and the people were so kind. Everyone accepted my religion, I just felt left out a good portion of the time.

In the not so brutal winters of Georgia, I sure loved Hanukkah, but definitely felt like I was missing out on singing Christmas carols and going to church with all my friends every Sunday. I would miss holiday break at home every year because my family and I flew to New York to celebrate with my grandparents and cousins. I wouldn’t get a visit from the Easter bunny in the spring with a basket of candy. I remember one day in the third grade I asked my mom if we could celebrate Easter the next year so I could have something to talk about with my friends.

“Honey don’t you and your friends have other things to talk about?” She asked.

I replied, “I want to talk about Easter, I want to be like my friends”

She kind of just said we could. I think she was a bit stunned by the fact I wasn’t comfortable with my religion because she had it so easy growing up. She was just like everyone in her town: Jewish.

In May of third grade I think my insecurity levels reached their peak. Every single person from my school made communion and I was stuck at home playing with my little siblings eating hamantaschen that my mom just made. I actually loved the dessert but couldn’t admit it solely because it came from the religion that set me apart from everyone else. Each year of elementary school went by and things went on like normal. Don’t get me wrong I had a really good childhood, but by the end of fifth grade whenever I would meet someone new, I wouldn’t admit to being Jewish simply because I was ashamed to be different and left out.

It was five months until my dreaded thirteenth birthday. Becoming a bat mitzvah was the way of welcoming girls into womanhood in the Jewish religion. My mom was so excited; she had everything planned. My friends were excited too. It would be all of their first and probably last bat mitzvah they would attend. I on the other hand was not looking forward to anything. This would be the day that I would acknowledge I came from a different background from every person I knew when I had tried to hide my faith for so long. One night though I vividly remember the disturbing news my dad told me. In between his cries I made out him saying

“Hillary w-we gotta go to New York. G-Grandma’s s-sick.”

Before I knew it we moved to spend my grandma’s last few months in Long Island.

It was mid school year so my first day in the seventh grade there was everyone else’s fiftieth day. The winter was cold and it was weird to experience. Something even weirder to experience though was driving to the grocery store with my mom one night, and seeing a menorah inside someone’s window. I was shocked. I discovered that about 64% of my new school’s population was Jewish, and I didn’t know whether to be happy or not. My life in Georgia revolved around making myself seem as not Jewish as possible. I didn’t know if I should let people know my true religion. I had just expected to go on with the rest of my life hiding it. In all my New York visits I never really interacted with anyone but my family, so I didn’t take into account that there were so many other Jews in just the neighborhood alone. I made a lot of friends, and when they all started talking about the readings for their bat mitzvahs, I came across the feeling I thought I would never face again: being left out. They all had so much knowledge of the Torah and Judaism, but I only knew enough Hebrew to get me by those few hours while I was having my bat mitzvah ceremony. I had distanced myself so far from the religion because I was ashamed of being different, that now that I was with people I expected to be able to relate to, I couldn’t.

So my regrets really came from my elementary school days. I was so determined to be as similar as I could be to the kids in my town that I lost a huge part of me that I would have really liked to know better. Even nowadays when people ask me what religion I am, I say

“Jewish but not so religious”

It’s like I’m putting a disclaimer on myself. I could have gotten to know my background and not hid it away, but I was too scared to be remotely different.