When you are born you start life with a clean slate. Your canvas is empty and your paint brushes are clean. Life is simple, and there is no thought of, ‘I am one thing, you are another.’  That is something passed on and taught, and therefore it never ends…

A wall was built around her. Not a wall of bricks or wire or steel - but a wall of plastic lunch boxes. Hot pink, glowing green, flowered, sparkly lunch boxes stacked three high and four across.

Paige sat alone on the long lunch bench like a seesaw weighed down on one side, no playmate to lift her back up. She timidly peered over the piled plastic construction hoping to sneak a glimpse of what lay beyond the wall. She could just make out the tops of some pigtails and ponytails as the girls hiding huddled closer together. She could hear them whispering and she knew their words were not meant for her ears. Until finally one spoke out.

“You can’t be in our club, Paige, so stop trying to spy!” blurted out the leader of the exclusive band of kindergarteners.  

Paige’s face dropped and her cheeks burned. She could feel her eyes filling with tears but she held them in even as they threatened to spill down her cheeks. She swallowed hard and with a lump in her throat she answered in a trembling voice, “Why? Why can’t I be in your club?”

The giggles bubbled over the wall, and like a small army marching up a hill they slowly rose to answer her plea. “Because you’re a Jew!” they announced, as if it should be obvious to all. “This is a Christian club, and you can’t be in it.”

Confused and heartbroken, Paige lowered her head and carefully placed the rest of her lunch back in her own sparkly lunch box. She zipped it slowly around and watched the army lower back behind their wall.  

And every day, every week for months she sat alone on her side of the table. The lunch attendants would walk by, but never thought to ask the ‘club’ to tear down their wall. They never thought to ask Paige why she was sitting alone. So she silently accepted their rejection and blamed herself for not being the same.

As the years went by, the days of the piled lunch boxes were gone, but the wall never came down in Paige’s mind. The pain from that time evolved into shame. She knew she didn’t fit in and she knew why. “I wish I wasn’t Jewish,” she would whisper to herself.

Each year when the days grew shorter and the holiday decorations flooded the stores, Paige felt that pit in her stomach. She was different. She wasn’t the same. Red and green ornaments dangled from Christmas trees, white angels danced from the ceilings and a line zig zagged around with children waiting to sit on Santa’s lap. A small Menorah shone in the corner, in the shadow of the hypnotizing Christmas lights.  

“I don’t want to celebrate Chanukah anymore!” she finally confessed to her parents. “I don’t want to be Jewish!”

“Why?” they questioned her. “Why wouldn’t you want to be Jewish, it is part of what makes you who YOU are.”

“Who I am. Who I am.” she repeated to herself. “But who I am is not what everyone wants me to be. I don’t fit in. I am not one of them.” she tried to explain.

That evening, she went to her Grandmother’s house for a Chanukah celebration. As they drove she stared enviously at the illuminated houses and welcoming wreaths. And when she walked into her grandmother’s house she did everything she could to push the smell of sizzling latkes away and tried to ignore the dreidels dizzily spinning on the floor.  

But when it was time for the family to gather around the Menorah, and say the prayers, Paige’s eyes widened. She inched closer to the window and was mesmerized by the flames dancing above each candle, swooping into a high, billowy swirl. Her eyes lowered to the wax as she watched it melt and slowly drip down the sides of the metal frame drying in splotches on the ceramic plate. She thought of the tears she held back as a five year old in kindergarten.

Paige slowly looked around the kitchen from one face to the next. She felt the warmth of her mother and father, her brother, her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and her cousins. At last she settled her eyes on her great grandmother and she noticed the gold Jewish star resting on her neck. She could see the reflection of the candle’s light in the star, and like a heavy, full raindrop, a tear slowly fell, sliding down her cheek and landing right above her heart.

There are Americans still trying to build those walls physically and metaphorically. They are not built  just to keep people out but to alienate anyone who does not fit IN. Being Jewish in America means being strong, being proud and knowing how it feels to be blocked out, in order to make others feel accepted withIN.