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Hybrid: felafel hotdog.
This Hyphenated Life, Post One / A Hybrid Jew
By Marco Greenberg
Tags: Marco Greenberg, Jewish World 
Let me start with a confession: I'm a Jew and a Zionist who spent his youth decorating Christmas trees, singing carols and even drinking egg nog. Like so many Jews in America and the Diaspora, I'm an odd sort of hybrid. So what is a hybrid Jew? Here is my own personal guide.

Let me start with a confession: I'm a Jew and a Zionist who spent his youth decorating Christmas trees, singing carols and even drinking egg nog.

No, I'm not a member of Jews For Jesus or a product of a mixed marriage. Instead, my hunch is that like so many Jews in America and the Diaspora, I?m an odd sort of hybrid.

As a kid, I went to grammar school on weekdays at St. Augustine By the Sea in Santa Monica, California; tackle football practice on Saturday in even more goyishe Westchester (when I asked for the day off for Yom Kippur, the response was, "what's that?"); and reluctantly attended Reform Sunday School at University Synagogue where, as the final bell went off, I slipped into the Temple?s bathroom to put on my pads, and was schlepped across town to play in the game that same afternoon.
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Is it any wonder that I/we fit Philip Roth's conundrum, 'I feel like a Jew among gentiles, and a gentile among Jews?'

My own name set the stage for the mix up that was to follow. No-one, in the over-sexed and over-drugged Southern California of my youth, seemed to notice that Marco and Greenberg didn't exactly match.

It wasn't till I landed on the East Coast for grad school that I faced an inquisition of sorts from my fellow Jews: What kind of name is Marco? Are you Syrian, Moroccan, Argentinean, or Italian? When I told them that I'm just another boring Eastern-European-Ashkenazi-American-Jew, just like most of them, they looked disappointed as the expected exoticism vanished into thin air.

The shame of not having a matching Jewish first and last name (rather than Marco, Moshe, Moishe, even Michael Greenberg would have done it), triggered 15-year old memories in me. I am sitting uncomfortably in my Episcopal school's church pews, waiting to be picked up at the end of the school day by my Nana who just happened to be a founder of the biggest synagogue in town. She looked visibly pained every time she came to St Augustine's. She didn't buy my parents' 'wanna be Wasp' rationale that 25% of the kids there were Jewish and the school wasn't really Christian.

Since those early days, I've continued this mixed life (minus the Christmas trees), and rather than feeling discomfort, I have learnt to embrace it. I have sought balance at the center. It suits me better than rushing off to the extremes - becoming a born-again Jew or abandoning Judaism altogether. My culturally mixed childhood has served to forge a Jewish identity that my more traditional friends take for granted, as well as given me a leg up in being able to connect to people of all faiths. I've built a hybrid life, even before I knew what the word meant.

So what is a hybrid Jew? Here is my own personal guide.

My name is Marco and I am a...

Jewish-American: Reform Temple as a kid, bar mitzvah by a Reconstructionist rabbi, married by a Conservative rabbi, kids sent to Modern Orthodox pre-school, then back to a Reconstructionist community for our latest shul. I can confidently lead the Seder (at least when no sabras are present) and I can wow my gentile friends plus 90% of American Jewry with my Hebrew. With this later group, the normal self-consciousness about my accent goes out the window.

American-Israeli: Made aliyah, and then came back, like so many of us Americans-who-tried-Israel. Did this experience set me straight or just mix me up even more? Living among the mishmash of Israeli life felt strangely familiar. While I am proud to 'pass' as '100% American' in most any crowd, there is an internal beat that is very much Israeli. At work, for example, when I sit in those outwardly polite and interminable conference calls, the Israeli in me wants to shout, 'nu, tachlas!' (Translation: so, what's the point of all your rambling? Get down to brass tacks, stop wasting my time, and make it fast!)

Father-Husband-Son-Brother-Boss-Vendor-Client-Friend-Volunteer-Workout Buddy etc.: Too much to tackle here in one post, other than to start by paying tribute to a family member who will one day surpass me in the hyphen department, along with many others. Meet Stella Shi Greenberg. A 4 year-old Chinese-Jewish-American-Princess-Future-Rocket Scientist whom we adopted into our family and has been ordering us and our other children around ever since.

Is this era unique in history in that so many individuals simultaneously accumulate and wear so many different hats? Is it crazy-making (and down right not kosher) to do so much mixing in this hyper-connected world or rather is it a healthy illustration of living modern life to the fullest?

I haven't got the answer yet. But I hope, in the series of posts I will be writing here, to start to explore what all this mixing up means to me as an individual and to us as a community. With tens of millions of blogs already out there, many of them unedited torrents of self-involved drivel, I'll try my best to keep This Hyphenated Life, my Haaretz.com blog posts, relevant and lively.

My posts will be a vessel to share ideas, insights, experiences and the sheer fun of leading multiple lives. It's for fellow hyphenates who want to examine their dual existence/s - to celebrate them, not just to dwell in the existential and neurotic angst.

After all, in this assimilated world, aren't we all hybrids to one degree or another?

Also by Marco Greenberg on Haaretz.com:

  • This hyphenated life, post two / Jew me down.
  • Battle of the attitude / Israeli girls vs. American Jews.
  • Advice to Ehud Olmert, blogger.
    Battle of the attitude / Israeli girls vs. American Jews.

    Advice to Ehud Olmert, blogger.

    Marco Greenberg, is a communications strategist and co-founder of the new media consultancy Thunder11.

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