My husband is Jewish, my stepchildren are Jewish, even my son is Jewish. And yet, I, myself, am merely Jew-ish, which is to say that I go to temple with my family, participate in our Jewish life, but have yet to officially convert. Why? I don’t know exactly. I believe that it’s either in your heart or it isn’t, and it is in mine, and no amount of mikvehs will make it more so.
My first seder was easily a decade ago. I slaved (no pun intended), I sweated, I researched. I even figured out how to get a lamb shank bone for my seder plate. And for dinner, I made a fine lamb roast. We invited my husband’s best friend since high school, and his family. Turns out, they don’t eat lamb. That was awkward. But it had nothing to do with Passover. (I had no idea that there were people who felt funny about lamb. Now I ask, every single time, and there’s only been one other occasion where someone categorically turned their back on it.)
Decades ago, as a fledging (broke) New York stage actress, I had the good fortune to be befriended by the film producer Robert Chartoff (“Raging Bull,” “The Right Stuff,” “Rocky’s I—VI”). We met on the basis of our identical surnames, but traced our ancestry back to different origins. It seemed our names were accidentally namesake bastardizations of different, multi-syllabic and multi-Slavic monikers of yore, carelessly abbreviated by uncreative Ellis Island officiates.
It is 1979, my first night of Seder in America since I fled Iran eight months before. My husband remains back in Iran, hoping to salvage a small part of our valuable properties, our home and business, a chewing gum factory that remains the largest in the Middle East. “Come with us,” I insisted, “It’s too dangerous, especially for Jews.”