I stumbled across some old photos last week from childhood. And while the last thing I want to remember are my awkward looks (Read: a perm [yes - PERM], horrid bangs, and purple braces), the pictures reminded me of all the must-have fads that I had to be a part of.

Like that photo of me with my shirt bunched on the side by one of those large plastic things. Or the ones of me when Christina Aguilera made bandanas and hoop earrings the size of my arm so cool that I thought it was the perfect look to rock with silver eyeshadow/fairy dust for… Hebrew School.

So here is a look back at some of our most favorite fads that will always hold a special place in our hearts:

1) Butterfly Clips. Let us not forget the years we spent sectioning our hair into mini “corn-rows” – and by corn rows I mean mini braids, or twisted hair pinned down by mini plastic butterfly clips that came in a plethora of colors, including my favorite, glitter.

True Story: I thought it was a good idea to enter a contest to be in a Got Milk ad. I put on a my best fake milk mustache, a cute (I use this term loosely) butterfly skirt, those clunky Steve Madden sandals that clippity clopped like a freakin’ horse everywhere you walked and, of course, what goes best with a butterfly skirt than a head full of… butterfly clips. I then made my poor mother take numerous pictures of me posing thinking “Teen People Here I Come!!” I don’t know how she didn’t laugh in my face. Or give me up for adoption.

I never did win that contest.
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Passover. Great holiday. Eternal source of existential agony.

I’m Jewish, yes? Well, ethnically, for sure. My family is made up of Jews from Belarus and Romania/Transylvania (suck your blood, blah, blah, vampire joke) who take the culture seriously but the religion…well, not so much.

Supposedly, all sets of my parents’ grandparents were Orthodox, and then their parents (my grandparents) were all Conservative, but my parents, as first and second generation Americans, kind of let that all go. They sent me to Secular Hebrew School for five years, where I learned all about the culture but not the actual religious rites, and that was that.

However, my situation growing up was very different from theirs, and that, of course, made my relationship to Judaism a little more complicated.

My parents were both raised in Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx. Growing up, they were in the ethnic majority (at least until high school). Being Jewish was just a fact of life.

I grew up in a very Italian- and Irish-American town on Long Island where I was one of about six Jews in my grade. Even though my parents and I barely practiced (every third year or so we’d go to temple for Yom Kippur), Jewishness became a very important part of my identity. As it happened, we lived directly next door to the Catholic church that was attended by about 85% of my classmates. This was a constant source of amusement. Jewish jokes? I was there…and maybe the one making them. Being Jewish made me stand out. So I made it work in my favor. Read More »