It’s Heritage Day at my Son’s School. What are we, anyway?

A note came home in my son’s backpack to state that today, this Friday, the school would be celebrating “International Heritage Day.” Third through fifth grade in my town is a time when students study the cultures of many countries. My child this year studied the cultures of Egypt, Japan, Australia. In successive years they will study about China and ancient civilizations from Greece to Rome to the Inca and Mayan Indians in social studies.

As a culmination and celebration of all this international study, third graders in my son’s school were asked to wear a hat that represents the culture of their immigrant ancestry.

Like most self-respecting Ashkenazi Jews, my family has roots in Russia and Poland. And, if you want to find some real exotic roots in my family, I believe my paternal grandmother was from Vienna, Austria.

But the Polish and Russians never looked upon my ancestors as their fellow countrymen. We were just: Jews. Yids. Pretty much second class citizens. That’s why Jews from Poland and Russia came over in droves to the United States – for economic if not religious freedom.

In my house, we don’t have any connection to Russian or Polish culture. How we identify, ethnically, is through Jewish culture.

So, what hat to use? The Moroccans have the Fez. The Mexicans, the Sombrero and the French, the beret, the Italians have the Fedora (acually, my older son has taken up wearing the fedora because he is so very dapper).

So, this brings me back to the question: What country do we identify?

I should have just put a Yankee Doodle style hat on my son’s head. We are Americans. But are we something else as well?    Is Judaism a people? A religion? A Culture?

With what other country do we identify?

I could have chosen an Israeli Kibbutznik style hat, but that would be so … 1950’s.

So outdated. And, as much love as we have for our spiritual homeland, we are not Israeli.

So of course, to show off our heritage, we selected this one.

A kippah, in the Bukharan style, that we purchased this winter in Jerusalem as we made our way to the Western Wall.

This is the hat of our heritage.