With the relaxation of Catholic influence in Quebec, local Jewish culture began to come of age and flourish.

We were invited to join in the school’s prayers and hymns, but our grateful acquiescence also implied there was something illicit or shameful about our Jewishness.

And come to differing conclusions about the obligations of collective living.

Father brought us out of bondage, but Mother decided where we were to settle and how we were to live.

It wasn’t easy for an entire Jewish family to escape Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century. Ruth Wisse’s did.

Fifty years on, no work by or about Jews has won American hearts so thoroughly. So what’s my problem?