Akhenaten, 10th Ruler of the 18th Dynasty, 1353-1334 B.C. He was a defiant leader who established a religion foreshadowing monotheism.
…man, as Thomas Mann says, is a confused creature. And he becomes even more confused, we may add, when he is subjected to extreme tensions…
-Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve
I never understood why my mother didn't want to own Chanel #5. It was a comme il faut scent for every woman of the haut bourgeoisie when I was growing up. I envied girl friends who ransacked their mothers' stash and wore Chanel #5 to parties. Comme il faut, I coveted a bottle of my own for my 16th birthday. But it was not to be. Like much else in my growing up years in a community of refugees, explanations were limited, or non-existent. After a while, I knew to leave my elders alone especially when the dismissive, "Why do you ask?" signaled an end to the conversation. Until my first year of college when I matured into defiance, I could not answer the—why do you ask?—show stopper. Defiance was considered disrespectful in my family. The punishment was a pained silence, a silence that inflamed my curiosity and my imagination. Thus is a writer and reporter born, though that took many more years of education and experience.
My mother died before I could ask her about her boycott of Chanel # 5 and it was only recently when I watched the Netflix biopic about Coco Chanel, Coco Avant Chanel, that I understood: Coco was a Nazi collaborator. Why my mother chose not to reveal her legitimate disdain for Coco Chanel I do not fully understand. Certainly she knew enough about her by the time I requested that lux bottle of perfume. So, I will hypothesize about my mother's silence on this particular boycott: Dynamic, fast-paced assimilation, similar to my parents' choice of the most American names possible for their children and the epidemic of nose jobs during my high school years suggested to me as I "came of age." I didn't succumb. My resemblance to the bas reliefs of Akhenaten gave me pleasure and intrigued me more recently when a cousin invested in DNA sampling and it came back "North African."
But what does any of this matter when the question "Are you Jewish?" is thrown at me unexpectedly. I know that the stranger who has dared to ask is thinking about the tragic war in the Middle East, as am I, every day. How will it end? When will it end? "Why do you ask if I am Jewish?" I might say if I have mustered enough courage, as I often am wary when someone asks. Has the stranger conflated Israeli with Jew, and Israeli with American secular Jew in particular? Is the stranger antisemitic, responding solely to my elongated North African face? Do they think I can solve the war? That I have taken a side? That I am a diplomat or a seer? To maintain my zone of safety, I answer the question about my identity, ethnicity or religion (take your pick) with the strange inversion of what my parents said to me: "Why do you ask?" Or, with emphasis, "Why do you ask?"