Ruth had a miserable life growing up. Her family was Jewish Orthodox, and first generation Americans. She spent most of her childhood moving around with her family as her father looked for work as a rabbi. Her family finally settled in Suffolk, Virginia. It was a small town which was racially segregated and Jews were not well liked there. They lived on the black side of town and her father was t

As a boy he was confused about issues of race but did not consider himself deprived or unhappy. At age ten, “I had reached the point where i didn\'t want the world to see my white mother” (McBride,100) He knew his mother was different from all the kids who he was friends with mothers. As a young man he had no time to look beyond his own poverty to discover what identity was. In college he saw that white students were free in a way he could never be. Most of his friends and all the women he dated were black but he had a few white friends.

“When i was a boy, I used to wonder where my mother came from, how she got on this earth. When i asked her where she came from, she would say, “god made me,” and then change the subject.” (McBride, 21) Ruth didn’t want race to become an issue in her house. She tried to ignore it and the rest of the outside world. The kids never found out that she was Jewish because she never brought up her past. She didn’t raise her children to be Jewish but many things in the way she raised her kids were based off the way Jewish families raised theirs. She was strict, faith was very important, she was always concerned with money, she had a distrust on anything new and people she didn\'t know, and an strong sense of getting her kids the best education. Her motto was, “If it doesn\'t involve your going to school or church, I could care less about it and my answer is no whatever it is.” 27

Even when Ruth’s mother died the family would not see her. After Ruth\'s mother died she was devastated and could hardly do anything. She was depressed for months but Dennis stuck by her and tried to tell her it wasn\'t her fault and that the lord forgave her. That\'s when she started going to Metropolitan Church in Harlem. She started to believe that the Lord would forgive her for leaving her mother. “ I started to become a Christian and the jew in me began to die. The Jew in me was dying anyway, but it truly died when my mother died.” (McBride, 218) She became a devout Christian and never turned away from her faith throughout her life. She was as dedicated to the Christian faith as her family was to the Jewish faith. “There was no turning back after my mother died. I stayed on the black side because that was the only place i could stay.” (McBride, 232)

When he was interviewing his mother he realized the her Jewish side is gone. He was shocked to hear her talk about ‘Tateh’, ‘rov’, ‘shiva’, and ‘Bubeh’. It was like five thousand years of Jewish history had landed in his lap in a few months. He had never felt any connection to the Jewish faith, because when his mother referred to Jews she never brought up her past. She was different now than in the 1940’s when she adopted Christianity, now she was able to face her past. There are probably hundreds of reasons why his mother could have stayed on the Jewish side, but he is glad she decided to come to the African American side. She raised 12 amazing children with the help of two extraordinary men. Now as a grown man he is gla

Some topics in this essay:
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