In my memory, I always owned, always wore the Star of David necklace my mother had given me.  It had been hers, a gift from an older brother, I think. The design was the simple six-pointed star encircled by a lightly textured rim—all in gold—with a silver-toned shape meant to invoke the two tablets brought down from Sinai by Moses. The entire charm was maybe the size of an American dime. 

Clearly, I didn’t own this as an infant or toddler, but I’m sure that by the time of my Bat Mitzvah, I wore it every day. My preference to wear this star charm on a very fine gold chain led to any number of broken chains, several replacements that my parents likely funded, and not infrequent trips to a jewelry shop for repairs. I wore this all the time until I lost it during my second year of graduate school. The chain probably broke as I walked home from campus, and I recall searching gutters and digging through fallen leaves for days after my star went missing. My memory places most of my search in the storm gutter on Forbes Street (officially Forbes Avenue, but always called a “street” by the locals) just before the turn up the hill onto Plainfield. I don’t know why.

Knowing that I was very upset by the loss of this heirloom, my mother purchased a replacement. It was never the same and I rarely wore it. When I graduated from graduate school the second time, in 2022 with an MA in Jewish Education, a friend gifted me a small mezuzah and chain. This friend’s Catholic parents had purchased the mezuzah on their one trip out of the US, when their church group toured Rome and Jerusalem. I have worn this charm constantly ever since. 

I know my small mezuzah gets noticed: One day my husband and I stopped at a small historic park at the site of a US Revolutionary war skirmish. The docent approached me, asked if I were Jewish, and proceeded to tell me that she was researching Jewish presence in the area during the revolutionary period. I was able to provide some useful references; I suspect the docent was or had married into a Jewish family, but she did not tell me and I did not ask.

I have never hid my Jewishness. I grew up in a “Jewish neighborhood” (maybe 50 percent Jewish) where the business district featured a Jewish-style restaurant (Weinstein’s), kosher groceries (Adler’s and KosherMart), and a Judaica shop (Pinskers) alongside a pizza place (Mineo’s), drugstores, and a supermarket. Our house and all my later residences were marked by mezuzahs. Hanukah candles are always lit in windows—except maybe when the only window in my NYC efficiency faced an air shaft. I always took off work for High Holidays, which means that all my employers could know I was Jewish. 

This is the America in which I was raised.  Traveling with backpack and EurRail Pass through Europe in my mid-20s, several of my t-shirts were printed in Hebrew script (including פייצבורג,  Pittsburgh in Yiddish). These proved to be terrific conversation starters, especially with young Israelis also traveling Europe on the cheap. This is the world I expected and experienced.

I recall no explicit antisemitism.

My father, who immigrated from Europe as a child, certainly had a different experience. Arriving in the US with a biblical given name, he changed it sometime around college graduation (although after serving in the US navy during WWII). Thus, Isaac Braunstein became Howard E Braun. My father’s slide rule has a leather case originally inscribed with “Braunstein” and from which the “stein” has been cut out. I cherish the slide rule because he taught me to use it, because his career as an engineer suited him, because a slide rule is a more elegant solution than modern brute-force calculators, and because it tells a story of the American Jewish experience. 

In my parents’ generation, names were not infrequently “Americanized.” My generation was given culturally generic first names. Yet most of our children have obvious Hebrew or biblical first names. From outsiders to full participants.

And yet… During college, my daughter chaired the Jewish Students Union and, often wearing a kippah, was the most visible Jew on campus. Following the Shabbat morning massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, this child of mine who had grown up as an equal participant in the abundance of American society wondered if it was time to worry.

Recent anecdotal reports cite an increase in sales of Jewish symbols, such as Star of David necklaces, since October 7. At the same time, news articles report rabbinic authorization to place a mezuzah on inner rather than outer door frames, to avoid easy identification.

Today, I am conflicted. We must not hide; we must stand proud—as Jews and as participants in current world affairs. And yet we should also try not to become targets for bigots and those seduced by hate.

Michele Braun is a graduate of the Melton Center's Master in Education, specializing in Jewish Education.