At times, I have felt somewhat like Brendan Fraser’s character, David Greene, in School Ties. David grew up in a middle (maybe even lower-middle) class Jewish family in Scranton, Pennsylvania. David receives a scholarship to a prep school in Massachusetts, but tries to hide his Jewish identity from his new classmates. The movie is set in the 1950s and David faces severe anti-Semitism when one of his classmates (played by Matt Damon) finds out that David is Jewish.
I’ve never actually kept my Jewish identity a secret (and I’ve only faced anti-Semitism on a handful of occasions); but until relatively recently, I have kept my identity as a Karaite Jew somewhat private in religious Jewish circles.
