ABSTRACT
I grew up in Ishpeming, a small town near Lake Superior in northern Michigan. Ishpeming had about 10,000 people and only a handful of Jews, perhaps two or three dozen at most. My family, the Narotzkys, were fairly prominent in that small town—we included doctors, merchants of all sorts, and a professor at the nearby university. Everybody knew we were Jews, because in a small town everybody knows those kinds of things about everybody else. Consequently, I was always singled out at school to “explain” each Jewish holiday. I was the only Jew in my class of Finns and Swedes throughout all my years of school.
