I Hid My True Identity Throughout High School

Losing my religion

I ran into the house in a wild panic.

My friends would be over in a few minutes, and there was evidence everywhere. Those stupid photos that I hated so much.

Damn, those photos.

Frantically, I ran around removing them until the truth was hidden once again.

Why were they on display?

They were of me as a 13-year-old. A doppelganger of Pugsley Addams. Shaved head, chubby cheeks, and a little potbelly — a supermodel I was not.

But it wasn't my resemblance to a TV character that I was worried about. It was my surroundings. And what I wore on my head.

I had to remove the evidence. The truth could not be revealed.

Ever.

The outsider

I cried all night.

Why couldn't I play football with my friends?

I pleaded with my parents. Tomorrow was a Saturday, and we had an important game against our arch-rivals. Instead, I would be forced to sit a scholarship test as they entered battle. A test on a Saturday!

Despite my protests and threats to fail the test on purpose, I missed the game and sat the test. And my competitiveness shone through — I was awarded a scholarship.

So instead of heading to the local public high school to start seventh grade with all my friends, I would be heading to an elite private school in a wealthy suburb where I knew no one.

I soon learned the school practiced two forms of religion — Christianity and money. I followed neither.

I was a…I couldn't tell them.

Why do Jews have short arms?

Why do Jews have big noses?

Hey, watch me throw this one-cent piece in the gutter and see if it attracts any Jews.

This was the schoolyard banter every day. "Jew jokes" were de rigueur, and as I progressed through the grades, they got increasingly racist. Soon, they revolved around the Holocaust and the atrocities that occurred.

Hey guys, I heard a new one last night. What do you call a Jew that…

In my stomach, I felt sick. Even typing it out now, I feel awful. At the time, I would offer a weak smile and a fake laugh. I wanted to get out of this situation.

Yeah, that was a great one. Haha.

I was a coward. I was spared my self-loathing as the bell would ring, and we would shuffle off into the school assembly to begin the day.

Each morning would begin with the Lord's Prayer and some school hymns. At first, I would pretend to mouth the words, for I didn't know them. I had never been taught — I didn't even celebrate Christmas. But I needed to fit in, so I studied my lines like an actor playing a role, which I guess I was.

I was constantly in trouble at school. Detentions, threats of suspension. Part of it was to prove to the others that I was cool, for there is nothing cooler than the attention seeker who disrupts the class at school.

Or so I thought.

I created an image I wanted my classmates to see — a rebel, cool kid, prankster, and clown. A range of characters who could mask the real person, all so they wouldn't ask questions or ever uncover the truth.

I was terrified of the truth

To avoid turning me into a hymn-singing, Lord's-Prayer-reciting, 100 percent Christian, my parents made me join an all-Jewish football team.

I hated it.

Here, too, I was an outsider. All the other boys on the team went to a Jewish high school. I was the pseudo-Christian who sang hymns each day. A fake Jew who masqueraded as a Christian.

One day, the all-Jew crew and I played a side that featured a classmate. As we ran onto the ground, Greg saw me and looked shocked. I wanted to do a U-turn and run straight from the field. My parents watched from the sidelines, cheering, rugged up in the winter chill.

I had chills of a different kind.

My secret was uncovered. I barely went near the ball, and when the siren sounded to end the game, as my teammates headed to the change rooms, I sprinted to the car park.

The next Monday, I called in sick to school. And the next Tuesday. Eventually, my parents forced me back to school, and I had to face Greg, who knew the secret.

Now I felt sick for real.

It was just before the third period when I crossed Greg's path. Greg looked at me and kept walking. Perhaps he felt sorry for me. Maybe he didn't care.

He kept silent for the next four years. I continued to laugh at the Jew jokes.

At the age of 13, according to the Jewish religion, a boy becomes a man. This is celebrated by having a bar mitzvah.

Over several months, for two nights a week, I learned Hebrew in order to recite a passage from the Torah for my bar mitzvah. It made me long to take a scholarship test.

New Testament by day. Torah by night.

On the day of my bar mitzvah, we celebrated with my family, and a photographer was on hand. A photographer who I would curse for the next few years. She captured the moment perfectly.

Chubby Ash, with a kippah on his head and tefillin wrapped around his arm, standing in a synagogue next to an Orthodox rabbi with a bushy beard and a big black hat.

Chubby Ash the Jew.

I would have preferred to be naked.

My mother loved this photo — the synagogue one, not a naked one — and had it blown up and hung on our living room wall.

"Look at the chubby Jew!" the photo screamed.

So whenever someone from school came over, I had to take down that damn photo and several others and hide them. If they uncovered the truth, my school life would be over. My entire life would be over.

Damn, those photos.

Ashamed of my shame

My secret remained for the six years I attended that high school. Aside from Greg, none of the other kids found out, and not even my mother realized how often I removed her precious Chubby Kid photo collection from the wall.

It was just after I graduated from high school that my grandmother was interviewed for a documentary on the Holocaust made by Steven Spielberg. She had survived Auschwitz but had seen her parents and younger brother all die during the Holocaust. As she told her tale with tears in her eyes, I watched on and felt ashamed.

She had bravely fought on despite her loss, survived numerous horrors, and fled her home as a refugee to start a new life. So what would she say if she saw me nod along at the Jew jokes — particularly the more offensive ones?

It was the moment I knew I had to come out of the closet, something I should never have entered in the first place. If someone made a racist joke, I would tell them off. If someone asked what religion I was, I would tell them. I was proud to be Jewish. The fake characters were banished, and the mask was removed.

I had hidden my identity, something that many people cannot do. Something my grandmother didn't do. She had stood proud despite the atrocities she faced.

It was weak on my behalf. I would no longer be ashamed.

And that damn photo of Chubby Ash the Jew would remain on the wall of my parent's house for all to see.

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