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I grew up as a secular Jew in a sheltered corner of Suffolk County, Long Island where everyone I knew was either Jewish or Catholic, and almost everyone was white.  Unlike most Jewish families on Long Island, my family did not belong to a synagogue.  My parents were secular – Jewish by culture and identity, but not religious.  We attended a Jewish cultural school on Saturdays, where we studied Yiddish, music, bible studies, and current events.  Our education explored the rich history and traditions of our ancestors. One of my teachers, Ruth Minsky Sender, was a Holocaust survivor from Lodz, Poland.  As a young teenager, she survived imprisonment in Auschwitz because her poetry uplifted the spirits of the other women in her barracks.  In her soft Polish accent, she explained to us the horrific circumstances, sharing her experiences in the ghetto and the concentration camp, and delicately answering our questions.  This was not the cold facts of a history book but rather the very