An Apology from Your American Jewish Parents |
Dear Children of the Diaspora,
We, your parents, owe you a profound apology.
From the moment you were born, from the first time we saw you in that clear plastic crib in the hospital, we envisioned your name on an Ivy League diploma, on a Harvard Law degree, on a Wharton MBA. We imagined you graduating from our alma mater.
From that day on, we started you down a path toward all the goals and dreams our parents imagined for us, only bigger and better. We imagined you being able to afford the Pesach program we couldn’t. We imagined you getting a bigger house, a beach house, a higher-end car. We saw you paying full tuition for your children at the best Jewish day school, comfortably affording a kosher lifestyle, and living the American Orthodox Jewish Dream better than we ever did.
To achieve those goals, we sent you to the best preschools, the top Jewish day schools, the most expensive Jewish camps. As early as middle school, we helped you make choices to build the perfect college resume, with the right sports, volunteer activities, and extracurricular educational opportunities.
In high school, we spent tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars on PSAT prep, SAT prep, and college guidance counselors. We tapped our entire professional and personal networks to get you into our, er, I mean, your top school choice.
Expecting nothing but profuse thanks for nearly two decades of work and sacrifice to make our vision for your lives a reality, we now........