Neither my farther nor any of our family ever took part in the Jewish .
I never got used to being singled out in that way . I"m proud .
of my ancestors and heritage. I've never practiced the Jewish faith or seen myself .
or our family as primarily of the Jewish culture. In the jargon of today's sociologists .
we've been assimilated. We"re Americans. .
-Barry Goldwater.
We American Jews have prided ourselves on being the people who .
went from Poland to polo in three generations. .
- Egon Mayer.
Someone a long time ago told me that opening a paper with a story drew the reader's attention better then anything. So let me tell you a story, my story. My story begins over a hundred years ago when in 1897 my great-grandfather Jacob Silverstein came over from Lithuania and in 1901 when my great-grandmother Leah came over from Russia. Both came here to escape the oppression and persecution that they were experiencing because they were Jews. They grew up in New York City, met, married and had four children. One of these children was my grandmother Harriet Julia Silverstein. She grew up in a home and neighborhood full of Jewish culture and religion; and in a society full of Jewish hate. Years later, after serving in World War II as a nurse, she met and married my grandfather Loren "Tiny" Lauzon. The settled in Grand Canyon where they had my father, Robert Maurice Lauzon. Due to my father's polio they moved to a small town outside of Phoenix called Wickenburg when my father was very young. Because of the prejudice that still existed against Jews my grandfather and grandmother decided that they would tell no one that my grandmother was Jewish and they never raised my father to know anything about his Jewish culture. My grandmother died shortly before my father married my mother still not sharing much about a deep and rich culture that was part of my father. Now in the year 2001, a nineteen-year-old attending Northern Arizona University, I am learning about a part of me not through family stories or history but through a class I choose to attend.
