We lived in New York City and were more Jewish than the Millsteins. That is what my father said: more Jewish, less Jewish, my father always quantifying things, spinning out the lessons that would shape my life. "They care about being Jewish," he said, "but what do you do with all that caring?"

My parents did this: They sent my brother, Jonathan, and me to Jewish day school; they kept a kosher home. On Friday nights my mother lit the sabbath candles. She placed her hands across her eyes and said a blessing to the sabbath queen.

I liked the scent of the sabbath, the perfume on my mother's wrists, my father's dress shirts bleached and ironed. I could smell the challah in the kitchen, the marigolds, red and yellow, arranged in their vase. I stood next to Jonathan with my hands behind my back and watched the candles flicker. We wore navy slacks and white Oxford shirts, the two of us like tiwns with our hair slicked back, wearing matching clothes for the sabbath.

My mother had been born Jewish but grew up in a secular home. Her parents sent her to the Ethical Culture School and to summer work camp, where the kids stood in a circle before going to be and sang "The International."

"Mom's seen some weird things," my father said once. My mother had stiudied anthropology in college, and had spent time in Bali after she graduated.

She smiled. "I've seen some weird things right inside this apartment."