My father is a devout atheist, but I still understood the weight of being Jewish before I understood almost anything else.
“Why did you leave Russia?” I asked him when I was a child.
“They didn’t like Jews in Russia,” he replied.
No further explanation. Just “they didn’t like us.” How was I able to grasp such thoughtless, blind hatred at age six? Perhaps my father was so resigned to living in places where people hated him for being Jewish that I assumed this was a casual way for a society to function and I just accepted it like he had. My assumption would have been right.