By Nate Feldman
As a person who has a father from a Jewish family in New York City and a mother from a Pennsylvania Dutch one from the bucolic Northwestern section of Lehigh County, PA, it should be no surprise that I have a fascination for how people from different cultures interact with one another.
Growing up, I had no particular allegiance to either of my parent's backgrounds, although I was much closer with my Mother's relatives and was more likely to celebrate Christian holidays, such as Christmas and Easter than the Jewish high holidays or Passover, things my father had pretty much moved away from in his adult years. I never had a bar mitzvah, and I was not a member of any synagogue growing up. With that in mind, because of my name, Nathaniel Feldman, I was always identified as Jewish in most social settings, so I grew a sort of affinity for Jews although I had very little understand of the religion and its traditions.
Spending my childhood in the mostly affluent Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, I imagined myself with a white suburban girl (Christian or Jewish). Those were predominantly the girls I had crushes from elementary school to high school. For a variety of reasons, I never really had a girlfriend growing up, however. I had at times severe emotional issues that probably didn't help, but in general, I was just never a good fit for people in my area.
When I was a college student, I became interested in people of other cultures. In the beginning, I was especially interested in South Asian culture. When I was 19, I met a Pakistani woman online who was living in a suburb of Atlanta. I took an Amtrak to Georgia over spring break, and we began a short relationship.
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