I am a cultural Jew. What that means to me is that I don’t adhere to the religious part but relate to other less well-defined but recognizable aspects of being Jewish. It’s really hard to explain.

In any event, I went to Israel for the first time in 1978. I came by boat from Piraeus in Greece. As the boat approached Haifa harbor, I saw many steel grey ships of varying sizes. While this did not seem particularly remarkable, there was one difference here. The writing emblazoned on the bows of these ships was in Hebrew.

I started to cry. For the first time in my life, it felt like I was part of the majority culture.