GREAT, MY DAUGHTER IS MARRYING A NAZI
Jenna Kalinsky

“Midway from lick to stick, my father informed me that the tattoo from the Cheerios box was not to grace my forearm.

“Out of respect for those who died in the Holocaust, Jews don’t mark their bodies,” he’d said with unfamiliar eloquence, rather than his usual dad-like “no.” I was surprised; were the Cheerios people aware of this? Though I failed to grasp exactly how a three-quarter-inch Smurfette would denigrate the memory of the perished, I did as I was told.

This was my first exposure to the notion that certain Jewish issues weren’t adaptable. My family had always sedered, lulaved, and fasted (at least until lunch) and had Hebrew school and bat mitzvahs, and ate chopped liver at funerals. But we also colored Easter eggs, enjoyed shrimp dinners, and as a matter of practicality, Hanukklaus came to our house as a one shot deal on December twenty-fifth.

While it was fine that the religious observance of most Jews I knew growing up was a Choose-Your-Own-Judaic-Adventure, I soon learned when it came to two specific, deeply serious issues that threatened the preservation and humanity of our people, there was no deviating whatsoever. First: never have anything to do with Germany, its people, culture or commerce. Second: marry the one you love—as long as he is Jewish…”

Jenna Kalinsky earned her MFA at Columbia University and then moved to Germany where she lived for several years. Currently, she teaches writing at The University of Western Ontario in Canada and is an associate editor for the online magazine, Drunken Boat. She is a two-time Breadloaf Writers’ Conference scholarship recipient and an Eden Mills Literary Festival in Ontario poetry prizewinner and has published fiction, poetry and non-fiction in EM Literary, The Oklahoma Review, Eleven Bulls, NYC BigCityLit and 12 Magazine with work forthcoming in So To Speak and is working on a novel and a collection of poetry.