LIAM

They’re American!

DAPHNA

In a couple generations, all these kids are running around bearing the hyphenated names of cultures that no longer exist. It’ll be just one giant globalized corporate world populated by one kind of people, who all speak one language and shop at the same store and all look the same. That’s how it ends up unless—

MELODY

No, it’s like that John Lennon song! It’s our country, like, succeeding. Like, progress! No nations, no religions, no—

DAPHNA

A world without Jews is progress?

MELODY

I didn’t say—

DAPHNA

A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes should not be telling me a world without Jews is progress.

LIAM

You’re the one who sounds like a Nazi. Keeping the race pure? You sound like a Nazi.

DAPHNA

How does your half-Jewish daughter teach her one-quarter Jewish daughter to be Jewish? Exactly how does that work?

LIAM

What do you want her to teach her? Bible stories? When was the last time you actually read the Bible, cause I’d be curious to know which part of it speaks to you? The part that says women were made from the ribs of men? That lying with a man as you lie with a woman is an abomination? Or best of all for you, a woman who is menstruating is impure and touching her makes you unclean? Is that what you want to preserve? Or do you just like the “traditions?” Is your Judaism a totally infantilized version that gives you the warm fuzzies cause it reminds you of Poppy and being a little kid, some sugar-coated memories of a childhood that wasn’t even that sweet, because if I know you at all, I know there’s no way you could read any of that stuff without having to modify a thousand and one sections and pretend not to see a thousand more until you water it down so thoroughly to make it palatable for your twenty-first century sensibilities that it barely resembles the original at all. I’m sorry, but I can’t get worked up about preserving a totally watered down version of something that wasn’t even true to begin with, and I’m not going to allow it to dictate how I live my life or who I choose to live my life with so I can genetically or biologically pass on something I don’t even believe in.

Beat. DAPHNA is quiet, calm, sad.

DAPHNA

Ok. So stop. You know what? Let’s all stop. Let’s all decide, right now, we’re going to stop being Jewish. That’s what you want? You think you’re the first person to ever question it? Cause I bet there were people before us who had questions too, but they kept practicing. They didn’t stop. None of them did. And they didn’t exactly have it easy, but they never stopped. And this thing that people in our family were doing in 1900 and in 1800 and in 1500 and in 200 and in 500 BCE made it all the way here to us. That alone has got to at least give you pause. And so now, when it’s easier to be Jewish than it has ever been in the history of the world, now when it’s safest, now we should all stop?