I have an odd habit of calling myself “Melanie ortiz” when I’m having a bad day or feel overwhelmed. I have a lot of emotions and they all seem to start with the word “Ortiz.” I call myself that because I’ve been searching for that right word to describe my life.
Ive been called that many times and I think it is because of my parents. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, but I’m actually a native New Yorker. When I lived in New York I had a lot of friends, which always made me feel like the only one who was from the outside. Ive always been a part of the New York Underground, and at one time I was involved with a group called the New York Underground, the “New York Underground”.
I love the sound of these two names. I was actually born to a couple named Melanie and I was the youngest of the four kids. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City in an area which was more or less exclusively Jewish. I was the only one of my siblings never to have a serious relationship with a non-Jewish person, and that has to say something about my family because Ive known non-Jews for more than twenty-five years.
I grew up in the middle of the Bronx and New York City in a neighborhood which was very white, middle class, and middle class and Jewish. I was always very aware of how there was a lot of Jews here and how segregated they were. I was also aware of how there was a lot of non-Jews who were very upset by this.
My brother and I grew up in the same neighborhood as my mother, my father, and her husband. She was very concerned with how we were being treated by white people, and when I was in high school, she would often stop by the house and talk to her husband and my father. She didn’t believe in having kids of our own, so while I was in high school, my father and my brother would go visit her at the house.
I think at one point in his life, my father and my brother were asked to give a speech at a synagogue in Philadelphia. I don’t remember the details, but at some point my father was asked by my brother if he wanted to go along with the other Jews who were going to speak. My father declined, telling the audience that he didn’t want to be associated with other Jews, that he was Jewish, and that he was proud of his heritage.
This is a topic that’s been talked about a lot on this forum, so I’ll just give you a brief history. My father was born in Russia, which is in fact the birthplace of Judaism. My father grew up quite religious and wanted to be a part of the Jewish community. However, he was also interested in science fiction, and at a very young age he decided that he wanted to be an engineer.
My father was a very strong person. He took me and my sister to the cemetery, and we were both wearing yarmulke and had shalomas. Unfortunately, the shalomas were not true to the text from the Torah, so my father had to put it on me, which was pretty embarrassing for me since I didnt really understand the Torah or what the yarmulke was for.
So when we decided to get married, my father brought out one of the shalomas for me. It was very pretty, and had a beautiful design. However, it was not long after that I realized that I wasnt interested in the kind of engineering that I was interested in, so I left my shaloma.
With your shalomas, you are supposed to be wearing them a certain way and they have to be fixed whenever you get a new one. This is also why you can’t have a really nice shaloma on your wedding day. The Torah is very specific about exactly how you are supposed to wear it. It doesn’t allow for anything that’s too fancy, or too conservative, or too retro.