Historically, Jews have been proud of our non-homogeneous thinking and our skills in seeing complexity. "Three Jews, four opinions," is a maxim quote… - Evelyn Torton Beck

I began to understand the limits that the dominant culture places on "otherness." You could be a Jew and people would recognize that as a religious or ethnic affiliation or you could be a lesbian and some people would recognize that as an "alternative lifestyle" or "sexual preference," but if you tried to claim both identities-publicly and politically-you were exceeding the limits of what was permitted to the marginal. You were in danger of being perceived as ridiculous and threatening.

My family history is a series of gaps, leaving questions to mark the spaces: What happened to my father while he was gone? Who took us in after the Nazis evicted us from our apartment? How did we get by after they confiscated the small business my father had painstakingly built up over the years? How did my father get out of the camps? My parents talked about those years, selectively. And not often.

Probably the single most insistent theme in this book, repeated with variation and from many different angles and perspectives, directed at both non-Jewish lesbians and non-lesbian Jews, is the desire of the contributors to be "all of who we are."