Fear, Fathers and Family

When Jon Masters was 10, his parents, seeking access to the American upper class, cut off their families, became Episcopalians, and made him promise not to tell anyone they had ever been Jews — not any woman he might marry, and not his brother who was in the crib in the next room. For more than 30 years, he lived parallel lives: in one he was constrained by his parents' fears of exposure; in the other he acted as if his family's past did not exist and he could be whoever he wanted to be.
Wi...