I was the only Jew at my Edinburgh boarding school. Honestly. The only one. There was an art teacher for a bit, and that was nice, but the only other non-Christian pupil was a guy two years up and he was a Buddhist. We did not have a bond. There was also this younger, quite unusual boy who was widely reputed to worship the gods of the Vikings. Although in retrospect that seems unlikely.
At first I didn’t really tell people. I mean, I was 13. What are you going to do? Wear a badge? Word got out after I went home for Rosh Hashanah, though, amid fevered speculation about what on earth had happened to me. Some thought expulsion, others disease or death. Some