The Inside World

As told to Rivka Streicher by Leah Peleg

“What do you want to do?”

I was 16, in a religious studies class in a non-Jewish school in the English village of Marchwood, when the question burst out of me. There were only a few of us in the class — in the fifth form we could choose between history, geography, and religious studies. I chose the latter; my mom was a deeply spiritual person, even though we weren’t Jewish, and didn’t align ourselves with any particular religion.

That day we were talking about our vision for our futures, and the girl sitting next to me said, “I want to be a mom…”

I looked at her and blinked. What?

She said, “Yeah, well what do you want to do?”