How to Do Jewish Right

Until about halfway into the third grade I had a pretty normal Soviet childhood. Get up in the morning, eat a cheese sandwich, walk to school, show your change of shoes at the door, take your place in the second row of your classroom, get selected to be the captain of your Little Red Star group, use recess to organize your Little Red Star group to work on a poster for the upcoming celebration of the Russian Revolution, join the rest of your elementary school to learn to march like a Red Army soldier for the school parade during the said celebration, and avoid the school bathroom at all costs unless that was the day you practiced your Cold War defense and had a gas mask to wear. In the third grade, though, it was time to become devious. That deviousness included challenging authority, which for a nine-about-to-turn-ten-year-old meant sneaking into the teacher's journal while the teacher was out during recess.