Summary

Having brought the conversation back to cultural differences between Americans and Israelis, Mark then comments that most of the people one might see drunk in Israel are “the foreign workers on Fridays” (8). Lauren adds “the Russians” to this group, to which Mark notes that they are not Jewish according to his standard (8). He brings up the notion of matrilineal descent—a belief that Judaism is only passed down through the mother, held by Orthodox Jews—which would begin an argument with the narrator, if it were not for Deb changing the subject once again.

Deb brings up Mark’s parents, the impetus for his and Lauren’s visit to South Florida. The narrator thinks to himself that Deb’s interest is not just polite, but in fact relates to her “unhealthy obsession” with the Holocaust and its survivors: a group that includes Mark’s...