Who am I again?

"How can you be Jewish and Chinese if you don't speak Hebrew and you don't speak Chinese?" Peter asked sincerely.

Indeed, we are a country of immigrants. I have American friends who have German, French, Chinese, Irish, English, etc. roots; and these friends don't have a strong connection with their respective culture or language.

The fact that I claimed ethnicities, but admitted to having little connection to them, came as a shock to Peter.

"I was born in the Czech Republic," he said. "I speak Czech. My family is Czech. I am not Czech by law; I am Austrian -- but I think I'm more Czech than you are Jewish or Chinese."

My immediate response was defensive: "How can you be more of an ethnicity than me?"

Ethnicity is defined as "the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition" in Oxford American Dictionary.

So, I am ... American? A college student? Does it matter?!

The farther we got into discussion, the more the ache in my chest grew. I wanted to express in a million words how these classifications were social constructs; that we are labeling and grouping people because it feels normal and real; we continue to follow the conventions our ancestors left us. But if we take ourselves out of this world of thinking that we have created and follow; a world with borders and generalizations and groupings; what can we see? Maybe more classifications within groups. Maybe the walls we have created can be broken.

This conversation began when my neighbor told me he thought that Judaism was only a religion, and not a people with a nation.

I think I also become defensive out of habit, pride and honor for my family.