SO YOU UNDERSTAND, To my grandchildren, a small part of who and why you are. Conceived in the same year as the redemption of Israel, this story is an American Jew’s quest for identity in the shadow of the Holocaust, the mass immigration from the Pale of Settlement, and the redemption of Israel, his search for Jewish identity and generational continuity by understanding his future through the context of his past. Some will say being born a Jew in America or anywhere is an accident, to others a blessing, and to many a responsibility……and so this story is of an unfolding life, innocent and true, as a third generation American Jew, raised within the Reform Movement, seeking to survive and achieve American and Jewish dreams to bridge the cultural imperative and secular American life with traditional Jewish values, beliefs, and behaviors. This is a story of educational success limited by a modern-day Jewish prophet heralding inconsistencies within the goal for Jewish identity and American medical professionalism, a story of the projection of the post-World War II generation of parents who believed with education the opportunity and fulfillment of the American dream was without restriction, a story of marriage to a convert with linkage of traditions of a Jewish past and a yearning for Jewish understanding manifested by the other movements within the Jewish spectrum, driven by the need to feel membership within the totality of the Jewish people. In the Shadow of the Holocaust, Israel becomes a state in May,1948. Irving and Phyllis Kalin marry December 12, 1948, second generation American Jews, made the commitment to have a family in a world now free of Hitler and in the womb of the redemption of Israel. Their children were raised within the Reform Jewish Movement, nurtured with traditional Jewish values of family and education projected into the fantasy the Jew was finally free of antisemitism and any restriction to opportunity – ‘but marry a Jewish girl’. ‘Become a doctor and the world will be your oyster’. Ketuba in the Shadow of the Holocaust, a story of an American Jew’s quest for identity.