As I was growing up, my whole wide world was Jewish: Jewish camp, Jewish synagogue, Jewish youth group, Jewish neighborhood. From nursery all the way up to the end of twelfth grade, I attended Jewish day school. I lived, ate, and breathed Jewdom, and inevitably all of my friends were Jewwy Jews, just like me. I didn’t choose that life, mind you, it was chosen for me by my parents, and once I graduated high school, my universe expanded to include the ethnocultural communities that had always existed only a bus ride away, just beyond the pale of the Jewish settlement pattern. Now, looking back upon that era, when there were never fewer than three or four David’s in a room at any one time, I can reflect upon the various advantages and disadvantages of living in a sheltered shtetl, the equivalent of a tiny little village nestled inside of a multicultural metropolis.