As a person from the south I am used to being one of a few Jews in my neighborhood or in school, but it was never a big deal.

While on tour with a dance company in Texas, a member of the stage crew came up to me after he noticed my Star of David necklace and he exclaimed “ You’re Jewish?!” I replied yes. He gave me a puzzled look. I asked if he was okay. And he told me that he had never met a Jew before. I told him to look across stage at our company manager. He did. I congratulated him as he just doubled the Jewish population that he knew!!!

Later that night, the light board at this theatre crashed and we lost all our cues. During intermission the lighting supervisor, company manager and I are all in the booth.  I start calling out channels numbers and the lighting supervisor is programming sub masters and we are making a plan to call the 2^nd act via sub masters and I notice a different crew member (the former board op for the evening) looking very perplexed.

I ask if he’s okay and he responds that we were all women and in charge and he was just really impressed.

I took a deep breath and thanked him and informed him that world is a changing!