CHARACTERS
KASIA — feminist, intellectual, youth leader. Until her teens she didn’t know one side of her family was Jewish. Gets involved with the Jewish youth group ZOOM, and tries to figure out what this new identity means to her. Is it a religion? A cultural heritage? An academic pursuit? A reinforcement of queer, outsider status?
TUSIA — a writer and artist. Born in Warsaw, uncovered her Jewish roots in her teens and spent her adolescence in New York. Her identities in Warsaw and Brooklyn are polar opposites—in Poland dominated by the elusive past, in New York free to be anything she likes. A Pole living in America, a Jew living in Warsaw…how will she sort out her separated lives?
MARIA — grows up knowing she is Jewish in a proudly secular matriarchal family. Meets an observant Jewish man and they quickly marry. Her comfortable cultural Jewish identity collides with the Orthodox world. A native of Krakow, Maria has to decide where she and her growing family can find a true home, and how to reconcile her various Jewish selves.
KATKA — a Catholic Slovakian, falls in love with two things she didn’t expect: a Polish Jew and Judaism itself. Moves to Warsaw for graduate school and pursues Judaism first as an intellectual journey, then as a life choice. Finding Polish Jewry embedded within a complex history, Katka wrestles with the reality of embracing a whole new identity.