Paskudnyak by Sonia Pilcer

First, I'd like to point out that I did a little research on Sonia Pilcer. (Thank you Wikipedia). According to Wikipedia, she has written stories that are loosely based on her own life.

In this story, Zosha is part of a Polish Jewish family. Her parents are Holocaust survivors Genia and Heniek (he escaped from Auschwitz so he has numbers). If Wikipedia is to believed, these people were real people. Anyway, this short story deals with the pressures on young people to assimilate into American culture while traditional households encourages tradition. This leaves our protagonist and narrator, Zosha torn between two worlds. There is an interesting progression in this story because in the beginning, little Zosha seems to enjoy the Jewish traditions, even to the point of wanting to ink numbers on her arm to be like her mother (though it's father who has the numbers). As usual, a young child doesn't really understand what it means to be Jewish and in this case, she thinks that numbers and as such, suffering is a part of her identity. As the girl grows into a teenager, she comes to abandon her Jewish identity in favor of being an American teenager. She dresses as her friends dress, wearing tight outfits, short skirts and boots (something her parents detest, thus conveying their traditional lifestyle). Desperate, her parents take her to a rabbi but she will have none her it. She refuses to speak hebrew and denies entry to a hebrew school. This is an emotional scene but she has effectively abandons her faith in favor of her American life.