Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

by Moshe Kasher

My mother had been struggling her way through school for years, determined to become a teacher for the deaf. She chased her master’s degree like it would define her and cancel out the bad decisions she’d made in the past. My grandfather, Dick the Dick, had been an English professor at a local community college. Lecturing on such topics as “Spousal Abuse: How to Do It!” My grandmother was a teacher in the Oakland Public School System. No doubt setting up the curriculum that would allow me to fail years later. Her mother was a teacher in Arizona at the turn of the century. Her mother’s mother was a teacher in Utah in the 1800s, teaching Mormons to be creepily friendly (yeah, that was her idea!). Her mother’s mother’s mother was responsible for teaching Abraham Lincoln as a youth. (Not true!) Her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was Jesus’s after-school tutor, pop-quizzing him on things like “How to avoid the pull of Satan in the desert” and “Why the Jews seem cool now, but you should never trust them.” Her mother’s mother’s… oh whatever, you get the picture. My family valued education.