A Childhood in Jewish New Orleans

It’s a standard trope in portrayals of assimilated Jews to open with a scene built around a Christmas tree. That’s how Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” and Alfred Uhry’s “Last Night of Ballyhoo” begin, and also Ian Buruma’s memoir about his grandparents, “Their Promised Land.” The idea is, as soon as you show that, you’ve got the audience’s full attention, especially if it’s a Jewish audience, because it’s so peculiar. When I was growing up, the idea that it was peculiar wouldn’t have occurred to me—­all the Jews in New Orleans, at least the ones we knew, celebrated Christmas, though our family…