Had my grandparents not emigrated when they did, I might have been born Jewish in Eastern Europe during World War II, or I might not have been born at all. Instead, I was born in 1942 in New York City.

I was born in the shadow of World War II, on December 18, 1939, on the South Shore of Long Island, a product of the early -wentieth-century emigration of Eastern European Jewry to New York City and its environs.

I was born in New York City, but I was raised in New Jersey, part of the great Jewish emigration of 1963.

New York is the greatest city in the world.

New York is my favorite city in the world.

I was born in New York City but grew up across the Hudson River in Alpine, New Jersey.