Even though I grew up as a Sephardic Jew in Brooklyn where we ate Syrian food and went to temple, it was still America.

Mizrahi contrasts the specificity of his upbringing—Sephardic Jewish life in Brooklyn, Syrian cuisine, synagogue attendance—with a larger national identity. The line suggests that immigrant or minority cultural practices do not negate “Americanness”; they are part of it. Implicitly, he resists a narrow, assimilationist definition of America by asserting that a home filled with distinct languages, foods, and religious routines can still be fully American. The quote also gestures toward the pluralism of New York City: ethnic particularity and national belonging coexist, and the everyday details of family life become evidence of a broader civic identity rather than an exception to it.