When I got my first American Girl doll, I was eight years old. Kirsten was a Christmas present, and I was wild about her. She wore soft leather booties and a homespun apron over her calico dress. When I dressed Kirsten in her birthday outfit, I brushed out her thick, blond braids — just like she appeared in the catalog.

The American Girl collection began in 1986 with three dolls, each representing a distinct era in American history. Today, there are 14 characters. The much-beloved Victorian, Samantha, is teetering on retirement, and a new doll, Rebecca Rubin, will make her debut on May 31. Each doll comes with a story, and Rebecca’s is summarized by The New York Times as “a 9-year-old girl living on the Lower East Side in 1914 with her Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, siblings and a grandmother known only as Bubbie.”

So what distinguishes American Girl’s Rebecca from GaliGirls: Jewish Dolls for Jewish Girls? The classic American Girl doll mold, I suppose. And in the classic American Girl storyline, Rebecca’s narrative illustrates, in part, the difficulty of maintaining cultural traditions and adopting new, uniquely American ideals.