Why Be Jewish?

Miriam Gross has this to say:

The fact that I am Jewish has always mystified me. It bears no relation to anything else in my life — not to the way I was brought up, not to religion since I am agnostic, nor to any community in which I have lived.

My parents both came from secular, middle-class, professional German (and Russian) families and although ... they didn’t convert to Christianity, they were nevertheless assimilated members of German society. Indeed they believed that assimilation was the best answer to the Jewish ‘problem’. []

Despite these views my parents both emigrated to Palestine in the 1930s (they weren’t married at the time), very soon after the Nazis started introducing anti-Jewish legislation.[]
I was sent to an English boarding school where being Jewish was neither here nor there — it was never mentioned. []

Of course I was aware of the history of anti-Semitism, of Hitler and the Holocaust, but it seemed that these terrible things, however unforgettable, were over and done with. I learnt nothing about Judaism or about Jewish traditions and culture at school, any more than I did from my parents. I never once took part in a Jewish festival nor did I ever go into a synagogue.

So it is not surprising that, for most of my life, I have had almost no sense of Jewish identity. I feel much more English than Jewish. This must be true of hundreds of Jews with similar backgrounds.
However, just as my parents were forced by the Nazis to focus on their Jewishness, so the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism in many parts of the world has made me much more conscious of being a Jew. Not that I have ever personally encountered anti-Semitism. But even in England ... there is more of it in the air; the anti-Semitism of the past, which I mistakenly thought had faded away, is coming back into the open.

So that I now sometimes find myself telling new acquaintances that I am Jewish for no other reason than to prevent the possibility of their letting drop some anti-Semitic remark. It would be less easy to do this when talking to Muslims who have been taught that Jews are devils....[]
In this new climate I feel more of a bond with other Jews than I ever have in the past — indeed it is a rather comforting fellow feeling, somewhat akin, perhaps, to belonging to a secret society. But no one would wish to acquire a sense of identity based on the negative fact of other people’s prejudices. It’s true that many Jews, perhaps most, have been shaped by traditional Jewish religion and culture, but it would be spurious for me to claim a part in experiences which I don’t share.



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Coincidentally, I just returned from Purim services. Purim is a joyful holiday, when children dress up in costumes and people give little gifts of food, and also donate money to charity. It celebrates the triumph of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordechai over enemies who wanted to kill all the Jews. We used a little book full of Purim songs, pictures,and prayers. But in an afterword by Jacob Neusner, this sentence occurred:

Purim was invented to remind Jews that they always have enemies.

It is a shame that Miriam Gross knows nothing about the traditions and customs of Jews, if only to be able to reject them intelligently. There are some beautiful things in Judaism.