Perhaps this experience as a lesbian and feminist is the reason I try to avoid the "us" and "them" division and try to find common ground in both wor… - Irena Klepfisz

I want the issue of anti-Semitism to be incorporated into our overall struggle because there are lesbian/feminists among us who are threatened in this country not only as lesbians, but also as Jews. If that incorporation simply takes the form of adding us on to the already existing list of problems, then it will be mere tokenism and lip service. But if it includes self-examination, analysis of the Jew in America, and dialogue between Jews and non-Jews, then I think this movement will have made a real attempt to deal with the issue.

It seems to me that there are sort of multiple American Jewish identities. One is the Zionist identity -- that I'm a Jew because I'm a Zionist, and I don't have to do anything else, but I can support Israel and I'm a Jew. And then, there's the observant one -- the one that's -- you know, you go to the synagogue. And the secularists -- I mean, when my -- when I first wrote my essay, "Secular Jewish Identity: Yiddishkayt in America" in "Tribe of Dina," which was, like, in, I don't know, '83, '84, people came up to me and said, I didn't realize I was a secularist...there was also this other identity which had to do with the Holocaust, and it had to do with either identifying yourself as a survivor or identifying yourself as the first generation or second and now third, where your identity is Jewish because of your connection to the Holocaust.

I think the thing is that being a secular Jew in a committed, conscious way, not just by default or by absence, but rather with content, is hard work. I mean, you have to work on it. It’s not like you have a synagogue to walk into. You know, it’s not like there’s an institution that you can walk in.