This is perhaps the most painful aspect for me of being Jewish, for I identify strongly as a Jew, am proud to be a Jew. And yet I sometimes feel so torn-so torn from the Jewish community, from the Jews I grew up with, who nurtured me, helped me. And yet I don't understand what America has done to them and how it has seduced them. The conservatism is there and really hard to accept. But it is there, definitely there with the mainstreaming.

My Jewish identity became extremely important to me from the moment the Jews began to be persecuted. At that point I became aware of myself as a Jew. But I came from a mixed marriage—my father was Jewish, my mother Catholic. My parents were atheists and therefore chose not to give us, the children, any religious instruction. They were totally non-observant. You might say that a Hebrew spirit dominated the household in the sense that my father had a very strong, very authoritarian character. And I suppose it’s true that many of the family friends were Jews, but many were not. So, while I did not have any sort of formal Jewish upbringing, I nevertheless felt my Jewishness very acutely during the war years (my first husband, Leone Ginzburg, was a Jew) and after the war, when it became known what had been done to the Jews in the camps by the Nazis. Suddenly my Jewishness became very important to me.

What is left to a Jew who refuses the religious community? Antisemitism and history. In short order I experienced plenty of both.

How do you see your own Jewish identity?
I am proud of being a Jew-although I must admit it took me practically a lifetime to get there. I have suffered from the low self-esteem that is the bane of the assimilationist Jew.
This is a heavy load that I could shed only when I recognized my success.
I identify being a Jew with being in a minority. I believe that there is such a thing as a Jewish genius; one need only look at the Jewish achievements in science, in economic life, or in the arts. These were the results of Jews' efforts to transcend their minority status, and to achieve something universal. Jews have learned to consider every question from many different viewpoints, even the most contradictory ones. Being in the minority, they are practically forced into critical thinking. If there is anything of this Jewish genius in me, it is simply the ability to think critically. To that extent, Jewishness is an essential element of my personality and, as I said, I am very proud of that.

I think it is time for all of us in this movement, Jews and non-Jews alike, to examine our silence on this subject, to examine its source. And Jews especially need to consider their feelings about their Jewishness, for any self-consciousness, any desire to draw attention away from one's Jewishness is an internalization of anti-Semitism. And if we want others to deal with this issue, then we ourselves must start to develop a sense of pride and a sense that our survival as Jews is important.

My mum was Jewish. Maybe I'm a really bad Jew because I'm always so excited to say that I am, but I don't live and breathe the religion.

As a child, my first conscious feeling about being Jewish was that it was dangerous, something to be hidden.

Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew
..
I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.

No, I'm very proud of being Jewish. And being Jewish is so much of what I am. Look, my father's family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler's concentration camps. I'm very proud of being Jewish. And that's an essential part of who I am as a human being.

I feel connected to Jewish history. I feel a part of the Jewish community, in all of its variety. As a Jew, my fate is bound up with other Jews. That could be Hasidim, Sephardim...people who are very different from me. In addition to that sense of bond and commitment, I also feel an obligation to contribute to Jewish culture, and that could take different forms. That could be my own writing, or it could be translations from Yiddish, so that people who don’t speak Yiddish can connect with Ashkenazi tradition. I don’t want Yiddish to disappear because nobody can read it. I also spend a lot of time on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I feel very much that it’s a part of me, in a way; I can’t totally distance myself from it, but I’m deeply disturbed by what’s happened there. I recognize the existence of religious texts, but I don’t necessarily believe them. I appreciate some of them from a literary or historical perspective, and I understand that they’re part of my history as a Jew, but I’m not moved by synagogue. I’m not even sentimental about it.

the more outside of a Jewish ambiance I was, the more conscious I became of Jewishness.

inside every Christian is a Jew

Judaism is not something I practice, but something that I carry inside. Being Israeli gives you the privilege of including Jewishness as part of a package, part of yourself. You don't ask any questions unless you want to. I have grown up in a Jewish country and I appreciate that.

It could be fairly said that I disagree with the old, false romanticism about Judaism. In practice, Orthodox Judaism can keep you busy nearly all of the time with things you should be doing. Keeps you feeling guilty. But feeling Jewish should also feel pleasurable. What can be wrong with that?