Vol. 188: Who’s a Jew?

California confronts a ticklish question

On a rare visit to Israel in 1969, Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, the fourth-generation publisher of the New York Times, found himself in a group hosted by an Israeli official who insisted on playing the Jew card.

“No matter what happens,” this Israeli honcho assured his American Jewish visitors, “everyone around the table will always have a homeland in Israel.”

“Excuse me,” Punch Sulzberger exclaimed, “but I’m an Episcopalian! Is this still my country?”

Hoo boy! What a comment to make to a Sulzberger! These people don’t like to be categorized or pigeon-holed, to put it mildly.

The Sulzbergers’ original family patriarch at the Times, Adolph Ochs (1858-1935), was indeed the son of German Jewish immigrants. He married Effie Wise, the daughter of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the primary architect of Reform Judaism, which sought to modernize the religion to suit American life. Ochs’s son-in-law and successor at the Times, Arthur Hayes Sulzberger (1891-1968), was a Reform Jew and also an outspoken anti-Zionist during a time (the 1940s) when the Reform movement was still debating whether to support a Jewish state in Israel. He believed strongly and publicly that Judaism was a religion, not a race or a nationality– that Jews should be distinguished from other Americans only in the way they worshipped. The notion of a Jewish state in Israel, of course, undermined that position.

Arthur O. Sulzberger Sr., the above-named “Punch” (1926-2012), was not religious at all. And much like his father, he viewed Zionism as a racist concept. He married an Episcopalian and raised their son Arthur O. Jr. (“Pinch”) in his wife’s Episcopalian faith. Pinch, born in 1951, as an adult stopped practicing religion altogether and was married by a Presbyterian minister.

So, are these 21^st-Century Sulzbergers Jews, or aren’t they? And why am I relating this family history now?

Like American Indians?

Well, you see, this month California took a crucial step toward requiring state agencies to include an optional box for “Jewish ethnicity” on all demographic data forms, from college applications to public assistance programs. California already recognizes nearly 50 other racial and ethnic identities for data collection purposes, from American Indian to Samoan. But this bill’s passage would make California the first state to officially treat Jewishness as something more than a religion.

“Plenty of proudly identified Jews do not attend synagogue or even believe in God,” noted the New York Times this month, “and Jewish tradition considers them to be Jews just the same.” In 2021, the Pew Research Center found that only 11% of American Jews said that “being Jewish is mainly about religion,” with most preferring some combination of religion, ancestry, and culture. (The Times neglected to mention where its own controlling family stands on this issue.)

On the other hand, you can’t convert to another race or ethnicity. But you can convert to Judaism.

So, what’s the bottom line when it comes to defining who’s Jewish? Ancestry? Religion? Nationality? Tribe? Or something else?

Superman without Lex Luthor?

That question has baffled scholars and antisemites alike for centuries. In Constantine’s Sword, the ex-priest James Carroll explored the long history of Catholic antisemitism and how this theological hostility toward Jews set the stage for modern racial antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Carroll argued that Christians were gentle folks for their sect’s first 300 years. Then the Emperor Constantine seized upon the cross and the crucifixion as nifty symbols with which to unify his empire. And subsequently the Church needed a common enemy to keep its squabbling flock together through the years. I mean, who would pay any attention to Superman if Lex Luthor didn’t exist? Besides, antisemitism was so much fun, doncha know?

Come to think of it, Christianity is the world’s only major religion that’s preoccupied with the manner of its founder’s death. Who knows, or even cares, how Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, Confucius, or Buddha departed this Earth?

If Palestinians were smarter…

Adolf Hitler, for his part, became so obsessed with defining Judaism that he took his eye off the battlefield and lost World War II. The founders of the State of Israel, lacking Hitler’s luxury of unlimited deliberation time, opted for Hitler’s definition— understandably, since Israel was originally conceived as a refuge for Hitler’s victims. That means that anyone with even a teensy bit of Jewish blood— yes, even the Sulzbergers— would be welcomed there if things turn nasty for Jews elsewhere. Israel is not so much a Jewish state— that is, one governed by the benevolent precepts of the Jewish religion— as a “state for Jews,” many of whom apparently feel no compunction about nasty behavior toward strangers in their midst. (As one of my otherwise charitable Jewish friends puts it, “Why don’t the Palestinians just go somewhere else?”)

And, yes, the Israeli definition of who is a Jew is a racist concept, in the sense that I (who have spent all of 20 days in Israel, in two visits more than half a century ago) can board a plane to Tel Aviv tomorrow and be welcomed with open arms, whereas a Palestinian whose family worked that land for generations must relocate somewhere else. (As I’ve suggested before, if the Palestinians had any brains, they would all convert to Judaism— in which case they too would be welcomed in Israel, after which they could practice any religion or none at all, just like Israeli Jews.)

On the other hand, Israel has created a more humane society than most of its neighbors, not to mention the Third Reich, which lasted only 12 years, compared to Israel’s 78 years and counting.

What about ‘food Jews’?

The California bill aims to help the state quantify its Jewish population in order to track hate crimes and for public health purposes— for example, by determining where to promote genetic screenings for diseases common in Jewish communities or ensuring that antisemitic attacks are not misclassified on reporting forms.

The trouble with the bill lies in its failure to recognize a primary Jewish characteristic: Our resistance to being classified (which we share with the Sulzbergers, among others). Nor does the bill consider that many Jews belong to multiple Jewish subgroups, some of which can’t stand each other. The ultra-Orthodox have no use for me, and vice versa. I may admire the Sulzbergers for reinventing and sustaining modern journalism, but not for turning their backs on their ancestors, who most assuredly were not Episcopalians or Presbyterians.

Of the many Jewish subgroups, one of my favorites are the “food Jews,” a sect which includes some of my relatives. These people never attend synagogue or open a prayer book. But at every Jewish holiday, they conscientiously and lovingly prepare all the appropriate edibles from scratch. And despite their lack of scholarly credentials, they grasp and transmit the three essential elements of every Jewish holiday:

1. They tried to destroy us.
2. We survived.
3. Let’s eat.

To paraphrase Hillel the Great: That is the whole law. All the rest is commentary.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com