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    Once a Jew, Always a Jew?
    Once a Jew, Always a Jew?
    Once a Jew, Always a Jew?
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    Once a Jew, Always a Jew?

    By David Dvorkin

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    Worldwide, the number of people who call themselves Jews is about 14 million.

    They may all call themselves Jews, but what they mean by that name varies widely. These self−described Jews range from the most Orthodox, who have submitted themselves entirely to the imagined dictates of an imaginary god, to those who practice various forms of Judaism that are so watered down that they scarcely qualify as a religion, to those who observe no part of Judaism at all other than the celebration of a festival that they may call Hanukkah but that is in reality merely a Judaized version of Christmas.

    In this short book, I focus on the United States, which until recently had the largest Jewish population in the world−−just under six million self−identified Jews. Although it was recently surpassed by Israel, America arguably still has the most politically, socially, and theologically influential Jewish population in the world.

    According to a survey conducted in 2013 by the respected Pew Research Center, of those almost six million American Jews, 22% "describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or having no particular religion[.]" In the case of the youngest adult American Jews, the so−called Millennial generation, "32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture."

    This large group of Jews, which is a growing percentage of American Jewry, as the above Millennial number shows, is commonly referred to "secular Jews," although some of them prefer the label "atheist Jews." These are the people I want to discuss in this book.
    I contend that they are not Jews in any meaningful sense of the word. They may wish to call themselves Jews for a number of emotional reasons, but I call upon them to be intellectually honest and accept that they have ceased to be Jews. They are ex−Jews.

    The contrary argument is based on the idea encapsulated in the phrase "once a Jew, always a Jew."

    For the anti−Semite, this phrase is used as a slur. It refers to negative character traits supposedly possessed by all Jews.

    To Jews who think that there can be such a thing as a secular Jew, the phrase refers to some innate quality, entirely apart from religion, that distinguishes Jews from their non−Jewish neighbors.

    What is that innate quality? That’s the crux of the issue. Let’s go hunting for it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Dvorkin
    Release dateSep 16, 2015
    ISBN9781310369841
    Once a Jew, Always a Jew?
    Author

    David Dvorkin

    David Dvorkin was born in 1943 in England. His family moved to South Africa after World War Two and then to the United States when David was a teenager. After attending college in Indiana, he worked in Houston at NASA on the Apollo program and then in Denver as an aerospace engineer, software developer, and technical writer. He and his wife, Leonore, have lived in Denver since 1971.David has published a number of science fiction, horror, and mystery novels. He has also coauthored two science fiction novels with his son, Daniel. For details, as well as quite a bit of non-fiction reading material, please see David and Leonore’s Web site, http://www.dvorkin.com.

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      Book preview

      Once a Jew, Always a Jew? - David Dvorkin

      Introduction

      This book started out as a chapter in a larger book, which in turn began as an essay. ¹

      The essay, Why I Am Not a Jew, was published in Free Inquiry magazine in 1990. The title was, of course, inspired by Bertrand Russell’s famous book, Why I Am Not a Christian.

      Subsequently, the magazine published similarly titled essays concerning other religions. One of those was Why I Am Not a Muslim, by Ibn Warraq (a pen name); Ibn Warraq later published a book with the same title. That book has been very successful, and that title is probably the best known of this type, after Russell’s original.

      A few years later, I put the essay on my Web site. I have other essays on my site having to do with religion, but Why I Am Not a Jew is one of the most popular, judging by the number of hits it gets, the links to it from other sites on the Web, and the e–mails, both friendly and hostile, I get because of it.

      Eventually I decided to work all of this material into a book. I invited my wife, Leonore, who is an ex−Catholic, to write a section covering her experience and viewpoint, and we decided to title the book Why I Am Not a Jew (or a Christian). The book is still a work in progress, but while I was writing a chapter titled Once a Jew, Always a Jew, I realized that it was sufficiently independent of the rest of the book to warrant publication as a short book in its own right.

      * * * * *

      Worldwide, the number of people who call themselves Jews is about 14 million. ²

      They may all call themselves Jews, but what they mean by that name varies widely. These self−described Jews range from the most Orthodox, who have submitted themselves entirely to the imagined dictates of an imaginary god, to those who practice various forms of Judaism that are so watered down that they scarcely qualify as a religion, to those who observe no part of Judaism at all other than the celebration of a festival that they may call Hanukkah but that is in reality merely a Judaized version of Christmas.

      In this short book, I focus on the United States, which until recently had the largest Jewish population in the world—just under six million self−identified Jews. Although it was recently surpassed by Israel, America arguably still has the most politically, socially, and theologically influential Jewish population in the world.

      According to a survey conducted in 2013 by the respected Pew Research Center, of those almost six million American Jews, 22% describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or having no particular religion[.] In the case of the youngest adult American Jews, the so−called Millennial generation, 32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture. ³

      This large group of Jews, which is a growing percentage of American Jewry, as the above Millennial number shows, is commonly referred to secular Jews, although some of them prefer the label atheist Jews. These are the people I want to discuss in this book.

      I contend that they are not Jews in any meaningful sense of the word. They may wish to call themselves Jews for a number of emotional reasons, but I call upon them to be intellectually honest and accept that they have ceased to be Jews. They are ex−Jews.

      The contrary argument is based on the idea encapsulated in the phrase once a Jew, always a Jew.

      For the anti−Semite, this phrase is used as a slur. It refers to negative character traits supposedly possessed by all Jews.

      To Jews who think that there can be such a thing as a secular Jew, the phrase refers to some innate quality, entirely apart from religion, that distinguishes Jews from their non−Jewish neighbors.

      What is that innate quality? That’s the crux of the issue. Let’s go hunting for it.

      Dirty Jews

      Anti–Semites and too many Jews are fond of saying, Once a Jew, always a Jew, even though they mean something quite different by it.

      Anti−Semites aren’t the focus of our attention here, but what they mean when they say, Once a Jew, always a Jew is relevant to the discussion in a way, so let’s look at them briefly.

      When an anti–Semite uses that phrase, he is referring to supposed negative traits shared by all Jews and to his conviction that Jews are always dominated by these traits, no matter how pleasant and normal—non–Jewish, in other words—they may seem outwardly. He is also expressing the conviction that these negative traits are innate, part of the inherent, essential nature of the Jew. No matter how hard a Jew tries to disguise his true nature, he cannot escape from his essential being. Once a Jew, always a Jew. ⁴

      The traits in question usually have to do with money: Jews are stingy, they’re good with money, etc. Facts are irrelevant to people who hold such prejudices. For example, a study found that a higher percentage of Jewish families than Christian families contribute to charities, and the Jewish families contribute higher amounts.⁵ The anti–Semite will find reasons to dispute this study, or he’ll simply ignore it. Similarly, anyone who knows actual Jews, as opposed to the stereotypical ones who inhabit the anti–Semite’s imagination, knows some who are painfully bad with money.

      In the latter case, selective perception can be

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