Sarah Hurwitz’s new book, As a Jew: Reclaim­ing Our Sto­ry From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us, win­ner of the sum­mer 2025 Natan Notable Book Award, doc­u­ments her quest for an answer to that ques­tion and her chill­ing real­iza­tion that the Jew­ish iden­ti­ty she’d assumed she had cho­sen was actu­al­ly the lega­cy of cen­turies of anti­semitism. Jews like her, she real­ized, unwit­ting­ly erase parts of them­selves in the hope of being accept­ed and safe.

Join Hur­witz at the Stre­ick­er Cen­ter to dis­cuss how mil­len­nia-old myths about Jew­ish pow­er and deprav­i­ty have pushed Jews to recoil from our own birthright, and about her process of strip­ping away lay­ers of anti­se­mit­ic lies and learn­ing to live as a Jew with­out apol­o­gy. She will be in con­ver­sa­tion with an all-star cast of Amer­i­can Jew­ish commentators:

Dara Horn is a nov­el­ist pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture and author of Peo­ple Love Dead Jews.

Dan Senor is coau­thor of the New York Times best­sellers The Genius of Israel and Start-Up Nation. He is also the host of the Call Me Back podcast.

Abi­gail Pogre­bin is a jour­nal­ist, author of My Jew­ish Year: 18 Hol­i­days, One Wan­der­ing Jew and Stars of David and a mod­er­a­tor of pub­lic conversations.

This event is in part­ner­ship with the Stre­ick­er Cen­ter and Natan Fund.