Rab­bi Marc Katz, author of Yochanan’s Gam­ble: Judais­m’s Prag­mat­ic Approach to Life, spoke with Sarah Hur­witz about her illu­mi­nat­ing new book, As a Jew: Reclaim­ing Our Sto­ry From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us. They explored Hurwitz’s impe­tus for writ­ing the book, the research she under­took in exam­in­ing Jew­ish iden­ti­ty today, and how anti­semitism shows up in our mod­ern world.

Rab­bi Marc Katz: Let’s start with the obvi­ous, why did you write the book?

Sarah Hur­witz: There were actu­al­ly a few fac­tors that came togeth­er that led me to write it. The first one was that dur­ing COVID, I start­ed doing train­ing to become a hos­pi­tal chap­lain. Most of my class­mates and all of my instruc­tors were Chris­t­ian. I start­ed notic­ing that many things that I think of as Chris­t­ian, they thought of as Uni­ver­sal­ist. We would talk about our min­istry, our the­ol­o­gy, and I was expect­ed to just spon­ta­neous­ly and extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly com­pose a prayer at a person’s bed­side. When I tried to explain that not many Jews pray that way, they’d say that as long you don’t say Jesus, it’s uni­ver­sal. I began to real­ize just how soaked I was in Chris­t­ian lan­guage, ideas, images, val­ues, even the idea that spir­i­tu­al­i­ty means that our bod­ies and this world are car­nal and some­how infe­ri­or to our soul or an incor­po­re­al spir­it realm. 

Then the sec­ond thing was that well before Octo­ber 7th, I vis­it­ed a col­lege cam­pus, and I spoke at the Hil­lel. When I fin­ished giv­ing my talk, this stu­dent raised her hand, and she said to me, ​“So how did you deal with anti­semitism when you were in col­lege?” At first I didn’t under­stand the ques­tion. She had to ask it again, and I said, ​“I did­n’t. Not once, not ever in the 1990s did I ever con­front any­thing like anti­semitism.” And the kids were so stunned. I think they almost did­n’t believe me. They kind of looked a lit­tle skep­ti­cal. And then they start­ed shar­ing sto­ries of times when they had felt real­ly uncom­fort­able on cam­pus as Jews.

I real­ly began reflect­ing on the dif­fer­ent Jew­ish iden­ti­ties I car­ried for most of my life. I would say things like, ​“I’m just a cul­tur­al Jew.” But I did­n’t mean I was actu­al­ly a cul­tur­al Jew. There are many peo­ple who are cul­tur­al Jews who are deeply engaged in Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture, art, thought, or Israel. They real­ly have a deep con­nec­tion to Judaism, maybe not through spir­i­tu­al­i­ty or reli­gion, but through oth­er aspects of Jew­ish cul­ture. I knew noth­ing about Jew­ish cul­ture. Or ​“I’m an eth­nic Jew,” which lit­er­al­ly is non­sense. Jews are of just about every eth­nic­i­ty and just about every race, so that does­n’t even make sense. Or I’d say, ​“social jus­tice is my Judaism.” There are indeed many Jews who are deeply versed in what Jew­ish tra­di­tion says about social jus­tice, and they are liv­ing that out in their lives, which is such a beau­ti­ful way to be Jew­ish. How­ev­er, I did not know any­thing at all about what Judaism said about social jus­tice. Or final­ly, I’d say, ​“I remem­ber the Holo­caust.” Or ​“I’m against anti­semitism,” which is a bum­mer of a Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, to iden­ti­fy essen­tial­ly, as an anti-antisemite.

I real­ly began to think in recent years about why my Jew­ish iden­ti­ty con­sist­ed of this series of caveats, apolo­gies, embar­rass­ments, con­di­tions. Why was I always try­ing to sand the edges off? Why was I always try­ing to dimin­ish my Jew­ish iden­ti­ty? And this book is my attempt to find an answer to that ques­tion. It real­ly is an explo­ration of how thou­sands of years of anti-Judaism and anti­semitism led Jews to try to escape that per­se­cu­tion by assim­i­lat­ing, water­ing down our tra­di­tions in the hopes of being safe and accept­ed. And, spoil­er alert, it did­n’t work.

MK: One of the things I admire about your book is that you real­ly chal­lenge Jews to take up space espe­cial­ly because we some­times strug­gle with know­ing how much space to take up. I’m won­der­ing if that has some­thing to do with your title. Can you explain, ​“As a Jew,” because it feels like it is giv­ing per­mis­sion for your read­ers to take up a lit­tle bit more space.

SH: I should give cred­it to the per­son who came up with this title which was the Israeli jour­nal­ist Amir Tibon. I was telling him about the book and he asked if I had a title, and I said, ​“no, I’m ter­ri­ble at com­ing up with titles.” He said ​“how about as a Jew?” I like that title because I think for so much of my life, I was say­ing I’m just a cul­tur­al Jew or I’m this kind of Jew, or I’m not that Jew­ish, but what if I was that Jew­ish? Would that be a prob­lem? This title is a dec­la­ra­tion of say­ing, no, I’m a Jew, as a Jew. No caveats, no apolo­gies, no excuses. 

MK: Let’s talk about the struc­ture of the book. Your book includes a num­ber of per­son­al anec­dotes. It’s the way you frame a lot of your chap­ters. For exam­ple, you talk about your time as a chap­lain and then you move into some kind of issue that came up as a chap­lain that frames your next argu­ment. Why did you choose to write the book in that par­tic­u­lar way, with that structure?

SH: I think that in a way, I am kind of relat­able to many Amer­i­can Jews, because I did­n’t grow up with a lot of Jew­ish back­ground. It was three bor­ing hol­i­days and one fun one. It was two texts: a prayer book in your hand and Torah on the scrolls. Then we add a hand­ful of uni­ver­sal­ist val­ues like don’t lie, cheat, kill, be nice, all of that. And so, I think that hear­ing about Jew­ish his­to­ry, about anti­semitism, about Israel, from some­one who has that sim­i­lar back­ground means you’re actu­al­ly hear­ing it from a per­son who’s wrestling with it. I think that is a lot more acces­si­ble and relat­able than a book with a bunch of facts and his­to­ry that I’m going to drop on you. I just don’t think that those books are as engag­ing. I think it kind of leaves peo­ple cold. I’m not an aca­d­e­m­ic. I am a Jew who’s grap­pling with this stuff, and I real­ly want­ed to bring read­ers along with me. I want­ed to feel like they were on my journey.

MK: It real­ly does feel like we’re going on a jour­ney with you. You’re dis­cov­er­ing things through your research, and then you con­vey them. I’m won­der­ing, what were some of the most pow­er­ful ideas that you encoun­tered when writ­ing the book that you did­n’t know before?

SH: Often we think of anti­semitism as a kind of per­son­al prej­u­dice. Jews are cheap, greasy, aggres­sive, I don’t want one in my club, I don’t want my daugh­ter to mar­ry one. You don’t see that so much any­more in the places where many Jews live. But what you do see is a kind of polit­i­cal anti­semitism, and this lan­guage comes from a philoso­pher named Bernard Har­ri­son. The idea is that the major­i­ty feels they are engaged in some grand moral project and the only thing stop­ping them are the Jews.

For exam­ple: We the Chris­tians, are Chris­tian­iz­ing the Roman Empire, and the only thing stop­ping us are these Jews who refuse to con­vert. We, the com­mu­nists, are bring­ing about the rev­o­lu­tion, the broth­er­hood of man. The only thing stop­ping us are these cap­i­tal­ist Jews. We, the Ger­man cit­i­zens, are bring­ing about this great Aryan, racial­ly pure father­land, what’s stop­ping us? These race-pol­lut­ing Jews. 

And today, you see this in Amer­i­ca on both the right and the left. On the right, you see, we, white Chris­t­ian Amer­i­cans, are bring­ing back white Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion, and the only thing stop­ping us are these Jews who are bring­ing in Black and Brown immi­grants to replace white peo­ple. It is called the Great Replace­ment The­o­ry, and you see that a lot on the right.

On the left, you see peo­ple say­ing we are try­ing to fight for anti-colo­nial­ism, anti-racism, and the only thing stop­ping us are these Zion­ists who are fight­ing for their colo­nial­ist, racist state. 

MK: That reminds me of the impor­tant dis­tinc­tion you offer in the book between ​“Purim anti­semites” and ​“Han­nukah antisemites.”

SH: Dara Horn writes bril­liant­ly in Peo­ple Love Dead Jews, that there are dif­fer­ent kinds of anti­semitisms. There is the elim­i­na­tion­ist kind that we all learn about in school, which says ​“you’re a Jew, you’re bad, so I’m gonna kill you. There is noth­ing you can do to be saved.” But there’s also a con­ver­sion­ist kind of anti­semitism, which says ​“you are a Jew, you’re bad, but there is some­thing you can do to be saved,” which is that you can give up what­ev­er aspect of Jew­ish civ­i­liza­tion that the major­i­ty finds dis­gust­ing. Back in the day, it was Jew­ish reli­gion. If you con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty you might be saved. For my grand­par­ents and par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion, it was to give up your last name, give up your nose, be less, ​“Jew­ey,” be a lit­tle more waspy, and then you can be saved.

I think the demand for a lot of young peo­ple on col­lege cam­pus­es today is to give up your con­nec­tion to your ances­tral home­land. If you give up your con­nec­tion to Israel, then you’re accept­able. If you are anti-Zion­ist, then you’re saved. And I think you even see the kind of con­ver­sion nar­ra­tive for some of these kids on cam­pus where they say, ​“grow­ing up, I was taught by my par­ents and my Hebrew school teacher and my Rab­bi that Israel is a mag­i­cal utopia of rain­bows and moon­beams, and it’s per­fect and then I came to cam­pus, and I learned that it’s actu­al­ly a racist colo­nial­ist state. I had an epiphany. I saw the light. I took anti-colo­nial­ism and anti-Zion­ism into my heart, and now I’m saved.” And they get the mes­sage from their class­mates that they are now a ​“good Jew.” 

Anti­semitism gets upgrades. The medieval Chris­t­ian cler­gy­man did not think of him­self as some sort of pagan xeno­phobe. He had cen­turies’ worth of very sophis­ti­cat­ed the­ol­o­gy telling him that Jews killed Jesus and they were evil. In lat­er gen­er­a­tions the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean schol­ar was nev­er going to say that Jews killed Jesus. That was medieval, super­sti­tious non­sense. They now had racial anti­semitism, and it was ​“sci­en­tif­ic”. That’s what you learned at the uni­ver­si­ty. Today, no one is going to say that Jews killed Jesus, or are pol­lut­ing the race. That’s out­ra­geous. But the prob­lem is Zion­ism. It’s the Jews’ nation that actu­al­ly is the prob­lem today. When you’re in an upgrade, it’s very hard to see it as anti­semitism You still think anti­semitism is the last thing. 

When we teach our kids anti­semitism by teach­ing them only about the Holo­caust we are rein­forc­ing that prob­lem. They learn that the Ger­mans blamed the Jews for los­ing World War I and for the Depres­sion and then they killed them. Why? Because of big­otry and scape­goat­ing and prej­u­dice. But it nev­er quite answers the ques­tion: Why the Jews? The real answer is because 2,000 years of Chris­t­ian anti-Judaism wore a neur­al groove into the West­ern world’s mind that led to the kind of anti­semitism that caused the Holo­caust. But good luck teach­ing that in an Amer­i­can pub­lic school where say­ing hap­py hol­i­days instead of Mer­ry Christ­mas can get you canceled.

MK: So what wor­ries you the most about anti­semitism today?

SH: How incred­i­bly insid­i­ous it is, and how incred­i­bly preva­lent it is across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. My friend Dara Horn very astute­ly point­ed out that if you think there are sides here you’re not under­stand­ing what’s going on. It’s the same nar­ra­tive on both sides. Jews are preter­nat­u­ral­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pow­er­ful and are deeply depraved. They’re in a con­spir­a­cy to harm you. And you see this on both the right and the left. It’s sort of the horse­shoe the­o­ry, where both ends of the horse­shoe start to come togeth­er, and as I write in my book, it kind of takes on the shape of a noose. So that makes me quite worried.

MK: And so what can be done?

SH: Illib­er­al­ism is a huge prob­lem, and often leads to anti­semtisim. When you no longer have the rule of law, when you no longer have ratio­nal process­es, when you no longer have peo­ple look­ing at data and evi­dence to make deci­sions, and instead peo­ple are going to old prej­u­dices, I think that’s when you start to see anti­semitism real­ly increase. I think one of the most impor­tant things we can do is fight for lib­er­al­ism. It’s not sexy at all. I hear peo­ple say­ing, some polit­i­cal action is good because it ben­e­fits the Jews and I say, ​“what if some­one else with a sen­si­bil­i­ty that was on the oth­er side of the aisle start­ed doing that against Jews?” They respond ​“that would be ter­ri­ble.” Well, that’s your answer. Any­thing that you do to oth­ers can then be done to you. That’s the prob­lem with illib­er­al­ism. Lib­er­al­ism means there are fair rules and pro­ce­dures by which we are all held account­able and kept from hurt­ing each oth­er, so I think that pro­mot­ing lib­er­al­ism is very, very important.

MK: Final ques­tion — if you had one mes­sage for your read­ers to walk away from this book with what would it be?

SH: The Jew­ish tra­di­tion has so much to offer, not just to Jews, but to our world, and I think to access it, we real­ly need to strip away a lot of lay­ers of anti­semitism and anti-Judaism that have turned us against our tra­di­tions and led us to mis­un­der­stand Judaism. We need to reclaim our tra­di­tion on its own terms.