A couple of friends have been telling me not to talk about Jewishness so openly or in the ways that I have. I'm feeling defensive about it. But one thing I'd say in my defense is that when I was growing up, and even afterward in New York, among Jews you always want to know who's Jewish, who's not. Thus the famous opening joke in Nathan Glazer's essay on Jews in Beyond the Melting Pot. When a Jew tells another Jew about a social gathering his friend has two questions: How many Jews were there? And how do you know? So again I'd say that This is the sort of thing Jews think about all the time. I'm just trying to open up the conversation to a wider audience, because of the new Jewish position in American society. When Jews say that antisemites are Jewcentric, they're right. But the difficulty is that Jews are also Jewcentric.
My sister in law who is anything but Jewcentric just darted into the room to talk about cell phone plans with me. She gets annoyed with me when I think about this stuff, says the world has to move past it. I agree, I want the world to move past it. Indeed, when I think of scenes from elite life this summer, I think that the elite is moving past it, that say when it comes to environmentalism, development, conservation, energy, general issues of public policy, the New York-Martha's Vineyard set is pretty cohesive, and it's racialist to start studying last names. But not Middle East policy. And that's one big beef I have with the neocons. They think about Jewishness night and day, as much as I do, more. Americans should know what's on powerful people's minds.
