Rather less than six decades ago, Bernard Levin wrote a widely read essay for the New Statesman. Such is the transience of journalistic fame that Levin won’t be much remembered by readers under 50, though there was a time when he was one of Britain’s most celebrated journalists.
And “Am I a Jew?”, published in July 1965, was one of the best things he ever wrote. I’m old enough to remember reading it at the time, but to do so again today is riveting, particularly in light of the violence in the Middle East and the furious debate over Israel. Levin begins almost frivolously, wondering whether he looked Jewish or had a Jewish nose and suchlike, before stopping to say, “of course… I know perfectly well that I am a Jew.” What he was really asking was what “being a Jew” meant to him: an emancipated, assimilated European, specifically English, living in the second half of the 20th century, without any religious faith apart from a lingering reverence for ceremonies such as Seder (the Passover eve supper), or much interest in Jewish tradition, apart from a liking for its food and jokes (“because of their underlying gallows-humour, which I like because I am at heart a melancholic”).
Content from our partners
