Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s brutal war in Gaza that followed, Jewish people in America have been wrestling with an identity crisis. After centuries of being perceived as outsiders, Jews had reached a level of acceptance and comfort that has been shaken in the past three years.
Nicholas Lemann, former dean of Columbia’s Journalism School and a New Yorker staff writer, recently wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that, “With jarring suddenness, it now seems no longer possible to be at once comfortably Jewish, and also Zionist, and also liberal, and also fully accepted outside the Jewish world.”
Here & Now‘s Scott Tong talks to Lemann about this identity crisis and about his own family history. Lemann is also the author of the recent book “Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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