The paradox of assimilation

My new book, Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, is now available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.

There is no greater paradox in Jewish life than assimilation. One of the defining aspects of Jewish life in the modern era, it is nonetheless still a matter of profound ambivalence and, at times, existential fear for the Jewish people.

The essential creed of assimilation is that the Jews should seek to be just like everybody else. In some ways, this is one of the great dreams of the Jewish people: to be taken as they are, to become one with the larger society, and to find in this a path to success and freedom.

At the same time, however, assimilation represents a terrible dilemma, because in being Jews, the Jews are not like everybody else. So, in our more introspective moments, we ask whether, in assimilating, we have ceded something essential. Whether we have lost the possibility of living a truly authentic life. After all, as the Zionist intellectual Albert Memmi once said, “To be is to be different.”