On more than one occasion, I have found myself being lectured by non-Jews (always men) about why I am incorrect in my Jewishness. Judaism is a religion and I can’t be Jewish if I am an atheist, some say. The ones that accept the atheism then feel compelled to categorise me as a ‘cultural’ Jew whose identity is defined by rituals and customs passed down over the centuries. And then there’s the stern mystification about the relatively minor role that Hanukkah plays in the spiritual calendar for Jews. It is hard for some to realise that while it involves lights and wintry nights, Hanukkah is not remotely the equivalent of Christmas. Nothing in Judaism is.

The thing that all these mansplainers, or goysplainers as I call them, struggle to understand is that Jewishness is a sprawling spiritual edifice that inheres in everything from all-consuming worship of God to a forensic interest in Talmudic law to the somewhat bare and simple fact of having a Jewish mother. It is an identity and a fact: simple and iron-fisted and complicated. Spiritual for some; cultural, political and moral for others.

But what I truly do not dare not tell my goyish interrogators for fear of a level of........

© The Spectator