A dash of neurosis, a smidgen of gallows humor and a hefty dose of apologizing for herself.
That’s how the author and former speechwriter for Barack and Michelle Obama describes her own Jewish identity during most of her life. But when she turned 36, Sarah Hurwitz took a Judaism class on a whim and discovered the beauty and depth of the tradition in which she’d been raised, newly appreciating its wisdom about what it means to be human.
How had she missed all that richness for almost four decades?
Hurwitz’s new book, As a Jew, documents her quest for an answer to that question and her chilling realization that the Jewish identity she’d assumed she had chosen was actually the legacy of centuries of antisemitism. Jews like her, she realized, unwittingly erase parts of themselves in the hope of being accepted and safe.
Hurwitz joins us to discuss how millennia-old myths about Jewish power and depravity have pushed Jews to recoil from our own birthright, about her process of stripping away layers of antisemitic lies and learning to live as a Jew without apology. She will be in conversation with an all-star cast of American Jewish commentators:
Dara Horn is a novelist, professor of literature and author of People Love Dead Jews.
Dan Senor is coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers The Genius of Israel and Start Up Nation. He is also the host of the Call Me Back podcast.
Abigail Pogrebin is a journalist, author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wandering Jew and Stars of David and a moderator of public conversations.