“My work is different because my sources are different, yes. But I’d attribute that difference less to my own abilities than to the ignorance of my colleagues. What you call a linguistic barrier, I’d call anti-Semitism.”

This bothered me. It made me uncertain as to whether we were humans or animals.

I memorized and repeated without discernment, treating everything I read or was told as the truth, as if it weren’t the product of fallible mortals but of some overarching infallible intelligence—either

This Zionism was the creation of Eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement shtetls, a movement of the religious poor who sought to settle the land that God had promised to their ancestors, the ancient Israelites.

His way of going about this was, in a sense, just a nomenclatural confusion; an un- or semi-conscious substitution of a more palatable vocabulary for one that felt too dangerous; so that what he called “history” was actually “theology,” and what he called “facts” were actually “beliefs”;

If enough Americans could be inspired by the dream of a Jewish State, they would vote enough politicians into office to make that dream come true, with treaties, aid agreements, protection from the Soviets.

Now that Israel exists, however, the days of the Bible tales are finished and the true history of my people can finally begin and if any Jewish Question still remains to be answered it’s whether my people have the ability or appetite to tell the difference.”

Judy was cruel. She had that smart cruelty to her of someone who’d gotten what she wanted. And she’d gotten it the fairest way, through suffering.

Instead, their true purpose—never publicly stated, but privately acknowledged—was to invalidate new conversions and turn as many new Christians back into Jews as possible.