Quote by Christopher Hitchens
Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm:An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phrase from D.H. Lawrence, and to immerse Jewishness in other and wider struggles. Indeed, the old canard about 'rootless cosmopolitanism' finds a perverse sort of endorsement in Jewish internationalism: the more emphatically somebody stresses that sort of rhetoric about the suffering of others, the more likely I would be to assume that the speaker was a Jew. Does this mean that I think there are Jewish 'characteristics'? Yes, I think it must mean that.
Summary
This quote reflects on the idea of being a "non-Jewish Jew" and the complex relationship between Jewish identity, political ideologies, and internationalism. The speaker, discussing their own personal identification with the Marxist perspective, suggests that many Marxists, particularly Jewish ones, distance themselves from their Jewishness in order to focus on broader socioeconomic struggles. They acknowledge that the stereotype of "rootless cosmopolitanism" associated with Jewish internationalism may have some truth to it, and they go as far as to suggest that Jewish characteristics may exist. The quote raises questions about the balance between individual identity and collective struggles, as well as the intersection between ethnicity, ideology, and perception.
