These days, it’s pretty hard to know who really is Jewish. Let’s take the example of the singles-bar scene in New York. A lot of times a Jewish guy will start talking to girl (call her Debbie) and during the conversation, he’ll ask if she’s Jewish, and she says, “Sure,” when she isn’t Jewish at all. How so? Let’s say Debbie’s Jewish grandfather married a non-Jew and they had a daughter together. The grandfather told his daughter that she was Jewish, so she grew up thinking she was a Jew. When it came time for her to marry, she married a Jew, to please her father, and so her poor husband married her, innocently thinking she was Jewish because that’s what she believed. When they raised their child, Debbie, they told her she was Jewish, even though she isn’t Jewish at all. Tragically, this scenario has occurred in hundreds of thousands of cases, throughout the Diaspora. It’s another reason why it’s so very dangerous to live there.
So I have devised an almost foolproof test to determine if a person is really a Jew. If you can read Chapter 8 of my novel, “Tevye in the Promised Land,” without getting goose bumps, it may be because you aren’t Jewish. Like I said, the test isn’t 100% foolproof. It could be that you are merely emotionally retarded. Or maybe your concentration span has been so crippled by the Internet that you don’t have the patience to read to the end.
And the opposite is also true. Lots of non-Jews who read the chapter get goose bumps and that doesn’t prove that their Jews. It shows they are lovers of Israel, that’s all. Or that they recognize outstanding literature.
Fortunately for you, this wonderful Jewish novel is currently being serialized in The Jewish Press, www.jewishpress.com/sections/books/tevye-in-the-promised-land-books/tevye-in-the-promised-land-chapter-eight-the-holy-land/2012/08/07/
so you can take the test right now. Get ready to shiver!