REFLECTIONS ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
479
The only exceptions were those girls whose vocational choices indi–
cated that they hoped to become physicians or engineers. They
wanted to be reborn men. But more significant for present purposes
was the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jewish students did
not want to be born again as Jews but as something else-"no re–
ligion," "agnostic," "pagan," "Protestant" (mostly Unitarians with
a few scattered Episcopalians), "nothing that would be a burden or
be
discriminated against"-were some of the typical responses. Not
a single Gentile student ever wanted to be born Jewish.
This is no more an expression of "inauthenticity" in Sartre's sense
than the desire to be born in a better age. But it does indicate a pro–
found
malaise
on the part of Jewish youth. Sometimes it takes an acute
form. Over the years I have met numbers of young Jewish men and
women who wanted to know why they shouldn't change their name,
why, if a job or life career was at stake, they shouldn't deny their orig–
ins. "After all," they complain, "we don't conform to, or believe in,
anything distinctively Jewish." They wanted to know from me as a
professor of ethics why it was wrong for them to seek to escape punish–
ment for a condition for which they have no responsibility. It was not
hard to point out that for most of them escape was practically impos–
sible, that where it was possible the psychological costs were usually too
burdensome, and that morally it was intrinsically degrading to capi–
tulate to irrational prejudice and deny kinship with their own fathers
and mothers who, often against heroic odds, had courageously kept
their integrity and faith whatever it was. Except for one or two cases
it turned out that these young men and women were content to
remain Jews because they were fundamentally decent, not because
they had any clear conception of what made them Jews.
This feeling of ambiguity and negation towards Jewish existence
is characteristic not only of certain sections of Jewish youth but even
of greater numbers of their elders, particularly
in
the United States.
Many American Jews have acknowledged themselves as Jews for the
sake of their Jewish brethren in distress. Many more have become
concerned with their Jewishness for the sake of their children in
hopes of providing them with psychological security and a sense of
historical belonging with which they can meet the shocks of discrim–
ination and rejection without neurosis. The Jewish child as a rule
experiences the impact of scorn, hostility and opprobrious rejection
