There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti- Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world–or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world– I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk. Christopher Hitchens
About This Quote

The statement that "there is a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don't much respect" is a very interesting one. This person's parents are not Jewish but are part of the Jewish community or have some kind of connection to Judaism. He/she does not consider them Jewish for some reason. It just seems wrong to him/her to be part of the Jewish community. He/she feels that he/she would be better off if he/she just left the Jewish community altogether.

Source: Hitch22: A Memoir

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