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How the Other Half Lives

Today on Tablet

by
Marc Tracy
September 19, 2011

And now, for something completely different. Most days you can come here and read Jews writing about what Jewishness is like, and we like to think that’s valuable and that we do it better than anyone else. But today in Tablet Magazine, Alice Gregory, certified northern California shiksa, has come to tell us what we are to her. Or, first, what we seemed like: she initially learned of us by reading the books of Judy Blume, Philip Roth, and especially J.D. Salinger.

Having since gotten to know us in the flesh through six years of living in New York, she now questions whether there is truly anything distinguishing about a “New York Jew”—even if she still finds among our ranks excellent boyfriends. “I’m attracted to men who have obligations to people other than me,” she writes. “A Jewish mother guarantees this.”

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.