But this is not a singularly Jewish issue. Lots of people don’t, for instance, consider Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior but still take pleasure in Christmas. It doesn’t even have to be about religious identity. How many Americans of, let’s say, Italian ancestry identify as Italian but speak only a few words of the language here and there, have read no Dante, seen no Botticellis, never even stepped foot on that boot-shaped peninsula? To a Florentine this person is not their countryman, but back in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, he sees himself as Italian.
