What a strange blog title.
It turns out that in my reading I find Jewish thinkers talking about the crisis that Jews encounter in their first year of college when the subject of their Jewishness becomes existential.
That did not happen to me. My Jewishness has periodically become an existential question unrelated to my age or my activities.
I have always known I am a Jew and I have never felt hostility to my ancestry. I have felt hostility to Jews who reject their fellow Jews.
The problem of Jews in college turns out to be simply the existential question of why a Jew should be or should not be a Jew. The number of answers is just short of infinity.
My answer is very straightforward and simple: a Jew is a person with a direct hands-on contact with the previous 3000 year history of the world. My ancestors were at everything of importance everywhere, from the founding of monotheisim to the revival of a 2,000 year old dead spoken language. They were in China 1400 years ago, in India, everywhere North of the Mediterranean and many places South. They came with Columbus to the New World.
I have in my genes the memory good, bad and indifferent of most human history. I welcome that direct connection to history and the world.
I am very fortunate.