Literature Network » Herman Melville

England, Israel and me Jessica Mann on how a liberal atheist came to embrace being Jewish Continuing our series, we look at the story behind Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20050306
Author:By JESSICA MANN

JONATHAN FREEDLAND quotes an ``eleventh commandment'': one should go on being Jewish to spite those who tried to erase Judaism from the face of the Earth. For many people, that depressingly negative motive is the only justification left for claiming an identity that has lost other traditional attributes, but Freedland is not one of them.

As a Guardian journalist writing critical articles about Israeli policy, Freedland has been the target of hate mail and rabbinical denunci-ations, but he says that he finds himself defending Israel to the Guardian as often as he defends the Guardian to Jews. ...

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