Another excerpt from Isaac Asimov’s autobiography that I think is especially relevant right now:

That evening I went to Park Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street and visited my old friend Sidney Cohen from the days of Seth Low Junior College. For the first time, I met his wife, Lea, an Israeli woman with a delightful accent (though her English was fluent) and with an equally delightful beauty. I also met Sidney’s three small children.

We went out for dinner and discussed Israel and the Jewish heritage. As usual, I found myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist and of not particularly valuing my Jewish heritage.

I like Jewish cooking, Jewish music, Jewish jokes—but I’m not serious about it. I also like other kinds of cooking, music, and jokes (in fact, we were eating at a Chinese restaurant). I don’t even mind being Jewish. I make no secret about being Jewish in this book, or elsewhere, and I’ve never tried to change my name.

I just think it’s more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.

This is not something I can get people in general to believe. I certainly made no impression on Sidney and Lea, so I remain a minority within a minority, and am uneasily convinced that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is in deep trouble.