The Non-Jewish Jew

Isaac Deutscher

1958

There is an old talmudic saying: “A Jew who has sinned still remains a Jew.” My own thinking is, of course, beyond the idea of “sin” or “no sin”; but this saying has brought to my mind a memory from childhood which may not be irrelevant to my theme.

I remember that when as a child I read the Midrash, I came across a story and a description of a…

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Creator Bio

Isaac Deutscher

1907–1967

Isaac Deutscher was born in Chrzanów, near Kraków, and raised in an Orthodox family, although he turned away from religion in adolescence. Upon moving to Warsaw in 1925, he joined the Communist Party of Poland. He was expelled from the party in the early 1930s for his criticism of Stalin and for spreading what the party considered needless alarm over Nazism. Deutscher moved to London in 1939, in time to avoid the fate that would befall the family he left behind. His laudatory three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky is his best-known work. Deutscher remained a committed Marxist until his death and was a prominent critic of the Vietnam War.

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