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Let's get down to basics.

You and I are agents in the world. We act on our physical and social environment. What we do is driven by what we are. The primary thing, what we all share, is being human, and that means we eat, breathe, walk, etc. But beyond this our behaviors are subject to who we think we are - our individual identity.

Our parents primarily, but others as well, influence us as we mature, feeding us information about who we are. At maturity, most people have a clear, strong sense of their identity, so strong that it can easily be forgotten that identity is a constructed mental state. I'm Irish! I'm Bulgarian! I'm a Democrat! I'm Jewish! are all the proud proclamations that come from early training and are not innate.

Gilad Atzmon is a native of Israel whose identity was formed as a Zionist Jew. Yet, he was bothered by things he encountered that caused him to question this identity. Unlike most people, he invited the anxiety and doubt that normally frightens people away from critical self examination. It's easy and comforting to endorse one's received identity and others around one will be happy to provide encouragement for it as they do the same.

But what insights await the one who carefully explores the self! This book is a marvelous account of what Atzmon discovered when he put himself on the road to authenticity; to becoming a self-made man based on reason. The exhilaration of being truly free is the up side, the hatred of others not free is the down side. Atzmon is reviled by many, because he deconstructs their mythology and leaves them exposed.

The Wandering Who asks what it means when one says "I am a Jew". Atzmon finds no difficulty with those who claim the title as people who follow a religious practice, nor does he fault those who see themselves as human beings whose parents were Jews. What he is out to address are those who place being Jewish above all other things, separating themselves from the rest of society and asking first before all other questions: "what is good for the Jews?"

He remarks about the need of Jews to state that they are Jews before anything else. For example "I am a Jew who supports equal rights" or "I am a Jew who is a Democrat" or organizations like "Jews for Jesus" or "Jews say No". Why this need to set oneself apart when other people would simply say "I'm a Democrat" or "I support equal rights"? If there is this felt need to identify as a Jew, then what, exactly, does it mean to say it? Atzmon makes the case that it serves only as a distinction without content - to set one apart from all others for itself alone, that the Jewish identity is primarily one of negation, rather than standing for anything with universal appeal. At the same time (though he doesn't mention it) it creates an almost insurmountable barrier to entry...how can the other become a Jew?

In an essay that steadily builds strength and will keep you reading, Atzmon shows that the "third category Jew" (those who place being Jewish above all other things), is in a mental state that sees disaster always on the horizon, what Atzmon calls "Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome". Those with Pre-TSS carry a fixed history of continual oppression that cannot be modified by current reality nor can the future be anything other than a repetition of the past. In this way the life of a Jew is closed to experience.

This escape from temporality (where the past is revised in light of current experience and the future is an open question) puts the one under Pre-TSS always on the lookout and ready to identify the mortal enemy. Right now, with Iraq out of the way, Iran is the one that threatens a "second holocaust" regardless of the fact that it has no way of accomplishing it. The frantic call by the Israeli government for the elimination of all Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment and a threat of unilateral attack if this is not done, strongly supports Atzmon's thesis.

For those Jews who place being Jewish above all else, the consideration of the "other" is absent; all that counts is being ready to face an implacable foe at all times, to be ready and willing to strike out pre-emptively, and to identify a foe at all times. What the other party, the foe, has to say is irrelevant. The only characteristic that counts is "enemy of the Jews" in the eyes of Jews.

Such an outlook is the ultimate worship of the self and the group. Atzmon makes the case that the holocaust removed the Jewish god from his throne because the horror happened and He did nothing. To replace this fallen god, being Jewish in itself is now the object of worship.

Atzmon shows the need to head off destruction already well established in the Jewish mythos of the bible, with the paradigm in the story of Esther: the Jews are threatened with destruction, but a Jew within the halls of non-Jewish power, Esther, is able to stop the catastrophe through leverage with the king. In the end those who plotted against the Jews are themselves destroyed.

We can see this same method at work in the employment of the United States to destroy Iraq and threaten Iran. We see it again in the pathetic case of the powerless Palestinians, where the United States is again used under the pretense of peace talks to allow Israel its way.

What does such a Judaism offer in the way of ethical behavior? How does it answer Kant's famous categorical imperative - act only in a way that you would prescribe as an action for all? Atzmon says it has nothing to offer. It is a tribal creed, it is Jerusalem, not Athens. The "other" is to be exploited and used in the interest of "what is good for the Jews".

The attempt by Zionism to create a new Jew on his own soil has failed. Israel has only recreated the ghetto and, in fact, must maintain this "we are under attack" stance to avoid Jewish assimilation into cosmopolitan society, assimilation being the threat above all others. Jews must remain apart, not for what they have to offer the world, but simply to continue to be Jews. This is the reason for Atzmon's admission that he is a "proud self-hating Jew" because he deliberately left the reservation, not seeing anything positive, even substantive, about remaining removed from the larger world that he saw offered so much.

And are Jews everywhere and always innocent except when fighting among themselves or disobeying their god? This is a fixed idea in Jewish history. One tribe standing uniquely apart from all of humanity in being capable of righteousness. Is it possible to say anything critical of what Jews do in Israel and not be labeled anti-Semitic? Currently, Zionists are frantically trying to crush the peaceful Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) movement which merely asks that a country that occupies the land of others be subject to a penalty for doing so.

My own belief is that Israel is a dire national security threat for the United States because it acts blatantly in violation of law and has the power through the Israel lobby to force the United States to act contrary to our creed of liberty and justice for all. Far from Iran being a threat, Israel is a clear and present danger, a nation with atomic weapons that is never asked to give them up, yet has the known habit of striking at will, where and when it wishes with the expectation that the U.S. will automatically support it. The U.S. has meekly fulfilled this expectation time and again. As Atzmon mentions, a terrible catastrophe could come because of the special paranoia of a nation of 8 million people armed to the teeth and ready to strike. Israel has never dropped the official state of emergency that it declared at the foundation of the country. The national motto could easily be "be very afraid!" and, I'm sorry to say, this kind of outlook is far too prevalent in the United States, a spreading of fear that Israel does not mind seeing. Israel's PM Netanyahu was elated over 9/11, because it enabled Americans to become obsessed with enemies, something Israel would like the two countries to share.

The Wandering Who is a must read for Americans because we, whether Jewish or not, are uniquely in thrall to what Atzmon describes and we need to open our eyes before it leads us to further foreign policy disasters.

In closing, consider your own identity, let's call it X, and ask yourself how you would answer someone who asks, "what does it mean to be X?" If you found you could not adequately defend being X, would you get angry with the questioner and say he has no right to ask? Or would you stop calling yourself X and courageously seek your authentic self? Authenticity is what Gilad Atzmon finds for himself and this book is a record of what he found along the way.