Reclaiming "Jew"

There is, in fact, a widespread hesitation to describe Jews as Jews. In 2000, in the aftermath of Al Gore's popular-vote victory in the presidential election, a well-meaning editor forced me to rewrite a sentence in an essay about Joseph Lieberman, the vice-presidential nominee. I had written that Americans had, in effect, “elected a Jew as vice president,” but the editor — a non-Jew — made me change the wording to “a Jewish vice president.” He knew that to write “a Jew,” even in a positive article by a Jewish reporter, would strike some as offensive.