These individuals,
according to authors
Daniel Klein and Freke
Vuijst, are all "half-Jews."
They include, left to right:

ou don't "half" to be half-
Jewish to have fun reading

The Half-Jewish Book: A
Celebration (Villard Books;

Paulette Goddard

Paul Newman

Peter Sellers

Secretary of Defense
William Cohen

David Duchovny

Harrison Ford

Sarah Jessica Parker

THE
HALF-JEWISH
BOOK

Matt-heft} Broderick

Gwyneth Paltrow

Lenny Kravitz

Goldie Hawn

Amy Irving

Sean Penn

Gloria Steinem

J.D. Salinger

Noah Wyle

Arlo Guthrie

and FREKE VUIJST

"It is the existential complexity
of being half-Jewish that captivates us,"
write the authors.

$22.95).
Authored by an intermarried couple
— full-time writer Daniel Klein, a
Jewish American, and Freke Vuijst, a
Dutch Protestant television correspon-
dent — the book takes on a serious
subject in a provocative and humorous
way.
It's an eye-opening look at the half-
Jewish identity, incorporating original
interviews, anecdotes, funny stories and
examples of holiday cards, menus,
poems, song lyrics and photographs —
all crammed into 301 pages with a pic-
ture of half of a bagel on the cover.
The authors were motivated to write
the book when their "half-Jewish,"
now-21-year-old daughter, Samara,
experienced some discrimination during
a trip to — of all places — Israel.
"Samara, [a student at Barnard], had
a terrible time at a kibbutz in Israel
where they basically said she was not
Jewish," said Klein, "despite the fact
that she had a bat mitzvah and spoke
Hebrew."
The authors note that half-Jews are
lamented by many as the first step

Bill Carroll is a West Bloomfield-based
freelance writer. Michael Aushenker of
the Jewish Journal of Greater Los
Angeles contributed to this article.•

toward extinction of all Jews in
America. Half-Jews are denied their
Jewish identity by Orthodox and most
Conservative Jews, and denied Jewish
weddings and burials by the State of
Israel if their mother isn't Jewish.
They are objects of "indiscriminate"
discrimination by anti-Semites — espe-
cially if they possess a Jewish-sounding
surname from their father. And, say the
authors, as if all that is not enough, the)
can never figure out how to decorate
their living rooms in mid-December.

"Half-Jews" On The Rise

Citing statistics from the Jewish
Outreach Institute in New York, Klein
and Vuijst claim there are more half-
Jews under the age of 11 in America
than full Jews, and that there are about
800,000 half-Jewish youngsters under
the age of 18.
"This half-Jewish population will
only grow older and larger as the gen-
eral population ages and intermar-
riages increase," said Klein.
"Intermarriage now makes up about
half of all Jewish marriages in
America." (Statistics vary by study.)
"It is troublesome when you're a non-
Jewish partner," said Vuijst, "and you are
made to feel like you're doing something
wrong, something detrimental to the
Jewish culture" by marrying a Jew.
However, Vuijst, who does a daily
news/feature program for Netwerk, a
leading Dutch TV network beamed