This is my first post, so I guess I should start with the title of the blog.  Let's start with non-Jewish Jew. An oxymoron, yes, but one with a rich heritage.  The famous Marxist intellectual Isaac Deutscher coined the phrase in a series of essays called the Non-Jewish Jew (published in 1968), which I happened to acquire in college at a book sale. Now, I am no Marxist; far from it. But Deutscher applied the phrase to humanist Jews like himself, and it is that category of Jew that I proudly belong to. "I am a Jew because I feel the pulse of Jewish history," Deutscher wrote.  That pretty much sums it up for me as well.

As for nice Secular Boy, well, hopefully you get the play on words.  I am secular, not religious; I will expand on that in future posts. I am a boy (well, a man, actually).  And I'm usually nice.  But I guess we'll see about that...