[avshyz]

Hi, I'd like to chime in. I'm Avishay, I'm a secular Jew from Israel. I'd like to say it's not an infatuation with our genetic material. Far from it. (enter an obligatory nose joke here)

It's being impressed our ancestors have been holding on to a religious and cultural identity for two thousand years. Years in which they were were a minority in different countries, spoke in foreign tongues, were forced to denounce their Judaism, and sometimes were haunted without even that choice.

It's that as a modern Hebrew speaker, I can pretty easily read a piece of text as the Bible - written thousands of years ago. And that even though my ancestors were from Syria, Iraq, and Morroco - they shared the same ethos as the jews from Hungary, Germany, and Russia.

Although, being a Viking is also very cool.