Why are my best friends Jewish?

This is a real question. I don’t know the answer and I’m curious.

I lived in New York City for ten years and Los Angeles for seven years, and there are a lot of Jewish people in those two cities, so it could be coincidence.

But I honestly didn’t realize it until one day I was thinking about the difference between shallow versus deep friendships, and made a list of my closest friends. After I looked at the short list, smiling and appreciating, I looked again. Wow. All of them are Jewish. Is it coincidence, or a cultural attraction?

I meet a lot of people and like most of them, but it’s rare I feel that extra-extra click with someone. In Buenos Aires this year, I met with a musician named Alejandro Staro, and we instantly felt like old friends. Then two hours into the conversation, he said something about his Jewish culture, and I was shocked. I had no idea. If that was part of the reason I felt an instant click with him, how could that be?

When I got home to New Zealand, I called one of my best non-Jewish friends, to ask her about this. She’s from Iran, Bahá’í faith, and spent twenty years fighting terrorism on the front-lines of Afghanistan, Somalia, and Kenya, before taking a nice peaceful post in 2019, in Kyiv Ukraine. Oops. (Yes she’s a magnet for disaster, and has also been attacked by a dolphin and silverback gorilla.) But anyway. She’s also one of those rare people that I super-clicked with the minute we met, years ago. So I explained the situation and asked her why I’m so drawn to Jewish people.

She said, “Maybe that’s why you and I clicked so well.”

I said, “Ha. Wait. What? No. You’re Bahá’í.”

She said, “Yeah but my mom’s mom is Jewish, so it was always part of my family’s culture.”

Again! I had no idea, so it was another blind taste test.

So if this is a cultural attraction, then what is that really? My friends are vastly different, some religious, some not at all, from different countries and backgrounds, so any cultural similarity must be subtle.

Could the Talmudic tradition of questioning pass down through non-religious families? Is it a shared love of discussion?

I could relate to the worldview presented in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Judaism” — a surprisingly great book, written by a rabbi. My friend Maya inducted me as an honorary “member of the tribe”.

Am I recognizing a shared worldview in strangers? Or is it something else entirely? I don’t know, so I’m asking the world for ideas. Please leave a reply here if you have any thoughts.