I found this interesting short clip of the versatile physician, writer, director, documentarian, comedian, and public intellectual Jonathan Miller, who died in 2019 at the age of 85, talking with Dick Cavett about how he views his own Jewish ethnicity. I found completely relatable his views about subordinating the ethnic and religious heritage into which he was born to a more universal sense of humanity.

The exchange is well worth watching for anyone trying to navigate rejecting ethnic and religious sectarianism and embracing solidarity with the human race as a whole, without giving the impression that they are disowning or are even ashamed of being born into a specific heritage. As he said, the only time he feels it necessary to tell anyone that he is Jewish is when they turn out to be an antisemite.

Miller was an atheist and in 2004 he wrote and narrated a three-part BBC documentary titled Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief. I used the series as a basis for a five-part series of posts on the history of western atheism. The series is available online and I can recommend it strongly, if you have the time. In fact, I plan to watch it again.

Despite his deep involvement with many aspects of the arts, one thing that Miller did not do was go into acting like many of his comedy colleagues. When asked why in an interview, he said that it was because of his stutter. The interviewer was surprised because you would never have guessed it when he spoke in public, as in the clip above, which was very often since he was a much sought-after guest on TV talk shows and panels. He said that this was because when he was speaking extemporaneously, he had learned how to navigate around the sounds that caused him difficulty but he could not do that with words written by someone else.