Andrew Lustig is not a Jewess – but his words are applicable to all of us, male and female, young and old, who identify as Jewish. From pop culture to politics, family to food, bigotry to Birthright, holidays to the Holocaust, Lustig’s spoken word poem “I Am Jewish” covers the myriad ways we express our Jewish identities and recognize our history as a people.

Click the image to watch on Youtube

Posted on January 11th, Lustig's video already has more than 153,000 hits. One of my favorite parts of the video is “I am constantly struggling to understand my Judaism outside of religion," which is a perfect, simple way of explaining the way I feel about Jewish. I am not necessarily religious (and in fact, there are times when whether I identify as agnostic or even atheist), but I feel so deeply connected to my Judaism, to the faith of my mother and her mother before her, that I cannot imagine there ever being a time in my life when I say I am anything other than Jewish - and all that comes with it.

Do Lustig’s words resonate with you? In what way?