I sympathize more with Kurtzman's point of view but he's got his work cut out for him answering this.

Still, I can poke at least one hole in Weirtheimer's reasoning here:

My grandmother has tried to get me to dump my shiksa girlfriend by saying that one day, when she gets really mad at me, no matter how much she loves me, she'll call me a "dirty Jew". Or at least think it. Weirtheimer makes the same point when he advises us not to assume our "non-Jewish peers are as indifferent to group allegiances as they might claim."

The essential point seems to be that a Jew who sees himself as a "citizen of the world" is akin to a nerdy weakling handing out with the high school football team and thinking they're his friends. No matter how much he thinks he's "one of the guys," he will always be held in contempt as long as he tries to pretend he's someone he's not.

I find the analogy unconvincing. First of all, it depends on the notion that all our non-Jewish friends and lovers are secretly antisemites and that any close relationship we have with them is far weaker than it seems. I guess you're not paranoid if the whole world is really out to get you, but frankly, I think Weirtheimer's paranoid.

Second, I think Weirtheimer's concern about whether those goyim are really so open-minded stems from an unconscious suspicion in HIS generation that the Jews are the nerdy kids, unable to be popular no matter how much they try and act cool. (read anything by Phillip Roth to get the full picture). What Weirtheimer misses here is that we don't share his generation's inferiority complex. We don't eagerly mix with non-Jews because we're desperate to have them as friends. We mix with them because we are them and they are us.

Similarly, we're not trying to deny our Jewish identiy just so we can fit into a larger culture. We're embracing a larger, world-centric identity because when we see disasters like Darfur (and global warming, and terrorism, and any other problem plaguing the 21st century), we can see that no solution can possibly come from a ghetto mindset.