Is Adam Gopnik Jewish?

Yes, New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik is a Jew.

Susan Freudenheim cited this evidence in her 2007 profile of Gopnik at the JewishJournal.com:

Gopnik, who would seem to be as obviously Jewish as anyone might imagine a New York intellectual to be, professes surprise at being pegged as a Jew. In his essay, "A Purim Story," which forms a chapter in his recently released book, "Through the Children's Gate" (Knopf, 2006), he describes a conversation with his wife:

"The thing that puzzles me ... is how they ever figured out I was Jewish."

She executed what I believe our fathers would have called a spit take. "That is the most ridiculous question I've ever heard. There's your name, for one thing, and then the way you use Jewish words in writing."

"What Jewish words have I ever used in writing?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, 'shvits.' And 'inchoate.'"

"'Inchoate' is not a Jewish word."

"It is the way you use it. You've got 'Jew' written all over you. It's obvious."

"It's obvious," my six-year-old son, Luke, echoed, looking up from his plate. "It's obvious." I was startled, though not entirely...."

Now, in an essay (A Critic at Large: "What Did Jesus Do? Reading and unreading the Gospels") that treats an assortment of new and recent books about Jesus and early Christianity (e.g., Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years” and Bart Ehrman, “Jesus Interrupted"), Gopnick rambles on and on in an entertaining and literary way about Jesus.

Gopnik's own style is hard to describe, elusive, analytical and highly composite. Hmm, that sounds almost Talmudic. It's in the genes.