The essay coins the term "non-Jewish Jew" to describe himself and other secular Jewish humanists.
[1] The essay begins with a description of Elisha ben Abuyah, a Jewish heretic from the 2nd century AD who was a friend of Rabbi Meir.
Deutscher names Baruch Spinoza, Uriel Acosta, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud, and Rosa Luxemburg as examples of "non-Jewish Jews".
Summaries of the speech had previously been published by the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review.
Prager also named Noam Chomsky and George Soros as examples of "non-Jewish Jews".