And I feel this is the case with all feelings – that they need to be admitted, even if only to yourself. And that’s not just a secular idea: that idea of sanctifying or desecrating the name of God through your behaviours in public really belongs to the religion, as well. As I understand it, feelings are extremely political – because they tell us a lot about power: who has it, and who doesn’t. DB: Feelings are contagious – you can be a winner in a society, and still be caught up in envious feelings. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Baum’s methodology is to look at what is missing – a philosophy of marriage, a clear idea of what this dominant structure is and how it influences lives. In these movies, both partners offer what you suspect is an exaggerated version of themselves: Baum the straight woman, Appignanesi the butt of the joke.I had approached the book with a measure of doubt, wondering whether – being of an age with the author but never married – I would find myself excluded from its thesis. And, actually, during a period in British politics – when the word ‘Jew’ is trending on Twitter and people are googling the word ‘Jew’ and looking probably in all sorts of insalubrious places to find out what Jews are up to –, you have a very strong wish and desire to speak to other people going through the same thing, in a somewhat contained and close setting. So as they saw it, their choice was between condemning him for being bad, or showing a liberal understanding of why he turned out so bad.

I read Tribes (2010) by Nina Raine, and I thought that’s exactly the kind of thing you describe – the Jewish family as an iconic description that you also have in your book.

It has often been regarded as the most bourgeois and conservative of institutions, while proving flexible enough to accommodate radical reinventions. They feel nobody sees the brilliance that goes into creating comedy, and how deep and wise what they’re saying is in comic form.

She is the author of Feeling Jewish (a Book for Just About Anyone) and The Jewish Joke: An Essay with Examples (Less Essay, More Examples).

Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘Marriage is unknowable to anyone outside it’: Devorah Baum and husband Josh Appignanesi with their children in 2016. Because it looks as though what I’m saying is that feeling Jewish means to feel: guilt, envy, self-hatred, paranoia – come and get it!

In this conversation, Lisa and Devorah will discuss Losing the Dead and then, more generally, the role played by familial stories in their work.

I don’t like this increasing focus on identity – to demarcate who you are, what you are… and that you can’t transcend these boundaries. She is the author of three books: On Marriage (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Random House; Yale University Press; CITIC; others) which came out in 2023, Feeling Jewish: a book for just about anyone (Yale University Press) and The Jewish Joke: an essay with examples (less essay, more examples) (Profile), which came out in 2017. But my case studies are predominantly American because Jews did really go for it there, culturally, in the post-war period – in a way that they never have here.