The Sunday, August 15 Real Estate section of the New York Times contained a story about the joys of living in Fair Haven, NJ, under the headline "Small-Town Feel in a Big-Spender Area." What caught my attention was this quote, which bears deep parsing:

Cynthia and Philip Auerbach have lived in Fair Haven for 44 years, rearing a family of three and now regularly hosting nine grandchildren at their 3,400-square-foot home, which they recently put on the market in an effort to downsize. When they first moved here, Ms. Auerbach said, they were looking for a community that "offered some diversity."

"It was important to my husband and me that we not be in an all-white, all-upper-class atmosphere," said Mrs. Auerbach, noting that although they are Jewish, they had also been uninterested in living in "a Jewish enclave."

Think about it: do members of any other ethnic or religious group take such pains to make sure a listener wouldn't think they wanted to be around too many of their co-religionists? How did Jewishness become part of the mix of factors of concern, Jewishness as the zingy horseradish on top of the gefulte fish of whiteness and high income? The liberal and Jewish guilt practically glows like radioactive plutonium on the page.

I'm glad Fair Haven provides the environment the couple likes for themselves and their family; somehow I doubt their definition of diversity embraces the Tea Party and Orthodox families pushing baby carriages and hanging an eruv.