Punk pioneer finds religion

RICHARD Hell (inset), who helped create punk rock at CBGB in the ’70s, asks himself “Am I a Jew?” in a new book, and his answer is “Yes.”

Hell, who played in Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, has a collection of essays, “Massive Pissed Love,” coming out next week from Soft Skull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint.

In an excerpt at OrbMagazine.com, Hell — born to a Jewish father and a Methodist mother in 1949 as Ri chard Lester Meyers — says he was annoyed a few years ago when he was included in a book called “Jews Who Rock.” “I thought, ‘Shouldn’t they have talked to me before they claimed me?’ I didn’t really regard myself as a Jew. Anyway, it was muddy. What is a Jew?”

Hell points out that Hollywood legend Erich von Stroheim was Jewish, as was Nathanael West (né Weinstein), who wrote “The Day of the Locust.”

“Was West embarrassed to be a Jew? Maybe a tiny bit. Maybe not. Anyway, he didn’t want to be held back by it,” Hell wrote. “In America, you’re supposed to be whomever you want to be.”

But if Jews claim him as one of their own, and bigots discriminate against him, Hell says that makes him Jewish. “I’ve concluded that a Jew is anyone whom anyone else calls a Jew.”

“Hitler was not an isolated phenomenon,” Hell states. “It can happen at any time, anywhere.”