But, as of last month, I have discovered that not only am I no longer the only Jew in the village but that I never was.

It seems that a colleague, who I shall refer to as Gavin and with whom I have worked for many years, turns out to be Jewish.

Not exactly your card-carrying, chopped herring-eating shul-member Jew, but a fully fledged Jew all the same - with a Yiddishe mama, no less.

He knows little and keeps even less, and to him his status as a Jew is neither here nor there.

Not worth mentioning in all the years I have known him, though he must have known I was Jewish (there are certain clues - such as the aroma of chicken soup wafting from my pores on a Friday morning).

Gavin knows he is Jewish but that is all he knows. He is vaguely aware that there is a festival called Passover but that is the sum total of his knowledge about his rich heritage (I have no idea whether he has had a brit since inquiring after the status of his foreskin might have seemed a tad intrusive).

He does, however, have a full appreciation of his roots, for Gavin's grandparents were murdered by the Nazis in Germany.

Of course, once his status was revealed to me I did what all Jews do on meeting another kinsman. I firstly lapsed into the Jew-ese vernacular, with a liberal splattering of words such as "Shabbat", "frum" and "nachas". When this was met with bemusement (or was that alarm in his eyes?), I settled for that old standby - a game of Jewish geography.

I had to explain the rules (well, he was clearly new at this) and, lo, we did manage to find a couple of Jewish acquaintances in common.

Yes! Gavin might not eat chopped liver or even fast on Yom Kippur, but he could play a mean game of Jewish geography - all is not lost for him! But, of course, all is lost, at least in terms of his Jewish lineage.

He is "married out" and has lovely - but not Jewish - kids. The line that his grandparents were killed for stops with him.

Funnily enough, I have since discovered a couple more "lost" Jews hanging around my workplace. One is the husband of another colleague and the other is an associate I have worked with for years on various projects.

I think I have uncovered the beginnings of an entire lost tribe in Preston, but sadly (perhaps) none are likely to be returning to the faith of their forefathers.

Of course, they are not sad, but then they have no idea what they have lost.

I, on the other hand, can't help feeling just a little saddened by the loss of all the potential future Jewish Telegraph readers, shul members and Jewish school pupils that might have resulted from these "lost" Jews - and the thousands more like them across the North-West and beyond.

What saddens me most is that they haven't chosen to disengage with Judaism - they were never given the chance to even make that choice.

Their parents made it for them by denying them reasonable access to their heritage with which to make an informed decision themselves. This lost generation is truly the "son who does not even know what to ask" from the Pesach haggadah.

But what's an affiliated Jew such as myself to do about this - try to bring these "lost" Jews back to the fold?

Should I leave a JT in their pigeon holes every Friday, a box of matzo each Pesach and a slab of cheesecake at Shavuot?

Should I blow the shofar loudly in my office before Rosh Hashana in the hope of sparking a sudden, innate yearning for Judaism?

Perhaps I should invite them (and their non-Jewish families) for cholent on Shabbat or to join us for a vigorous shaking of the lulav in the succah?

Such efforts are more than likely to alienate than to attract, but suppose my clumsy attempts to sell the religion actually worked?

Would that be desirable - to lead a man along a path that is sure to cause no end of difficulty for his non-Jewish wife and kids (and possibly even break the family up)?

Perhaps Chabad, famous for reaching out to lost souls, would say that is exactly what I should be doing. Every Jew matters, to corrupt a national slogan currently in vogue.

In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a Chabad mitzvah tank hanging out in Preston now that I have outed it as a haven for lost Jewish souls (I can just imagine the looks I would get if I ventured to ask my colleagues if they have laid tefillin today).

But I won't be following this lead and shall not be making any attempts to gently steer these men back to the fold. It is, I feel, far too late to start hoping to light the spark of yiddishkeit in their souls.

And so I shall trundle on, no longer the only Jew in the village but still the only practising Jew.

But I will be more alert to the possibility of other "hidden" Jews wandering around and will work on finding a suitable shibboleth with which to identify them; Jewish words won't do it, there are no secret handshakes and my "Jew-dar" is obviously weak. So, how does one flush out unaffiliated Jews? Ideas on a postcard please!

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