Whenever I’m cataloguing the benefits of being Jewish — bountiful comfort food, emphasis on education and family, interest-free loans from George Soros — I always include the advantage of being in an extreme minority. About 1% of Americans are Jewish.
Not a lot. And steadily dwindling due to assimilation and intermarriage. Which is a shame. Because being an outsider has advantages. It sharpens your powers of observation. What is unquestioned, standard operating procedure to the majority is strange to you. It makes you think, even if that thought is, “Why can’t I celebrate Christmas like everyone else?”
There are exceptions. Jewish ultra-Orthodox, like zealots everywhere, have the same tendency to live in uniform bunches, like grapes, and crave conformity. They emphasize learning, but won’t touch a book that isn’t approved.
I’m thinking of mainstream American Jews, whose fish-out-of-water quality contradicts a central value of Christianity — that everyone should be like you, the culture revolve around you, and every shiny surface reflect a person just like you.
They don’t know what they’re missing. Being an outcast encourages you to dance to strange music. To explore places not meant for you. Such as when my younger son was in high school and expressed interest in the University of Notre Dame. We took a road trip, then a tour. That doesn’t mean I left my personality in the car.
“You can be the Jew,” I whispered to the boy — Notre Dame ranks last among the top 25 American universities when it comes to Jewish population.
To Notre Dame’s credit, the cathedral-like stonework of the lovely Jordan Hall of Science includes not only Louis Pasteur and Madam Curie, venerated like saints with full-body statues, but Galileo, whom you may recall got in hot water with the Catholic Church for endorsing the Copernican notion that the earth revolves around the sun. This was heresy because in the Bible, the earth — and mankind — is the center of universe.
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Absolutely no one cares what the Wehrmacht thought about D-Day. The Nazis spent billions & used tens of thousands of slave laborers to build their Atlantic Wall which the Allied broke in under 12 hours, even at the hardest beach, Bloody Omaha!
ReplyDeleteAnd anyone that brings up Soros's name as in blaming him for whatever, instantly brands themselves as an out right anti-Semite!
I've been punished at various websites for ripping folks a new posterior orifice when they throw the S-word around..."Soros" is now just a euphemism for "Jew"...and whenever I see it, I get very pissed-off.
DeleteBut you're wrong about the Wehrmacht and D-Day. There's a two-volume series entitled "D-Day Through German Eyes" that reveals the "other side" of D-Day. Almost all accounts from Normandy are told from the Allied perspective. But what was it like to be a German soldier in a coastal bunker, facing the mightiest armada in history? What motivated the defenders, and how did they fight?
The Germans were stunned by the overwhelming firepower of the Allies, and their determination to free Europe from fascism. The stories the German survivors tell in these books are as fascinating as they are horrible.
My favorite scene in "The Longest Day" is when Major Pluskat is looking out from his bunker in Normandy & sees thousands of landing craft heading for him & goes flat out nuts trying to convince his stupid superiors at Wehrmacht HQ what's happening & they just tell him, 'The Allies don't have that many boats"! Then the big guns from the battleships start hitting the beach he's in charge of. Apparently that actually happened as Pluskat was a real German officer & survived the war & told his story to Cornelius Ryan, author of the book the movie is based on.
Delete"D-Day Through German Eyes" has interviews with German POWs who were brought back to the landing beaches for transport back to England. Two of them looked about, in shock and amazement, at all the mechanized equipment around them. And each of them asked their captors: "Where are all your horses?"
DeleteA friends son was dissuaded from going to Norte Dame after an older family friend told him that the friends nickname when he went there was TJG….which stood for “That Jewish Guy”. It was a funny reference to the fact that this was how everyone referred to him. Friend said it’s a great place but the fact that you’re Jewish is going to be the first thing everyone thinks about. Friends son went to Penn instead.
ReplyDeleteGood point about the ultra-Orthodox. They emphasize learning, as long as it's all in the same subject. As close minded as evangelical Christians or fundamentalist Muslims.
ReplyDeleteIts kind of early in the morning for thinking, but this really makes my head hurt. There are so many buckets. the black bucket, the white bucket , Christian, Muslim , Jew. Each with their multiple buckets of reformed, conservative, protestant , catholic. Ethnic buckets, national and tribal.
ReplyDeleteMost people can claim or are put into multiple buckets. much of the decision making that goes into differentiating is due to pride, or prejudice .
I guess I really dont know what woke is. It seems part of it is to do away with the notion of buckets. I'd like to believe we could see ourselves as all in one enormous bucket together.Llike Dr. Bronner says: all one all one. Most of us seem to be fighting to stay in our chosen bucket. Certainly dont want to find ourselves in a bucket with people we feel are wrong about everything.
Maybe we are just looking for respect , acceptance and fairness for each bucket. Again not for the people in the bucket that see things different from the way we do. Their wrong and stupid about almost everything.
Like I said its early.
This article says the Jewish population of the USA is about 2.4 percent, not 1 percent. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population/
ReplyDeleteNo it doesn't. It says 2.4 percent of adults have some vague Jewish affiliation — a parent who is Jewish, for instance. If we look at children being raised in a Jewish household, that becomes 1.2 percent. I would expect readers of the blog to be alive to nuance. If you're looking at Jews who might find themselves in a synagogue or observing a holiday, it's closer to 1 percent than 2 percent.
DeleteThen there's that whole "Who's a Jew?" thing that I've heard all my life. If only your mother is Jewish, so are you. If only your father is Jewish, you aren't. There are fewer and fewer children of two Jewish parents, because there is so much assimilation and intermarriage going on. That's that's been happening since the Sixties, when the Jewish "early Boomers" (like me) began "mixing" and marrying.
DeleteMy older cousins, born during WWII, recoiled in horror at the idea of marrying non-Jews. So they didn't. For my younger cousins...and me... there was no such prohibition. We dated and married whomever we liked, regardless of race or faith or ethnicity. The three major partners in my lifetime have been of Swedish, Norwegian, and German descent.
The bottom line? Anyone born into a Jewish household, no matter how tenuous the ties, is still a Jew in the eyes of "the goyim" (non-Jews). I'm what's classified as "non-observant." I love the food and the music. I light the menorah. I string lights and put up a tree.
But I am what I am. I can no more change my Jewishness than I can my skin color. Even if I do get mistaken for being Italian. As a kid, I learned about my heritage. Attended Hebrew school. I've not only seen the British footage of the bodies being bulldozed into the pits, I actually OWN the tape. How that happened is another story for another time. I watched it...once. I've offered it...for free...to any online hater who wants it. No takers.
Woke is open-mindedness and acceptance of others who are different from you. That is clear and understandable. So Florida is where open-mindedness goes to die. Idiots want to eradicate rather than accept others who are not like them. That’s what it means.
ReplyDeletehere is what someone posted on face book. Woke means awakened to the needs of others. To be well informed, thougtul, compassionate, humble and kind. Eager to mae the world a better place for all people. I don't know if this fits the meaning. But any body who reads the Harry Bosch books knows that his credo is everybody counts or nobody counts. It has more to do with justice when it comes to justice, but I think it fits in with being woke as well. Amazing how conservatives can turn a word or phrase into something evil
DeleteA new generation is coming to realize the value of looking at their own roots and expanding them. Behind the scenes, in theological schools of thought, there’s an emergence of believers who think in terms of the paradox of being both “other” and transcendent of perceived limit including those imposed by rote systems of belief.
ReplyDeleteOne of Harvard’s most popular chaplains is an atheist, and respected by his traditionally religious colleagues. Every one of us of any faith or “none” belongs where the heart leads, and can learn there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists challenged the hardline Christianity evident in post-colonial America, and we are still living in its shadows - it takes eons it seems to claim our freedoms and embrace heartfelt beliefs as we work with profound limitations in our so-called civilized societies (and selves).
Your son sounds awesome - those I’ve loved best as guides emerged from many faith-paths. And many Jesuits sound like Jews of the Renewal tradition. Funny how we may find parts of ourselves with those who are distinctly “other.”
I participate in some on-line discussion forums, mainly hobbyist or specialty topics, not politics, but every now and then there'll be some knucklehead complaining about "woke" this or "woke" that in some ludicrously irrelevant forum such as vintage bicycle restoration. I'll reply with, "What is your understanding of what the term 'woke' means?" I have yet to see a response that makes any sense in the context of how they were using the term. Many don't reply at all.
ReplyDeleteDesantis is trying to associate “woke” with making people feel guilty about our checkered heritage. I’ve always felt that if everyone knew just how badly minorities, particularly blacks, were treated maybe there would be some understanding as to why things have turned out the way they have. Most Americans, myself included only learned about the horrors of Tulsa until recently.
ReplyDeleteThe end of the Civil War was in may ways the beginning of our downward spiral. As unspeakable as slavery was, things did not get much better when the slaves were freed. It was pretty much, “OK. You’re free. Good luck with that.”, as their opportunities for education, health care, property ownership, business, etc. were sparse.
Too many southerners were sore losers. Too many still haven’t gotten over it. Many northerners, after the great migration, have joined their ranks.
It is a tribute to Black Americans that they’ve achieved as much as they have in the face of such bigotry. A long way to go and if more people like Desantis have anything to say about it, the road will be longer.