June 06, 2005

• err - '
• Interesting, but no Michael Bloomfield? pfffftttt...
• Heh. "The Dreidel Will Rock" is one of the funniest article titles ever. A reference is made to a Pat Metheny rant in the entry for Kenny G. That actual article could be found here. Good stuff.
• [banana with a noble Sephardic profile] Great titles, but frequently weak writing.
• oy!
• vey!
• Something curious strikes me - what does it mean to have an enthicity that is so easily hidden/not known? (I was taking the "Jewish or Not" quiz, and had no idea most of the time). Certainly, Jewishness has been racialised in the past (like Irishness, etc), but is it really a race in the same way as dark skin or Asian features? Or is it more of an ethnicity, like being Polish or Italian? Is Jewishness still regarded as a separate race? I have always thought of it as a religion and perhaps an ethnicity/culture (depending on the person and their family), but I know that Jews and non-Jews consider it to be a racial identity.
• jb - you raise some tough questions that are not easily answered. Many Jews ourselves don't really know how to answer. Judaism is definitely a religion, but it's also a culture and, some might say, an ethnicity as well. I think each person looks at it differently. For me, being Jewish is some of all 3 of those things. It definitely is interesting, and sometimes uncomfortable, being a "hidden" minority. Living in New York City it's rarely something I ever consider, but it does make me wary sometimes. While it's not something I want to hide, I feel often it's not something I particularly want to advertise either. (Granted, most people can look at me and figure it out pretty quickly. I just have that "look" I guess.)
• I would lean towards a religion and a series of ethnicities (e.g., Jews from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Bloc have fairly little in common with the Jewish cultures that evolved in Spain and North Africa, which in turn have almost nothing to do with Persian Jews, which...) The Eastern European group (Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews) is by far the largest. Of course there are going to be some common physical traits that get recycled if people from Ashkenazi stock breed with other Ashkenazim... but race is pretty subjective, don't you think? It definitely doesn't explain, for instance, folks I know who have converted, only to be told afterwards that they "look" Jewish. Then again I have a dangerous tendency to get into long winded empty arguments on this very same...subject... crap. Someone who knows what they're talking about, feel free to tape me up in a cardboard box and mail to Abu Dhabi. the_bone: that rant is beautiful.
• /meant converting into Judaism, not away from it /attaches postage to self