http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-jewish-problem/Content?oid=122431 Comments On: The Jewish Problem by Eli Sanders en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Fri, 24 May 2013 08:00:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
I was born in Seattle in 1957. The first clue I had to that something about me was different was when Catholic kids roughed me up in 8th grade and exposed me to new words, "kike" and "hebe", though they didn't define them. It dawned on me that we were Jewish toward the end of high school. I began to realize there were other Jews in my class (of 1975) at Roosevelt, though they were in different social circles. I didn't actually learn anything about Judaism till a few years later when I transferred to Stanford and had a Jewish roommate.

What's weird is how Jewish my identity is. I'm not religious or theistic, but I'm much more comfortable with a Jewish wife and avoiding Christmas. I rarely go to synagogue, disliking its Hebrew and prayers, but I feel I belong. They're "my people." (It helps that it's a reform synagogue.)

I don't think there's anything significant about identity. It's just there. We rarely, if ever, shape it consciously. It's like emotions. They're just there, and we hold them as tremendously important, but it's just part of our machinery. Perhaps its purpose, in evolution, was to help us connect to our tribe, to stay loyal. Perhaps by learning "belonging", we learn to extend it to others.

Thanks for connecting.
Posted by ras]]> Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:09:37 -0800 The Stranger
I don't mind what my fellow gentiles have called "whining". When you're not numerous you gotta be loud.
Posted by daws]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:51:50 -0700 The Stranger
@5: Wrong. Assimilation was the rule in certain places, such as the Middle East and China, but in Europe they largely kept to themselves and took advantage of the early Christian prohibition on lending to take over the financial industry, which is why we generally associate them with cities, where the banks are, also why Spain immediately fell in to economic decline with the coming of the Spanish Inquisition. Were it not for persecution of Jews, the Industrial Revolution would probably have taken place in Catalonia, 150 years before, where it had already begun and got cut short.

@24: Comment 10: That's good to hear. IME non-observant Jews tend to be extremely grumpy, and understandably so, considering as they've effectively given up on life in a sense.

Comment 23 & @23: I'm pretty sure it's mostly conducted by hispanics and blacks. The only place I know of where hispanics and blacks are NOT the majority of criminals is the Puget Sound, where (especially outside of Seattle) criminals tend to be poor white rednecks (named Bubba) hotwiring cars. What 23 may be responding to though is the East Coast Old Boys Club.

Comment 24: That discussion (God in the Jewish texts [including Talmud], Jew and Gentile) is both very interesting and very complex. Virtually all the positions attempt to simplify it too much. I won't discuss it too much here because it would be a distraction, but we'll leave it at its not easy to understand and might well take a lifetime to completely understand.


Posted by Jeremy Janson]]> Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:13:55 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Jeremy Janson]]> Sat, 28 Apr 2012 04:47:07 -0700 The Stranger
@23 I'm pretty sure the lionshare of crime in South Florida (where I came from) is conducted by a highly diverse ethnic background.

@24 We are, in fact, human. We just follow a stricter set of rules because we feel it brings us closer to -our- Father in heaven. No, you can't borrow money. Go get a job.
Posted by Josh Is Now In Seattle]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:57:36 -0800 The Stranger Posted by From Seattle]]> Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:57:16 -0700 The Stranger
What do I have?

The best my parents could tell me was that they "think we may be Scotch or English, but we're not sure" and that doesn't come with any kind of solid traditions other than eating a lot of beef and getting drunk - something almost every American is good at.

As much as many minorities want to be known for something other than their race and possibly may want to assimilate, we non-minorities (exactly what is that? Were not the Irish, Germans, Swedish and English all minorities here at one point 200-some years ago?) want to have some kind of cultural back-story or ethnic heritage to hang our hat on. The most I can look back on with some nostalgia is the fact that most of my overweight family loves to eat really odd things from Pennsylvania like scrapple, lebanon belogna and birch beer.


Posted by JohnnyND]]> Tue, 10 May 2011 19:02:20 -0700 The Stranger Seriously, is it like a handicap parking sticker?

Posted by EEW]]> Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:00:51 -0700 The Stranger
As for Kosher Salmon

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2…

here is a Kosher fish in your lap!
Posted by slade]]> Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:04:48 -0800 The Stranger Great article!
Posted by -ink]]> Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:34:41 -0700 The Stranger

Posted by Jewish from NY]]> Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:45:53 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Juju]]> Sat, 29 May 2010 16:48:48 -0700 The Stranger Posted by 9wurnogjv]]> Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:50:51 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Thanks]]> Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:05:47 -0700 The Stranger Posted by iktomi]]> Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:39:16 -0800 The Stranger
The obnoxious anti-Semitic comments posted here, however (yeah, I'm looking at you, too, "entitled jewboy"), make me want to crawl into a cave.
Posted by AMichal]]> Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:25:38 -0800 The Stranger
@10 you are a moron.

@Eli Self fulfilling stereotype FTW
Posted by entitled jewboy]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:48:03 -0800 The Stranger Posted by CC3475]]> Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:14:32 -0800 The Stranger Posted by cc1975]]> Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:13:02 -0800 The Stranger Posted by foomanchu]]> Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:49:12 -0800 The Stranger Lebanese imigrants are a much smaller minority group and all my Lebanese friends are so positive and happy to be here. The only time they complain is when they talk about how Isreal keeps bombing and bombing all their neighboring nations.
Your article made me yawn, and have less sympathy for you and "your people".
I see why many jews rush to a$$imilate.
Love the food though.
Posted by openeyedliberal]]> Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:45:15 -0800 The Stranger Posted by MapleSyrup_on_Icecream]]> Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:10:35 -0700 The Stranger
Also to be celebrated is the club-footed attempts of their non-Jewish peers to indicate their awareness of their presence. Anti-semitism is not evidenced by such ignorance, and American Jews are not alone in discovering how to feel about and deal with encounters of that sort.
Posted by textthatappearsbelow]]> Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:36:03 -0700 The Stranger Posted by sash]]> Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:09:40 -0700 The Stranger Posted by et]]> Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:23:32 -0700 The Stranger