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The Half-Jew's Complaint
New York, 3:59 AM
Tue Dec 22
55 posts in the last 24 hours
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The Half-Jew's Complaint |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
07/10/09
07/10/09
So, as reasonable and clear as the above posting is, it's not me!
I forwarded the article to my husband, and he posted here as if the comments weren't moderated, unknowingly using my profile. *sigh* Now he knows my screen name and stuff.
07/09/09
What kills me is how the hell else am I supposed to describe my background? My father's side is Eastern European Jewish...there is no other term for it. This has bothered me for years.
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(Please don't take offense.)
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*ducks*
07/09/09
It really does remind me of people who get up in arms about whites and blacks dating/marrying - that they're messing up the races. Again - I have a different take as my family looks like a bag of Skittles.
07/09/09
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Signed,
A Jewess
07/09/09
On the other hand, without these kind of marginalizing definitions, the Young Adult shelves in bookstores would be full of cobwebs.
And, Sadie, I think what that person said to you at the Hillel meeting was heinous and incredibly insensitive. I'm sorry you had to hear that.
07/09/09
07/09/09
Also, that Hillel kid can take a flying leap.
07/09/09
07/09/09
However, some Orthodox Jews would say that a non-Orthodox conversion doesn't count at all. So there is that to take into account.
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I am fully Jewish -- both my parents are, and my parents parents are, etc. My uncle, however, married a christian woman. My aunt has never, as far as I know, actually converted, but she's certainly no stranger to synogauge, and all 3 of their kids have been bar mitzvah-ed. They know they're Jewish, and they're proud to be, and they have a goddamn great time celebrating Christmas and Easter as well with their maternal grandparents, who also seem to be plenty happy with their Jewish father. (It helps that my aunt's family is awesome, and our family is awesome, and we all get along like you wouldn't even believe.) My uncle and his family, and my parents and our family, are both fairly lax Jews. We have no desire to go to temple regularly, though we're happy to celebrate the high holy days, and we're all big fans of pork. BIG fans of pork.
It's not just a half-Jewish/full Jewish divide; it's a militant Jewish/lax Jewish divide. My aunt (not the Christian one, my mom's sister) is VERY Jewish. They are kosher, and they are conservative, and they are dominating. There is an unspoken tension at high holy day dinners because we get the impression -- through the constant explaining and re-explaining of things we've been doing and knowing and learning for decades now, in our own lives -- that they are talking DOWN to us, that they think we don't KNOW about Judaism because we don't go to shabbat services every Friday. It's every bit as aggravating to know that my full Jewish blood -- blood that cannot be denied by the original wording in the Torah, or any revision thereafter -- is as easily dismissed as a gentile's. It's frustrating.
I think for people like me, who are relaxed relatively non-practicing Jews, the real tension with the Jewish/Half-Jewish divide is protectiveness over the ethnicity. I feel extraordinarily protective of my ethnic group, of my history, and of my people's ability to survive and even flourish in a world that has been downright murderous towards us pretty regularly over the course of history. I don't think you MUST be a full Jew to feel that way; quite the contrary. I think ANYONE can feel that way, about the Jewish people or about anyone. But I would like more Half-Jews to be PROUD of their Jewish side. To defend Israel (not to a fault, but to realize it's part of their blood, too), to defend our religion, to defend our people, our practices. To speak out against Anti-Semitism in its modern manifestation. To not hide or justify it with "I mean, but we do Christmas." Just be proud of who you are. Whether it's your father or you mother, stand by it. Be a Jew. We're not so bad, are we?
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Oh Darlin', don't fear the Nazi's. They're dead and gone.
07/09/09
I was born and raised Christian. My boyfriend is a secular Jew whose identity is very important to him -- he wants his children to be Jewish. I have no problem with this; I'm still in many ways quite attached to the Christian church, but to one of its more liberal wings (Episcopalians) and neither he nor I has any problems in general with interfaith marriage/upbringing/etc.
But that still leaves the conundrum: if he and I have children together, how will they be Jewish? I'd have to convert. Which I'm not opposed to in theory... but my understanding is that for a "real" conversion (i.e., one recognized by the Israeli government), you have to become Orthodox. Which I'm just not willing to do. I'll eat American kosher (as a pescetarian, I practically do already anyway), I'll go to a Reform or even Conservative temple, I'll observe the holy days, etc. But I've already done the strict religious thing enough for one lifetime (my entire childhood and adolescence was spent as a far-right fundagelical Christian); I'm not going back.
So it's incredibly frustrating to hear they're not willing to reconsider the standard (particularly since it's loosely based on the vague notion that I could be cheating on my boyfriend. Lovely).