Shana Tovah to Those Who Jew

[Bert Orange 1126]

[Guest Lobo]

Happy New Year!  Once again, my half-Sephardic mother got her wires crossed and had pork ribs.  But we did our part---grilled chicken with some wine.  I need a new reboot in my life.  Maybe this can be a part of it.  Little by little...

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

11 hours ago, Bert Orange said:

Obligatory:

Thejewsdidthis.gif

what’s in the bundt cake?

[Guest Lobo]

37 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Obligatory:

Thejewsdidthis.gif

what’s in the bundt cake?

Well, it's not a plastic baby Jesus.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4980]

That looks like what would happen if my five year old tried to make a pound cake. Also, I keep getting disappointed because I keep thinking this is about Shania Twain.

[Guest Lobo]

No...Shania Law is what will come to our shores if we don't spend trillions defeating radical Islam.  You can help by burning any written works you see by a Mr. Mark Twain.  But the trickster avoids both Jew and Gentile by using an alias, a Mr. Samuel Clements.   

If any of you South Texans have some time today, there is a fascinating history of Sephardic Jews in South Texas.  The celebrations of Rosh Hashanah in the Rio Grande Valley rival that of New York.  My next-door Austin neighbors from Manhattan are Ashkenazi and each year are consistently so surprised about the Sephardic tradition in Texas they send photos back to their relatives in New York.  Even though it's on my mom's side which counts for more, I'm technically only a quarter Sephardic and half drunk. 

[Bert Orange 1126]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Obligatory:

Thejewsdidthis.gif

what’s in the bundt cake?

Honey apple. But mostly butter. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4980]

This led me down an interesting rabbit hole about Texas' earliest Jewish settlers.

 https://jhvonline.com/who-was-the-first-jew-in-texas-p10638-271.htm

I am a descendant of the Isaacks family, but any jewishness in my blood has been too watered down by generations of southern scotch-irish ancestors with a liberal allotment of almost every other european country for it to count for anything. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by NotActuallyALonghorn

[Bill Lumbergh 7233]

[Johnny Sack 8397]

[TwiceHorn 31685]

I know it's not, and I have been around Jews most of my life, but it ("Jew") has always felt a little pejorative.  I think it's the short, vowel-ly nature of the word.

[deadshank 24653]

I have never understood the bias people have against Jews.  Why?

[Johnny Sack 8397]

19 minutes ago, deadshank said:

I have never understood the bias people have against Jews.  Why?

Jealousy.  I have quite a few close Jewish friends here in Houston. They pretty uniformly are smart, hard working, educated, and successful. 

[TwiceHorn 31685]

33 minutes ago, deadshank said:

I have never understood the bias people have against Jews.  Why?

Other.

Simple as that.

Personal anecdote.  I grew up in North Dallas, among the private preschool/kindergarten set.  Yes, affluent, but also people trying to find the best education for their kiddos and doing it before formal schooling started.  This meant I hung with a lot of kids that went to St. Marks or Greenhill or Hockaday, etc.  Especially with Greenhill, but with all of them, Jews well-represented.

As common as Jews were, as little kids, our parents couldn't explain really in an understandable way why or how Jews were different or similar.  They tried to tell us they were just the same as anyone else.  Yet, they still get this name, "Jews" that mysteriously seemed to indicate that there was something beyond just the church they went to.  Parents sure as hell didn't try to explain the Holocaust or its historical underpinnings, or the blood libel or any of that to kids under 10 years old.

A bit the same with the Catholic kids, and there were actually probably fewer Catholics than Jews.

The miniseries Holocaust came out when I was 12.   We read the Diary of Anne Frank at some point, but still didn't have an adequate explanation except Nazis were evil bastards.

Even in Methodist Sunday School, we became aware that Jesus was Jewish and the role of Jews in the Old Testament, but without any prejudice or judgment, just "historical fact," complicated somewhat by the the "completion" of Jews by the coming of Christ.  Still, a bit much for kids to deeply understand.

It wasn't until sophomore year in high school, reading The Merchant of Venice that I/we really came to understand the historical prejudice against Jews in the context of Shylock.  We also read The Chosen that year, which gave some additional perspective on Jews.  At that point came understanding, and also a flurry of Jew jokes, mostly rooted in the stupidity of anti-Semitism, but still insensitive at best.

Jealousy may come into it, but it's "other" first, just like all prejudices.

Edited September 7, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Guest Lobo]

33 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I know it's not, and I have been around Jews most of my life, but it ("Jew") has always felt a little pejorative.  I think it's the short, vowel-ly nature of the word.

I can't find a link to the particular bit, just the whole set behind a paywall.  But Louis C.K. has a bit about the word "Jew" and how it's a tiny little matter of pronunciation in the subtlest of ways that makes all the difference with how you intend the word, and who is listening.  It's not hilarious, but it's fucking brilliant.  

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4980]

32 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I know it's not, and I have been around Jews most of my life, but it ("Jew") has always felt a little pejorative.  I think it's the short, vowel-ly nature of the word.

 

Reminds me of this:

Obviously, we shouldn't think of any ethnicity as inferior, but our society has historically felt otherwise. As a white guy whose family has been from Texas for generations and being married to a person of Mexican ancestry I definitely suffer from this myself.

29 minutes ago, deadshank said:

I have never understood the bias people have against Jews.  Why?

My understanding is that Jews were excluded from almost every profession in Europe except stuff like the banking industry (except they couldn't charge interest to fellow Jews). That pretty much made them the boogeyman for the common man, especially when the Lord of your particular fiefdom told you to think that.

[InkaUtexas 26356]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

Well, it's not a plastic baby Jesus.

Santa Claus? 

[InkaUtexas 26356]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

No...Shania Law is what will come to our shores if we don't spend trillions defeating radical Islam.  You can help by burning any written works you see by a Mr. Mark Twain.  But the trickster avoids both Jew and Gentile by using an alias, a Mr. Samuel Clements.   

If any of you South Texans have some time today, there is a fascinating history of Sephardic Jews in South Texas.  The celebrations of Rosh Hashanah in the Rio Grande Valley rival that of New York.  My next-door Austin neighbors from Manhattan are Ashkenazi and each year are consistently so surprised about the Sephardic tradition in Texas they send photos back to their relatives in New York.  Even though it's on my mom's side which counts for more, I'm technically only a quarter Sephardic and half drunk. 

What is the other quarter? I am going to assume straight up bad ass. 

[DonkeyCigars 143]

48 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

Jealousy.  I have quite a few close Jewish friends here in Houston. They pretty uniformly are smart, hard working, educated, and successful. 

In my experience it is this as well. Jealousy/envy and the insularity that the Jewish communities foster/

[83Horn 1656]

Apologies for my ignorance, but this is the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title:

 

[TwiceHorn 31685]

2 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

 

Reminds me of this:

Obviously, we shouldn't think of any ethnicity as inferior, but our society has historically felt otherwise. As a white guy whose family has been from Texas for generations and being married to a person of Mexican ancestry I definitely suffer from this myself.

My understanding is that Jews were excluded from almost every profession in Europe except stuff like the banking industry (except they couldn't charge interest to fellow Jews). That pretty much made them the boogeyman for the common man, especially when the Lord of your particular fiefdom told you to think that.

It's a longer-standing, deeper thing than charging interest, although that shaped Jewish mercantilism.  This is a pretty good thumbnail sketch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism

[Bevo 13635]

Happy New Year

[Samson's Wig 3195]

L’Shanah Tova!

[TwiceHorn 31685]

19 hours ago, DonkeyCigars said:

In my experience it is this as well. Jealousy/envy and the insularity that the Jewish communities foster/

I might submit that both the high achievement that produces the jealousy and the "insularity" are products of persecution, rather than reasons for it.  Jews have kept to themselves to a large degree because they have been shunned by other groups.  And they tend to carry around an "immigrant mentality" because historically, their "welcome" has run out to one degree or another every place they've been, so they "get" while the getting is good.  Orthodox Jews are just weird and separate themselves from other Jews as much as Gentiles or anyone else a lot like various "orthodox" Christian sects, e.g. "Amish."

Jealousy and their alleged insularity are probably just modern justifications for maintaining anti-Semitism when the real reasons are lost to time.

ETA:  Bwahaha.  The real reasons.  As if they're any good.  In the final analysis, prejudice and racism are just dumb.

Edited September 8, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[deadshank 24653]

20 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

I went out with two Jewish girls in college and then another in my 30s.  They were fun and open-minded.  What they wanted with my redneck self I’ll never know.  I must have been an unwitting science experiment.  

[Johnny Sack 8397]

1 hour ago, deadshank said:

I went out with two Jewish girls in college and then another in my 30s.  They were fun and open-minded.  What they wanted with my redneck self I’ll never know.  I must have been an unwitting science experiment.  

I dated one also.  Most Jews will marry other Jews despite dating others.  

[Willfully Horn 8091]

Boolean Judaism, you are a harsh mistress.

MIL’s father’s mother was Jewish. Israel wants nothing from our girls.

[Bevo 13635]

What are y'all atoning for?

[atomheartbevo 90054]

Wait, Shana Tovah isn't Shania Twain's birth name?

[RPM 26429]

[WBT 20744]

5000 years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax.  You're goddamn right I'm living in the past.