Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ralph Dumain on August 25, 2009 at 4:41am

Depends on where you are, I suppose. The closest thing you're going to get in the USA is by checking out Humanistic Judaism (established by the late Sherwin Wine) and seeing what they're doing. But maybe there's room for expansion given the advanced state of secularization and intermarriage. I note though that you emphasize marrying Jews rather than simply perpetuating Jewish cultural identity in some way. Would such an exclusionary priority actually work given that you want to tap into those not interested in religion?

Permalink Reply by Ralph Dumain on August 25, 2009 at 9:12am

But how many American Jews have any sense of Jewish culture? They are aware of belonging to a specific group, with varying degrees of investment in it, but what's really left of Jewish culture in America outside of New York city? I ask this question both regarding the religious (or those who go through the motions at least) and the secular.

Permalink Reply by Ralph Dumain on August 26, 2009 at 9:04am

Mistrust of the majority is something I know intimately. But one need not know anything of cultural particulars to understand this; one just has to be familiar with the experience. What makes the Jewish version of this different is because for so many American Jews, especially those born after 1945, they generally retain almost nothing of immigrant culture save for the psychological disposition of being a minority. And others ofttimes do not understand this. The external, visible markers of culture are almost trivial in comparison to the internal attitude, which doesn't always manifest itself in obvious ethnic mannerisms. The reasons people don't understand this are worth looking into; I think it's the narrowness of their own experience and lack of critical thinking that is responsible, and perhaps a certain rigidity about the classification of populations, or maybe complacency, but I don't think this is all that mysterious a phenomenon.

The more interesting question is why different minorities who may be psychologically similar in many ways fail to understand one another.

Permalink Reply by Ralph Dumain on September 3, 2009 at 8:17am

I have my doubts about this instinctive cultural understanding. I'd say it's pretty limited. I you took a bunch of American Jews of various types and put them in a Catholic mass or a Pentecostal revival meeting, it's not unlikely they would react similarly, but beyond the consciousness of being a particular minority, you're not likely to find that much commonality.

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Kaufman on February 28, 2010 at 7:23am

Sorry. I wish there was just a place for community for atheists. And, even though my past is all Jewish family-blood, my present isn't. I married a convert, he is a patrilineal jew still forced to convert to make my family happy. I can't believe we were so stupid! That was 20 years ago, but I still cringe. Anyway, we have since adopted, and internationally. No one thinks my hispanic born son is jewish, but his last name does raise eyebrows.