Tell me the truth: is the font on my diary obnoxious? What font do you see, anyway? Cause I was just looking at it and it made me think, ok, enough already. It's not cute anymore.
And, by the way, have you seen the headlines at the supermarket? Osama and Saddam are having a gauzy-dress wearing dance to celebrate their gay marriage.
So the question is, why is it that being gay is still the ultimate insult and disgrace, so much so that it will even make us revile these two evil bastards more than we already do? As if everything they've already done isn't horrible enough, now they're gay, so they're really beyond redemption? Just asking.
And on a more semi-serious note, I found plain-jane's diary for today just so thought-provoking, for me anyway. Here she is, as she says, "the gentile mother of a Jewish child", and has a pretty good sense by this proxy of what the Jewish thing feels like. And the things she said about it sounded very on-target for me: the Jewish mother of children who are not necessarily Jewish.
Are they Jewish or aren't they? The best answer is that they are if they want to be. According to Jewish law (which I'm not exactly big on), they are. The children of a Jewish mother are Jewish. When they were born, I had them named in a ceremony in a synogogue, although I didn't go myself, and neither did my parents; a friend took care of it for me. I've got certificates. I did this to honor my grandmothers and name my children for them, but also so that if they ever needed proof, they'd have the papers. Why would they ever need to prove they're Jewish? Oh crap, I don't know. If they ever married someone who was, god forbid, orthodox and needed proof. Worse, if they ever wanted to claim Israeli citizenship, since all you need to do that is to be Jewish.
As in, over my dead body. Listen, that kid may be living in the United Kingdom for a year, but I'll be damned if she's going to Israel. One of her friends says she's going on some sort of trip sponsored by, I think, an organization called Birthright Israel; if you're Jewish you can go for free. TO ISRAEL???? She said, for the cultural experience. I said, you want to experience getting blown up on a bus?
Okay, I'm off the track, not that I was on one. Back to Jane. who said also "in 1933, my child would have been dragged from my arms and exterminated because of his ancestry." Now that's a thought. I can't say I've taken a survey, but I'm willing to guess that this thought has passed through the mind of every Jewish parent for the last 60 years or so. There was never a time in my life that I didn't know about what had happened to Jews in Nazi Germany, and that if I had been in that time and place it would have happened to me, too.
I've got two daughters with nice Italian last names and a quarter of Irish ancestry to boot. Religion is not an issue with us, and the ethnic blend adds interest. And the thought also occurred to me years back that if anything happened, maybe they could pass. Maybe they could hide under their Italian names and when it all blew over again, they would still be there, still okay. And still, according to someone, Jewish.
I always wanted to leave it up to them, to self-identify however they wanted to. By and large, they have. When they were little, I would hear them answer, if anyone asked, that they were half-Jewish and half-Catholic. As they got older, they understood that Catholic is a religion into which they were not baptized, and the answers would be that they were Jewish, Irish, and Italian. Their names mark them pretty clearly as Italian, and although they have some sense of the Irish -- at least R does, she was born on St. Patrick's Day -- it doesn't show much.
I think now if anyone were to ask, they would give the same answer: Jewish, Irish, Italian. I also think that if anyone asked, as someone once did in a college classroom of R's, for the sake of making a cultural reference, is anyone here Jewish? that both of them would raise their hands. As she did at the time, and she was the only one. I'd like to think that they would do the same if Italians were asked to come forwar, but I don't know. Not too sure about the Irish; they'd have to do some convicing on that one. Actually, I'm pretty sure that at this point, they've both self-identified, more or less, as Jewish.
No idea where I'm going with this. (But I assure you, while there's breath in my body, she's not going to Israel. Not that there's anything wrong with Israel.) Just giving the flip side, as it were, for Jane's today.
--------------------------------------------------
I'm watching The Nanny
--------------------------------------------------
last ::
next
Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
|
