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A friend of mine is Jewish and she is always talking about being brought up in the Jewish Culture. Because people on this board are generally against any type of racial or religious stereotype maybe by using the word culture we can start an interesting debate. (I have lots of respect for Jewish people but am not one myself)
I asked my Jewish friend exactly what she meant by growing up in a Jewish culture, here is what she said:
Expectation of being more aggressive and assertive with others
Expectation of academic and career excellence
Stronger interest in the arts, music, cultural events than the general population
A belief that Jewish people are God's chosen race and as a result a little bit of arrogance and extreme confidence
Certain social and interpersonal behaviors that are very assertive
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What do you think, is there a Jewish culture and are Jewish kids brought up with certain expectations and behaviors.
I doubt you'd find too many American Jews buy into the "chosen people" thing. you do bring up a good question though.
Let me try to explain it this way: European Jews (from which the vast, vast majority of Americans draw their roots) were a people apart. In so many nations, they were not welcome. The Jewish religion itself, of course, was based on a sense of peoplehood and that was taken from the Jewish kingdoms of biblical times into the Diaspora (dispersal of Jews) which began shortly after the time of Christ.
The first Jews to come to the US in significant numbers were from Germany, but after the Civil War with industrialization, urbanization, and massive immigration, the majority of Jews emigrated from Russia, Poland, and other parts of eastern Europe.
It is important to note based on your question that these Jews saw themselves as an ethnicity as well as a religion (certainly Jews still see that today). So in many ways, the huge wave of immigration that we associate with the periods between the Civil War and WWI (where Ellis Island was the terminal) included vast numbers of people like Jews, Italians, Poles, Irish, Germans, Swedes, etc.
And like the other groups, these Jews had their own cultural ways and those from eastern Europe carried their own language (Yiddish), too.
In so many ways, the story of these American Jews paralleled the other groups in question. With one significant difference:
Jews carried their own religion along with ethnicity.
The result? Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants ended up mixing more quickly past their ethnic communities through their shared Catholicism. For Jews, while of course a degree of intermarriage took place, religion kept the boundaries tighter. Even by the 1950s, when an Irish Catholic marrying an Italian Catholic was hardly unexpected, Jews intermarrying was.
Let's keep in mind the effect that both the Holocaust and the creation of Israel had in keeping Jewish culture going. That Jews may well have been the most urbanized of European immigrant groups kept the culture going strong in New York, and other major cities like Chicago and Philadelphia (and later LA and Miami) as well.
Where's it at today? Really a shell of what it once was. As noted, it was just a matter of degree between the Jewish experience and those other European immigrant groups. Intermarriage was going to take place...even though it was pretty much ordained to be later.
Now it happens at a rate well over 50%. So the Jewish culture of which you speak is fading into the melting pot at a rapid rate as both numbers and the loss of connection to those immigrant generations religates much of the Jewish experience to history.
That said, American Jews, perhaps more so than those in any country, have added so much of their (our) culture to Americn culture from comedy to the growth of Broadway to the start of Hollywood, in literature and intellectual circles, to food (bagels are hardly Jewish anymore).
I would say there is a Jewish American culture. It is part religious/part cultural, but I would say the Jewish faith is what drives the differentation.
It encompasses a variety of areas: religion, education, music, food (very important), lifestyle, marriage, and family life.
A friend of mine is Jewish and she is always talking about being brought up in the Jewish Culture. Because people on this board are generally against any type of racial or religious stereotype maybe by using the word culture we can start an interesting debate. (I have lots of respect for Jewish people but am not one myself)
I asked my Jewish friend exactly what she meant by growing up in a Jewish culture, here is what she said:
Expectation of being more aggressive and assertive with others
Expectation of academic and career excellence
Stronger interest in the arts, music, cultural events than the general population
A belief that Jewish people are God's chosen race and as a result a little bit of arrogance and extreme confidence
Certain social and interpersonal behaviors that are very assertive
---------------
What do you think, is there a Jewish culture and are Jewish kids brought up with certain expectations and behaviors.
Yes, definitely. I work with many Jewish people. They make jokes about themselves; for example, their holidays "We were persecuted, we persevered, so we eat."
It's funny, speaking of holidays, last year the Jews in the office were saying how their typical Christmas--going to movies and getting Chinese food--was being crowded by the Hindus (there were Hindus in on this conversation), who starting to do the same things on Christmas Day. It was pretty funny to listen to, and one of the reasons I just love New York where you get to hear conversations like this.
Anyway, here's something on Jewish culture that's very popular right now:
I would like to ask a question I have often wondered. If any one finds it offensive please excuse me, and just ignore my post.---Are Jewish people a race of People, or just a religion, that gives their people their name. thank you.
I would like to ask a question I have often wondered. If any one finds it offensive please excuse me, and just ignore my post.---Are Jewish people a race of People, or just a religion, that gives their people their name. thank you.
I'm not Jewish so I hope someone who is gives you a better answer. Judaism is the religion of Jews. However, many people who identify as Jews are not religious at all.
I've been on a religious discussion board with Jewish people and asked a lot of questions. One of them responded to that question this way: She said, "we are a tribe." A group of people who share a history and in some cases, genetic characteristics. Think of Tay-Sachs disease--it's a genetic disease that affects Jews of Eastern European decent. It's not a racial disease, but it came from a group of people who were interbred enough to develop a genetic problem.
Some of the stories I learned from people on that board were fascinating. One, a Jewish woman who lives in South Jersey, said she had a caregiver for her kids for a while who was an older Catholic woman. One Friday night the Jewish woman was late getting home and made it there to pick up her kids barely in time before sunset, when Shabbat begins. The Catholic woman had the cabinet underneath her kitchen sink open and was lighting candles. The Jewish woman asked her why she was doing that and the Catholic woman said she really didn't know--her mother, grandmother, etc., had passed down this custom to light candles under the kitchen sink on Friday nights. The Jewish woman told her that she was pretty sure that the Catholic woman must have had ancestors who'd undergone a forced conversion in the past and had to hide their Jewishness. Eventually the information must have been lost.
Sure enough, the Catholic lady's family did a geneology and it turned out they'd come from Jews. The Catholic woman kept her religion but her daughter embraced Orthodox Judaism, married a Jew and is raising her children Jewish.
Similar stories of "crypto-Jews" have come up in the western states in recent years. People of Spanish descent who are Catholic but who turn their pictures of Christ to the wall on Friday nights, light candles, and don't eat pork, but never knew why they did these things. Most New World Crypto-Jews of Iberian descent are in Mexico and Brazil.
That was the Spanish Inquisition. Convert or die. Some faked it and lived.
Last edited by Mightyqueen801; 12-09-2009 at 05:30 PM..
Reason: Added sentence
I would like to ask a question I have often wondered. If any one finds it offensive please excuse me, and just ignore my post.---Are Jewish people a race of People, or just a religion, that gives their people their name. thank you.
I'm not offended (and I'm Jewish too!) Judaism is a religion, not a race. Anyone could be Jewish, either because they were born into a Jewish family or because they converted later in life. But if you hunt around enough here on C-D, you'll run into a certain subspecies of humanity with some very strong beliefs in this area. And those people will tell you with absolute certainty that there's a "Jewish race." They happen to be wrong.
I'm not offended (and I'm Jewish too!) Judaism is a religion, not a race. Anyone could be Jewish, either because they were born into a Jewish family or because they converted later in life. But if you hunt around enough here on C-D, you'll run into a certain subspecies of humanity with some very strong beliefs in this area. And those people will tell you with absolute certainty that there's a "Jewish race." They happen to be wrong.
Well, Jackie Mason thought so. Woody Allen also. There has been a minority comic relief bent in the US for decades, Black comedians have cashed in on their differences as well as Jew's, Mexican's, Cuban's, and Native American's. All those groups have been in the minority of the US populace and therefore have a little bit of a twist on what it means to be an American. Whether it's your music, speech, theology, or race, if it isn't in the mainstream it's thought by most to represent another culture.
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