Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences 
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Throughout the European Middle Ages and modern times, Jews were the quintessential outsiders. Political power derived its legitimacy from Christianity, so Jews were politically suspect. Back before the conflict with the Palestinians, Jews generally got along well with Muslims; because the Muslims and Christians were at each others’ throats, that didn’t help. Economically, Jews were both advantaged and disadvantaged: not being subject to Church prohibitions against money-lending, they were economically useful but despised; not being allowed to own land in many places, they were forced into mercantile trades; having connections with other Jews in other cities helped them prosper in trade, furthering the association between Jews and money (at a time when a typical peasant had none). On a religious level, Jews were viewed as having rejected (and perhaps killed) Christ; to this day, their refusal to accept Jesus as their savior is viewed by some Christians as preventing the establishment of the Kingdom of God. At the same time, Jews had beliefs that further alienated Christians: refusing to eat food prepared by Christians, for example; and classifying Christians as idolators. The position of the Jews in Western society is unique primarily because of their long history; other groups, such as the Romani, were regarded in much the same way (outsider = bad). The Irish (a white-skinned, English-speaking, Christian people) were badly discriminated against in the United States until the Italians and Eastern Europeans arrived to take their place as whipping boys.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,What you ate was American food, with a Jewish flavor to it. Bagels are of Eastern European Jewish origin. The macaroni and cheese dish is from the same region, and there’s another version without the cheese (to accompany meat-based meals, since dairy products wouldn’t be allowed). Coconut and tuna would probably have baffled my Eastern European Jewish ancestors, unless they happened to live in a fairly cosmopolitan city. Most of the Jews in America are from Eastern European roots. That all being said, there are Jews from other parts of the world (India, the Mediterranean, the Middle East) that have their own culinary traditions. In fact, Roman-style Italian cuisine is considered to be of Jewish origin, and to this day the part of town that used to be the Jewish neighborhood is full of excellent ‘Italian’ restaurants. Generally, Jewish cuisine is similar to that of the people around them but adapted in some ways to accommodate the Jewish dietary laws (no pork, no mixing of milk and meat). As for ‘Hebrew’ food, that’s not a term that gets used — mostly because modern Jews don’t refer to themselves as Hebrews. If you want to look at what folks were eating in the Old Testament, I suppose you could call that ‘Hebrew’ food; but nobody else does. It’s mostly just roast meat, barley cakes, and lentils — pretty typical for peasants in the Middle East down to this day. The big exception is unleavened bread, which has ceremonial meaning to Jews (matzoh) and Christians (communion wafers) today.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I think that female circumcision is actually more of an African than a Muslim thing, although since Northern Africa is predominantly Muslim the two have blurred together. It is, I believe, illegal in the USA.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I burst out laughing when I read this. Years ago, on the Bill Cosby show (Cosby is a famous, and black, comedian), the family was going for Chinese food and one of the children protested, ‘Chinese food again? We aren’t even Jewish!’ American Jews have had a reputation for enjoying Chinese food, and I’ve never heard that said of blacks. On the other hand, many of the Caribbean immigrants in the USA seem to favor Chinese food. There are many Chinese restaurants in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, and they often combine the two cuisines.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I’ve always been partial to Asian women. Specific things I find attractive are the skin color (typically darker than Caucasians); high cheekbones; and dramatically black, straight hair.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I wouldn’t read much into it. Maybe the server thinks their barbecue sauce is crap, and doesn’t understand why anyone would eat it.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,By ‘curls’ do you mean the long curly bits hanging in front of their ears? If so, then here is the explanation. The Old Testament includes a prohibition against cutting ‘the corners’ of the hair. Some Jews interpret this to mean that they should leave the hair of their sideburns to grow untamed. Many other, equally Orthodox Jews simply keep their sideburns trimmed but let them extend longer than they might otherwise (below the middle of the ear, for example). You wouldn’t notice that, because those Jews typically don’t dress in a way that stands out other than always wearing a hat. (There are even some Jews who use a depilatory, rather than a razor, to sidestep the issue.) The Jews that dress distinctively do so mostly to set themselves apart, not because their religion requires it. They certainly wouldn’t try to claim that Abraham wore a black suit, white shirt, and conservative tie. Rather like the Amish, they have frozen their dress code in time.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,First ask yourself why would anyone make such an unpopular (and at times dangerous) choice, if it were truly voluntary? The sex drive is extremely powerful, and it’s all most people can do to simply maintain decent behavior – let alone turn their sex drive inside out. Although there’s no definitive evidence either way, there are a lot of indications that sexual orientation is linked to clearly biological traits that seem unrelated on the surface. This suggests that there is a biological (presumably genetic, possibly environmental) element. You should also reflect upon the fact that homosexual-like behavior is not rare among primates, it is often part of dominance/submission displays. That might not be the same thing, but evolution tends to repurpose physical and behavioral characteristics (which is why it is worth studying). It might be that this kind of dominance display was linked in some way to something else, so that when the one changed the other was changed as well. Hypothetically, the evolutionary changes that led our ancestors towards monogamy might have somehow changed same-sex sexual displays from an occasional thing into a more constant orientation. (That’s a wild speculation on my part.) Or it might be that true homosexuality occurs among other primates, but that those individuals are killed or abandoned as sometimes happens with other ‘different’ young ones.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,Among Orthodox Jews, it is traditional for the husband and wife to have sex through a hole in a sheet. The reason is not so that they don’t see or touch one another, but rather so that the sheet will absorb the blood from her hymen, proving that she is a virgin and also protecting her husband (to some degree) from contact with the blood. This is only for their first intercourse. Perhaps there’s a similar tradition among Russians.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I don’t think it breaks down to right vs. wrong. In many cases, dating someone from the same background as yourself is easier: it ensures that you have something, maybe many things, in common, ranging from the types of food you like to the way you view the world. On the other hand, differences can be stimulating. My first wife was from a very different background: socially, economically, racially and religiously. I introduced her to opera, the value of education, my religion and more generally the idea of intellectual curiosity (which in her background was not encouraged); and although our marriage didn’t last, she went on to explore the world in ways she never would otherwise have done. (Our differences did not cause our marriage to fail, it was something more fundamental.) I didn’t learn much from her, though; she was too busy adopting my values and abandoning hers for it to be a two-way street. However, I’ve seen other couples shake themselves apart because they each had strongly held values and viewed maintaining them as central to their individual identities. One final comment: a lot of this stuff doesn’t really surface until there are children. Then, suddenly, this tradition or that belief becomes something you really need your child to share.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,You might as well give it up. I remember walking down the hall with a co-worker when a passing Asian woman spoke to her in some language other than English. She just smiled and nodded, then she muttered to me: ‘I wish those Japanese would stop it and realize I’m Chinese. How would they like it if I spoke to them in Korean?’ My point is that even THEY can’t reliably tell at a glance, any more than you could tell a Swiss from an Austrian from a Dane.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I suspect this breaks down on a generational basis. If Jews held grudges for too long, there’d be no place they felt comfortable. (Actually, that’s one of the reasons they feel so strongly about Israel: it’s the one country that can’t turn against them.) I, myself, have no strong feelings about Germans or Germany. My parents, who are of the World War II generation, do or did. My mother, for example, said she would never buy a German car (she prefers Japanese!); but there are plenty of younger Jews driving BMWs. She also expressed some misgivings about the Poles, because she feels they had a history of anti-Semitism even before that, but it isn’t very strong. This came up when I married a girl from a Polish background who had converted to Judaism, and she only mentioned it once. I’m far more concerned about signs of anti-Semitism in the United States, and of course I don’t like the rhetoric coming out of the Arab countries, where Jews, not Israelis, are vilified.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,Without meaning to imply anything about your desirability, I feel obliged to point out that a drunken guy of any color will hit on anything with a pulse. That’s why they have expressions like ‘two-o’clock woman.’ Your best bet is to look for sober ones who are looking for more than something to lean against while they puke.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,This isn’t an answer, more of a related question. My kids went to a school in a small city with a large minority population, and I was active in the PTO at their elementary school. Based entirely on the turnout at PTO meetings and evening events we held, I commented to the principal that the school seemed to have very few African-American students. She told me that, in fact, it was about 1/3 Hispanic and 1/3 African-American. I wondered then, and still do, why the turnout of Hispanics was so much greater than the showing made by African-Americans (although Anglo whites predominated at our functions). It certainly wasn’t economic status, because the Hispanics were not a prosperous lot as a whole. Perhaps the African-American churches drew people’s interest away from the public schools?
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,Roma that blend in with the mainstream population more or less become invisible, at least in the United States, where the population as a whole is heterogenous. In European countries where the main population is more homogenous, any minority sticks out. The Germans and French have been name-calling for 1,000 years. Aside from those generalizations, from what I’ve read, Roma traditionally have a similar contempt for others and, to a degree, view them as prey. (I don’t have a lot of information, but I’ve read the Yoors book and a few other things.) Certainly the few Roma that I’ve knowingly met were con artists and thieves, and my wife saw them begging all over Poland when she visited there. Again, odds are that if a bank teller were a gypsy, I probably wouldn’t become aware of it unless I noticed an unusual name and got nosy.
User Detail :
Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,
