![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vicarzUnable to keep my eyes open in front of books, the computer, and then the tv, I turned in around 10. I clicked on WETA a bit early. From 11-12 on Sundays they play spacey trippy music. It’s lovely to hear, and a quaalude to wrap up the weekend. Earlier they play folk music. I rarely like the sound of voices a cappella - though I often in ethnic and/or folk. Tonight the announcer let me know I was enjoying jewish lullabies. Well don’t I feel silly. Tired, but unable to sleep because I’m transfixed by lullabies. Oi. Oy? They were so beautiful. Not restful, but beautiful. I didn’t mind staying awake to hear them.
What is a jew? I remember wondering about that in grade school, realizing we got off these weird holidays. I liked potato pancakes. I had jewish friends, and not-friends. I couldn’t tell who was jewish, didn’t care...both are still the case. I thought a JAP was an Asian slur until I went to college, where UM quickly taught me the New Jersey version of that stereotype – and I hated it. Jews? You don’t have to be jewish to be a JAP, lesson #1. Or female. My first college roommate was a male JAP. Having a gay roommate could have been so fun, but no he was just a spoiled little shit. Ugh.
Jewish…is weird to me. Any group in the world that has ever been prejudiced has or currently does hate the jews. This amazes me. What the fuck is a jew? Why do people care about them? They, perhaps like the Irish, are not physically distinguishable from other populations. I didn’t know my jewish friends were jewish. I don’t often know now. A friend gave me a line that actually opened a whole new line of thought when she said “We’re a hairy little people” while she convinced me to switch razor brands based on her expensive full-body razor knowledge. This was not long ago. I now suspect that jews may be brunettes.
It’s hard not to have a jewish opinion right now, with the middle-east a bastion of love like it is. It’s cute how people with opinions about jews mask them with Israel opinions. I mean people do have plain old opinions on Israel – but if anyone actually has opinions about jews, they often emerge in Israel discussions. It’s rare that the term “Zionist” is used by anyone who isn’t prejudiced (my understanding is that the term and the 'doctrine' have been proven to be falsifications created by old-Russia in some campaign by...Lennin?). Israel is what made me start thinking that perhaps jewish culture is arrogant. I have negative Israel opinions, but like this country I’m not sure how much of what I see are the actions of right-wing leaders who aren’t supported by their populace. There is a sick part of me that would appreciate rounding up palestines in Israeli camps, oh the irony. Wow, that is a sick thought. Funny, but sick. Maybe I won’t post this after all.
I think I like jewish culture. I don’t know if I do, probably never will, probably will never care enough to actually find out, and that’s before we ignore the obvious point that any large group will be too diverse for convenient stereotypes to accurately describe. What I have picked up, right or wrong, is a strong belief in the importance of career success through education. Perhaps those are just the jews I know, but perhaps the stereotypical doc-tah or law-yeh jew is there for a reason? Accountants? I also know the stereotyping that was done by the germans pre WW2 which falsely accused ‘the jews’ of owning everything and shutting others out. Well shit, if you don’t have a law degree and work 80 hours a week, then perhaps you won’t be a well-paid attorney, figure that the fuck out. The views, properly attributed or not, toward the focus on education are consistent with my upbringing and current belief system.
On the other hand, I’ve rarely heard people that bothered to talk to me that were as dead-set in their religions views, or that believed that there was one answer that was so unquestionably right. That’s a weaker picture to me than the focus on education, but one that’s rather troublesome given the state of Israel. Lovely situation where both sides are so dead-set in their righteousness. I think I like the ‘not interested in visiting that place’ American jews. Hmm, ‘American’ auto-corrects to capital while jew does not. I don’t capitalize xtian either - no religion is worth reaching for the shift key.
So, these aren’t valuable opinions. I just felt like voicing things I know and don’t about jews, which is to say – not much. I don’t care much either. That whole god and old-new testament concept lost me with the xtians, similarly religion interests me little except as a thing that makes people act weird. Technically jews are some sort of Christian-like thing, pre-dating, just not…wow Christian auto-corrects but jew doesn’t. See, prejudice aigh! Let’s try muslim, ah that didn’t correct either. If I do quaker, nope not that one. Is buddhist? MS is prejudiced as hell!
All that writing, the edge of a controversial subject, and nothing came. Lots of incomplete thoughts, most bordering on racist sounding opinions. Not the work I was hoping for.
I wrote this weeks ago, and think today I’ll actually post it. I thought about it again the other day while listening to a book review on NPR, written by a jewish woman that had gone and interviewed many terrorist leaders - some of whom had later died in Israeli strikes. One of the things she pointed out was that there was no outright hate shown to her by the people who led these anti-jewish groups. The other VERY INTERESTING note was that many of them in foreign countries had never even _met_ a jew. They didn’t know jews, but hated them based on misrepresented beliefs about how ‘they own everything and control the world.’
Ignorance is hatred, or a close cousin to it. Maybe my experience is why people hate ‘the jews,’ they don’t know who they are. The jews might represent an invisible enemy, so whatever is wrong you can blame on the jews. In areas where there is poverty, unemployment, and general desperation - they would love to have an enemy to hate, and the INVISIBLE ZIONIST CONSPIRACY is a great rallying cry. Of course the real enemies are those people that take the energy of discontent and turn it into a violent force - not trying to do any good, but using the turmoil to propel themselves to positions of status and power. If you don’t have an enemy to draw you together, just create one! They don’t even have to be real!
It’s funny blaming the jews for the world’s problems, when in reality it’s really the republican frat boys that are doing it! That’s right bitch - I’ve learned NOTHING MUA HA HA HA!
Am I the Al, or the anti-Al? I love black and white.
Yesterday I pissed people off and was totally surprised. If talking about THE JEWS pisses people off, at least the reactions are somewhat understandable.
What is a jew? I remember wondering about that in grade school, realizing we got off these weird holidays. I liked potato pancakes. I had jewish friends, and not-friends. I couldn’t tell who was jewish, didn’t care...both are still the case. I thought a JAP was an Asian slur until I went to college, where UM quickly taught me the New Jersey version of that stereotype – and I hated it. Jews? You don’t have to be jewish to be a JAP, lesson #1. Or female. My first college roommate was a male JAP. Having a gay roommate could have been so fun, but no he was just a spoiled little shit. Ugh.
Jewish…is weird to me. Any group in the world that has ever been prejudiced has or currently does hate the jews. This amazes me. What the fuck is a jew? Why do people care about them? They, perhaps like the Irish, are not physically distinguishable from other populations. I didn’t know my jewish friends were jewish. I don’t often know now. A friend gave me a line that actually opened a whole new line of thought when she said “We’re a hairy little people” while she convinced me to switch razor brands based on her expensive full-body razor knowledge. This was not long ago. I now suspect that jews may be brunettes.
It’s hard not to have a jewish opinion right now, with the middle-east a bastion of love like it is. It’s cute how people with opinions about jews mask them with Israel opinions. I mean people do have plain old opinions on Israel – but if anyone actually has opinions about jews, they often emerge in Israel discussions. It’s rare that the term “Zionist” is used by anyone who isn’t prejudiced (my understanding is that the term and the 'doctrine' have been proven to be falsifications created by old-Russia in some campaign by...Lennin?). Israel is what made me start thinking that perhaps jewish culture is arrogant. I have negative Israel opinions, but like this country I’m not sure how much of what I see are the actions of right-wing leaders who aren’t supported by their populace. There is a sick part of me that would appreciate rounding up palestines in Israeli camps, oh the irony. Wow, that is a sick thought. Funny, but sick. Maybe I won’t post this after all.
I think I like jewish culture. I don’t know if I do, probably never will, probably will never care enough to actually find out, and that’s before we ignore the obvious point that any large group will be too diverse for convenient stereotypes to accurately describe. What I have picked up, right or wrong, is a strong belief in the importance of career success through education. Perhaps those are just the jews I know, but perhaps the stereotypical doc-tah or law-yeh jew is there for a reason? Accountants? I also know the stereotyping that was done by the germans pre WW2 which falsely accused ‘the jews’ of owning everything and shutting others out. Well shit, if you don’t have a law degree and work 80 hours a week, then perhaps you won’t be a well-paid attorney, figure that the fuck out. The views, properly attributed or not, toward the focus on education are consistent with my upbringing and current belief system.
On the other hand, I’ve rarely heard people that bothered to talk to me that were as dead-set in their religions views, or that believed that there was one answer that was so unquestionably right. That’s a weaker picture to me than the focus on education, but one that’s rather troublesome given the state of Israel. Lovely situation where both sides are so dead-set in their righteousness. I think I like the ‘not interested in visiting that place’ American jews. Hmm, ‘American’ auto-corrects to capital while jew does not. I don’t capitalize xtian either - no religion is worth reaching for the shift key.
So, these aren’t valuable opinions. I just felt like voicing things I know and don’t about jews, which is to say – not much. I don’t care much either. That whole god and old-new testament concept lost me with the xtians, similarly religion interests me little except as a thing that makes people act weird. Technically jews are some sort of Christian-like thing, pre-dating, just not…wow Christian auto-corrects but jew doesn’t. See, prejudice aigh! Let’s try muslim, ah that didn’t correct either. If I do quaker, nope not that one. Is buddhist? MS is prejudiced as hell!
All that writing, the edge of a controversial subject, and nothing came. Lots of incomplete thoughts, most bordering on racist sounding opinions. Not the work I was hoping for.
I wrote this weeks ago, and think today I’ll actually post it. I thought about it again the other day while listening to a book review on NPR, written by a jewish woman that had gone and interviewed many terrorist leaders - some of whom had later died in Israeli strikes. One of the things she pointed out was that there was no outright hate shown to her by the people who led these anti-jewish groups. The other VERY INTERESTING note was that many of them in foreign countries had never even _met_ a jew. They didn’t know jews, but hated them based on misrepresented beliefs about how ‘they own everything and control the world.’
Ignorance is hatred, or a close cousin to it. Maybe my experience is why people hate ‘the jews,’ they don’t know who they are. The jews might represent an invisible enemy, so whatever is wrong you can blame on the jews. In areas where there is poverty, unemployment, and general desperation - they would love to have an enemy to hate, and the INVISIBLE ZIONIST CONSPIRACY is a great rallying cry. Of course the real enemies are those people that take the energy of discontent and turn it into a violent force - not trying to do any good, but using the turmoil to propel themselves to positions of status and power. If you don’t have an enemy to draw you together, just create one! They don’t even have to be real!
It’s funny blaming the jews for the world’s problems, when in reality it’s really the republican frat boys that are doing it! That’s right bitch - I’ve learned NOTHING MUA HA HA HA!
Am I the Al, or the anti-Al? I love black and white.
Yesterday I pissed people off and was totally surprised. If talking about THE JEWS pisses people off, at least the reactions are somewhat understandable.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 06:50 am (UTC)n. A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.
There's nothing inherently hateful about zionism, Albert Einstein was an openly zionistic. The russian falsification was a book called something like 'the protocols of the elders of zion', which ascribed the ideas of world contol of the banks and governments to Jews.
As an idea this can be traced back (at least) to renaisance Italy (1400s). Christianity explixitly prohibits money lending, so until the renaisance all banks were run by Jews. The Medici family saw how much money was being made and started spreading rumors and lies about Jews, and later even engineered a run on the banks to break the jewish control and replace it with their own.
As for JAP I hated the term the first time I heard it - when I moved to Syracuse - about 2 weeks later I was using it freely. It's hard not too when there are just sooooo many people who fit the stereotype.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 06:52 am (UTC)Crap - I had heard that banking story before, wish I had that in my mind when I wrote the post.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 07:24 am (UTC)Interesting tidbit: I was doing some reading on Zoroastrianism the other day, which was the first monotheistic religion, and likely the origin of Judaism and therefore Christianity and therefore Islam. They don't marry outside of their religion and they do not convert, so they are pretty inbred these days, and number in the thousands worldwide, mostly Iran and Los Angele. They are the true Aryan race, as in the people who brought the Vedas to India. And they don't have blonde hair and blue eyes either. They also count King Cyrus as one of their own. He is noted as having rebuilt the temple of Jerusalem in like 600 BC, allowing the Jews to move in there and settle down enough to compile the Torah and therefore start the "Judeo-Christian" ball rolling.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 07:39 am (UTC)on zoroastrianism and other minutae
Date: 2003-10-17 11:38 am (UTC)- Zoroastrianism is not the first monotheistic religion. It was the first eschatonic religion, with the concept of an afterlife wherein one is judged by one's conduct, and a catastrophic end of the world.
- Zoroastrianism is a natural evolution of Vedic Aryan myths which later became Hinduism. You will occasionally find cognates: Mithra (Roman Mithras), a god of the sun in Hinduism, is an archangel in the Zoroastrian spiritual pantheon. Likewise, Dyaosh Pedar (Sanskrit Dyaus Pitri, Greek Zeus Pater, Latin Ju-piter) was later referred to by his honorific title, Ahura Mazda. (cf. Sanskrit Asura -> Avestan Ahura, reflecting the s -> h migration between Iranian and Indian languages [e.g., soma, haoma])
- Zoroastrianism still exists iN Iran, especially around the enclave of Yazd, and a Zoroastrian representative is in the Iranian Majlis, but the majority of Zoroastrians are actually in India (mainly Bombay), where they are called Parsis. One was a major character in Moby Dick.
- Zoroastrianism thus influenced later Judaism, during the "prophetic" phase (Zachariah/Melechiah/yaddayadda) with such concepts as an angelic pantheon, an afterlife (hitherto, the afterlife was referred to as sheol, the grave, with no good/bad conduct distinction), the end of the world, and the concept of a malevolent devil. Prior to the influences from Zoroastrianism, ha-satan "the accuser" was represented as merely another angel in the pantheon and seperate from the tempting serpent.
- "Aryan" is a very loose term and you should watch where you use it. The Aryan languages refer to the Indo-European languages, which cover a wide swath from Portugal to Bengal, and while "Aryan" people tend to be Caucasian, it should be noted that when most tribes spread out of central areas (in this case central Asia), they tend to marry and/or enslave/capture the locals. In this way a nationality can increase while having a fairly diverse gene base. In the case of the Aryans, they exploded from somewhere north of modern day Iran (current estimates say eastern Ukraine), and the Iranians consider themselves the closest descendents (Iran == "Aryan"). That may be disputable, but the shortly after the first major split of the Aryans circa 1,500 B.C. Greek and Old Persian weren't all that different from each other. And both could understand the Scythians (also known as the Saka or Sakalaba, which later became the term Sclav and even later Slav).
- As an aside, exactly the same thing happened, about a millenium or so later, with the Turco-Mongol explosion of the 700-1200's or so, which spread the Uralo-Altaic languages in a swath from Finland to Mongolia. The major tribes involved were the Huns (Hsiung-Nu, Ye-ta), Pechenegs, Magyars (later to become Hungarians), Bulgars, Khazars, Turks (Tueh-Chi), Naiman, Tatars, Mongols, Turcomans, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Kazakhs (Cossacks), Kyrghyz, Azeris, and a few more I really can't remember at the moment. The languages are roughly mutually intelligable. But a Hungarian looks nothing like a Turk looks nothing like a Mongol. Again, tribes intermarry, so use of the term 'race' is very misleading.
- Aside to the aside: Most of the Turco-Mongol tribes, before they converted to Islam, espoused Manicheanism, which is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism. Another offshoot, Zurvanism, heavily influenced the now all but extinct school of Dharmagupta Buddhism.
- Trying to bring this back on topic, it should be noted that the Khazars converted wholesale to Judaism around the 900's, partially, it is surmised, because at the time Jews could operate commercially in the Christian (read: Byzantine), and Muslim worlds. The Khazars mysteriously disappeared, but it is now believed that the vast majority of Eastern European Jews are of Khazar descent.
- If the subject interests you, you might want to check out the following books:
Re: on zoroastrianism and other minutae
Date: 2003-10-19 04:25 pm (UTC)OK, I think you got everything I was going to say.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 01:41 pm (UTC)I didn't know you were a terp (no caps there either). When were you there?
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 04:41 pm (UTC)I know where UMBC is. My father's been the director of undergraduate mathematics there for quite a while now.
I didn't realize that UMBC had the huge New Joisey population like UMCP does.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 05:09 pm (UTC)